“It has long been recognized that any interpretation of prehistoric religious behavior should be based on concrete archaeological evidence. Yet evidence for Paleolithic belief systems is extremely scanty, and that which does exist is usually enigmatic — or as [Mircea] Eliade has expressed it, semantically opaque” (Freeman & Echegaray 1981).
Three lines of evidence are typically [...]
Tags:Cantabria·cave·dualism·El Juyo·El Juyo face·figurine·J. Gonzalez Echegaray·L.G. Freeman·Magdalenian·mask·methodology·Mircea Eliade·mobiliary·Orc·overinterpretation·Paleolithic·parietal·parsimony·ritual·Rorschach·sanctuary·Spain·temple
Everyone knows the experience: you happen upon a wreck and know you shouldn’t look but can’t help it. While there is a chance of seeing something disturbing, you look regardless. There should be a word for this and in the absence of one, I will call it car-wreck voyeurism. I felt something like this after [...]
Tags:adaptation·ancestral environment·ASD·Aspergers·autism·autism spectrum disorder·autistic·EP·evolutionary psychology·fantasy·fitness·foraging·gathering·hunting·Jared Reser·Just So Stories·maladaptive·orangutans·Panglossian·Panglossian Paradigm·parsimony·peer review·pleiotropy·Plio-Pleistocene·Psychology Today·Satoshi Kanazawa·sociality·solitary forager hypothesis·spandrels·speculation·Thomas Hobbes
In a recent essay on the cult of David Foster Wallace, Nathan Heller notes that DFW’s mature work deals with the crisis of contemporary pluralism: “how to think intelligently and truthfully about the world when that world is full of intelligent and truthful people who adhere to irreconcilable schools of thought.” While Heller [...]
Tags:Alan Sokal·Catholic·confirmation bias·David Foster Wallace·evolutionary psychologist·fantasy·group level selection·group size·Jesus·language·Matt Rossano·Nathan Heller·natural law·Panglossian·parsimony·pluralism·Pope Benedict·postmodernism·resurrection·science·storytelling·supernatural selection·technology·truth·wish fulfillment
Over at Seed, Holly Capelo provides a helpful survey of the various ways in which the famous Upper Paleolithic cave paintings — found primarily in France and Spain — have been interpreted over the last several decades. The occasion for her survey, which strangely omits mention of David Lewis-Williams’ contention that the paintings were the [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·archaeoastronomy·aurochs·bovids·bull mythology·cave paintings·cyclical time·David Lewis-Williams·entoptic images·Hall of Bulls·Holly Capelo·Lascaux·linear time·lunar time·Magdalenian·Michael Rappengluck·Occams razor·paleolithic graffiti·parsimony·seasonal hunting·star time·Taurus constellation·time-keeping system·Upper Paleolithic
Over at HuffPo Religion, Wray Herbert asks whether religious belief soothes the worried mind and reports on some new research suggesting it does. Scholars have been asking this question for quite a long time, and many have simply assumed that religion does in fact sooth troubled minds. Freud reached this conclusion in Future of an [...]
Tags:Alexa Tullett·anxiety·burials·calming effects·deliberate burials·explanation·Freud·Future of An Illusion·hominids·Michael Inzlicht·Neanderthals·order·parsimony·Pascal Boyer·purpose·Reflecting on God·Scott Atran·souls·spirits·Wray Herbert
In light of yesterday’s post regarding the widespread and naturally explicable belief that humans have spirits or souls, I thought it would be appropriate to continue on a related topic. It is often claimed, by enthusiastic archaeologists and anthropologists, that deliberate burial of the dead is a symbolic practice related to belief in the spirit [...]
Tags:burials·burying the dead·cult of the dead·deliberate burials·grave goods·hominids·Homo neanderthalensis·Homo sapiens·hygienic burial·Kebara·modern behavior·mortuary practices·Paleolithic religion·parsimony·Qafzeh·ritualized burial·Robert Gargett·Sally Binford·Shanidar·soul·spirit·symbolic thinking·taphonomy
