Re: Religion and Inner States

Glenn Morton (grmorton@gnn.com)
Mon, 20 Jan 1997 19:52:14

Jim wrote:
>Glenn wrote:
>"I think the Neanderthals had natural spirits like those of modern peopleswho
>also live tight against nature. But where the modern's gosds might inhabit
>the eland, the buffalo, or the blade of grass,the Neandertals' spirit was the
>animal or the grass blade, the thing and its sould perceived as a singlevital
>force with no need to distinguish them with separate names." Neanderthal
>Enigma,p. 341
>
>Sounds like a religion to me and sounds like a religion to me and sounds like
>Shreeve disagrees with what you say he believes.>>
>
>Nope. As you have conceded before,Shreeve's opinion is that Neanderthal's had
>a "different sort of self and a different kind of consciousness." His opinion
>sounds vaguely like Leakey's: Neandertal had a consciousness, but not of the
>same luminosity as modern human beings. I have no problem with that.But it is
>not bilblical sprituality, nor shaman-spirituality.

What about the evidence for a Shaman's cape found in a Neanderthal grave?

"But the Neandertals' true humanity revealed itself in the actions of
their souls. At the 50,000-year-old site of Hortus in southern France, two
French archaeologists in 1972 reported the discovery of the articulated bones
of the left paw and tail of a leopard. Their arrangement suggested that the
fragments were once the remnants of a complete leopard hide worn as a
costume."~James R. Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma, (New York: William Morrow
and Co., 1995), p. 52

>Then answer my question:
>
><<You're saying there is a qualitative difference between
>outer manifestations of the inner lives of birds and humans.All right. I am
>saying there is a qualitative difference between the outer manifestations
> of
>the inner lives of man and Neanderthal. Under your own standard, I win.>>
>
>Why is such a distinction all right for you, and not for me?
>
>Jim

Jim, There is very little distinction between what Neanderthal man did and
what middle Aurignacian man did.

Neither had pottery, iron, mathematics. writing, farming.

Both made jewellry, musical instruments (Neanderthal made the earliest musical
instruments), stone tools (neanderthal's were more complex), buried their dead
with grave offerings, engaged in underground mining, used red ochre-a paint
for coloring objects, collected minerals (iron pyrite/quartz)pretty shells and
so did Homo erectus. Both modern man and Neanderthal built tents or hogans,
constructed walls, paved areas in their habitation, bought bedding to their
caves, built fire. Both made spears points and attached them to spears; hunted
big game; lived in caves on the northern side of valleys (the caves are
warmer there); chose habitations along the migration pathways of game animals;
and gave evidence of religion.

You reject all these similarities because you feel that some sort of "shaman
art" becomes the definition of humanity. If this is true, then are the
Azilians spiritual people? They left NO shaman art, and no representational
art. Are they human? Are they spiritual?

glenn

Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm