Monotheism and baboon sun-worship

[Greg Laden]

Marc,

I did not state or imply that my much needed correction of your incorrect desription of the meaning of modern DNA phylogenies was central to idea about monkeys having inspired religion.

I like the idea that monkeys invented religion.

I simply do not want a) to let onlookers misunderstand the meaning of the DNA phylogenies, or b) to let visitors to our site see us as inexpert when we are discussing such matters ....

Cheers,

GTL

[platypus]

Marc -- this is my first post since I am a new-comer to this forum and I hope I understand the thread.  I find your observations to be
totally fascinating as I had never heard of the baboons raising hands and barking at the rising sun.  But, immediately I thought of something I had read some time ago (unfortunately, source is lost in the black hole of my mnemonics) regarding certain primitive tribes (Aborigines?) who upon awakening in the morning scream "here I am" and they have a "night watch" who awakens the tribe to greet the sun every morning in the belief that it will not continue to rise if no one is there to acknowledge its importance!
PsychologicPalentology is of great interest to me and I am afraid that I breach that by approaching the subject in a more modern frame as well.  I would gratly appreciate your thoughts regarding this idea I ask you to entertain: could phalic worship be the oldest form of worship on the planet?  Granted that the tendency to anthorpomorphise the actions of the "lower animals" is often pointd out  by many in the scientific community at once I am mindful of Koko who was proven to have a "concept of death" and
I believe a system of belief in the "after life!"  I may be mistaken on the latter...thank you, John

[Jane Moore]

Marc, I have a couple of comments regarding your last post. Keeping in mind that I study variation in modern humans rather than the evolution of humans, I hope the group will forgive me if I've got this hopelessly wrong:

What do you understand the writers of the following articles to have said that in your opinion I have gotten wrong and that you have stated correctly:

(1) Bernard Wood, Human evolution: Ecce Homo - behold mankind, Nature 390:6656, Issue of 13 November 1997; (2) Ann Gibbons, Y chromosome shows that Adam was an African, Science, 278:5339, pp. 804 - 805, Issue of 31 Oct 1997; (3) Ornella Semino, A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, Francesco Falaschi, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and Peter A. Underhill, Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y-Chromosome Phylogeny, Am. J. Hum. Genet., 70:265-268, 2002.

It is my understanding that at least the second and third papers you cite are dealing with intraspecific rather than interspecific genetic variation, thus are making no inferences about differences in relatedness between any anatomically modern human populations and chimps.

In the above quote, we have the Bushman who, like the basal Egyptian, is straddling the borderline of human society at the time when he is leaving the domain of the pre-human and the pre-religious era.

I don't see how a modern human population could be said to be "leaving the domain of the pre-human". Any human-prehuman border was passed hundreds of thousands of years ago.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Marc -- this is my first post since I am a new-comer to this forum and I hope I understand the thread.  I find your observations to be
totally fascinating as I had never heard of the baboons raising hands and barking at the rising sun.  But, immediately I thought of something I had read some time ago (unfortunately, source is lost in the black hole of my mnemonics) regarding certain primitive tribes (Aborigines?) who upon awakening in the morning scream "here I am" and they have a "night watch" who awakens the tribe to greet the sun every morning in the belief that it will not continue to rise if no one is there to acknowledge its importance!
PsychologicPalentology is of great interest to me and I am afraid that I breach that by approaching the subject in a more modern frame as well.  I would greatly appreciate your thoughts regarding this idea I ask you to entertain: could phalic worship be the oldest form of worship on the planet?  Granted that the tendency to anthorpomorphise the actions of the "lower animals" is often pointd out  by many in the scientific community at once I am mindful of Koko who was proven to have a "concept of death" and
I believe a system of belief in the "after life!"  I may be mistaken on the latter...thank you, John

Dear Platypus (and, for that matter, Marc Washington),

Greg Laden who, at times, does exhibit a well controlled sense of humour (re: his attraction for the notion that monkeys could be the true primeval prophets) has, nonetheless, in his earlier posts, made clear, I believe, that the PALANTH-Forum is definitely not a place that welcomes grandiose, esoteric ramblings of any kind. I fully agree with him on this, and I think that you would be well advised to look at our FORUM POLICY (to be found at: Forum Information -> Agreement, Policies & Guidelines) which identifies fairly well (except for the "non moderated" qualifyer which, as you can see, is clearly  erroneous ) the basic discussion thresholds that can only be crossed at one's own peril.

Finally, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I should add that these comments are definitely not directed at J. Goodrum, Colin, S.M. Kelly, Bob Stimson, and Jane Moore who are obviously much more good-tempered than me.

À bon entendeur, salut.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

Here is matter of detail I forgot to bring up in my earlier post and that has to do with the use -- and, in this case, misuse -- of "topics". Since, for the life of me,  I cannot see what relevance this "sun-worship" exchange has to do (except in a very peripheral and demonstrably incorrect way) with Human Evolutionary Biology. it has been decided to move it here, in the Miscellaneous Board which as you should all know is meant to serve as a host to topics that do not fit too well in our basic categories. I hasten to add that for any given topic to be labelled "miscellaneous" does not necessarily imply that it necessarily sits in a purgatory, of sorts.

Jacques Cinq-Mars