Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Cauvin’s central point, then (and there are others who share his general view), is that at places such as Mureybet, the development of domestication was not a sudden event owing to penury, or some other economic threat. Instead, sedentism long preceded domestication, houses had already changed from the primitive round structures, half underground, to rectangular buildings above ground, and bricks and symbolic artefacts were already being produced. From this, he says, we may infer that early man, roughly 12,000–10,000 years ago, underwent a profound psychological change, essentially a religious revolution, and that this preceded domestication of animals and plants. (This argument is reminiscent of Merlin Donald’s, that the first use of language was for myth, not more ‘practical’ purposes.) This religious revolution, Cauvin says, is essentially the change from animal or spirit worship to the worship of something that is essentially what we recognise today. That is to say, the human female goddess, flanked by her male partner (the bull), is worshipped as a supreme being. He points to carvings of this period in which the ‘faithful’ have their arms raised, as if in prayer or supplication. For the first time, he says, there is ‘an entirely new relationship of subordination between god and man’.²² From now on, says Cauvin, there is a divine force, with the gods ‘above’ and everyday humanity ‘below’.

The bull, he says, symbolises not only the male principle but also the untameability of nature, the cosmic forces unleashed in storms, for example. Batons of polished stone are common throughout the Mureybetian culture, which Cauvin says are phallic symbols. Moreover, Cauvin discerns in the Middle East a clear-cut evolution. ‘The first bucrania of the Khiamian or Mureybetian remained buried within the thickness of the walls of buildings, not visible therefore to their occupants. Perhaps they only metaphorically wanted to ensure the resistance of the building to all forms of destruction by appealing to this new symbolism for an initial consecration [i.e., when the houses were built]. The time had not yet come for direct confrontation with the animal.’²³ After that, however, bovine symbolism diffused throughout the Levant and Anatolia and at ’Ain Ghazal we see the first explicit allusions, around 8000 BC, to the bull-fighting act, in which man himself features.²⁴ Man’s virility is being celebrated here, says Cauvin, and it is this concern with virility that links the agricultural revolution and the religious revolution: they were both attempts to satisfy ‘the desire for domination over the animal kingdom’.²⁵ This, he argues, was a psychological change, a change in ‘mentality’ rather than an economic change, as has been the conventional wisdom.

On this reading, the all-important innovation in ideas is not so much the domestication of plants and animals, but the cultivation of wild species of cereals that grew in abundance in the Levant and allowed sedentism to occur. It was sedentism which allowed the interval between births to be reduced, boosting population, as a result of which villages grew, social organisation became more complicated and, perhaps, a new concept of religion was invented, which in some ways reflected the village situation, where leaders and subordinates would have emerged. Once these changes were set in train, domesticated plants at least would have developed almost unconsciously as people ‘selected’ wild cereals which were amenable to this new lifestyle.

These early cultures, with the newly domesticated plants and animals, are generally known as Neolithic and this practice spread steadily, first throughout the fertile crescent, then further, to Anatolia and then Europe in the west, and to Iran and the Caucasus in the east, gradually, as we shall see, extending across all of the Old World. In addition to farming and religion, however, a third idea was included in this spread: the rectangular house. Foundations showing different variations have been found, in Anatolia, at Nevali Cori in Iran, and in the southern Levant, but the evolution of circular houses into rectangular ones with rectangular rooms appears to be a response to the consequences of domestication and farming. There was now more need for storage space, for larger families and, possibly, for defence (with sedentism the number of material possessions grows and there is more to envy/steal). Rectangular rooms and houses fit together more efficiently, are easier to vary in size, allow more ‘interior’ rooms, and make more use of shared walls.²⁶