Stage 3

So, back to our burgeoning artistic community and its flourishing religious trade.

                                                                                            
   I imagine that early religious concepts would logically be rooted in nature, sun, earth, moon, stars, etc….
   
   Which would have seemed as mysterious to the ogglets as the love affair between Archy and Mehitabel seems to me.                               
                                                                                                                                             
   Think about it, being witness to all the wonders of a world we take for granted today, and trying to understand it all with a mind having more or less the reasoning power of a modern day chimpanzee. It’s easy to see why we worshipped Mother Nature, giving thankful praise in good times, and fearful pleadings in bad. It’s also easy to see why we would follow and obey anyone who appeared to have an understanding of the elemental forces in the world. So we looked to the Agnes’ for our religious guidance and, living in harmony with nature we again marched blindly into the future.

   Some of the earliest artifacts discovered were of the feminine form, either as a depiction of a voluptuous Mother Earth, or a tribute to the mysterious life giving abilities of women, (I hope it was the above and not just some pornographic renderings by the little pre-pubescent ogglets). In any case the religion was female based and held sway over our endeavors for centuries. It celebrated life in all its manifold varieties and interwove quite nicely with the natural order of the universe. Using the gifts nature had to offer without depleting, giving and taking in equal measure, in general a well balanced religious enterprise. The female deities represented nature in her purest form and continue to exist in our time and indeed appear to be making a comeback. Yippee!

   Unfortunately a black cloud was looming on the horizon. Either the women became too powerful (pushy) or the men became too fearful (jealous), but the feminine religions were soon to face a new contender to the throne.

   Since our thumbs are the main reason for planetary dominance shouldn’t we be worshipping some sort of thumb god? Imagine the Sunday morning thumb wrestling services, the bragging at the local bar, (mines bigger than yours), hitchhiking would take on a more religious significance, as would the thumbs up sign, probably be against the third commandment though.

  I tend to think that a Golden Frog would make a better idol at this time in history. (Hey! Look it up or trust me on this one. ((((I’d look it up))))))
   

   Anyway; by now the population had increased considerably, (what prolific little buggers we were). Our verbal and reasoning skills had increased as well as our artistic abilities, so we were making not just religious items, tools and pottery, but also personal adornments, ( Oh the women were in seventh heaven). The jewelry, as such, was probably more practical in nature, and used more for tribal or religious identification, but it was jewelry nonetheless.
   The tribes interacted for trade and festivals and of course the occasional war. I should point out that weaponry improved also, being always on the search for the cleaner kill, (bludgeoning being so messy and all.) The tribal interaction helped assure that we weren’t pissing in our own gene pool, and allowed for the free exchange of ideas.


   In the big picture, I would have to say that, a minor flaw is nature’s criteria for the selection of a mate, the whole survival of the fittest thing. While this concept definitely is essential to the evolution process it tends to put us in a situation of having to bludgeon our way to the top of the hill to be noticed in the crowd. Stressful as it was, it is definitely more desirable than the modern approach to the acquisition of wealth and power using the “small print method”, or more specifically, the large print giveth, the small print taketh away, (Bludgeoning assured that the strong survived, but at least it was for the betterment of the whole, today’s method merely tends to favor the greedy over the needy.).

 

 

   The current selection process would probably have led to early extinction in the good old days. But evolve we do! Good or bad. (I think my mama said it best, when she said “Son, life is a box of condoms, open one up and somebody’s getting……”)

But I get ahead of myself, more on this later........