I have always thought that the Book of Genesis started as a folk memory (passed down through many generations) of a power struggle that occurred between hunter-gatherers and early farmers during the transition between hunter-gathering and agriculture.
Hunter-gatherers have much more leisure time than agriculturalists, nature supplies all needs, and so forth . . . while agriculture requires hard work and endless toil.
Agriculture opened up humanity to many different diseases that aren’t usually experienced by hunter-gatherers, as people tended to congregate in greater numbers, and rats (among many other pests) set up housekeeping around farms, and this leads to disease.
In Genesis, we have an ideal people living off of whatever they pick and gather, only to turn around and be condemned to farm the land. No more unending leisure time, clothes need to worn for protection of the body while farming in the fields, and we now have rampant disease.
All of these seems to be represented in the Adam and Eve story on Genesis.
As a side note, consider that the legend of the cosmic hunt was known in pre-Columbian North America and Asia, so it is a story that came across with the Paleoindians when they crossed the land bridge between Asia and Alaska during the last ice age.
So, legends can survive for thousands and thousands of years.
I agree with the folk tale approach to Genesis. It allows for the contradictions, especially considering that people would have their favorite version and want that enshrined.
And, of course, over time, the tales get embellished and exaggerated.
This was a very interesting paper. The conclusion, with the parts I found interesting highlighted:
In this study we used a suite of phylogenetic comparative methods to investigate the early evolution of religion. We reconstructed ancestral states for seven characters describing religious beliefs and behaviors in a global sample of 33 hunter-gatherer societies and tested for correlated evolution between these characters and for the direction of cultural change.
Our results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, shared by the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism. This supports long-standing beliefs about the antiquity and fundamental role of this component of human mentality, which enables people to attribute intent and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects and would have prompted belief in beings or forces in an unseen realm of spirits. Reconstructions are equivocal on whether or not the religion of the LCA of present-day hunter-gatherers included belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, and the concept of a single creator deity, or a high god. Belief in either ancestral spirits or creator deities who remain active in human affairs was not present in ancestral hunter-gatherer societies, according to the reconstructions. This may be indicative of a deep past for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, to whom high gods would appear to be rulers (Peoples and Marlowe 2012).
The majority of traits of religion we investigated exhibit a correlated pattern of character change on phylogeny. The results suggest that belief in an afterlife, shamanism, and ancestor worship evolve in concerted fashion as an integrated system of beliefs and practices. However, neither high gods nor active high gods exhibit correlated evolution with the rest of the religious traits, including ancestor worship, despite Spencer’s and Tylor’s suggestions.
This is in line with a variety of evidence from other studies (Botero et al. 2014; Norenzayan 2013; Peoples and Marlowe 2012; Radin 1937; Swanson 1960) suggesting that if a society acquires belief in an omniscient and potentially morally punishing creator deity, it does so regardless of other aspects of its religion but more as a reflection of its social and political structure.
Recently learned that this interesting plant exists. The Black Sapote is a tree whose fruits are known colloquially as Chocolate Pudding Fruits, because they allegedly taste the same as the dessert in question.
I then learned that one of my FB correspondents had tried these out while she was in Nicaragua.
wondering why I haven’t opened it yet…
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