prehistory/early civilization/mythology

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
Anyone have any recommendation on books on the subject? Fiction or non-fiction as long as it is interesting. I am thinking along the lines of those bits in "Snowcrash" by Bruce Sterling that talk about Sumerian mythology. So I am not looking for a dry account of the beliefs of Sumerians for example but a description of a possible reality behind them.

Another book from the non-fiction realm is "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond which deals in some scientific speculation backed up by archaelogical and biological research on the reasons why some people reached civilization and conquered the world.

A book that is somewhere between fiction and non-fiction that deals with the topic is the whole "Ishmael" series by Daniel Quinn. While a bit cheesy it has some good parts. I especially enjoed the part where he speculates on the events that inspired the biblical story of Kain and Abel (Kain symbolises the pastoral semitic people while Abel is their agricultural civilized neighbours, the whole story is propaganda against the pastoral way of life. pardon me if I butchered it).

Another book is "Generation P" by Viktor Pelevin. I think it is called "Homo Zapienz" in the English translation. I haven't read it in English so I don't know how the world play and the observations it makes carry over but it also has a bit near the end about Babylon and how advertisers worship Ishtar or some such thing. I cannot remember so I am reading it again.

So please talk about any books that talk about this.
 
Bruce Sterling?

Snowcrash is by Neal Stephenson, innit? I read it a couple of weeks ago, thought it was pretty good., especially the Sumerian stuff. Funny, too. It's probably not really what you're after, but Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's The Roots of Thinking has some interesting stuff on Paleolithic culture. It's an attempt to fuse physical anthropology with cultural theory and hermeneutics; there's a chapter on 'The Conceptual Origin of Death', and a lot of stuff on cave art in relation to cognitive development. As far as novels go, you might want to try The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat. It doesn't really go into detail, but it conveys this amazing sense of the sheer weight of centuries of history and mythology, pressing down onto the present.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
On the matriarchal pre-history / patriarchal history tip, you can't beat Merlin Stone's When God Was A Woman, backed up by Monica Sjoo's The Great Cosmic Mother. Some of this material has been critiqued heavily recently -- if you see a mention of "nine million victims of the witch trials" just skip the chapter -- but not all of it is. Merlin's alright though. Also check out Max Deshu's website.

Similarly avoid Margaret Murray until you've been innoculated. It's fiction dressed up as archaeology and somewhat pernicious, but very pretty.

For a compelling half-mystical analysis of pre-historic culture and science you should check out some John Michell, At The Centre of the Word and 12 Tribe Nations, and maybe some Paul Devereux for landscape stuff, Haunted Land perhaps.
 

originaldrum

from start till done
wanna read about what the ye olde chinese were up too

Gavin Menzies - 1421: The year the Chinese discovered the world
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling...whatever. I forget which is which. Yeah, Snowcrash is probably Neal Stephenson because Sterling is much more serious.
 

shaun L

Member
I reckon that there is an interesting window on prehistory thats opened by a parallell reading of Riane Estler's 'The Chalice and the Blade', Terrence McKenna's 'Food of the Gods' and erm the book of the C4 series 'Secrets of the stone age'

Any one on its own would be fine... with the exception of 'secrets...' which now suffers from the retrospective blight of the more recent 'Secrets of Barbarians' C4 banalothon.
All three of them have big narratives to wrest from the murk of the stone age... and I think reading them in paralell helped me to avoid being too heavily indoctrinated by any one perspective.... in particular Riane Estler's focus on gender related power structures gives a balance to Terrence McKenna's interest in a mushroom fuelled psychedelic utopia situated in Ice Age North Africa.
 

&catherine

Well-known member
Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille is by no means a necessarily agreeable figure as far as his theory goes, but his book on the huge collection of prehistoric art (cave painting) found at Lascaux in France is just incredible to read. This is as much due to the subject matter as Bataille's style. His book on eroticism takes place on a very similar theoretical bent, but again Bataille draws on very rich subject matter (he was a librarian by training and seems to demonstrate the breadth of a librarian's interests - he was particularly 'in to' the anthropological work of Marcel Mauss and Roger Caillois, which seems to have been big in France at the time).

So, those books again:

Georges Bataille, Lascaux, or the Birth of Art
Georges Bataille, Eroticism
 

titan

New member
check out the wriitings on this website -

http://www.new-tradition.org

there is a very interesting chapter on egyptian horoscopes but the whole site blew me away. always wondered why the chronology of history as taught at school confused the hell out of me.

interested to know what you all think...
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Edith Hamilton has done really good renditions of Ancient Greek and Roman myths. She also provides a lot of context and lineage without getting too arcane or having too strong of a theoretical agenda.

Bertrand Russell's sections on Ancient Greek Philosophy in History of Western Philosophy are also well researched and informative from a purely historical standpoint. He is also enjoyable to read and occasionally very funny. It's also a good jump off point because he references a few people who have written books on more specific aspects of ancient civilization.

I often resort to The Usbourne Book of World History that I received on my 9th birthday as well. Brief, as you'd imagine, but there are a lot of nice pictures.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I often resort to The Usbourne Book of World History that I received on my 9th birthday as well. Brief, as you'd imagine

Oh come on, you're not that old... ;)

I've got Julian Cope's The Modern Antiquarian, which I really like. It just focuses on Britain, but much of what he writes in the first section of the book could probably be applied in a more general way to any pre-urban, monument-building ancient civilisation. Much of it is highly speculative, and there's no shortage of Roman-bashing and Church-bashing, but crucially it doesn't pretend to be either serious scholarship or a non-partisan analysis of clashing cultures.

The second half of the book is a gazetteer of megalithic sites throughout Britain, accompanied by photographs and charmingly hand-drawn maps. Oh, and it's got poems scattered throughout. :) Clearly a labour of love, which I quite like about it too.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
What is a history book without pictures and maps? That's what I want to know. I think the answer is: an inferior history book.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
What is a history book without pictures and maps? That's what I want to know. I think the answer is: an inferior history book.

Well of course!

I was just picking up the unintended implication that there wasn't much world history back when you were 9. But yeah, I think I had that book too, Usborne was (is?) a great kids' publisher.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Well of course!

I was just picking up the unintended implication that there wasn't much world history back when you were 9. But yeah, I think I had that book too, Usborne was (is?) a great kids' publisher.

I learnt what fucking was from an Usbourne book. No lie.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
been meaning to read this for ages. going to do it this year:

V576-99.jpeg


I
n this groundbreaking book, Leonard Shlain, author of the bestselling Art & Physics, proposes that the process of learning alphabetic literacy rewired the human brain, with profound consequences for culture. Making remarkable connections across a wide range of subjects including brain function, anthropology, history, and religion, Shlain argues that literacy reinforced the brain's linear, abstract, predominantly masculine left hemisphere at the expense of the holistic, iconic feminine right one. This shift upset the balance between men and women initiating the disappearance of goddesses, the abhorrence of images, and, in literacy's early stages, the decline of women's political status. Patriarchy and misogyny followed.

Shlain contrasts the feminine right-brained oral teachings of Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus with the masculine creeds that evolved when their spoken words were committed to writing. The first book written in an alphabet was the Old Testament and its most important passage was the Ten Commandments. The first two reject of any goddess influence and ban any form of representative art.

The love of Mary, Chivalry, and courtly love arose during the illiterate Dark Ages and plummeted after the invention of the printing press in the Renaissance. The Protestant attack on holy images and Mary followed, as did ferocious religious wars and neurotic witch-hunts. The benefits of literacy are obvious; this gripping narrative explores its dark side, tallying previously unrecognized costs.

Shlain goes on to describe the colossal shift he calls the Iconic Revolution, that began in the 19th century. The invention of photography and the discovery of electromagnetism combined to bring us film, television, computers, and graphic advertising; all of which are based on images. Shlain foresees that increasing reliance on right brain pattern recognition instead of left brain linear sequence will move culture toward equilibrium between the two hemispheres, between masculine and feminine, between word and image. A provocative, disturbing, yet inspiring read, this book is filled with startling historical anecdotes and compelling ideas. It is a paradigm shattering work that will transform your view of history and mind.
 

massrock

Well-known member
Intriguing.

Obviously Mcluhan goes on about this sort of thing, how media remake us, though with a slightly different focus. I think he saw the really big rupture as being the printing press.

Erik Davis in Techgnosis touches on those themes as well IIRC.

Mr. Tea's joke was a bit obscure but funny.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
"Shlain argues that literacy reinforced the brain's linear, abstract, predominantly masculine left hemisphere at the expense of the holistic, iconic feminine right one."

Does this kind of thought still hold any water in modern psychology (edit: let alone neurology) circles, though? I can imagine nomad having a field day on this...

Edit: thanks massrock, it's nice to know someone appreciates my work. ;)
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
"Shlain argues that literacy reinforced the brain's linear, abstract, predominantly masculine left hemisphere at the expense of the holistic, iconic feminine right one."

Does this kind of thought still hold any water in modern psychology circles, though? I can imagine nomad having a field day on this...

yeah i'm not entirely sure. what IS the last word on the left brain right brain thing?
 
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