MPJ

It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when religiosity we are all familiar today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities and numerous super powered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10.000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in the history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls but only Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels.


According to the theory, slowly after the beginning of the Holocene period, the first large prehistoric population of Eurasia that spoke Proto-Indo-European languages was formed. They were the ancestor of Indo-European languages and the source of Proto-Indo-European mythology from which all pagan religions arose in different areas of Europe and Asia. This is why we can easily compare different deities and see all the similarities they inherited from the proto times. Take for example gods of lightning, thunder and weather in general. The deity of these properties emerged in all different mythologies and Norse Thor, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Slavic Perun, Hindu Indra, Hurrian Tar and Hittite Tarḫunna and many others were no doubt based on Proto-Indo-European deity called Perkwunos.

The similarities do not end with the deities but also with other colorful characters from old myths. Last week I stumbled to one amazing piece of art in Churchill Park at Kastellet citadel in Copenhagen. It was 114 years old sculpture of Valkyrie by famous Norwegian artist Stephan Sinding. It was probably the best 3d/live action street art I have ever seen before. It reflects everything about what Valkyrie really is in old Norse mythology. The word literally means "chooser of the slain" and it is portraying a female figure guiding the souls of deceased Nordic soldiers either to Fólkvangr, Freyja's afterlife, or to Valhalla, Odin's immortality hall. Old Norse literature describes valkyries either as purely supernatural or human maidens with certain supernatural powers. Both types of beings were associated with honesty, splendor and gold, but also with bloodshed and brutality in battle.


In South Slavic mythology, a similar being vila represents a female supernatural being who is sympathetic to people, but she could also be vengeful and brutal. She is depicted as an extremely beautiful girl with golden hair, dressed in long, flowing robes and armed usually with bow and arrows. She exists on a luminal plane between nature and culture, between gods and humans constantly travelling between one realm and the other to interact with the heroes and villains of the epics. Even though both valkyries and vilas developed in different religious environments it is hard not to spot various similarities between the two. The whiteness and glowing quality of the vilas is mirrored in the description of the valkyries and both figures are to be found in the sky in most of their depictions with connection to lightning and thunder.*

The warrior aspects of the valkyrie are unquestionable, they are "vowed to war" and their role is primarily on the battlefield. The mythical vile are similarly portrayed and often described as wearing armor, with bows and arrows and envisioned as powerful, supernatural warriors. There are convincing resemblance in regards to the connection between vile and valkyries and heroes in the epics. Most often this relationship is a warrior bond, but this relationship can become both sexual and malicious. Just as a vila can manipulate heroes or villains to murder those of her choosing, so too the valkyries are reputed to play deadly games with the heroes with whom they associate.*


Although the nature of the valkyries' flight is portrayed as a magical ride on horseback whereas the vile most often fly unmounted with the use of bird wings, it is not uncommon for the vile to ride horses or deer. Both, viles and valkyries are often described to gather in groups within the epics and refer to each other as sisters. It is fair to suggest that the valkyrie and the vila are rooted in the same figure, their differences lies only within cultural difference between the Slavs and the Germanic peoples. Perhaps the most likely attestable age of the two figures lies back to the 6th century CE when the south Slavic tribes were still located in the North of Europe.*

From there, we could push the date back even further to the time of Proto-Indo-European times, especially if we extend this comparison to apsarā, beings with similar traits from Indian religion and mythology. Тhe various trios of birth-fate-death-associated women in Greek and Roman folklore also appear to origin from the same source. The direct ancestor of valkyries are most likely Proto-Germanic walakuzjǭ which stands for walaz (battle wound) +‎ kuzą (choice, decision).


Historical origins of vilas include the various traditions especially Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore. The word 'vilenski' was used as an adjective, meaning "enchanted", but also became a generic term for various enchanted creatures during the late Middle English period. Nevertheless, the proto origin is no doubt the same as the valkyrie's, and south Slavic version, especially in middle age Serbia survived even the Christianizing the old beliefs and ended in colorful epics and poems of 14th century and later. Although, to be perfectly fair and precise, the mythological vila from the oldest myths and tales and folklorized one in epics and poems are somewhat different in a way that folklore is centered to human affairs, heroes, battles and supernatural beings only serve as a side story, so to speak.

Always, when I am reading or writing about old myths and tales I can't help but wonder how would one comparison be of a typical religious person from the old times and today. It seems to me that old stories were much colorful and picturesque than the ones from the religious beliefs of a singular god. Even a small things like simple walk through the woods would be different for somebody in BC times for a simple fact that from all they knew, not only natural plants and animals could be found there. For many, the forest behind the house could also be a magical gateway to the supernatural world and even the smallest unexplained event of natural behavior (like methane leak or weird animal demeanor) could be immediately linked to the supernatural. But this sounds like a nice topic for another story.

Image refs:
https://vrallart.com/artworks/milos-marko_i_vila/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Dadd...Yellow_Sands.jpg
https://www.saatchiart.com/...The-Valkyries

* A Treatise on the South Slavic Vila by Dorian Jurić 
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/9407/1/fulltext.pdf
This article contains quotes/paraphrases from Dorian's theses

Goddess Zhiva (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2018/08/goddess-zhiva.html

Serbian Vampires (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/serbian-vampires.html

Fairies of Naissus (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2015/11/fairies-of-naissus.html

Refs
https://templeilluminatus.com/forum/topics/valkyrie?groupUrl=the-triple-goddess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie
https://www.worldhistory.org/Valkyrie/
http://www.mcurtis.net/legend-of-keres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vila_(fairy)
https://slavicmythologyandtales.wordpress.com/2020/08/15/vile-and-rusalki-part-2/
https://sr.m.wikipedia.org/sr-ec/ВилаРавијојла

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land or portion of the sea or the tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with fresh water nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures inherited the island and named it to the Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owns the appearance to Poseidon as well when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him, both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his affection to nymphs as well, he was the sea god after all and in the aftermath of the mythological creation, he alone is most likely responsible for the origin of the human race on a total of 227 Greek islands including Atlantis, but that's different story.


However, the reality and history of Corfu is much different and much less idyllic. Being in the cross worlds in the middle ages between Ottoman empire and western civilization, the history of Corfu was turbulent to say the least. The island managed to survive and keep its Greek identity after numerous raids by barbarians and conquests by Europeans during the medieval period. The origin of first people on the island is not much known. According to Homer, they had some relationship with the Mycenaeans (Dorians) but it is not scientifically proved true. Furthermore, there was no ancient ruins dedicated to Poseidon at all. There are two ruins excavated so far, one of a temple dedicated to Hera and the other, the most significant temple built in around 580 BC dedicated to goddess Artemis which was monumental in dimensions for the time. In the above picture is its full, around 20 meters long, pediment portraying a living Gorgon (mythical creatures with hair made of living, venomous snakes, most likely Medusa or one of her sisters).


After the ancient times, the island was ruled by Romans first and then went under Byzantine empire. After the Byzantine period ended (around 1267 AD), Corfu was vulnerable to the constant pirate attacks and raids by its neighbors and crusaders and stabilizes only when Venetians occupied the island in 1386. These olive trees from the picture above are seeded by Venetians and considered to be more than 500 years old. The Venetians ruled more than 400 years and ended their rule in 1797. The most of the Venetian domination left a big remark in todays island architecture, including the large fortress. After that, the island was occupied by French followed by strange alliance of Russians and Turks, then British and finally on 21 May 1864 after the London treaty, Corfu and all Ionian islands united with Greece.


The most important milestone in the history of Corfu happened during the Turkish siege of 1716 when Venetians managed to defend the island and stopped the Turks in their advances toward Europe. Fighting alongside Corfiot’s were Venetians, Germans, Italians, Maltese ships, Papal galleys, galleys from Genoa and Tuscan, Spanish galleys, and even Portuguese forces. The Turkish failure in Corfu was a historical event of enormous importance - who knows what would happened if the result of the battle went otherwise. However, the other parts of Greece and their southern islands weren't that lucky and went under Ottoman occupation causing large number of refugees and migration toward Corfu. In the following centuries, more immigrants arrived from Illyria, Sicily, Crete, Mycenae, and the Aegean islands. Of course in this small blog story, I didn't mean to go much into historical events but I always like to learn a bit more about places we travel to. If you want to know more, reference links below are good point to start googling.


This summer, we visited Corfu and it's picturesque village of Messonghi. In the same point of history, the small village along with neighboring Moraitika were established by Cretans and Peloponnesians. With it's interesting feature of Messonghi river, small and nice beach, crystal clear waters and amazing people, this village was our host for 11 days of our vacation and we fully recommend the stay. Beside archaeological museum we also visited Serbian House dedicated to the Great War events and one nice museum called "Casa Parlante", dedicated to the ordinary life of one British aristocrat family from British rule in the middle of 19th century. The most impact on me personally was the traditional Corfu dishes called Sofrito and Pastitsada and their recipes dated back 200 years in the past. The last but not least our big thanks goes to Spyros, his family and their fine Georgina Apartments where we staid the entire time.

Refs:
https://atcorfu.com/corfu-history/
https://greeking.me/blog/visit-corfu/item/207-corfu-the-island-of-the-phaeacians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfu

There is a period of time we are familiar with acronym "BC". It stands, of course, for "Before Christ", the period before the famous tale about origin of Christian religion. But this time goes far behind Jesus. Far beyond origin of all monotheistic religions. It goes even before the eons when our ancestors knew gods in plural and to the ages when modern humans started their everlasting and ongoing endeavors. The time in prehistory occupied with endless wonders of surrounding nature without firm beliefs but surely filled with many invisible divine spirits and mysterious stars.

Due to illiteracy of the period there's almost nothing tangible we could use to gain full knowledge of how early society really looked like and even though we know great deal about those times only by analyzing cave walls, fossil record and DNA samples, in order to describe one early settlement we still must use lots of imagination and scientific guesses.


Personally and definitely caused by the mystery of the ancient times I do enjoy to read and in this case to watch fictitious stories about early people, events and how everything was in the beginning. Hence and if we stay in the realm of motion pictures, I want to share four movie recommendations from the rather small pile of films covering prehistory free of wild imagination that might be anthropologically correct. So, lets start in, appropriately suitable, chronological and descending order, starting with the latest film about the earliest period of prehistory in all four movies. The story about first joint adventures of man and man's best friends. The wolfs. Well... You know... The dogs.

Portraying Europe at the end of the Pleistocene epoch some 20000 years ago, Alpha is telling an adventurous story of Keda, a teenage boy on his first hunting trip and Alpha, first domesticated wolf. They struggle to survive the harsh environment of the last ice age and along the way learn to enjoy new special friendship among two species. Something we are taking for granted in our very contemporary age. Three things about this movie are fascinating - for one, there are no human villains in the film and this is amazing for nowadays movies and yet the story works just as perfect. Secondly, I learned something I didn't know - Alpha was played by real Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a mix between German shepherd and real Carpathian wolves created for military purposes. I always admired German shepherds but I have to say that this relatively new breed is really magnificent in every way. Finally, the language they used is a fictional one - fully developed for the movie by Christine Schreyer, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia who used three ancestral languages in the process and this effort alone gave the movie a genuine and really extraordinary feeling.


Next two movies went even further in the past. The set was still Eurasian continent and the time could be estimated some 30-40K BC where one of the kind event in the history of two dominant species happened. It was the time when our ancestors started to populate the area that was already taken by Neanderthals. Barely compatible, this caused the death of the weakest and unprepared party in conflict. It is still a mystery what was exactly happening in those shared period that probably lasted hundreds or more likely thousands of years but in the aftermath just like proposed in one of the movies, Neanderthals suffered and died out from both major issues - their bodies were totally unprepared for new diseases humans unknowingly delivered and also equally important, their minds couldn't stand or understand the violent behavior of newcomers.

Ao, le dernier Néandertal and The Clan of the Cave Bear are both dealing with collision of two dominant humanoid species of the time only from different angle. In first, Ao was a desperate Neanderthal man whose family was brutally murdered by modern humans and he was forced to seek his life elsewhere and find happiness with homo sapiens woman. The movie offers outstanding performances by Aruna Shields and especially Simon Paul Sutton who portrayed the story with one word - perfectly. The same goes for Jean Auel's first book of the "Earth's Children" series and the movie with the same name. Here, the script is the opposite and follows young girl Ayla who finds shelter within Neanderthal clan. It's hard to say which film is more appealing, historically accurate, better performed and made but if you choose to watch them, entertainment filled with drama, adventure and even romance is guarantied.


Finally, if we go even further to the past, more or less 80000 years ago, in the time of tribal societies where the fire was luxury and hard to find, the last film recommendation was the oldest movie of them all. Quest for Fire was filmed back in 1981 and it was my first movie I watched from this genre. I remember I was fascinated with scenes with mammoths who were played by circus elephants in full wardrobe and trained lions in role of saber-toothed tigers. In short, three cavemen are sent in the quest to find the fire for which they still don't have the knowledge of how to start it. The quest turned into real adventure and what they learned and returned to their cave was priceless. And I am not talking just about fire. Enough said.

Refs:
https://www.milanzivic.com/2015/10/neanderthals-humans-and-shared-caves.html
https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog
https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/08/23/bc-professor-creates-language-for-alpha
https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-wild-story-behind-quest-for-fire

My great-great-grandfather was born in 1845 and he spent his entire life through the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. Little is known about his life - after all life in rural Serbian villages in past times wasn't really documented well and literacy among majority of people wasn't something our ancestors could be proud of. However, what was a major disadvantage for most people turned to be a great opportunity for my great-great-grandfather. Beside being literate and educated, he was gifted with a human property only few others possess. He owned a strong and melodic voice that would probably guaranty him at least a radio-host job if he was born a century later. Anyhow, one of his tasks was to read newspapers, various dispatches and communiques while standing in the center of village square surrounded with neighbors and people from nearby settlements. Soon enough he earned valuable prominence in his family and his children decided to devote our family name to him. Ever since then and after, more or less, 100 years our last name is carrying my great-great-grandfather's. Zhiva.



But his name goes even further in past. Millennium or two before my great-great-grandfather, this name belonged first to someone else entirely. Zhiva (Živa) was the name of the old Slavic goddess of life, fertility and marriage, one of numerous terrestrial goddesses. It literally means "living, being, existing" and compared to other religions of the past Zhiva was the goddess similar to Hera, Demeter and Aphrodite of ancient Olympians and very much alike goddess Sif from the old Norse mythology. Thanks to the modern pop culture, especially comics and in recent years movie blockbusters, we are pretty familiar with old beliefs of our ancestors in Greece, Rome and Scandinavia, but tremendous and equally colorful stories are hiding in old Slavic mythology as well. Like with our family name, in one way or another, old stories of ancient mythology survived all these years. And not just stories - the customs, celebrations and rituals are very much alive even today despite all the efforts from the new Christian religion that tried or still trying to eliminate old paganism from people's minds.

Contrary to the old Greeks, Romans or Scandinavians who more or less occupied smaller territories, Slavs spread to vast areas of nowadays Asia and Eastern Europe. Numerous cultures and nations emerged from several migrations and gave birth to slightly different mythology of the same deities and in different Slavic languages and history Zhiva is known with different names and the most prominent ones were Zhibog (life god), Živa, Жива, Siwa, Šiwa etc. Along with variety of names comes the variety of descriptions and searching for definite and most accurate ancient text is the mission impossible or one of those Sisyphean task, if we want to stay in the realm of old legends and stories. However, I did find one mutual description of her that pretty much covers all sources and it explains the goddess as: "Zhiva is the main female goddess in the world of the Slavs. Like the god Svarog, she covers the whole world with his light and closely following the basic laws of the Kind. Goddess Zhiva gives tenderness, care, kindness, heart and care of all pregnant women and lactating mothers." Zhiva existed as a supreme goddess and she was the offspring of main Slavic deities (Rod as a main supreme god, creator of everything, Svarog, god of heaven and three great goddesses), a sibling goddess to other female deities (Vesna, Morana, Lada, terrestrial goddesses related to Earth seasons), sister of god of thunder and lightning Perun and wife of Dabog (Dazhbog), god of sun, justice and well-being.


I can imagine that is very hard to enumerate all Slavic gods, their relations and all their pantheons due to vast diversity of Slavic people but if we consider only South Slavs who migrated to the Balkans at some point in 6th century one thing is for sure. They immediately collided with upcoming and already established Christianity that took heavy roots in Roman and Byzantine empires. Almost immediately missionaries are sent to start conversion and kill old beliefs for good. It turned out it was another wave of Sisyphean tasks that required centuries to process. Serbs accepted new religion only later in 9th century but not entirely. While god in plural ended with its existence almost fully with start of second millennium, many customs staid until today. For example Serbian people still celebrate family religious day called slava - which was dedicated to the god family had chosen to be their protector in the old days. Christianity never succeeded to eliminated this custom and only converted it into worshiping Christian saints instead. What was once a day dedicated to Perun, god of thunder, now is replaced with Saint Elijah (Sveti Ilija) which is also connected with thunders and lightnings in Christian tales. Old Serbs believed that gods could take shape of ordinary people who were visiting family homes at random times and one of the related custom was warm hospitality toward strangers who knocked to their doors. The oak was the holy tree and all the temples are built out of it instead of using heavy and everlasting stones. In the aftermath, no Slavic holy sights and temples persisted today. In temples dedicated to goddess Zhiva, high priests wore ritual hats or helmets with horns which were symbols of fertility among Slavic people and other religious folklore throughout Europe in the old times.

Aside of Slavic deities, Serbs believed in other godly creatures who had influence over nature like ghosts, fairies, demons, dragons, forest mothers and also human like creatures that originated from people like vampires, witches, werewolves... The list is endless. To better live with all those beasts and scary underworld monsters many rituals are invented and practiced all over. One in particular is still alive in Eastern Serbia in the event called Rusalje, where women falls into trans after ritually caroling and dancing and virtually connects to the ghosts and afterlife world in order to predict future events and understand upcoming dangers. Interesting facts is that many women refused to exert 'the healing procedure' in local monasteries performed by Christian priests and willingly perform the ritual every year. Of course, these were the extreme but there were other more benevolent rituals that were practiced in the past and I would not be surprised if they are still alive today. For example, if we are talking about Zhiva, human worshipers were ceremonially providing bouquets of flowers, fruits and wheat on numerous occasions but also there were a ritual of sacrificing a rooster before the time when wheat is sown and/or after the harvest is over.


If we are considering the Eastern Europe Slavic history, perhaps the strongest sites where Zhiva was worshiped were throughout lands of nowadays Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and eastern Germany but perhaps the most interesting site where the temple of Zhiva once existed was famous lake Bled in Slovenia. More precisely, the foundation of the temple, that provided the support for a square wooden house in the 8th century were excavated under the Christian church on the Isle of Bled. Attached to the foundation was square building with apse from 9th century that clearly indicates the transition from pagan temple to early Christian church. Christian missionaries dedicated of shutting down old Slavic sites and temples at the time almost always transferred the sites of worshiping of Slavic goddesses into the worship of Mother of God to ease the transition and the nowadays church on the Lake Bled is consecrated to the Ascension of Mary. The temple of Zhiva on the Isle of Bled and the waterfall on the nearby Savica river were commemorated and celebrated in the epic poem 'Baptism on Savica' by the 19th Slovenian poet France Prešeren.

Well, temples dedicated to Zhiva definitely no longer exist but it is documented that many places, at least in Serbia, with names that survived the last millennium and have words 'deva' or 'baba' in their roots (which means goddess mother) suggest sites of worshiping the female deity, most likely locations of Zhiva's temples. Couple of those places and nearby mountains have such words near the village where my great-great-grandfather lived and where our summer house still stands. Also lots of people names and surnames have word 'Živa' in root and they all originate in old Slavic beliefs. Years ago during my education within high school and faculty Živa was my nickname and I always turned around if I heard somebody called it.

Image refs:
https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/2017/08/10/reanimating-slavic-gods-the-man-who-breathes-life-into-deities_820264
https://www.locationscout.net/locations/6017-lake-bled
http://www.1zoom.me/de/wallpaper/156998/z349.2/

Refs:
http://www.starisloveni.com/Bogovi.html
https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/550443944/goddess-zhiva-wood-birch-statue-slavic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deities_of_Slavic_religion
https://www.rasen.rs/2017/01/rusalje-ili-zene-padalice/#.W26_Kegza00
https://www.srbijadanas.com/vesti/info/misterija-istocne-srbije-ko-su-zene-koje-padaju-u-trans-i-predvidaju-buducnost-2017-05-20
https://vesna.atlantidaforum.com/?p=3916
http://lifestyle.enaa.com/horoskop/Kdo-je-bila-Ziva.html
http://vladimir-uno.blogspot.com/2015/09/ziva-goddess-of-living-water-life-love.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_Pre%C5%A1eren

Let me start this story with remarkable opening of the Michael D. Gordin's book named "The Pseudoscience Wars". The full quote is this:

"No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself - I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts".

And this is the ultimate truth - there is no pseudoscience. It's not the real thing. You can, with more or less enthusiasm, add adjective "pseudo" to anything you like and get yourself the bad or opposite meaning of the original word. But in the world we are currently living in and with, for example, TV shows like "Ancient Aliens" being vastly popular than attending lectures or reading published scientific papers by professional archaeologists and historians, pseudo combined with science are now recognized word in almost all thesaurus and dictionaries. It definitely earned itself to be the real thing after all. But if there are no pseudoscientists proving their pseudotheories, how exactly it became real in the first place? Surely popular documentaries such as "Ancient Aliens" or books like "Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods" with both of them treating religious texts as undeniable facts are coining the word more and more with every repeating broadcast and amazon purchase. However, we cannot put entire blame on Giorgio Tsoukalos who is definitely one of the faces we think first of as a metaphor of the entire background behind the pseudo-scientific world. Don't get me wrong here - I do enjoy watching Giorgio and History channel is pretty high in my cable list and I even own a book or two with intriguing titles connected to Nazca lines and elongated skulls (like the one in Giorgio's hands in below image) written by Erich von Däniken, but even though I dislike pseudoscience per se, I genuinely don't look to the entire 'genre' too critically and by the end of this post I will even give it a credit for helping main scientific stream even more than modest scientists are ready to admit.


So, in relation to science, how 'pseudo' can contribute at all? But first we need to better understand how the science mainstream works in the first place. Basically if you take Gordin's quote from the beginning of this post, change the meaning a little, following by excluding all 'pseudo' words - it could be the shortest valuable definition. In addition, what scientific mainstream does, is to identify and adopt new idea and spread it to the scientific society. If the idea passes the challenge, it gets itself a research by various independent scientific groups and at the end, after numerous publications, debates and with additional new inquiries, if proven worthwhile, it receives its own theory. After that point and over time it is all about proving or discarding it in experiments and observation. No matter what happens in the end, the entire process from the idea till the new knowledge is what we recognize as scientific process. Even in the potential case of acquiring some fabulous artifact or tool (i.e. anti-gravity engine) that originates from the aliens, science would take it apart and in the process of reverse engineering, disassemble to the basic components and tried to understand it fully before putting it into mass production.

Pseudo world in scientific realm comes to the 'new idea' part. And you can get ideas from anywhere and those believable and fabricated from the old history could be very hard to scientifically pursuit but they are sometimes, if not always, very appealing and interesting. For example it is easy to say that some poorly cartooned image by some cave-man artist resembles more to astrosuit than some old civilization outfit created for their spiritual ritual, but in fact, this kind of statements or ideas not really contribute to the mainstream with actual new knowledge and they are often based on myths and questionable ancient (and not so ancient) stories. But they are very believable, entertaining and, who knows, maybe some of them are not far from the truth nevertheless. However, in the end, they are just good stories and nothing more. Furthermore, if you ask me, this conclusion might be very true for all dogmatic and religious beliefs even today, considering that they are all based on ancient texts that are taken for granted as the ultimate truth and interpreted in one way or another.


To prove the point, perhaps two epic masterpieces from the old ages, more than others, inspired many conspiracy theorists and writer(s) of the most famous religious book(s) today. They are "Epic of Gilgamesh" of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Indian Sanskrit called "Mahabharata". Both of them are mixture of fiction, true stories from the time, history facts and inspirational/motivational material with strong messages for their readers (for their time) along with religious and/or spiritual aspect spread throughout the poems. It is easy, for example, to find numerous similarities of people and events in four millennium old clay tablets* and those described in "Book of Genesis" or "Old Testament" as we know them today.

But there are other ideas that walks on the edge of being pseudo but with potential to change our understanding of the world and the universe. Let me give you two examples. Well, first example is more a set of bold ideas originated from the scientific world and scientists themselves. They are people like all the others and they are allowed to daydream even more then others. Today, there are many of their new ideas that passed the initial process and ended with theories that are well documented, published and backed with heavy usage of mathematics and physics formulas and equations. But, like any pseudo-claim they also have one thing in common - it is extremely hard or even impossible to prove them or confirm them in experiments. Let me just enumerate several in the realm of astrophysics: String theories, Hawking radiation, Multiverse theory, Holographic principle, Zero-Point energy and Vacuum fluctuation, Warp drive and Wormhole theory, Quantum entanglement and teleportation, etc. I am not saying that all these ideas are the same as pseudotheories but they are all stuck in the same space of unproven bag of ideas still waiting for a meaning or new technologies or any other kind of breakthroughs in order to be validated and recognized as a new knowledge.


Second example is what we safely say it's a pseudo-idea and here is the good place to quote myself from an earlier post regarding human soul and consciousness research** "At the end, proving that we all are living in a universe where one single individual is only a single link in the big chain of one ultimate consciousness along with the claims that our mind is capable of interacting with other's and also with material world, is going to be very hard with all we know today. For example, is not far from logic to assume that one mutual consciousness is stronger around our planet where seven billions of people breath every second and weaker with distance especially in the distant areas of the Solar system where no life exists. However, to prove or dismiss this idea, we need to put somebody in spacecraft and send him beyond the Oort cloud or even farther to the very edge of the Solar system and measure both subjective and objective consequences with astronaut so far away from the hive called Earth." Obviously we are still far away from performing experiments like this or to find a black hole and put a space ship in its orbit in order to detect Hawking radiation. But it was more or less the same with Einstein and his theories of relativity that waited years for both mankind and technology to mature enough in order to be confirmed. And eventually it happened nevertheless. The same could be true with pseudo-claims. Even if they serve today just to entertain us in documentaries, books or movies and even though they are not based on any solid ground one day we might give them that solid foundation and be ready to put them into validation process. And I wouldn't be surprised if some or many of them became proven and true.

But what about conspiracies? Can we give them the same amount of credit like with pseudotheories? Can we really be so sure that they are possible? Like all those portrayed in movies and literature with governments, big corporations or religious headquarters having secrets so big and dangerous we are all unaware of? Well, my open-minded-skeptic personality stops right there.. I really think there is no such thing in the world. Claims that governments already contacted alien intelligence or Vatican to have secret basement with off-the-world or divine artifacts or large corporations to perform experiments with futuristic technologies nobody knows about - all that walks to the edge of impossibility to me. In this case I will simply follow my philosophy "to not believe in concept of believing" and say that I will start 'believing' with a conspiracy when I see one with my own eyes.


However, and if we stay in the world of entertainment, conspiracies are very high in my reading and watching list. It's hard to explain why. I simply love the mystery and possibility that there is something out there, something extraordinary and new. Something that only lives in fiction. And for today's glimpse into this world I chose to show you one extraordinary novel series, written by Patrick Lee and called "The Breach". After I have read all three books with Travis Chase in lead role I can tell you that if you enjoy 'conspiracies' genre this is standing shoulder to shoulder with Fox Mulder. And not just conspiracies. Sci-Fi part, all the twists and storytelling is something I was never encountering often with other authors so far. Perhaps the same value is with A.G.Riddle's "The Origin Mystery" series of novels. With both of them, everything was perfectly wrapped and almost unpredictable to the very end. Something I am secretly hoping with any book I start to read. I admire both authors for the imagination they have and willing to transform into letters. I can't thank them enough for entertainment I had for weeks.

Image refs:
¹ http://contactinthedesert.com/gat/
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata
³ http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/05/27/8-infamous-conspiracy-theories/
⁴ https://www.goodreads.com/series/60963-travis-chase; http://www.patrickleefiction.com/

Embedded refs:
* http://www.milanzivic.com/2014/09/supermarket-religion.html
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2013/08/superstition-vs-religion.html

Refs:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo10672063.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-pseudoscience/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/09/03/what-archaeologists-really-think-about-ancient-aliens-lost-colonies-and-fingerprints-of-the-gods/#72dd16ff41e3
http://www.legendarytimes.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories

Think about it. If life really is some sort of a game and we are just a characters in one giant artificial intelligence play then ... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game then we are only just either a slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?


It is obvious that first option is what we easily recognize as a religious world. If you ask me, this is simple marionette type of a world in which we, being a game units, have little or no influence in the game and we must obey divine rules and please the puppeteer. Within my point of view, let's just hope this is not the case. However, the second scenario is something worthwhile to give further thinking into. If life is something like one large simulation with characters playing the game independently without creator influence during the game, then we are just participating one giant Zero-Player environment that started eons ago in the point of history where evolution begun with predefined start pattern. And evolution is nothing more than just a set of rules in the complex game algorithm and the time is just an iteration flow in patterns changing from one state into another by following the rules.

Confused?

Ok, let's simplify the scope and check one famous Zero-Player game that might help understanding the basic principle. The inventor is perhaps one of the great minds in the world, John Horton Conway, mathematician from Princeton University, who tried to simplify original John von Neumann idea to explain evolution with creation of a mathematical model without explosive growth over time, using just a small initial patterns with unstoppable and unpredictable outcomes with a set of rules, as simple as possible, which would drive entire system forward in time. Conway came up with brilliant two-dimensional matrix where one dot represents one living cell. Cells obey four simple rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (death by under-population). 2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbor's dies (death by over-population). 3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation (survival). 4. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life (birth).

Conway's matrix is, just like life, infinite in size, but for a demonstration purpose I found Brett Alistair Kromkamp's jQuery code** with finite matrix that I nicely embedded in the post. Just FYI, as single cell is clickable, I couldn't make it mobile or any small display friendly. To try it out you would really need to use old fashion computer screen and mouse pointer. I also created eight initial patterns that in time show different outcomes. Think of them as eight species of life and if you click on reset/start eight times and monitor each life form evolution separately, you should spot three stable forms that over couple of generations become stable, four of them ended in oscillations and one dies after 42 generations. Please fill free to play and create your own pattern and see what happens. This is of course zero-player game so your god-like intervention in this game is only to create initial organism. The Conway's game of life then operates on its own and you can only watch.


Conway's brilliant experiment is only a two-dimensional game with small amount of simple rules and yet it opens endless fun and endless variations in evolution of different patterns and their interactions. Now, is it possible to create, hypothetically speaking, way complicated game on a molecular level with complicated rules within the realm of chemistry? And instead of an endless matrix to use three dimensional surface of a planet? Is that what the Earth is? One giant playground with molecules in endless interactions with each other and we are today just a snapshot in the game in it's current evolution stage?

It surely fits the world surrounding us and the one in the past. In this game the world before was less complex than it is today and the world today is less complex than the one from the future. Living units in the game are evolving due to infinite interactions and if we go to the very beginning, to the first pattern of living cells, some 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed, it is clear that we indeed might be living in a complex biological game. The game without players and puppeteers and only with living organisms with developed conscious minds. In order to neatly describe the current stage of the game I will just quote Stephen Hawking: "We humans are highly complex biological machines behaving in accordance with the laws of nature. Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interacting neurons. That consciousness creates a three-dimensional model of the outside world: a best fit model that we call reality."


You might be asking now where free will fits in the game? If we are not players per se, then do we even possess such thing? Are we able, being units in the game, just by following the rules, no matter how complex they are, to choose our own course of action without constraints and fate? If the game model like this one is correct then I am pretty sure we can stop thinking about free will. There is no such thing, at least in the raw meaning of the word. Yes, we are able to control our actions and to choose certain path which gives us illusion of a free will, but even if we choose one path in favor to another, we are not really capable to calculate where this chosen path really leads to or where it ends. There are simply too much unknown variables on the way. Not to mention that we are completely incapable of knowing who or what will we stumble on the chosen path and how this new interaction will play out in the game.

But the beautiful thing in this mind experiment called "Game of Life" is even though we only have limited free will, as it seems, there is no fate as well. And even though the rules are definite and inexorable, due to the enormous size of the game level and complexity of the rules and infinite number of organisms and molecules, it is really impossible to calculate the outcome of the game or any of game's part separated either in space or in time. At least from the inside of the game. And as it appears, there is no outside of the game as well. If there was, then, like in Conway's game embedded in this post above, there could be a "reset" button somewhere. "The button" that was perhaps pressed about five times so far.****


But, like in any game, there might be glitches, lags and bugs (like fabulously portrayed in Tron movies and series*) and I definitely had that in mind when last summer Viktor and I filmed a short movie with the same name** that exploits this very scientific thought. It's our first and only movie so far so it's full of imperfection but to sum it up, it's plot tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of the life itself, its origin and the rules it is built on. Entire movie is embedded above and about all the filming and production, please find within referenced link.

Image refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/,
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/game-of-life.html
*** https://crazy4comiccon.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/tip-of-the-day/

Code ref:
** http://www.quesucede.com/public/gameoflife/index.html

Refs:
**** http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/06/the-sixth-great-dying.html
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/lexicon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://www.hawking.org.uk/videos.html
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_life.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/

Have you ever been in situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer from the very question from the title, or expanded a little with: "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really 'Yes and No'. And nothing can be closer to the truth. If you are now asking, who else could force you to do, whatever you do on regular bases, this guy might be the answer:


The keyword is of course Parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro and micro organisms who can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life which in most cases leads to host's malfunction, to use raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of uselessness for parasitic survival or simply to follow natural circle of life i.e. to lay eggs outside host environment, etc...

This blog is not a medical source or place for study biological entities of any kind and I am surely not really qualified to provide any advanced knowledge about parasites and how to avoid contamination or heal after. But I am always interested about scientific edges and researches that provide unusual results, to say the least and this post is more about whether or not some parasitic species, like Toxoplasma gondii (color inverted image shown above), are able to affect human mind in a way that personality of the host could be changed to the level of influencing entire social life. However, some basic information can't hurt in order to better understand how biology works. For example, if we are talking about macro parasites or entire sexually developed tiny organisms with complex, 'teen' and 'adult' lives with stages of infecting hosts, feeding, laying eggs and contaminating surroundings then we are talking more about different kind of worms (shaped as round, tape, hook, whip, etc) invading hosts through raw meat, contaminated water or from unclean food. This is the most common ways of intrusion, but parasitic eggs can be spread from everywhere and through simple touch of infected handles, phones, appliances ... anything at all. When inside, they eat your digested food or even your blood vessels and cells. And they spread wide variety of diseases even though they can stay dormant for months and years. They are truly microscopic monsters very similar to those 'Alien' types in horror movies.

However, the bigger they are, the better they are studied and understood and today, contrary to dark ages when parasitic infection was able to spread severely among huge numbers of people, treatments are very successful if detected as early as possible. The smaller they get, like the single-cell deadly microorganism known as Plasmodium (Malaria parasite), the tougher the fight is for knowledge and treatments for diseases they are causing. And for some parasites, disease, in a form we define one, is just the final stage of their complex life. As it seems, they are also very much able to force their hosts to do their bidding as well. In the most intelligent and cruel way. Let's see what Toxoplasma gondii is capable of. Sometimes it is hard to believe all the scientific facts. And believe me, 'believe' is the right word for this little alien and hostile invader of hosts' minds. Humans included.


All parasite species tend to complete their life from the stage of being born till the end of their lives. Toxoplasma gondii's ultimate treat is the cat. This is what it is designed for and this is where it wants finally to multiply and to end its life. But it is hard to find a cat when you need it, right? So there are lots of potential intermediate hosts on the way. Before they ultimately end in the intestine of cat shaped animal, they find the drive in the encysts of the brain and other tissues of a warm-blooded species, including humans. If they move in rats or some other rodent animal, the parasite recognizes its intermediary and alters host's behavior for one purpose only - to be easy victim for cats. More precisely they induce high levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter known to alter novelty-seeking and enhance the hosts neuroticism. In other words mouse becomes curious adventurer of its surroundings, looses fear of cats and everybody else. Uninfected, rodents have built in protection from their native predators and always try to avoid areas marked with cat urine or odor, but after the infection, parasite brainwashes rodent to even go into craving cat urine and directly into trap. Toxoplasma gondii can only sexually reproduce in the feline gut and there you have the answer of why cats so much love mice and rats. Even more surprisingly, all the symptoms with infected lab rats stay after parasites die in the rodent, suggesting permanent changes in host's neural system.

But what happens if T.gondii finds the way and invades human body? And according to research, it is apparently capable of infecting us on large scales and up to one-third of people around the world are estimated to be potential hosts. And we are sort of dead-end for their travel. If we exclude sporadic cases of tigers and lions attacking and eating humans, cats actually can't thrive on us. Well, yes, domestic cat doesn't eat human being, but still there are other ways of transferring parasite from human to cat and it seems that Toxoplasma gondii, like with rodents, are also trying to use its unprecedented ability to alter host behavior and all in favor of parasitic life fulfillment. Here we can, for the simplicity of this blog post, make difference in parasitic life inside intermediate human host comparing to rats and mice. In its acute form, I would say after parasite realizes there is no way out, or due to some other reason in the mixture of parasitic and host's life, human host can go into severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, suicidal behavior or performance of slow mental activity and thinking, within large amount of time, in parasite's latent form, the host is going into light personality changes that is very difficult to recognize as a disease. The latent toxoplasmosis might even be immune for treatments and antibiotics and some hosts, like our distant rodent relatives, could even change response to cat odor as well.


Perhaps decade ago, one comprehensive study have been finished at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic by Jaroslav Flegr and numerous researches ending with extremely interesting findings published in the paper "Induction of changes in human behaviour by the parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii" (referenced below). Over the years they tested many cases of infected men and women against 'Cattell's personality factors' (sort of scientific personality test designed to reveal aspects of an individual's character) and compared them to those performed by non-infected people. Both, infected men and women had significantly higher apprehension and level of social fearness with significant differences in results of the two groups. Infected men showed lower superego strength (rule consciousness), higher vigilance and were more likely to disregard rules and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic. Women, on the other end, showed higher warmth and higher superego strength, suggesting that they were more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic. And all those human properties are not considered as a disease of any sort. Remember that latent stage of toxoplasmosis can be the case of one of three people you can meet on the street, including yourself and me. All those people would behave differently if they were not under the influences of small microorganism only visible under the eye of electronic microscope!

Now, it is very much close to all sort of logic that human culture, isolated or widespread, can alter individual personality. In simple words, if you are a member of a herd of sheep, the most likely you would be a white sheep and behave like all the other members of society, well ... herd. However, the same logic goes for humans and the other way around - that cumulative personality might shape cultural dimensions through the collective behavior of individuals. And if you got yourself a society of humans all or most of them infected with T.gondii (which is not far from the truth especially in early history of mankind ever since the ancient Egypt and domestication of cats), their cultural self would no doubt be shaped far from the case if all they were uninfected and healthy. And if you glimpse again the personality of diverted subjects above, with increased apprehension, decreased superego with men and highly sensitive women, if you ask me, the very own free will could be in question along with increased susceptibility to superstition and religiosity.

Well, I am not saying it, and surely there's a lots of more research to be done, but if one small society in the history of humanity, should thank a small microorganism for, i.e. rise of religion and everything what that implies, you have to wonder....


.... about a nice plot for a novel. And that is exactly what Tom Knox did with his thriller called "The Deceit" and amazingly wrapped plot that connects origin of all religions, ancient Egypt, domesticated cats, Toxoplasma gondii and everything that might come out of this twist glued together. True or partially true or not at all, this book inspired me to learn something that I didn't know before and of course pushed me for a little web research that ended with this blog post. This is actually a second time that Tom Knox, a.k.a Sean Thomas, forced me to do some more reading about the background of his novel - first time it was after his "Genesis Secret" in post Supermarket Religion and needless to say I recommend both books and looking forward for more of his work. I am already hinted for "The Marks of Cain" which apparently offers similar travel from the history of man. Stay tuned.

T. gondii refs:
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/1/1.short
https://web.natur.cuni.cz/flegr/pdf/induction.pdf
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1602/2749
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070403-cats-rats.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16PF_Questionnaire

Image ref:
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history/veneration-and-worship-felines-ancient-egypt-003030

General refs:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2012/06/281/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parasites_of_humans
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-11321/10-signs-you-may-have-a-parasite.html
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/16125/20140922/10-common-parasites

Couple of weeks ago, we went out for usual supermarket shopping. The routine that everybody loves and what we people from big cities, from the time when first mall was invented, consider as a sort of entertainment. Thankfully we have one big supermarket just close by so that rainy day we stopped by again for the umpteenth time. I left my son in the toys department and checked my wife at the other part of the store, and found her pretty happy and busy with browsing for, well something, probably important we ran out from our home supplies. I didn't know what else to do so I decided to check couple of book shelves they like to call 'Bookshop and Entertainment'.


Well, I surly don't have to describe in details what I have seen in there. The majority of book covers were designed with pastel colors, pretty girls and tender flowers of all sorts. Just for fun, I randomly opened one of the novels and read something like this "Her lips were swollen now and her scent filled the room, buttery pastries. He knew what would happen as he leaned toward her. Little puffs of air left her mouth. Her scent thickened the space between."*. As tempted as it was, I resisted to read further and kept searching for something, well I don't know.. different and with.. well you know plot, conspiracy, twist, intelligent characters.. and stuff.. I knew it was mission impossible, but still, sometimes even in the most dirty rivers people used to find gold and jewels. Well, I didn't find them really, but eventually, after couple of spent minutes in front of book section I decided to buy one novel. The one that inspired me for this post. It was standing under the timid, last shelf, just next to the floor and contrary to the all photoshopped girls and pink roses all over the place, with big scary snake on the main cover and with intriguing title "The Genesis Secret**". The teaser was saying "It was hidden for 10000 years. It should have staid that way...". The price was in the range of local newspaper, so I put it into trolley without checking inside. If I did, I would probably never buy it due to author's style of writing (or translator's?) in short sentences, obviously in war with commas, but nevertheless, after couple of pages (or dozens of them), I finally got used to this and found out the story inside extremely fascinating. The book is outstanding thriller and follows the story around journalist who investigates origin of religion in the place where all dogmatic beliefs of western civilization started millenniums ago. One of the story chains is placed in the nowadays eastern Turkey and northern Syria and Iraq, where many of archaeologists still search for 'Garden of Eden', 'Noah's Arch', 'Cities of Giants' and all other places and events from Abrahamic monotheistic mythology and all older religions from the history before Abraham and from the same origin, geographically speaking.

If you read the book or inspired to do it, Tom Knox is offering his version of the origin of genesis and I am not going to spoil reading for you. However, following are my thoughts of ancient civilizations and their myths and religion. Or to be precise, what I think that happened way before Christ, Muḥammad and Abraham. Let's talk in facts and human nature. Just like I shaped my thoughts on this topic based on what I have read before or seen in documentaries, we can safely assume that the same goes for ancient guys. Way before monotheistic societies, just like anywhere else, polytheistic religions were dominant. It was surely the case in ancient Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia, or the same area described in the book. It was them who invented Cuneiform script, one of the earliest known system of writing. Initially, they used it for practical means, like keeping records in their tradings and exchanging goods, but it was imminent that sooner or later it would be used for other things. Like writing stories. One of them is about Utnapishtim, the guy who was selected by the gods to build an ark and save only the chosen ones from the upcoming rage in a form of the.. well the flood.. What else. They also recorded the ancient site of Dilmun, a place where the first creation happened and the most famous cuneiform poem, 'Epic of Gilgamesh' in which, a demi-god Gilgamesh searches for internal life only to found out that with creation of man comes along creation of death and even he found a beautiful garden by the sea and a plant that restores youth, in the final moment a serpent steals the plant and vanishes.


It is hard not to notice all the similarities between old Sumerian stories and the ones written in the first Bible. It is simple, one civilization vanishes, the other rises on their ashes. But the stories survive. In one way or another. If all the familiar stories in the Old Testament, represent only older stories and Eden is nothing more than ancient Dilmun, while 'modern' Noah is Utnapishtim himself, and the snake from the Bible is the same snake from the Gilgamesh poem, we can only ask ourselves, where the old Mesopotamians got their stories? Did they invented them in the first place or there were even older civilizations with their own tradition and religious stories that inspired the old Sumerian writers?

We will never know. My guess is as good as yours. But when we find even older temples deeply buried in the dirt, like the 11000+ years old Göbekli Tepe, not too far away from ancient Harran, described in the Knox's thriller, we have to wonder whether human's history in various beliefs is much older than the first letters carved in the stone and clay tablets. But what we can assume pretty accurately is when humans started to worship the divine and build temples. It was the moment in our evolution, and by moment I mean probably large period in time, when humans started to cultivate plants and domesticate wild animals. Before that, humans were simple food pickers and animal hunters and their lives were pretty simple. Animalistic even. The food they found here and there were always within reach. They only needed to learn to get to the food before other species. And they were way better then other animals, with all the hunting in teams and kind of cooperation with other tribal members. However, agriculture is much different, from the moment you plant the seed in the ground till the moment plants mature for consummation, there is plenty of time and lots of danger. Simple heavy rain or longer periods of drought, early snow or some other weather disaster can kill all your efforts. The animal plague of some kind or wild animals can devastate your domesticated herd. If you were ancient farmer, there was nothing you could do. Nobody can stop the ice cubes falling from the sky. Even today there is no 100% efficiency, despite all the thermal rockets we use to protect our fields. But then, it was pure disaster. So if we put ourselves into ancient brains, there must be somebody above who throws the ice, right? We have to please him, give him a piece of our food. And ask him to spare our crops. Maybe even sacrifice something precious to show our mercy?


That's how all began.

The rest is history of religion and despite different civilizations in different times or places it was more or less the same. The bigger the temples were, the better gods were pleased. The bigger the stones we used, the higher the temples were. Soon enough we had gods for everything. For the food, for the safe sea travel, for the war, for health, for love... Our brain evolution was followed by religion as well. The sooner we learned about regularity of star movements and solstices of our own Sun, the better our temples were built to catch a ray of sunshine only once a year. When we were in special mood to offer our gratitude and sacrifices... In the nutshell, if you ask me about all the Stonehenges, all the Mayan and Egyptian Pyramids, all the Churches, Mosques, Hindu temples and Far-East Sanctuaries, everything religious in ancient and modern times, they all have one thing in common.

That first grain seed, one ancient farmer put in the ground for the first time.

Image and article refs:
* http://www.carisroane.com/born-of-ashes-sensual-excerpt-chapter-6/
** http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genesis-Secret-Tom-Knox/dp/0007284144
http://www.gobeklitepe.info/
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gilgamesh/summary.html
*** http://news.nationalgeographic.com/gobekli-tepe/
http://artduh.com/2013/12/22/gobekli-tepe/
http://agriculture-vs-foraging.weebly.com/the-first-cities.html
**** https://www.pinterest.com/morenotiziani/zdenek-burian/
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/