People at worship services. Wikimedia Commons
Posted on 12/13/2014 6:08:09 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The ascetic and moralizing movements that spawned the world's major religious traditions -- Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity -- all arose around the same time in three different regions... The emergence of world religions, they say, was triggered by the rising standards of living in the great civilizations of Eurasia...
It seems almost self-evident today that religion is on the side of spiritual and moral concerns, but that was not always so, Baumard explains. In hunter-gatherer societies and early chiefdoms, for instance, religious tradition focused on rituals, sacrificial offerings, and taboos designed to ward off misfortune and evil.
That changed between 500 BCE and 300 BCE -- a time known as the "Axial Age" -- when new doctrines appeared in three places in Eurasia. "These doctrines all emphasized the value of 'personal transcendence,'" the researchers write, "the notion that human existence has a purpose, distinct from material success, that lies in a moral existence and the control of one's own material desires, through moderation (in food, sex, ambition, etc.), asceticism (fasting, abstinence, detachment), and compassion (helping, suffering with others)."
...shows a sharp transition toward moralizing religions when individuals were provided with 20,000 kcal/day, a level of affluence suggesting that people were generally safe, with roofs over their heads and plenty of food to eat, both in the present time and into the foreseeable future...
The researchers say that this transition is consistent with a shift from "fast" life strategies, focused on the immediate problems of the day, to those focused on long-term investments. They say that it will now be interesting to test whether other familiar characteristics of modern human society, such as high parental investment and long-term monogamy, might stem from the same historical change.
(Excerpt) Read more at popular-archaeology.com ...
People at worship services. Wikimedia Commons
Whoops, forgot the tag for the source, Popular Archaeology.
Pardon my ignorance, but what does 20,000 kcal/day mean? They can’t be talking about calorie intake! Even i can’t eat that much! LOL!
That would make for some very tubby ancient people.
I will not be insulted if you correct me, because i really don’t know what it means and am just judging from context.
It was more likely the cause of rising standards of living.
Lefties always get everything backwards. That's what happens when agenda rather than logic drives your positions.
When you read a label that says 200 Calories (notice the capital letter) it actually means 200,000 calories (as the actual scientific definition of calorie = the energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius at one atmosphere of pressure), or 200 kilocalories. So food energy is generally measured in kcal, but called Calories.
Good point. No question that Christianity was responsible for the rise of Western civilization. And from what I know of it, Confucianism in China, with a dose of Buddhism.
Thank you for that explanation!
But that would make 20,000 kcal/day kind of like the spaghetti man in Monte Python.
(maybe they are talking about the total calorie consumption per day of the entire VILLAGE?)
Or am I thinking backwards? Does that mean that 20,000 kcal is the same as 2000 Calories a day? That would be a nice healthy diet, but still about 2 times the Moochelle recommendation for growing youths.
I just found this quote today:
“[Communism] is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision.
Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communists vision is the vision of Man without God. It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world.”
- Whittaker Chambers, Witness, p. 9.
We function on about 1,500-2,000 kcal/day now, in an extremely sedentary culture. I’d not be surprised at early cultures (as noted, “safe” ones where food was abundant & reliable, and threats rare) consuming several times that due to no transportation (for self nor goods), close involvement with farming & hunting, and labor-intensive everything every day all the time. Non-temperate weather also necessitates high calorie burn just to maintain safe body temperature, both in just existing and in actively managing environment (hauling wood to burn, wearing heavy animal hides, sweating profusely, etc.).
Today, Olympic athletes et al are known to burn upwards of 5,000kcal/day - and that’s concentrated activity surrounded by sedentary behavior (sitting while transported, other such relaxed behaviors). When every waking moment involves labor, I can see common folk burning that much easily.
I recall someone computing that a naked man just standing in a blizzard would need 30,000kcal/day to survive. That’s pretty extreme, yes, but does establish an upper limit to caloric intake; if you’re living Survivorman-like in extreme cold with primitive insulation & heat, you’re gonna be eating a LOT.
The 20,000 number may also cover _available_ calories. People may not have consumed/burned that much daily, but did have it available and may have reached that occasionally. Our current available calories are at least on par with that.
Just some thoughts; I’m no expert.
What an amazing insight. I shall ponder it much, and irritate many with it.
Do you have any idea where this photo was taken?
My thought too. You don’t raise an advanced culture without _first_ establishing a strong social morality; an advanced culture does not arise from crude selfishness/tribalism and _then_ decide “hey, let’s be nice to each other because a higher power obligates it”. Authors see the correlation, but confuse the causality.
I stopped reading right there.
I hear what you are saying.
Gone are the days when farmer brown would awaken before dawn, consume five eggs, some biscuits and sausage gravy, home fries, toast, and BACON , and then spend the entire day farming.
I get up at six, walk the dog, have breakfast, spend the morning on the computer, practice four instruments, and then go and teach from 2:00 PM till 9:00 at night.
Then I get on the computer again till midnight.
Probably the bass is my most “calorie-burning” thing.
2,000 Calories = 2,000 kcal = 2,000,000 calories.
20,000 Calories is about 10x what a modern sedentary largish adult consumes daily. If you’re working your butt off every day dawn to dusk, instead of mostly just sitting on it, I’d not be surprised if that were an attainable intake.
...which makes me also consider: ‘tis observed that the hearts of warm-blooded critters (us included) have a MTBF (i.e.: functional lifespan) of about 1 trillion beats. If you’re working hard enough to burn something in the vicinity of 20,000 kcal/day, you’re working hard enough to double your average heart rate - which means halving your lifespan. Indeed, living to 50 was considered _old_, with 30-40 being typical.
“That changed between 500 BCE and 300 BCE — a time known as the “Axial Age” — when new doctrines appeared in three places in Eurasia. “These doctrines all emphasized the value of ‘personal transcendence,’” the researchers write, “the notion that human existence has a purpose, distinct from material success, that lies in a moral existence and the control of one’s own material desires, through moderation (in food, sex, ambition, etc.), asceticism (fasting, abstinence, detachment), and compassion (helping, suffering with others).”
I’m pretty sure the bulk of the old testament was written down before 500 BC. So it’s a little difficult to put Judaism and Jehovah on this list.
‘then go and teach from 2:00 PM till 9:00 at night’.
What do you teach?
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