Posted on 11/30/2006 11:14:15 AM PST by LibWhacker
A startling discovery of 70,000-year-old artifacts and a python's head carved of stone appears to represent the first known human rituals.
Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until perhaps 40,000 years ago.
But inside a cave in remote hills in Kalahari Desert of Botswana, archeologists found the stone snake [image] that was carved long ago. It is as tall as a man and 20 feet long.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I see more of a Shiva Linga in the Yoni....
But maybe that's just my dirty mind.
How do they know its 70,000 years old? Does it have a date on it?
You've got it all wrong! This is clearly an examole of early capitalistic advertising. It was placed at the entrance to a playground where the children could ride the back of the stone serpent. Cost for admission: live rabbit,pig, or quail. Makes as much sense to me....
I see Mary on a piece of toast.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
Tell me that cylindrical rock in the cleft isn't suggestive....
NO NO! I've seen it - it's at Animal Kingdom in Disneyworld.
And I thought the first human ritual was having some guys over for a game, beer and pizza.
This kind of article always annoys me. How can they know this is the first ritual? Maybe there were many, many previous ones that didn't involve stone snakes.
The article makes the claim that it is the first KNOWN human ritual, certainly leaving the possibility that older ones may be found.
Why can't they just report on the snake and leave it at that?
: (
YEC INTREP
And so the Shaman said, "all your women are belong to me. leave them overnight for the snake god...er...I mean me to make them fertile as a turtle."
Because the significance is NOT the snake, but that it IS the earlier known human ritual...others will be discovered, most likely, but for now....
"At first we thought they were just another snake cult. Then they started putting up these towers everywhere!"
You don't get it. It's like finding a footprint and saying it's the first known instance of somebody walking. Or finding a dish and a spoon and saying it's the first known instance of somebody eating. Totally bogus, bullsheet pronouncing.
Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until perhaps 40,000 years ago.
Thanks for the pings. I just FReepmailed Blam that I'd get this up sometime tomorrow, and that no one would beat us to it. ;'D
Shaman is the current usage.
However, over time, the word has seen the usual linguistic permutations.
A document was found, written ca 1450 years ago, that has the older form, "schamman". This was Olde Germanic, and actually pronounced "SKAM'-man".
That form was related to an even earlier known Nordic form, "scamman", which is actually closer to the original meaning, as well.
It is believed that this earliest form, allowing for the usual slurring of foreign words and known consonantal drift, was derived from "Scandia Man", applied to traveling tricksters, AKA "Lokis", that were fore runners of later traveling mime troupes, which evolved into "roaming shows", or "Romany".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.