Göbekli Tepe carvings speak to me
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html?c=y&page=2
"What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean."
Can't understand??
We are still the same - our need for symbols is the same. The symbols are even the same - The Chicago Bulls? The American Eagle? Puma Brand running shoes? The astrologers predictions are still printed daily in newspapers for Taurus the Bull.
Read "where the wild things are" by maurice sendak. a boy is sent to bed without supper. in his imagination he becomes king of the wild things. and he has power over them and the obey him.
does not carving these animals into the stone give us power over them?
does it not speak to our need to have power over the wild things? to have power over the powerful things?
consider the desire to buried in a coffin that is shaped like a mercedes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/africanlives/ghana/ghana.htm
also referenced in African Folklore By Philip M. Peek, Kwesi Yankah:
"When an onion farmer passed away, he might find his last resting place in an onion-shaped coffin, while an important or wealthy man might repose in a wooden Mercedes."
Is this not a form of aspirational marketing?
or how about cargo cults? are we so distant? don't we want to wear fake rolexes? drive big cars and live in fancy houses in the hope that we will be important and lead more meaningful and valuable lives?
"In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches."
or http://mikejay.net/articles/the-last-cargo-cult/ from encounters with people who were living as they had lived from the stone age...
"‘Cargo cults’ got into full swing during the 1950s, though once the phenomenon had been classified by Westerners it seemed that the beginnings of the movement could be traced way back, as far as the 1890s. The classic account was by the Australian anthropologist Peter Lawrence who went out to the Madang district of New Guinea in 1949 to conduct field research into the traditional social relations of people who, despite colonial rule, were still living much as they had in the recent Stone Age."
"...the Minister of Health has a robust response. He insists not just that John Frum is a cargo cult no longer, but that it never was one in the first place. “We Tannese knew about God before the missionaries came. Of course we knew that there was a creator, who made all this. But the whites could never understand that there could be a revelation for the black man, a messiah for man Tanna. They could only imagine it had to be about their consumer goods. Cargo is not our obsession, it’s the white man’s.” And the American flags, the parade we’ve just witnessed? “This is not about waiting for cargo to come from America. This is a reminder of our history. The Americans helped us, they freed our leaders from the colonial jails.” It’s true that the US Army treated the islanders far better than the colonial rulers, paying far above the standard wage and dispensing free Red Cross aid, but the nature of the alliance between the John Frum Movement and the Marines is less than clear. This being the 21st century, the Minister of Health intends to set the record straight in the near future on the Vanuatu government website."
Which brings us to animism:
"It is not surprising to find that many peoples respect and even worship animals (see totem or animal worship), often regarding them as relatives. It is clear that widespread respect was paid to animals as the abode of dead ancestors, and much of the cults to dangerous animals is traceable to this principle; though we need not attribute an animistic origin to it."
and finally to the reason why the author has so much trouble - animal worship is absent from our daily lives now.
"When a god is respected or worshipped by means of a representative animal, an animal cult is formed (Teeter et al., 2002, p. 355). The origin of such cults developed from a distinction that primitive man lacked between animals and humanity (Raglan, 1935, p. 331). This lack of discernment caused humans to look upon animals as equals. Therefore, it was just as simple for them to represent their gods in an animal form as opposed to a human form because in primitive man’s judgment animals and human were equal (Gilbert, Qtd. in Raglan, 1935, p. 331)."
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