August 26: Woman, Homosexuals, Beer and Civilization

History 104A, August 26: Woman, Homosexuals, Beer and Civilization

I think this is where I had repeated things last time (on the

Power Point presentation: Civilization.ppt). And, hopefully it's corrected this time. This is the way it should have

read without the repeating of my copying. However, it seems to be --

oh, you can read it better than I can. It says what characteristics

and we went through these last time -- agriculture, generally

permanent settlement, division of labor, specialization of labor,

control environment, social hierarchy, government or a bureaucracy,

formal social institutions, trade, technology, art including some form

of written communication. It's not really writing and it's not an

alphabet in many cases. It can be codices, symbols, drawings of

various natures and various types. This is what we were dealing with

and what we developed last time as characteristics of civilization and

identified. And we hit this one too last time, the earliest known

civilizations originated in the Nile River Valley, China's Yellow River

Valley, the Fertile Crescent, which when you see a map because of the

sort of green in the area at the time. We call it the Fertile

Crescent, but anybody who has recently seen pictures of the Tigres

and Euphrates in of course the country of Iraq, which we are very

familiar with in recent years, it does not appear very fertile. In

fact, on the contrary, it is pretty dull, dreary, sandy, desert.

In this valley, Mehrgarh and Harappa, which we should really

know, and West Africa, where ancient peoples grouped together to form

the first societies between the tenth and fourth Millennia BC.

Ongoing excavations reveal that an ancient civilization may also of

originated in Japan around that time. What are they called? The Ainu

that are actually not Asian but are much more Anglo or lets see that

the word Caucasian -- or more Caucasian in their appearance and bodily

shape. They don't have the normal Mongolian characteristics, and they

seem to have been there even earlier than the Mongolian people that

have settled in that area in more recent years.

First basic settlements. We have you read Jarmo and the group

meeting is when? Next week? Is it Monday or Wednesday?

A Monday.

THE PROFESSOR: So as a reminder, you are to read Velikovsky and

the group meeting for Monday does deal with the question of your

impression of Velikovsky. Of course that material, as I explained, is

in the library. I have suggested that you do not read it too

carefully but just read it rapidly. And we will come in and discuss

it in the groups for about 20 minutes at the end of the period, at the

end of the time schedule. The Jarmo material is there for reading as

well. And again, if any of you haven't been to the library or are not

library people, I still have plenty of copies that I can lend out

until after the group meeting in my office. And of course since today

is Friday, it's going to be a little more difficult to get because you

have to come over right after class since I'm only there after class

today. Any questions on the group meeting?

In any case, Jericho. Jericho is in Palestine and I literally

use the word Palestine because it is the West Bank area and it's near

the Dead Sea. When I went to Israel in 1993, my son was playing

soccer in the large world Jewish games that are called the Maccabiah

games, and we went to watch them. It was interesting. It was a

quite different Israel than it is today. There was no uprising. And

there hadn't been for many moons. No bombings, suicide bombs or

anything. It was very quiet to the extent that we saw no security

getting off the airplane in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was without any

security to speak up except for a few soldiers hitchhiking. When you

got to Jerusalem, there was much more security because there's a much

heavier Muslim and Palestinian population. I have to make it clear,

for whatever it's worth, that the Palestinians are not all Muslim.

There are large numbers of Christians and Druses that made up the

Palestinian Liberation Organization. Of course that is not of course

true with Hamas or other groups. And we took a tour headed out for

the Dead Sea, which is an interesting place because you cannot sink.

It's obviously very hot area. And they have these mud baths that you

can take to beautify yourself and all kinds of nice oils and tonics

that you can place on your body in the Dead Sea. And of course we

headed for the place called Massada where, around 70 CE, common era AD,

a group of Jews played a Jonestown, a Waco, and they fought to the

last man for two years and last woman against the Romans up on this

very high plateau that was almost unreachable until the Romans built a

land bridge to it. And of course there also was the caves of the Dead

Sea scrolls. The big city in the area, Jericho. We could not go to

Jericho. And that's where -- the reason -- heavily Arab and heavily

anti anybody but Palestinians. And so that was the one site that was

closed off and considered dangerous for the quote/unquote tourists or

for anybody who was not a Palestinian, which translates to, that the

City of Jericho is still in existence. And it begins to appear

somewhere around 7 or 8,000 BCE. And by city, we generally talk about

an area over 3,000 in population.

Of course most of you are familiar with Jericho as a name because

Joshua walked around the city blowing his horn so that the walls would

come tumbling down. I think some of you remember the Biblical event.

It is generally believed that most of the Biblical

stories have some basis in fact. And the Jericho walls were somewhat

made out of clay. And within 100 or so years, the clay easily

disintegrated and therefore a fairly large size army trampling the

ground could have caused its destruction. Of course whether or not

the sun stood still as the bidding of Joshua, Velikovsky does have

some answers for that interestingly in the reading. Again, it all

ties together.

Another city of about 3,000 was in what we call the Anatolian

peninsula. I have to spell with my fingers. The Anatolian peninsula

is better known today as what country?

A Turkey.

THE PROFESSOR: Turkey. So in this area of Turkey, the City of

Catal Huyuk.

Another city in China, Loulan, are among the same period of time,

somewhere around 8,000 BCE with the population of 3,000 people. Jarmo

had around 200, quite different from the Bushman site we examined

which had maybe 20 people living in the site. Some of the Bushmen

site maybe as many as 30. These were wandering tribes. Here we have

the beginnings of settlements and we'll talk about why perhaps in a

short period of time as well.

And of course the later settlements that are more permanent and

the ones we're going to be dealing with and studying Mesopotamia, the

Fertile Crescent. Mesopotamia, meaning the land between the two

rivers, the Tigres Euphrates or better said, reading from left to

right, the Euphrates Tigres.

Ancient Egypt, the Minoan civilization. Anybody know where the

Minoan civilization was?

A Right off of Greece, the islands.

THE PROFESSOR: Which island mainly? It's the island of Crete.

Minoan civilization on the island of Crete here at around 3,000 BCE

beginning lasting to around 1200.

Q Were they the civilizations that were wiped out and we don't know

how it occurred?

THE PROFESSOR: We know it was wiped out and we know from the

ruins that somehow it was done by fire. We know from the stories of the

Greek myths. But yes, it has been from time to time been identified

along with some of the other island civilizations with possibly having

been the lost City of Atlantis. The lost City of Atlantis is out in a

different galaxy and you can get there through the star gate. How

many know what the hell I'm talking about? Okay. Just as long as --

I know you don't, but -- sorry Connie.

And King Minos, the Indus River in India and Harappa and a little

more advanced in some cases, the city and area of Mohenjo-Daro and

Yellow River Valley, Longshan and Yangshao in China. The Mayan is the

one that you have probably heard about here down in Central America in

the Yucatan. Earlier than that, there was a group of people called

the OLMEC -- whose monolithic sculptures are fascinating because they

very much look as if it were African. The appearance is much more

African than indigenous people. So we don't know again where some of

these civilizations came from, but many of you are aware of the Kon

Tiki or some of you are. Author Thor Heyderdahl's attempt, God,

it must be 50 years ago, to prove that the people of the Americas came

from Egypt originally through rafts and boats that the Egyptians built

and built this boat and traveled to the Americas. And that explains,

for some reason, perhaps some of the commonalities in the highlands of

Peru, especially with the Incas, as with the Egyptians, including

mummification and brain surgery which was done in ancient Egypt and

was done in ancient Peru. And another interesting commonality, the

marriage between brothers and sisters in the noble families. How many

were aware of some of these issues?

What is still mysterious about the American civilizations is that

they did not have -- I'm doing this a little out of context, just in

case I forget -- they did not have a wheel for the movement of goods,

services, in other words, carts. Now, perhaps the terrain was too

rough. But what's fascinating about them not having a wheel, if

you've seen the Mayan calendar that later passes onto the Aztec

calendar is basically a wheel. They certainly had the ability to make

pottery, which is where people said the wheel developed from, the

pottery wheel. But what is more interesting even than that is that

they had children's pull toys with wheels on them. And so the

question arising, why would they have toys to be able to pull and not

be able to transfer that to carts or tools to move and build things

with? So we still obviously have a lot of mysteries as to ancient

times and ancient history.

And there are some fascinating analysis of some of the middle

American sculptures because they have this thing on their chest. And

one writer by the name of Von Daniken argues that these people

in middle American came from another planet, maybe Atlantis, escaping

the Wraith, and they had these battery -- I don't even know how to

spell Wraith -- they had these electrical batteries which were space

suits to protect them. And he's the one that also puts Atlantis

off the coast of Bermuda. He's done a whole series of work.

And then there's another book explaining that area about a 12th

planet, not a tenth, which, if you read recently, there is debate

among astronomers that they have found a tenth planet. How many of

you have read about that?

A It's not really a debate. I took astronomy. And once you get

past Pluto, there's pretty much just huge chunks of ice, thousands of

them, millions of them.

THE PROFESSOR: What do you mean it doesn't exist?

A The debate is, do they count these huge chunks of ice as planets.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, that makes it debate. Of course there's a

debate whether Pluto is a planet.

A It's a big hunk of ice.

THE PROFESSOR: So maybe there's only eight planets. It

certainly has a strange orbit that raises questions. Again, out of my

field of expertise. I only read what I read in the newspapers about

these things. We'll let the astronomers tell us whatever they want.

In the meantime, instead of this planet, it went in a different

direction of the elliptical path, and they dropped people off into

Middle America. These things are always fun in a social science

class. You can't really play with them and deal with them in

astronomy or biology as we indicated. This is part of the reason I

enjoy history. We have a lot of mysteries and why we search. We

don't have answers, so we can speculate on.

All right. So we will be dealing further with these

civilizations. It came back. If this were the only item or among the

most prominent items found, as it has been in most of the Neolithic

new stone age quote/unquote societies and in the, especially the early

civilizations around the Mesopotamian, what would you infer about

those societies? What was this figure? You want to do some

inference, speculation?

A It's a Venus and it regards to the importance of fertility.

THE PROFESSOR: You know it's called a Venus figurine and

supposedly represents fertility. From that, what would this say about

the society? By the way, I had a different one that came from Jarmo.

And you can look at the booklet that some of you may have. You see

this sitting Venus figurine. They are all over. We can actually

track them along the coast of Asia into Alaska at around 10,000

through to about 6,000 BCE. I pass that around. Remember I told you

that one of the librarians threw out all my stuff. So since my wife

tends to collect Venus figurines or female goddesses, I was able to

steal that without her knowing it from her collection to pass around.

I'm glad nobody broke it or she'd kill me.

When I passed around the

one from Jarmo, somebody in class said, well, primitive people believe

that if you rub the figurine, it would make you pregnant. And one

woman in the back of the class yelled out, oh my God. I thought it

was sort of neat. I hope none of you rubbed it unless you wanted to

rub it. Does anybody want me to pass it around again?

What would you say about a society where that figurine was found?

What would you say about their culture? Their way of life? Perhaps

even their economic system? Again, similar to the maps exercise--

anybody? Do I scare you that much? Again, speculation. We can't

prove it. Your guess is as good as anybody's. What would you say

about that society's way of life? Culture? Values? Religion?

A Apparently, they concentrate on having families.

THE PROFESSOR: They were worried about fertility, so they

concentrated on having families. Obviously reproduction becomes

important to any people. And certainly it was far more difficult

among primitive people. Survival certainly was difficult as far as

newborns were concerned. Death rates were high -- disease, injury.

So certainly family became important. What else can you speculate?

A Well, if it's a civilization that already had agriculture,

fertility not only deals with women's pregnancy, but harvest and crops

and fields.

THE PROFESSOR: Fertility then pertains to the fertility of the

land. So why the female figurine is so important?

A Because women are the ones that gave birth.

THE PROFESSOR: Women are the ones who are fertile. And why not

the male? Don't they have the role?

A Those civilizations may not have completely understood the male's

role.

THE PROFESSOR: You know what's interesting is that they've done

some research recently among some of the intercity ghetto areas about

girls getting pregnant out of wedlock, blah, blah, blah, or yada,

yada, yada -- I have to go back to Friends. And it was actually

shocking to me to find out how many young people did not necessarily

know how babies were created. Some thought it came through French

kissing. Is that called liberty kissing now? It's like growing hair

on your palms after masturbation; right? Those kinds of myths still

prevail.

And so why not, why does it have to be that primitive people

understood the relationship between sex and reproduction. Do animals

understand that relationship? Of course we can't answer that one. We

can't speak to the animals to find out. Therefore, it was a mystery.

And yes, it began to be further understood as perhaps human

intelligence through the convolutions of the brain began to expand.

And by the way, what I didn't see in your book is any mention of the

fact that Neanderthal man's or women's size, the size of their brain

was actually larger than homo sapiens. It's not the size of the brain

necessarily that creates your intelligence. The frontal lobes and the

convolutions make a main difference.

Did you hear about the study that some idiot did in England

recently where he decided that men's intelligence is higher than

women? How many heard about that? Only one? No women here pissed?

A I'm assuming that he's never going to get married. He's one of

those --

THE PROFESSOR: Well, he might get married. Most men want some

dumb women.

A That's all we can get, then what's the point.

THE PROFESSOR: Because a bimbo is a bimbo. You're going to

college. You have to look at things differently than the real world

out there. You suspect these guys want intelligent women, that's why

you went to college, to get a good M-R-S. Throw something at me. I

accept it.

A He did offer a counter argument to that and say that women use

their data processing centers much better than males do.

THE PROFESSOR: Their data processing centers?

A I have no idea.

THE PROFESSOR: I can just go up to some woman and say, I love

your data processing center. Actually, the strange part was that he

said that up until the age of 14, men and women have the exact same

IQ. Now, if IQ is not supposed to change from birth, why the hell

would there be a five point difference after the age of 14? There's

obviously discrepancies in the testing. And on top of that, it runs

into the whole thing about the IQ testing. What got me off on that?

Oh, the brains of early people.

As civilization expanded into the -- well, they're not up there

now -- into those river valley civilizations, the figurines that began

to appear were male figurines with extremely large phalluses. For

those that don't know the word phallus, the word is penis. If you

don't know the word penis, no, never mind.

I suggest if you have not been down to the Egyptian museum, which

is in San Jose, Rosicrucian area near the San Jose Botanical Gardens,

whatever it's called, it's worth a trip. It's one of the best

Egyptian museums I've ever seen. It's small, put on by the

Rosicrucians. It used to be free but they're now charging about a

three dollars entry fee. Just recently they took some mummy from

there of a young girl and they spent a fortune trying to analyze the

mummy, the bones, for any disease, cause of death etc.

And of course it's not just the mummification. They have got

a tomb that you can walk through. But you will also find many of

these artifacts, not only the early Egyptian artifacts, but the men

with their phalluses that are often held up with straps. They're

unrealistic unless your name is Ron - what is his name? --

A Ron Jeremy.

THE PROFESSOR: Hmmm! I don't know. The fact being that it is

also argued that primitive people needed the songs, the dance, the

sexual relationships to create stimulation because their brains were

not developed enough to create imagination. Translation, the guy used

to teach biology of sex here, a man named Walt Halland, a phenomenal

instructor. Did anybody have Walt Halland? Too bad. He started his

class in biology of sex with everybody chanting the F word just to see

if they could handle it. He argued that the biggest sexual organ is

imagination, is the mind, the brain. Of course I used to enjoy -- he

had a class right above this one. And at least once a semester they

would blow up prophylactics and the whole ceiling would start coming

down. People would laugh and start jumping around. They had a TV

unit with a VCR here before they put in the smart classroom. And one

day I went to put in -- in fact, it actually was that Did Darwin Get

it Wrong? DVD. I went to put it in and it didn't work. And so I

pulled it out afterwards. And then there was a young woman who saw

into it and said, I think there's a piece of paper in there. It

turned out to be a prophylactic. I hope it was Mr. Halland's class

blowing them around the room rather than some other reason it was in

there. But in any case, you never know what's going to happen at

Ohlone. We're off the subject.

Let's get back to reproduction and early primitive peoples.

There is some interesting speculation on women's roles in ancient

society done by anthropologists and sociologists. I was very very

interested in chapter two of your book because it seems to imply that

civilization is brought on by women. Of course this is an argument

made by a Brazilian sociologist by the name of Gilberto Freire.

It talks about Gilgamish an early King who sends a

woman to tame Enkidu, a wild man who lives like the wild man in

the grasslands. Women are sent to tame men. Which women?

Prostitutes. She then teaches Enkidu to eat cooked food, drink beer,

and bathed and oiled his body.

There's another little line in your book I loved and hadn't

heard, was the speculation that civilization began around Mesopotamia

and the reason people settled down was so they could make beer?

A Uh-hum.

THE PROFESSOR: So the basis of civilization, women and beer.

And brought on by prostitutes. What does that translate to? Again,

history can be fun, especially pre-civilization. How many have heard

the name Lilith besides from Frazier? The Lilith festival is no

longer going on, but for the rest of you the name Lilith comes from

Christian-Judeo mythology and reappeared in many books and studies

starting at the end of the 1960s with feminism because, apparently,

the argument in the quote/unquote mythology of Judea-Christian

tradition is that the first woman was not Eve but was a woman named

Lilith. Are you familiar with that?

A I'm kind of familiar with it. It's been a long time. Lilith was

Adam and Lilith. Lilith did something, I can't remember.

THE PROFESSOR: She refused to have sex below Adam. She wanted

to be on top. No wonder you don't remember it.

A And she was kicked out by Eve. And then God took a rib or two

from Adam to create a woman that would be submissive.

THE PROFESSOR: Yeah, passive and submissive. And Lilith became

the symbol of the assertive, independent female and became -- because

of that symbol of independence, the Goddess of prostitutes and other

independent women. Also it

was apparently for the men, they saw her as sort of a demon who, when

men entered puberty, would go around and steal their sperm to produce

more children. And that's why we have wet dreams. Any of you who

had wet dreams, I want you to know that you helped produce demons. I am

sure you never expected this stuff in a history class, really -- and

I'm not making any of this up. This is all part of quote/unquote

mythology. And certainly for some explains why there is a

discrepancy, they see it, between God created Adam and Eve, created he

them, and then God created Eve out of the rib of Adam. A number of

authors have indicated that much of what went on with the female

dominated world of Lilith and the Goddess was eliminated later in the

Bible. And there is a book that deals with it called King David by

Robert Graves. It's a novel as well but also in The White Goddess

which is a study that the Bible was changed to eliminate this female

dominated world and the female goddesses to bring in a male

domination, as men from wandering tribes came down into the river

valley civilizations saw the wealth and decided to take it over and

dominate it.

Let's go back a little to the earlier speculation which is just,

you know about the cave paintings and you know they're deepening

recesses in the dark recesses of the cave, either to protect them

or to create magic or perhaps in a sense returning to the womb. We do

know that around those paintings they have hands on them, have small

feet prints, footprints. The argument that has been made is that the

paintings were done to aid in the hunt and they were done by the women

who stayed at home with the children while the men went out hunting.

And the women created the basis of what was going to be culture and

civilization because, while they were home, they did the minor

creation of pottery and clothing or whatever. And they passed on the

knowledge of the culture while the men went out and hunted the mammoth

and sat around drinking their blood and bowling with their heads or

whatever. Maybe only on Tuesday nights they bowled with the mammoth

heads. The fact is that the argument being that all of that -- of

what we refer to as civilization, develops around the woman more

specifically because the women are the gatherers. They foraged. And

they were able in their ability to better use their centers of data

processing to figure out that they could not only gather grain but

they could see changes made and began the breeding of grain. In other

words, what we call the domestication of crops. And with that

domestication of crops, we began to have an excessive food supply or

beer or whatever in an area. And with that excessive food supply,

more people could avoid going out hunting for animals. They can hang

around. But who would be the men who would want to not go hunt? The

faggots. Well, that's derogatory, the argument being the effeminate

men who identified with the mothers who wanted to cook. So

civilization was taken over by women and brought into existence by

effeminate men who became the non-hunters, the real men, the ones who

to do drive the trucks. They became the effeminate men, homosexuals

who became priests, school teachers, artists, musicians, and dancers.

With that the speculation being that women created that village that

people could engage in. They need to build a village that what's her

name, Hillary Clinton stated.

And with that, we have another question. The village needs

something else, animals. How do we get domesticated animals? In

other words, today of course we meat. Granted, women eat salads

unless they're male type of women; then they might eat steaks. I'll

never forget -- this is just a sideline story. A woman came in a

class and she was really upset. And I said well, what happened? She

said, well, she was in the cafeteria and she had seen this guy on

campus and she really wanted to meet him and was interested in the

guy. And then in the cafeteria she saw him eating a salad, and she

knew he wasn't a real man. So I just thought I would pass that on.

In any case, how do we get the domestication of animals? Because when

we think about it, wild animals are fairly wild. In other words, the

wild pig, the bore, the wild cow, even the wild rams are violent

creatures. How do we breed out those wild creatures to create tame

creatures, create domesticated animals? And the answer that some

anthropologists sociologists provide is that all of the -- almost all

of the animals that have become domesticated, meaning the wild

characteristics have been somewhat tamed out of them.

Animals that could be sacrificed to the Mother Goddess

because there were symbols in their existence as animals that

reflected the Mother Goddess.

And so I guess I'll have to pick up on that on Monday before

the group meeting as to what those symbols were that bought on and how

it brought on the domestication of animals.

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