Not one but two readers have asked me about the Turkish myth of Shahmaran, a mythic snake-woman who lives in a cave. Among other things, she teaches a young man the history of Mankind. She ends up being captured and eaten. “As I am about to die, I will give you my secret. Whoever eats my tail will attain wisdom beyond measure and long life, but whoever eats my head will die.” Reminiscent of the two trees in the Garden of Eden or the serpent in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
This retelling doesn’t do the story justice, and it’s quite a bit of work to read the many different versions of the myth (originally in Turkish, Iranian, and Arabic) and relate them to other snake myths and ideas unique to the Snake Cult. But there are about 1,000 readers here from 68 countries who would be interested in such content. So, I hope some intrepid readers here take on the challenge and write about specific myths or practices that the Snake Cult reminds them of. I’d be more than happy to link them. This extends to criticisms of the Snake Cult, including the less popular connection to evolution. A big hurdle when writing is feeling like one is yelling into the void. That is slightly less true on this topic. And it’s something that deserves more perspectives than my own, which is rooted in English and Judeo-Christianity.
Links
If you haven’t done so, set apart a few hours and read EToC v3. If you’ve followed the blog for a while, I introduced the Snake Cult with the idea that serpents sure do have some hallucinogenic connections in creation myths. In this piece, I produce evidence that their venom was used as an entheogen in Greece, India, and the Americas. It’s a strange thing to get right!
Humans are getting less schizophrenic
Davide Piffer and Emil Kirkeegard have a new paper: Evolutionary Trends of Polygenic Scores in European Populations From the Paleolithic to Modern Times. They estimated the level of schizophrenia, autism, intelligence, and other cognitive traits in Europe in the last 30,000 years, though the data was somewhat sparse before 12,500 BP. The EToC model of human evolution is that “I” is a stable hallucination, and it became stable in the last 50,000 years, which should correlate with less schizophrenia. The evolutionary trajectory described in EToC v3.0:
“So, when I say “evolutionary time scales,” I mean long enough to have no overlap between the recursive abilities of two populations. Long enough to be cognitively foreign. Tribes where men develop consciousness as infants vs. during puberty or have schizophrenia rates of 1% vs. 10%.”
Consistent with what Piffer and Kirkeegard found:
There are many caveats about estimating genetic propensity for traits in a very different environment and population. And the degree to which schizophrenia is a good stand-in for earlier states of “identifying with inner voice” or recursive self-awareness. But the slope is directionally correct and fairly steep. To read more, check out Emil’s write-up here on Substack:
Anthropologist Peter Frost also has a write-up of the study and even cites EToC v3.0 in the section about brain size reduction since the Ice Age:
Cranial capacity, and hence brain size, decreased among Europeans after the last ice age (see Hawks, 2011 for a review of the literature). Yet, during the same period, mean cognitive ability held steady or increased among Europeans. How do we explain this apparent contradiction?
Perhaps the brain was starting to do more with less, specifically be relying more on recursive thinking (Corballis, 2014; Cutler, 2024).
Continuity of the Middle Stone Age into the Holocene
This 2021 paper describes Middle Stone Age technology found in Africa dating back just 11 kya. From Wikipedia:
“The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago.”
And the LSA:
“The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it are up for debate. The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age is thought to have occurred first in eastern Africa between 50,000 and 39,000 years ago.”
This is part of the Sapient Paradox: why is behavior that is now universal not universal just 10 kya? Where was the art? Why did some African cultures 11 kya use MSA technology more suited to 200 kya? (And up to 7 kya in Australia.) The mystery extends to skeletal remains. Why do we find archaic human skulls from just 13,000 years ago? Also from Wiki:
“The Iho Eleru skull is a notable archaeological discovery from the site which dates to approximately 13,000 years old. It may be evidence of modern humans possessing possible archaic human admixture or of a late-persisting early modern human.”
Why Evolution is True
If you don’t know the blog, check out Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True. A recent high-quality piece: Bret Weinstein denies that AIDS is caused by HIV
Snakessss
Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, humans, chimps, and gorillas have good resistance to the neurotoxins in snake venom. Snakes have been a factor in human evolution for a long time, applying selection pressure on basic elements of the nervous system.
In EToC v3, I mentioned the Native American Snake Dance as possibly using venom and antivenom. I have been tracking down sources for that, and it’s probably worth its own post. Here is a sneak peek of some sketches drawn by a Hopi Indian:
There is even a bullroarer with a snake on it:
Finally, I ran into these guys holding boomerangs. Turns out it’s not just an Australia thing.
The earliest known boomerang is 30 kya in Poland. Maybe they all diffused from around there? Here’s a nice article that catalogs the global phenomenon.
SO... I have a theory that I want to share. I really do not think it is ready for putting "out there" yet but I believe it would be right up your alley. Please zip me an email so we can correspond. Spoiler alert: It involves the ancient goddess cults and Venus' of Willendorf culture (which will segue into your EToC ) prevalent in Europe back to 40,000 years ago plus. I will look forward to your response.
the boomerangs are just better throwing sticks, the returning boomerang is an Australian specialty, especially if you miss over water