The Alphabet and the Goddess, Part 1

something that. Actually I wonder if there's a linguistic relationship between Rhiannon and the one I'm about to talk about, because it's kind of a cognate the Sumerian goddess in Anna. You're familiar with in Anna, but she's the one who rings like a bell through the night. No, no, no, that's also Rhiannon. But in Nana does sort of take to the sky like a bird in flight, and I

don't maybe sometimes she promises you haven't. She is definitely the darkness and she rules her life like a fine skylark. But let's not get sidetracked. In Nana has hymns of her own that we can sing and I think we actually should read some in a second here. So in Nana is a Sumerian goddess. She is also known as the Acadian Ishtar. I think that they're This is believed to be the same goddess, essentially across a different stream of tradition, and the deep history of the Mesopotamian goddess

has lots of different things associated with it. So in some sense, Nana is the goddess of the storehouse, meaning that she rules over the stores of things like dates and meat and grain. But she's also a goddess of fertility and sex and war and slaughter. So she's got all of this interesting stuff gathered up under her feathers. I don't know why I said feathers. I don't think she's a bird under her dark wings. That's a different that's a different song. But it's interesting because all the

things that she is encompassing here. Um, this, this is the domains that we would cover in a vast pantheon of gods and goddess is from other traditions, all wrapped up into one. Yeah, And to give a sense of the power of Ananna, I if Robert, if you will comply, I think we should have a reading of some excellent ancient texts. Let's do it trivia question. In fact, I didn't know this until this episode. Who do who do you think is the earliest named author in all of

world literature? M hmmm, well it certainly it would probably tie to this time period, but I had no idea who the individual would be. Well, very often we find ancient texts and carvings things, you know, marks made in clay and cune of form and stuff. We don't know who the author is. It doesn't say like you know,

Jeff wrote this clay tablet inscription. But a strong contender for the title of the earliest named author in all of world literature is in Headuwana, a twenty third century b c. E. Mesopotamian high priestess and poet twenty third century b c. Forty three hundred years ago. This priestess and poet she was the daughter of the Akkadian king Sargon the Great, and she's named as the author of a collection of hymns and poems, many of which are devoted to the praise of the Sumerian goddess in Hannah.

And I think we should read some selections from Inhduanas him the Exultation of Anna. And this is from a translation that I found on the electronic text Corpus of Sumerian Literature based out of the University of Oxford. Now the poem is way too long to read in its entirety, but I put together some abridged selections. So here we go.

On the Exultation of Anna, Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman, clothed in radiance, beloved of On and Rak, Mistress of Heaven, with the great pectoral jewels. She loves the good head dress, befitting the office of ain priestess. Like a dragon, you have deposited venom on the foreign lands, Lady who rides upon a beast whose words are spoken at the holy command of On the

great rights are yours? Who can fathom them? Destroyer of the foreign lands, you confer strength on the storm, beloved of Inlil. You have made awesome terror way upon the land. Because of you, the threshold of tears is opened, and people walk along the path of the House of Great Lamentations in the van of battle. All is struck down before you. With your strength, My lady, teeth can crush flint. You charge forward like a charging storm, My lady, the great an Una gods fly from you to the ruined

mounds like scudding bats. They dare not stand before your terrible gaze. They dare not confront your terrible countenance. Who can cool your raging heart? Your malevolent anger is too great to cool, Lady Supreme over the foreign lands, who can take anything from your province. Blood is poured into their rivers because of you, and their people must drink it. And then there's a section that's talking about if a city has not acknowledged itself to be hers, if the

city doesn't say I belong to an Anna. Quote, it's a woman no longer speaks affectionately with her husband at dead of night. She no longer takes counsel with him, and she no longer reveals to him the pure thoughts of her heart. I in head to Anna, will recite a prayer to you. To you Holy in Anna, I shall give free vent to my tears like sweet beer. Be it known that you are lofty as the heavens. Be it known that you were broad as the earth. Be it known that you destroy the rebel lands. Be

it known that you roar at the foreign lands. Be it known that you crush heads. Be it known that you devour corpses like a dog. Be it known that your gaze is terrible. Be it known that you lift your terrible gaze. Be it known that you have flashing eyes. Be it known that you are unshakable and unyielding. Be it known that you always stand triumphant. The light was sweet for her, Delight extended over her. She was full of fairest beauty, like the light of the rising moon.

She exuded delight. Robert, how would you even begin to characterize this awesome mixture of brutal, merciless conquest and all these statements about radiants and beauty. Oh, I mean, well, but she's not to be trifled with, and she's really on on on par with the sun in terms of just beautiful, radiant. But but but also with all this destructive potential. I think it's fun. It talks about delight. This is a poem with delight in it. And also they will make you drink the blood. Yeah, I mean

that The best I can think is the sun. It is delightful to stand in the sun, but you will and can be burned by the sun as well. I mean it is, there's just a primal and vital energy to her. Now. She in many ways I think here is described as having the qualities of a storm god like Baal or mar Duke or Yahwe or Zeus or thor you know, these these storm war gods where the sky weather deity tends to be so ceated with conquest

and power and killing um. But she's also embodied, as you know, resplendence and delight, and she has all these other qualities we see in in other stories about her. That she's associated with stores of grain that are necessary for survival, that she's associated with sex and fertility and happiness. And so how does it end up that you've got this one deity who's got all these different qualities gathered underneath her. Yeah, and then what is taken away from

her over the centuries to follow. That's a good question, you know. Uh. In thinking about my own favorite goddess, my mind instantly turned to Fetis because I've been interested in mythic sea creatures of late, and we've talked about the Iliad quite a bit of late. So I I thought to Thetis, who through really throughout the history of written language. She's most well known as the mother of Achilles, Uh, you know, the the nearly invincible warrior of the Iliad.

And she's commonly described as an immortal near it. And she begot Achilles through her union with the mortal Pelias, king of the Mermaidans. And to protect her mortal son, she dipped him by the heel and the river sticks. And she also commissioned Hephaestus to forge his armor and arms. And she petitions Zeus himself on her son's behalf. Now, Thetis never strikes me as as someone you want to cross or mess with, especially as as far as the welfare of her son is concerned. She commands a fair

amount of power and influence in the Greek pantheon. And and she herself as the daughter of the sea god Nereus, and her brother in law is Poseidon. And yet there is something reduced about her. Uh. This this this being that is that that was worshiped as a goddess. Uh seems to be somewhat diminished in the Iliad and in other works. It's like she's been reduced to a supporting

role when she once was the star. Yeah, and so I I researched this a little bit and I can't ram it ran across a pay per titled The Wrath of Fetus by Laura M. Slatkin from Columbia University and was published in the journal Transactions of the American Philological Association. And she points out that in the Iliad, she's quote a subsidiary deity who is characterized by helplessness and by impotent grief, and yet she persuades Zeus to set in motion the in the events of the Iliad, and in

Mighty Achilles invokes her name above all others. He asks her to pretention Zeus and remind the king of the gods that she is the one who saved Zeus when all the other Olympians wanted to bind him, and to be bound, Slatkin points out, is the doom of a god. And Thetis does nothing short of saving the cosmos and maintaining cosmic equilibrium by preventing Zeus from going down like Zeus's own father Cronus. So that's kind of funny to suggest that you would be saving the cosmos by saving Zeus,

because like, of what good is Zeus? Zeus is just trash? Yeah, but it but he's the trash we know, right, You can imagine a situation was like, oh man, these gods, gods are crazy, but at least we kind of have worked out, you know, what their their mad passions are. We don't need another revolution so that the other Olympians will rule the roost. I mean, Zeus mostly just does bad stuff. Yeah, but it's true, it's true. Well, there's something.

It's like it's almost like we make excuses for him as this like bad tempered, criminal, violent male deity, or we're just like, oh, boys will be boys. What a rascal? Are we still talking about mythology or not talking about current events? No? No, no, I mean I think that well, I think there's something to be said about that, and

that will tie into today's episode. So fetis were also told in the writings of the Greek poet pindar Uh was destined to birth of son more mighty than his father, and that's why her her original suitors Zeus and Beside, both abandoned her love and forced her against her will to marry Immortal instead. Uh So, think of that. There's tremendous power in thetis, like she was faded to birth this this child greater than its father. So if she had born the son of Zeus or Poseidon, that would

have been a rival to the King of the gods. Right, but the King of the gods. If the King of the gods has a son who's too powerful, he asked to fear, he will be dethroned. Right, So maker Mary immortal, so at least her mighty son will be mighty, and more or less the mortal realm, and certainly at Kells

is mortal. That's kind of the that's the whole theme, and this immortal mother and the son that is doomed to die, and sola Can points out that this was an established trope because Thetis has a lot in common with Eos, the god, the goddess of the dawn, and the mother of Memnon, who we've discussed on the show before,

and the Colossi of Memnon episode. Yeah, the established role of an immortal mother looking after her mortal son who is doomed to die, and the Iliagist sticks to Fetus in this one role, but still invoking the established mythological role of the old Indo European don goddess. Interesting. So Thetis was certainly worshiped as a sea goddess in her time. But this goes beyond the mere limiting of a mighty

deity to a supporting role in the iliot Uh. Slatkin points out that the Laconian traditions identified her as a primordial creatrix, so she she is quote not simply a cosmic force, but the cosmic force. She not only has power in the sea, but is the generative principle of the universe. Well, that seems to go along with the nature of the sea and creation myths, right, Like when you have the sea, you've got the waters. First, there is like the darkness and the waters, and then you've

got creation coming out of that. The water is almost kind of symbolize a primordial chaos from which some kind of order can be wrought. And you see that in other creation myths too, like in the Tiamat creation myth where mar Duke slays Tamat, the sea monster, you know, the who re presents the water being yeah, and then

uses her body to make the world. So we've already established this this trend where we see a a often a primordial like all powerful cosmic goddess who is then reduced over time made a minor role in a story of warring men or a or a minor deity that is that is overpowered by masculine deities. What what happened

and what potentially is still happening in our culture? Yeah, And on one hand, that kind of male dominant, misogynist rewriting of cultural ideas and mythology and stuff like that, it seems so common that you might not even stop to ask why things are that way, right, I mean, it just seems like, well, that's always what happens in culture.

You know, men think they're better than women, and they want to rewrite all of the cultural stories and everything to downplay women's roles and make themselves feel more important. And and some people just say, well that, yeah, that's just how it is. But why wouldn't that be an interesting thing to have an explanation for why that is such a trend. And that's what we're gonna be talking

about in today's episode. We're gonna talk about one hypothesis, one fascinating hypothesis for why this has come to pass. And this was presented in the book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess The Conflict between Word and Image by American surgeon author and inventor Leonard Schlaine, who lived n seven

through two thousand and nine. Yeah, so, in the late nineties when this book was written, Schlaine was the chief of laparoscopic surgery at California Medical Center in San Francisco, and apparently he worked at least to some degree in performing surgeries on the arteries supplying blood to the hemispheres

of the brain. And just a fun bit of trivia that really has nothing to do with our episode today, but his daughter Kimberly is married to the actor Albert Brooks, and his daughter Tiffany as a noted filmmaker and founded the Webby Awards. Stuff About Your Mind incidentally, is a Webby Award winning podcast. I don't see that as a conflict of interest, but I just thought I pointed out but wait a minute, Albert Brooks, Hanks Scorpio, Yeah, Hank

Scorpio himself is connected to this episode. Now, before we lay out sh Lane's central claim and discuss some of his arguments, I definitely want to say that this is an idea we're discussing because it's interesting and because it raises questions worth investigating, and not because we're endorsing it

as correct. I'd say this is going to be more in in bicameral mind kind of territory, where this is a book that brings up a lot of interesting questions, takes us to a lot of interesting places, but ultimately we're not going to be saying we think that this guy has the right idea. And in many cases I think that I'll go ahead and say that I'm not convinced by his core thesis, and I've got a lot

of criticisms about his approach to argumentation. But at the same time, I think a lot of peripheral arguments and observations that come up in this book merrit individual analysis, right. And then he's using he to build this hypothesis. He's using uh, he's using science, and he's using history. He's using a number of just fascinating cultural examples. So he

is uh. Even if we ultimately are not won over by the hypothesis, uh, he supports it with so much fascinating information, and it really does force you to at least re examine some of these things that we've taken for for granted, like just the absence of or that, for the most part, the absence of goddesses from our our our major world religions. Okay, so let's start with Schlane's central claim and then back up and and run

through his argument. What do we have a quote here that will help us get to the heart of Schlane's claim from the beginning? We do. We have at least a couple of quotes here, and and certainly he was he was a great writer, so his words capture at best, he writes quote, there exists ample evidence that any society acquiring the written word experiences explosive changes. For the most part, these changes can be characterized as progress. But one pernicious

of fact of literacy has gone largely unnoticed. Writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially it's alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and within them women's power in the culture. WHOA. Now, that is a far reaching and radical hypothesis and something that, if it were true, would have profound implications for the whole world. Indeed, and

that's that's kind of the heart of his hypothesis here. Yeah, So whenever you've got these big kind of hypotheses like this, uh, radical claims about something very fundamental about like say, the role of gender egalitarianism or the lack thereof in the world, and explaining it through something as widespread as the idea of literacy. You definitely it makes your ears prick up right, you know, you want to know what this was about. I've got another quote that expresses part of the core

of his idea. It's quote, literacy has promoted the subjugation of women by men throughout all but the very recent history of the West. Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word. Another nice summary from from later in the book is quote the alphabet, through its emphasis on linearity and sequence, caused the left side of the brain of those who learned it to hypertrophy, resulting in a marked cerebral dominance of one lobe over

the other. Metaphorically, the mind listed to one side as one carrying an unevenly distributed load. So we're talking about like a major, lasting influence on the way the human brain works. Yeah. Now, Schlan talks. He tells a story in his book, and he talks about how he first began to form this thesis when he was touring Greece with this great antiquities guide who kept going to sit after sight and explaining, okay, what was once here was a shrine to a goddess, female goddess, but then later

it was rededicated to a male god. It's kind of an odd pattern to just see happening over and over in one place after another. If the if the tendency is generally toward male dominance in the culture and patriarchy and misogyny, why did you have all these female goddesses to begin with, and why did the changeover in power to male dominated pantheon's occur? And so Schlan started to

wonder what what would cause all that? Yeah, because basically we do have a wealth of goddesses in the polytheistic tradition, but we see most of them fall out of favor over time. They're either reduced to minor deities or demi gods, or or certainly they are just the the feminine at best. Really, they're the feminine aspect of the same god that also has a masculine aspect as well, while the male gods

continue to climb up the hierarchy. Because really, outside of Hindu Shaktism, which focuses on the feminine aspects of the gods and the cosmos. Can you think of any widespread goddess movements outside of WICCA and the neo pagan goddess movement that is also rather modern. Well, the key is widespread. If you go into beliefs held by smaller numbers of people, I think you'll get into all kinds of things with with female deities and and even uh, you know, matriarchal

kinds of pantheons. But the big religions of the world, you know, you've really just got a few that are representing the vast majority of humankind, right, and those tend to be the big monotheisms. And then you've also got

Hinduism and Buddhism, right. So as a sort of an inform formal survey of sorts, I reached out to the folks and the discussion module which is which is the official stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook group, which you should all join if you want to engage in meaningful conversation with other listeners and and also your hosts here. But I said, hey, what are what are some goddesses or divine females that are displayed in your homes? Uh?

And I and I also open this up to sort of hyper real religious examples as well, which will say so, just a quick list of some of the uh goddesses that were mentioned. I this wonder Woman, the Virgin Mary Desire of the Endless, which is a character from the Sandman comic book. Um, somebody mentioned sort of an abstract feminist goddess tattoo, uh Freya, Princess Leiah Calisi from Game of Thrones, um Mucha's Claire de Lune painting. And also Marlene Dietrich who was an actor, right, yeah, uh Tara.

In fact, here is a quote from listeners sorry, who says, I have several white Taras in my house. She's a Tibetan Buddhist deity thought to help curb ego driven thoughts and action. So I thought this was interesting beginning. I had to ask because I was looking around my own living room and I realized, well, we have several depictions of various gods, but they are all masculine. Why do I not have any images of a goddess in here as well? I'm gonna have to fix that. Yeah, what's

wrong with your living room? Man? I know I've got I've got I've got to balance it. And that brings us back to uh to Schlane's are here, how did this unbalancing occur? Yes, And another side of the theory, of course, would be how come we see goddesses diminished throughout the world for the last few thousand years? But now you've got all kinds of people who say, yeah, I've got wonder woman, she's a goddess. Where did that

come from? She Len has an answer for that too, Again, not necessarily something we're going to agree with him on, but it's an interesting thing to consider. All right. Well, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and we come back. We will jump into she Lene's hypothesis.

Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back. Now we're about to get into Leonard Slaine's hypothesis about what happened with the decline of female lead pantheons of goddess based religions and lead to male dominated religious ideas and cultures

in history. And so he's got a framework that he uses throughout the book to sort of describe these associated ideas of types of thinking, sort of perceptual modes, hemispheres of the brain, and a gender identity that are all sort of grouped together into these hemispheres, and I think this grouping could be kind of problematic. We'll talk about it. But what is his basic basic division of the two

perceptual modes. All right, so you have the feminine outlook, which is holistic, simultaneous, synthetic, and uh and it involves concrete worldviews. So this is sort of the perceptual mode that sees sees things by gestalt, sees everything at once, that goes by intuition, that works uh more with concrete images and objects very much bound in image. And then you have the masculine outlook, which is linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract in its worldview. Okay, so this is more

based on non visual information and uh, sequential analysis of things. Yeah, the feminine is, hey, give me a picture, and then the masculine outlook is I'd rather have those thousand words. Now, I'm sure a lot of people you're listening to this and saying, like, I'm not loving the like gender associations there with the different types of points of view, And

I think that's a fair point to make. Slain himself is aware of the fact that these generalizations could be problematic, and he writes, quote every individual is generously endowed with all the features of both, right. Yeah. He frequently brings up the Yen yang Uh symbol from Taoism as as the idea of balance between the two. Yeah. So Slain is obviously aware of the fact that these perceptual modes do not always correspond to the literal divisions of biological

sex or of gender identity. But nevertheless he uses these concepts by by these terms male and female to describe them, and I think sometimes throughout the book this leads to trouble because it continually suggests a blurring of the distinction between for example, the quote male perceptual mode, which female primates are perfectly capable of using and even favoring and confusing that perceptual mode with literal males of the species.

So this, I think, this book is, for one thing, going to be vulnerable to a lot of criticisms of over generalization with all kinds of things, actually, but gender is going to be one of them. Yes, So let's let's talk about some of the the key sources that ground his idea. Because he didn't you know, he's very upfront about this. He didn't just dream all of this up. He was basing Uh, he's basing it on the foundation established by other thinkers. Okay, so he points to a

few of these. First of all, there's Robert Logan's the Alphabet Effect, from which states that quote, a medium of communication is not merely a passive conduit for the transmission of information, but rather an active force in creating new social patterns and new perceptual realities. There's an intrinsic impact to the use of an alphabet, and the literate worldview

is different from one where information comes exclusively via oral communication. Okay, this sounds very parallel to another author that he quotes frequently, which is Marshall McLuhan. Uh. The the idea that the medium is the message, right in some way, that the medium through which information is conveyed actually does change the

way your brain works. Yeah, I mean I instantly think of the you know, the classic bit of writing advice, or I guess just storytelling advice in general, show don't tell you know it is that is in effect image versus word. But in any case, when you're doing that as a writer, you're using words. True. Yeah, so it does get get a little complicated. He also points to the work of anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, who touches on the downside of the power of literacy that it brought

with it hierarchical societies and slavery. So while one might think to the current state of Western women and credit their rising status to higher levels of education, Schlane argues based on this that that men and women lived in greater balance in nonliterate agricultural societies, and that we see some examples of this in preliterately at grarians cultures, um

you know, from from relatively recent times. Okay, So his proposition here is that we might actually be very surprised at how much gender egalitarianism we would find if we went back in history at times before the written word. Right. He says that quote images are primarily mental reproductions of

the central world of vision. So he points out that the brain uses the human brain uses wholeness, uh, simultaneity and synthesis to observe the world and to gain meaning from alphabetic writing, the brain is forced to depend on sequence analysis and abstraction. In other words, the way that you take in uh, you know, an open field is different from the way you read a paragraph about what that open field looks like. And so he's saying that this ultimately shapes the mind of men and women in

a way that leads to more patriarchy and culture. Yeah, he says, it affects the inner, outer, and supernatural realms of the mind. And uh, yeah, he points back to a time when the goddess, in all her forms, was the principal deity. And there's that. There's this wonderful quote that I keep coming back to. Uh. From the book, he says, from the outer rim of history. We begin to learn her name Insumer. She was in Nanna in Egypt. She was Isis in Canaan. Her name was Ashera in Syria.

She was known as as Tarta in Greece Demeter, and in Cyprus Aphrodite. Whatever her supplicants called her, they all recognized her as the creatrix of life, nurturer of young, protector of children, and the source of milk, herds, vegetables, and grain. Since she presided over the great mystery of birth, people of this period presumed she must also hold sway over that great bedevil er of human thought, death. I brought you into this world, I can take you out.

It makes sense, right, Yeah, And again this this this gets back to our just our ideas of these primordial feminine deities. Meanwhile, uh, these his deities, he says, they tended to have male consorts who, in these concerts might be gods of the hunt, you know, representing the the the the hunter gatherer balance of life. But he was generally a temporary lover to be cast aside, or if not that, a son, So she was not. It wasn't

even like a king and queen scenario. So when does Slane propose that this transition from the female empowering female deity lead religions transitioned into the more patriarchal, male dominated religions. Well, he points out that around fIF BC you had hundreds of goddess based religions enveloping the Mediterranean basin. But by the fifth century CE you these have been almost completely eradicated, and by that time women were prohibited from he says,

conducting a single major Western sacrament. So something is occurring during this time that that that depletes the power of the goddess and allows the masculine gods and ultimately the the male abstrac abstraction of the one God in Abrahamic tradition to rise so obviously it's not going to be so easy to prove that the cause of this change was the alphabet literacy. So how's he going to go about it? Well, he argues that this is ultimately left

to quote the court of what archaeologists call competitive plausibility. Yeah, and this is something that the historical sciences often have to resort to. Write. You're a historian, you're an archaeologist. You can't run the experiment of replaying history to figure out what happened. So you have to sort of construct a model and see what model best fits the existing evidence, and then even more important than that, what accommodates new

evidence that gets discovered. Yeah. So, first of all, in the book, Schlane spends a lot of time assembling an overview of human evolution with a focus on gender relations. So he takes us from the scent dependent ground to the vision dependent life in the trees. He takes us from packs of male chimps feasting on their kills and sharing with only females and heat, to the emergence of estrus free humans who are thus unshackled from the alpha

male structure. Uh human physiology, he points out, increasingly ends up demanding fragile young and a birthing process that that incapacitates the female. Prolonged childhood ends up meaning that the females can't participate in the hunt as much and often have to stay closer to home, and they need support from the males and from each other. And then on

top of that, the infant's brain is incomplete. Uh, and language comes in to fill the gaps, and it also enables learning lessons to take place outside of genetic change. Now that's an interesting idea that the fact that humans are born with maybe fewer instincts about how to behave properly and and fill their role within the human society than other social animals come born with. And there's but that humans have this this card they can play, which is the language card. You can transmit a lot of

information from one generation to the next through speech. Quote, using speech, one number of a clan learning a lesson that would enhance survival could pass it on to the others within hours instead of eons. And he said, this this is another bit that I just absolutely love. He says, the new corporate brain called culture hovered like a friendly poltergeist over each tribe of hunter gatherers. Isn't it funny that culture can be like a person. It's almost like

a person who's not there. It's the invisible queen of your society, right, That culture is a thing that has preferences. It's a thing that tells you what to do and how to act. It's a thing that tells you what's beautiful and what's not, what's tasty and what's not. It's almost sort of like you have this invisible parent who's a corporeal parent is assembled from the parts of many other parents that came in generations before. Yeah, and it's uh.

He points out that all this probably begins as gesture based communication, uh, you know, as well as um the visual features of the faith, various expressions. But then these we end up incorporating vocal communication to free up those hands and the eyes because if you're only speaking in sign language, you can't it diminishes your ability to work a tool. At the same time, you have to look at the other person. But if you as you can communicate in the dark, Yeah, it also gives you the

chance the ability to do it in the dark. So uh language, vocal language begins to take over. Uh. And it's not only the relay of information here, but complex discussion and strategy. All of that becomes possible as well, and so you end up having the situation where the hunter gatherer divide grows for these early humans, and there are ramifications on the way that males and females both

experience the world, he argues. He says that you know, hunting demands cold bloodedness, tinged with cruelty, but if you're a nurture that requires an emotional generosity combined with warmth, uh, we see this emergence of of different roles, which leads males and females to respond differently emotionally to the same stimuli, different worldviews, different ways of surviving, essentially redesigning the human

nervous system in the process. So he's saying that even though men and women are born with these kind of very potent brains that could do whatever they want, the roles that they tend to assume within the group force them to favor one kind of emotional state versus the other.

You can have the state that's usually assumed by the males, which is this cold, cruel hunter state of mind, or you can have this state that's more often assumed by the females, which is the intuitive, emotional, nurturing and educating side right. And of course, all this takes place within a bilobed brain, something that all vertebrates, beginning with fish,

actually possess. The human brain lobes look symmetrical, but they're functionally different, what we call hemispheric lateralization, and other vertebrates have this as well, but it's most striking in humans. And then you have in between all of this, you have the neuronal fibers that are called the corpus colossum, the connect and integrate the two lobes. Each controls the movement of the opposite side. They work in close congress with each other. And we've discussed a lot of this

on the show before. With all things brain region related, we've learned a lot about function through dysfunctions, specifically injury and disease affecting specific regions of the brain, and in

recent decades we've learned even more through magnetic stimulation. But essentially it comes down to this divide right brain, you have nonverbal emotional states, dream, spirituality, music, balance, altered states of consciousness, metaphor and holistic views and just a quick reminder that Julian Jaynes and his bi cameral mind hypothesis, Uh, this is the source of the voices. And then with the left brain, we have doing, we have action, we have language, and we have the the complex meshing of

competing emotions. And he describes metaphor as quote the right brains unique contribution to the left brains language capability. Now, if we're to recall some of the interesting thoughts of Julian James, James had this whole idea that our very consciousness itself is built on the possibility of metaphor. I don't know if he's correct about that, but it's certainly true that metaphor undergird's our entire structure of language. There are very few ways of talking that do not involve metaphors.

In fact, most of our abstract words are actually based off of metaphors for concrete tasks. Yeah, Slaine. He argues that metaphors essentially bring plasticity to language, and they translate emotion into language, birthing poetry, mythology, and more. And then he to get back to the gender divide here. He says that in in females and again I want to remind everybody that this is a um this is a book from the nineties, so just bear than in mind

of on the science here. But but he argued that that in females we see ten to thirty three pc more neuronal fibers in the forward part of the corpus colossum, and that means greater integration, better communication of emotions, increased global awareness, field perception, and the understanding of offspring moods. And they're also generally more adept at multitasking. That's the

other part of the argument. Males, on the other hand, they become more adapted shutting down their feelings for you know, improved hunting ability. So the fact that there's more tissue connecting the hemispheres on average and the female brain tends to mean that the brain has a more balanced approach, whereas the male brain, if it on average has less tissue connecting the two hemispheres, it can tend to be more uh, an isolated kind of left brain approach to things. Right.

But then again, the argument here too is also that that that male and female brains can ultimately do the same things, because he points out that in a hunter gatherer society, each hemisphere of the brain is executing tasks for which it is best suited. But you still have to have versatility in case of injury or death. Right, what happens if the hunter is sick? Uh, then maybe the the gatherers have to do a little hunting, or

vice versa. So each sex of the human species has to be able to assume the principal labors of the other. So he's not saying that only men can be hunters and only women can be nurtures. He's saying the opposite. But this cultures are generally arranged so that men do the hunting tasks and women do the nurturing tasks. And then he talks of a fair bit about eyeballs. All right, we will address the eyeball question when we get back.

Thank Okay, we're back. It's time for eyeballs now. I think this is actually one of the most interesting little side tangents in the book. Uh. It only takes a couple of pages, but he puts forward this interesting idea about the differing role of light sensitive cells called rods and cones in the retina and how this may have actually shaped our cognition. I've never read any thoughts along these lines before, but I thought this was one of

the most interesting actions of the book. So you've got these different cells in your retina, you've got rods, you've got cones. And rods are extremely light sensitive, Schlin writes, quote, like trip wires, they detect the slightest movement in a visual field, distributed evenly throughout the periphery of each retina. They see in dim light and appreciate the totality of the visual field, seeing images as gestalts. So rods are for kind of all at once. Perception is how you

get a general sense of a field of vision. Cones, meanwhile, are concentrated densely in the middle of the retina, called the macula. And cones have two main functions. One of them is that they pick out differences in color, and the other is that they intensify clarity in the in the middle of the vision, so he writes, quote, concentrating on one aspect of reality at a time. Cones view the visual field as if through a tunnel. Like rods, Cones report to both hemispheres, but the left hemisphere is

metaphorically best suited to p process their input. So while you've got rods that are used for this all at once perception of a general field of vision. Cones are used for focus analysis and sequential processing. Now, biologically, rods are older than cones. All vertebrates have rods. Cones are

only possessed in abundance by a few animals. Schlan points out that cones are mainly present in predatory animals like predatory predatory birds and predatory mammals, and especially in the in the human primate um because they allow you to focus on something and to see where it's going and to scrutinize. So the cones isolate elements of the field of vision then look at them one at a time, and this is better served by the sequential analytic function

of the left part of the brain. So to quote one of Schlene's most interesting smaller hypotheses in the book, quote, the focusing ability of the phobious centralis creates the illusion of time passing because the image is seen within this new auro circle of the eye can only be processed one at a time. Because macular vision examined what was and then moved on to what is, it forced the emerging human brain to consider the possibility of what might

come next. So Schlan argues that the abundance of cones in the human eye, paired with left brain analytical thinking, helped give rise to the human sense of time and our tendency for mental time travel into the past and future, something that other animals only have these sort of rare little inklings of though there are some inklings, and we've

talked about that in the past with birds and other animals. Um. But yeah, I think that's an interesting thing to consider, the fact that we've got these eyes that focus on one thing at a time, and how that affects our perception of reality. Could that actually generate time as we know it? Yeah? Yeah, this is this is definitely an interesting portion of the book. He also talks about hands a good bit. Yeah. He in that specifically this is

tying in with the predominance of right handedness in human beings. Uh. He points out to the left hand, controlled by the right brain, is more protective than the right. This is the hand that's going to hold a baby. Meanwhile, what's the right hand doing the attacking hand? Right? Yeah, again, except in people who are reversed and are of course left handed. Um. So, in all of this, males come

to embodied death. Females come to embody life, but eventually men come to identify their own role in reproduction as well. And again, the female goddess reigns supreme. Is this master of life and death, realizing when there's a dependency between the two that I have to kill to eat, I have to consume life in order in order to live. And h. Layne writes that the goddess reign supreme and then the Kurgan culture rides in on its horses and represses it, replacing her with their sky god. Uh and UH.

What he says is interesting about this in this very early example is uh, is that in other aces we see a more primitive of two colliding cultures absorbing the more advanced culture. So you have got these agricultural, more technologically advanced societies that are invaded by these horse riding Kurgan people's, and you would expect them to adopt the more advanced agricultural technology of the societies they invaded, right, you know, very much like when the when the Mongols

invade China and then essentially become Chinese culturally. But that's not what we see here. And of course the question is why, all right, so Schlaine can't be the first person to offer a hypothesis on what caused the demise of goddess culture. Uh. And so I know he referenced, he references Claude levy Strauss a good bit. Does levy Strauss have a have an argument that he counters? Yeah?

So the the Levee Strauss argument is that the essentially bride bartering kicked kicked things off, so men came to realize that they had a role in reproduction. And then women, of course can procreate earlier than men, so they become a commodity, and eventually all femininity is is treated as such a commodity. But Chlane opposes as he says that it doesn't explain the quote dramatic zigzagging from masculine to feminine and then back to masculine principles that occurred before, during,

and after the first five thousand years of agriculture. And then another argument, you have anthropologist Sherry Ortner who credits the tendency to align the masculine with culture and the feminine with nature. This is definitely a tendency you see in in literature all throughout the ancient world. Yeah, and what do. What do cultures do? Will they rise up in the world by advancing their culture, and in doing

so they are mastering nature. They are overpowering nature, and sometimes the exact language for that is even more severe. Butch Lane opposed this and says, well, it doesn't account for the female imagery that is predominant throughout these different mythologies. Meanwhile, you have Frederick Engels who are us that the goddess perished due to the rise of private property. Of course he did, and he argues that this this becomes a

thing as nomadic hunter gatherers. Uh, you know, give way to agriculture so you can own land, and then it follows that you can own women. Now, sh Leane opposes this, neans is that it doesn't explained the fall of the goddess.

He points to the work of William Irwin Thompson and Jane Jacobs who argue that hunters were so reduced in status during the agricultural revolution that they turned to conquest and this led to the fall of goddess cultures, which I think is an interesting especially an interesting idea, especially in light of of so many discussions going on in our culture today about what happens when when roles and peoples who traditionally felt more empowered, uh feel less empowered.

So the idea here is that you've got all these people with these hunting instincts, especially predominantly men, with hunting instincts that are not really very necessary anymore. Like, you know, we've got plenty of grain, we don't we don't need to hunt, and in fact, there aren't even all that many animals around for you to hunt anymore. So what are you gonna do. Well, maybe you just turn your hunting instinct on people and you say, I'm going to

become a warrior now instead. Yeah, the rise of the warrior class. Now. Meanwhile, feminist historian Gerda Learner she blames the form flames all of this on the formation of the archaic states. So the idea here is that you had, through the necessity of centralized power, you end up resurrecting the role of the alpha male. You need some sort

of decision maker at the heart of it. And Lennon Learner also argus argues that slavery ties into all of this because slaves would have been of little use during in hunter gatherer culture. But when you have agriculture. This gives slaves value, and so the former hunters they they turn first people into slaves and then women, specifically into subservient people. Now, Shelen opposes this. He says that it doesn't account for the numerous goddess based societies that thrived

during this period. And he says, you know why we're there, slave owning archaic states built around goddesses then, and so Slaine argues that, yes, there's a change going on here, but it's a change coming from within and it all

ties in to the hidden cost of literacy. Okay, well, I think we should end our first part there, and in the next episode, we're gonna look at a little bit of the historical evidence that Slane uses to support his hypothesis, and we're going to discuss some criticisms of the argument, both criticisms of reviewers and some critical thoughts of our own. In the meantime, be sure to head it over the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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