Modern day humans, Homo sapiens, are a result of the biological evolution that has been underway since the beginning of life on earth. They/we are the last surviving hominin species of many that have evolved over the history of the planet. Early hominins existed for millions of years as hunter-gatherers – small groups of individuals who harvested from their surrounding environment, and likely made infrequent kills of other animals. They moved amongst a number of locations as the resources in the local area became depleted. It is important to recognize that such life styles are still successful, as they are known to persist on the globe even today (Figure 10) [1]. It is unclear how well these present-day cultures compare with hominins of millions of years ago, nor exactly how we began the evolutionary process that distinguishes us from other primates, but it is important to note that present day hunter gatherers, as well as our distant hominin relatives, are much more like ourselves than the other animals on the globe.

Figure 10. Members of the present day Pirahã people of Amazonian Brazil one of the many existing hunter-gatherer cultures that continue to exist in the world today[2]. — **Figure 10. Members of the present day Pirahã people of Amazonian Brazil one of the many existing hunter-gatherer cultures that continue to exist in the world today[2]**.

There are millions of years of history between the time of the split between the great apes and the resulting hominins. The greater part of this time predates any kind of literature that would help us to understand the success and failures of hominins over time. In this chapter we look for evidence of the creative irrational in the pre-literate cultures. We need to look at activities and behaviours such as working with fire and the start of megalithic constructions that need to be seen as reflecting characteristics that express the creative irrational and possibly a sense of the spiritual.

Why the Need for the Creative Irrational in the Human Success Story?

In this book we are asking the question “Are humans the only irrational species? Is this unique characteristic the key to our success and dominance in the world?” We are interested in this essential creative irrational that can be attributed uniquely to modern Homo sapiens. It is in this sense of “beyond reason” that we find the critical piece of the human development puzzle that distinguishes us from all other organisms.

To be clear: it is not a question of whether or not modern humans express irrationality, but is our level of irrationality the key to the success of our species? With irrationality as the purview solely of Homo sapiens, is it that which sets us apart from all other species – including the other hominins? In particular, we can see that the positive, creative irrational has been expressed throughout the history of humankind from the first effective control of fire to the building of the first megalithic structures on to modern day quantum physics. This creative irrational can be seen in the initiation of many, if not all, of the more concrete accomplishments of modern humans. Such outbursts of the irrational may help explain our success over time. For us to see a trait as essential in human development, we must be able to trace it back to the beginning of our separation from other species.

Many theories have been proposed for the development and “success” in terms of survival and multiplication of the modern human. One author suggests it was the ability of hairless modern humans to run down prey on the savannas of Africa that was primary[3]. Some authors suggest that modern humans evolved bigger brains that facilitated communication and abstract thought[4], although since it is now recognized that Homo neanderthalensis had a slightly larger average brain size than modern humans, that seems hardly enough by itself [5]. It is still unclear how and why the hairless, slight-of-build, modern humans bred with and out-survived several of our more physically robust cousin species such as Homo neaderthalensis (Neanderthals) and Homo sapiens subspecies Denisovan (Denisovan) through the end of the last Ice Age to become the dominant species on the planet[6].

As discussed in the last chapter, all biological species need to address their needs for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Everything from single-celled bacteria up to and including human beings need to provide for these immediate living requirements. As early as 2 million years ago, like many other animals, we find a number of early hominins[7] that worked stones into tools that made their lives easier. This was the case with Homo habilis[8]. A later hominin species, Homo erectus certainly used both very practical stone tools and fire to enhance their procurement and use of food. There is even some evidence for their creation of rudimentary art[9]. They persisted for over a million years to as recently as 70,000 years ago[10]. In comparison to the relatively short 300,000-years of existence for modern humans, Homo erectus certainly qualifies as successful[11]. Yet they too became extinct.

We now know that not only did modern humans coexist on the planet with several other closely related hominin species such as Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly others, but they also interbred with these other hominins. So what characteristics did Homo sapiens express beyond those of its close relatives that allowed them to survive while other species became extinct? Could the creative irrational have been essential to getting humans through the many hardships of living endured through the warm and colder cycling of the last 100 million years and eventually to have led them to inhabit all of the World’s ecosystems except Antarctica?

A milestone in the development of Homo sapiens has been found in the archeological research in South Africa where 100,000 years ago a population of humans occupied an area on the southeast coast[12]. Food from the coastal ocean was plentiful and their environment was far from the warm and cold cycles of ice ages in the more extreme northern latitudes. They certainly were not living “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” as suggested as an aside by Hobbs[13] in 1651. Even at this early stage of human cultural evolution the residents of this South African site were readily meeting their requirements for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures that would have allowed for a diversion of attention to “non-essentials”. In addition to the rational activities represented in the creation and use of tools, the site contains artifacts that undeniably represent art, reflecting the early importance of the irrational. Shells with holes made in them for stringing and the use of ochre as decoration of individuals at the site go beyond what might reasonably be thought of as being purely for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Here we see an early example of the importance of the irrational in human development; the beginning of the all-important creativity shown by individuals “thinking outside of the box”.

It was fifty thousand years after the encampments in South Africa flourished that one branch of modern humans is known to have co-habited with Neanderthals in Western Europe. They interbred with the Neanderthals who had survived there for 600,000 years until as recently as 24,000 years ago. There is also evidence of interbreeding among Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovan in South Asia[14]. Yet despite the evidence for occupation by all three species across much of the Eurasian land mass, in a relatively short time period following the end of the last glacial maximum, all other hominin species became extinct and only Homo sapiens remained. We are left with the question of “Why?” How and why did modern humans outlast robust and successful Neanderthals and Denisovan and why have they since become the dominant species on Earth? We see that several other hominin species have expressed their creativity by use of tools and displayed other talents that promoted their access to food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. But humans somehow have become unique and different through their evolution.

When do we first see the creative irrational in hominins? The movement to follow our irrational impulses in art, architecture and all other aspects of the creative, including the spiritual, may be more than just a hidden side of humans that needs to be tolerated. Maybe it is essential to our ongoing success. It is critical that we consider it in our present and future possibilities both individually and also as a species on Earth. Of particular interest here is our wish to undertake a critical review of the role of the irrational in the success of humans and what it might mean for understanding and evaluating spirituality in our modern day society.

Background

There are a number of activities and behaviours that distinguish us from other animals and other primates. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, rational use of simple tools is widespread in many, if not all, animals so this doesn’t separate “us” from “them”. Certainly our evolutionary tree does contain close cousins who excelled at the development of highly refined tools[15]. The early hominin species Homo habilis is so named to reflect its development and use of stone flakes as tools that they could then use to cut up animals for food and skins[16]. Hominin creation and use of tools certainly helped to promote their success over those species that had limited tool use. But there are other developments in hominin development that surely contributed more to their long-term success than did simple tool use.

In this chapter we look at some of the characteristic behaviours that must have developed very early in our cultural evolution, behaviours that can be viewed as being more important than those that we appreciated in relation to the many rational behaviours exhibited by other animals. We presented some of them in the last chapter. Although language can be seen as both a rational and irrational activity in hominins, the lack of any hard evidence for the initial timing of its use and its effects on the success of hominins makes it impossible to include it here in our discussion of the essential irrational in human development. It certainly must have had an important impact, but there is little hard evidence that we are able to consider here. We do have suggestions of behaviours that provide us with evidence of a growing need for expression of the irrational in human behaviour that includes their need to deal with fire, as well as for their creation of art and ultimately the building of megalithic structures.

Containing Fire – the Initial Irrational?

Fire – that which can cook our food and burn our flesh. Fire in nature is certainly common and often becomes dangerous to life and limb. Forest fires in the temperate zones or grass fires in equatorial zones can almost eliminate most forms of biological life, although in most cases some species always survive. Over time through regeneration and/or immigration the ecosystems recover. Some species of trees now even require fire to perpetuate themselves. But to most animals, including hominins, fire is mostly to be feared and may result in death when it is uncontrolled. How did early hominins make the leap from fearing fire like all other animals, to taking advantage of its ability to cook food to improve its taste and nutritional value?

First, it is important to note that as in the situation with tools, there is no strict distinction between the reaction of hominins and other animals. Our close cousins the chimpanzees have been observed to benefit from the effects of fire in the wild. They have been observed to follow fire started naturally in the wild, and benefit from eating any toasted animals that remain once the fire has moved on and the ground has cooled down. But they will not approach it directly while it is burning[17]. Although they do not seem to approach fire carelessly, they don’t seem to be afraid or stressed about it. They are able to predict and respond to the progress of the fire[18]. But very importantly, they have never been observed to start fires.

Bonobos have come even closer to the use of fire - once they have been guided by their human trainers. In captivity they have been coached to use matches to ignite a fire. One Bonobo, named Kanzi, has been videoed setting up a campfire, starting it burning, then roasting a marshmallow[19]. While this is an impressive task, the examples given required a lot of support from humans – in conceiving the task, imagining, understanding and producing matches as well as instructing Kanzi on how to put it all together. Without a doubt such complicated tasks are not observed in the wild. Thus they certainly can follow the directions of modern humans to in some way replicate our irrational creativity, but as a species they have not made the use of fire a natural key of their survival strategies.

Moving closer to the Homo sapiens spp., there is evidence that other hominins made use of fire. Neanderthals apparently used fire, but it is unclear as to whether they ever actually initiated fire or if they just made opportunistic use of it as it occurred in nature[20]. Certainly their use of it is evidence that they didn’t fear fire and, at times benefited from its actions.

But Homo sapiens is the only species known to irrationally approach, create and contain fire. Is it the systematic use of fire as an aspect of their activities that conferred such an important advantage on them[21]? They did this at many different scales of their activities, from individual use in intimate and personalized settings such as campfires, to the social use of large fires set at particular times in the open savannah to encourage new and more vigorous subsequent growth of the grasses in the fields on which they did much of their hunting and where they later must have herded these creatures. Once they had control of fire, they were enabled to vastly expand the range of their social interactions to promote their joint activities, not all of which were strictly required for immediate use. They also anticipated future needs in the ingenuity they displayed in their means of moving and storage of the means for fire-building throughout their range of travel. It eventually led them towards the creation of special places is which ritual fires might be built, apparently in aid of rituals associated with their spiritual practises.

Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point Discoveries – South Africa’s contribution

The Blombos Cave[22] and Pinnacle Point[23] sites in South Africa were used by humans around 100,000 years ago. They display a major advancement in the lives of hominins as the initiation of truly Homo sapiens development. At these sites there is extensive evidence of far-reaching “leisure” activities including the creation of art in the form of special shell assemblies and the use of ochre for personal decoration. Archaeological evidence has shown that these people had access to abundant food sources allowing them to indulge in leisure activities in their local coastal environment. There are numerous modern day tribes on the west coast of Canada such as the Haida and Coast Salish whose continued existence is based on the abundant resources of their coastal ocean environments[24]. They are only one small sample of the many “traditional” peoples that survive today[25]

To return to the South African situation, these people had no problem finding adequate food so there was no need to migrate out of the area. It has been speculated that this luxury of resources played a significant role in their ability to shift some of their attention away from the rationale of food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures toward the irrational. One example of their creative processes is found in their use of fire to create silcrete for hunting arrow heads[26]. Although others of their groups were creating hunting points from flaking and flint knapping of naturally-formed materials found in their environment, in this case the early humans discovered, developed and implemented a complex multistep process to turn naturally occurring materials of surface sand, gravel and dissolved silica into a material usable for flaking into points. This level of use of fire for tool creation is far beyond that seen in other primates and hominins. With evidence for a slow and rational development of an advanced pyrotechnology, we see in this development the first significant presence of the creative irrational in humans.

A second less tangible use of fire in the early South African cultures involves the potential impact of fire control on their social and communication skills. For example, spending time around a stable and controlled campfire would lend itself to communicating and developing their language skills. While there is ample evidence for their development of art in the two sites, and it follows that they had adequate luxury to use language, it is impossible to know to what extent their use of language could have diverged from interactions concerning these essential rational needs, such as “a predator is near”, to holding conversations that would be more than “beyond reason” involving subjects of the past and the future. There is much to be spoken about that is additional to the rational activities of procuring food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Thus one can imagine that ancient South African humans would have discussed topics in addition to those in keeping with present day discussions of the weather, the food, etc. The presence of personal adornments made from shells may have elicited comments such as “nice, pretty thing you have there.” There is no way of knowing when they might have reached broader topics, such as those concerning life, death and the spiritual, but these additional subjects are important enough to have soon demanded their share of a wider human attention, much of which was devoted to these further abstract questions about their lives.

Cave Paintings in the Dark

In our initial exploration of the creative irrational in the behaviour of hominins we consider briefly the many incredible paintings found in the dark depths of caves. The earliest examples are found in Indonesia. There we have found the outlines of hands made using mouth-sprayed paint (Figure 11). These may simply be expressions of self-awareness stating “I am here”. But this dates from 35,000 to 40,000 years before present when Southeast Asia was occupied by all three hominin species Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalis and Homo denisovan[27]. It is unreasonable to think that this effort would not offer significant aid for the marking of one’s territory. It is even more likely that the work, found in such an inaccessible location, would not only have required control of fire for lighting, but must surely represent a group effort at recognizing and marking their existence in a manner beyond that required for survival, a sure sign of the creative irrational.

Figure 11. Cave of Pettakere, Bantimurung district (Kecamatan), South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Hand stencils estimated to be made between 35,000-40,000 BCE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting#/media/File:Hands_in_Pettakere_Cave_DYK_crop.jpg). — **Figure 11.** **Cave of Pettakere, Bantimurung district (Kecamatan), South Sulawesi,** **Indonesia. Hand stencils estimated to be made between 35,000-40,000 BCE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting#/media/File:Hands_in_Pettakere_Cave_DYK_crop.jpg).**

A little later in time and ten thousand miles away from the initial Indonesian work are the extensive naturalistic paintings deep in the caves of Chauvet, France[28] and at Altamira, Spain[29]. Both of these earliest European sites of hominin creations have handprints painted on the walls of deep caves, incredibly similar to those seen in Indonesia (Figure 12). But the artwork goes far beyond simple handprints. Here there are black lines that outlined or more broadly filled-in, smudged drawings that date to a period 33,500 to 37,000 years before present (Figure 13 and 14) accompanied by more complex sketches along many stretches of the caves[30].

Figure 12. Handprint from Chauvet Cave (http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/hands/index.php). — **Figure 12. Handprint from Chauvet Cave (http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/hands/index.php**).

Figure 13. Animal paintings from Chauvet Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.com). — **Figure 13. Animal paintings from Chauvet Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.com**).

Figure 14. Early black pictures from Chauvet Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave - /media/File:Paintings_from_the_Chauvet_cave_(museum_replica).jpg). — **Figure 14. Early black pictures from Chauvet Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave - /media/File:Paintings_from_the_Chauvet_cave_(museum_replica).jpg**).

A later period of European occupation, from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago, produced extensive paintings of other animals in many caves in Southern France, Spain and Portugal. There are many sites including Pech-Merle[31] and Cougnac[32], France. Again these caves contain handprints on their walls (Figure 15). This is just at the end of the last glacial maximum around 26,500 years before present when temperatures were as low as they had been in this period and were just starting to warm up to present day levels. It was a time of great change for the hominins. Homo denisovan had died out and the Neanderthals were reaching the end of their survival. Although the exact dates of the Neanderthal extinction continue to be actively researched, by 18,000 BCE Neanderthals had died out in their last refuge in the coastal areas near Gibraltar just south of Spain and Portugal - and only modern Homo sapiens remained. The cave paintings from around this time, such as at Rouffignac[33] and Lascaux, date to around 17,000 BCE (Figure 16). They continued to express handprints as well as the more filled-in paintings. If we take the starting date for this activity to be in the Indonesian caves, handprint painting had been expressed for over 20,000 years. This longevity of a cultural activity appears to have occurred over wide-spread areas throughout the time span of the occupation by the three major hominin groups.

**Figure 15. Handprint from Pech-Merle cave in France circa 25,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pech_Merle).**

Figure 16. Complex paintings from Lascaux Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux). — **Figure 16. Complex paintings from Lascaux Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux**).

In addition to the cave paintings, humans were producing abstract carvings of stone throughout the period[34]. Carved “Venus figurines” have been found over a wide geographic area from France in the west to Russia in the east. But the creations were generally small pieces, such as the finely carved Venus of Brassempouy (Figure 17). It is only 3.6 cm high. This particular example is dated to the same time period and found in the same geographic area as the site of the Pech-Merle cave paintings. Definitely these hominins were expressing the creative irrational in many forms.

Figure 17. Venus of Brassempouy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Brassempouy). — **Figure 17. Venus of Brassempouy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Brassempouy**).

What do all these ancient artistic expressions indicate about hominins? Only hominins are known to create such works. The creations are all located in areas that are difficult to reach. They all require working with fire for light. They don’t seem to be immediately related to the direct concerns of the day. Some authors have considered the paintings to be shamanic[35]. The objective may have been to help hunters by enhancing their chances of success or actually may have been representative of the expression of higher levels of awareness and of a sense of spirituality. But that in itself is irrational according to present day thought. Certainly the cultures that created these incredible pieces had to have the necessary luxury of time for the creators to divert effort from food to art. This work would have to have been seen and valued by the others in the communities, some of whom would be required to feed and house the “artists”. It is important to note that the simple creation of handprints using paint persisted from 38,000 BCE down to at least 5,000 BCE. They are found on all continents[36]. Could they have been considered sufficiently valuable to be supported for the making of these illustrations in spite of the fact that not all members of the culture would get to experience – or fully understand them? They are enduring evidence for the cultural importance of the creative irrational. With more information and insights into these peoples we might be able to confirm them as evidence for an awareness of a need for the spiritual in their lives.

The key question about the cave paintings is how they relate to the rational or irrational of hominins. For the most part they would have been created with great difficulty for non-immediate benefit. If they were created by shamans in connection with some benefits to hunter gatherer’s success at procuring food, then they can be seen in the same light as creating a more efficient spear point. But the time and effort required for cave painting could also have been seen as deliberately diverted from the practical efforts required for tool creation. Moreover, their presence implies sufficient cultural support to enable the creators to realize their dreams, images, visions, or whatever. As such this is an example of the early creative irrational in hominins. It is an activity that does not necessarily translate into immediately rewarded activity. Yet it must have been sufficiently valued by the culture to feed, house and shelter the artists. The extent of their production over such large geographic and temporal scales couldn’t have been produced by isolated secretive individuals. It must have been a societal endeavour.

Göbekli Tepe Humans’ First Megalithic Constructions

There is much archaeological evidence of the creative irrational beginning from 35,000 until 13,000 years ago. But it is around 12,500 years ago that we see a major shift in the creative expression of humans as displayed at the Göbekli Tepe site in Eastern Turkey. Here the creative irrational takes on a totally new scale of construction. Its purpose can’t be confirmed, but it was not a site of human long-term settlement. While some remnants of human skulls have been found there, it was not a site of the interment of the dead as has been seen for tens of thousands of years by both humans and Neanderthals[37]. Here we see, for the first time, large-scale stone manipulation and carving that some authors have claimed to be of spiritual origin, or at least as representative of cult objects. The site was first appreciated and described by Professor Klaus Schmidt an archaeologist from Germany[38]. While others had previously encountered the site, it was left unexplored until it caught Schmidt’s attention. In the following two decades he led a group of researchers in uncovering an extensive site with many unique megaliths carefully and precisely positioned in up to 30 separate circles of large stones. The site is now becoming more widely known through the writings of Collins[39] and Hancock[40] who have described it in some detail. The structures are immense. There are 30 roughly circular enclosures of dressed stones some of which are up to 6 metres/20 feet in height. There are many aspects of this amazing site in addition to its size, its careful alignment and the fact that it was created at a time when only hunter-gatherers were thought to be living in small isolated groups around the world. We focus here on only three features that relate specifically to the fact of the site being illustrative of the creative irrational in this culture: 1) its location is distant from water sources so it could not have served as a place of dwelling, 2) the precision and beauty of the stone carvings is exceptional indicating a more than casual occupation and 3) its deliberate decommissioning and burial was carefully undertaken and designed to completely erase any easy evidence of its existence without actually destroying it.

The first irrational feature of the site is its distance from water sources. This is one of the primary reasons that Schmidt considered the site as a “temple” rather than any kind of human settlement[41]. Typically hunter-gatherer groups would establish themselves close to water sources to meet their daily needs. Göbekli Tepe is situated on the top of a hill about 10 km from known water sources. Its construction would have required a large workforce and there is evidence for the consumption of large amounts of food during what seems to have been communal feasts. There are numerous animal bones at the site; they appear to be associated with short-term intense feasting events. The coming together of such large numbers of individuals would have required the transport of both food and water some distances. While the reason for the situation of the site so far from water sources can’t be confirmed, but it is highly unlikely that these builders would have chosen it for its ease of occupation. It must have been selected for other irrational reasons that would have supported the diversion of extensive expenditure of time and energy away from the tasks of procuring food or shelter and devoted to other important purposes.

The second aspect of the site that is associated with the creative irrational is the many highly-refined images carved or embossed on the stones as depicted in Figure 18 and Figure 19. The skill of the constructors at creating such exceptionally fine images on such hard stone surfaces is most unusual for this early time period. Many of the large megalithic stone T-pillars at the site are carved to represent highly stylized human forms. In addition many of the stones have images embossed on their surfaces. Many of the images are simply embossed onto the surfaces of the structure such as the fox in Figure 18. Some of the images are presented in an incredibly detailed 3-D embossed form on the stones (Figure 19). Keeping in mind that only a fraction of the site has been excavated, there is certainly the expectation that many more such creations will be found in the future. Throughout the site the standing structures provide representations of many organisms including snakes, scorpions, or other larger animals such as mastodons and aurochs. There are numerous birds, some of which are well known, but there are also some that are quite unknown. Among the animals, foxes are especially common. So much so that it has been suggested that the erecters of the whole construction may have been a cult that venerated foxes as especially important animals[42].

Figure 18. Embossed image of a fox on one of the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe (http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Go_Tep_launch.htm). — **Figure 18. Embossed image of a fox on one of the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe (http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Go_Tep_launch.htm**).

Figure 19. Embossed image of a panther at the base of one of the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe (https://www.ancient-code.com/15-mind-boggling-images-of-gobekli-tepe/). — **Figure 19. Embossed image of a panther at the base of one of the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe (https://www.ancient-code.com/15-mind-boggling-images-of-gobekli-tepe/**).

In addition to producing exquisitely detailed representations on the stone surfaces a most marvellous stone totem has also been found on the site (Figure 20). This piece is about 2 metres high and was embedded in one of the walls of the constructions. The totem is made up of a number of images stacked one on top of another. The top image of the totem is an animal, possibly a bear. Just underneath are arms and hands that are notably human in form. Thus we see their mixing of animal and human forms in a non-naturalist manner, perhaps a little like the totem poles of present day traditional structures in western Canada. Appearing to be held in its arms, is another “person” with a face and arms reaching down. Reaching up from the bottom, on the sides of the totem are snakes wriggling up the sides, as portrayed elsewhere at Göbekli Tepe. This is a fantastic creation. It contains aspects of animal and human forms arranged in a vertical fashion. It is typical of later mythical themes where individuals, likely shamans, take on animal forms for experiencings in other worlds. The possible representation of a mythical birth in the lower image is certainly consistent with such experiences. Of importance here is that this is certainly not simply a rational, naturalist representation of the world of the hunter-gatherers. What were they trying to represent by the mixture of the animal and human forms? Why would often-feared snakes be placed in such an intimate representation with the human image? The size of this totem gives weight to the argument that it was not the result of an idle time-filling activity on the part of the creator/creators. It must represent something of great importance to the society – something beyond food, shelter and procreation.

Figure 20. Various aspects of the stone-carved totem found at the Göbekli Tepe site. (https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-gobekli-tepe-totem-pole/). — **Figure 20. Various aspects of the stone-carved totem found at the Göbekli Tepe site. (https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-gobekli-tepe-totem-pole/**).

The third and last amazing aspect of the site that we will deal with here is it’s decommissioning when great effort was expended to stop the further use of the site by burying it in rubble. It needs to be appreciated that while these structures required a very considerable effort at composition and arrangement in their creation and execution, they were eventually deliberately hidden. For reasons of which we have no idea at all, thousands of years after construction began, the structures were covered with mounds of debris around 8,000 BCE. This could have been carried out by representatives of the builders or by some later group of people. But it is notable that they did not destroy the site, which would have been relatively easy. Instead they invested significant additional effort and resources in hiding it essentially protecting it from its natural degradation over time.

The reason for this remarkable ending of the period of their construction and use is totally unknown! We have no reason at all for why this was done. Only that it was obviously an operation of closing an elaborate structure that was agreed among them. There is no evidence of any prior negative attitude to it; simply it appears that someone or group in charge must have decreed an ending and that then the whole structure was closed to view. This closure was done with an eye to totally clogging up all access to the structure or even of knowledge of its former use and appearance. Its modern-day discovery was an event that seems to have been quite without prior knowledge of anything being there earlier. Its closure presents us with a mystery of immeasurable proportions. We have no explanation for why it was closed and why its former presence should have been so carefully obscured. Such a sense of time and purpose by hunter-gatherers is curious. Their appreciation that the site no longer fulfilled its role and should be terminated reflects an irrational, non-present-moment sense of life. The obscuring rather than burial or destruction suggests a connection with future time.

While the reason for creation of the complex and all of its incredible structures is still not known, we see it as a significant pre-literate expression of the human creative irrational. Their motivation to the erection of such great monumental detailed structures is plain evidence of what was considered to be worth their veneration. That is a much more than casual interest in complex arrangements of objects was displayed. This is quite apart from those essential interests and concerns with food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Here we are shown significant attention directed to objects that played a much more than incidental role of distraction or free-time play. They appear instead to display an intense, directed interest in values that required considerable efforts in both the planning and displaying stages of their activities. This unmistakably important site clearly indicated the presence of questions beyond those representing and dealing with their or our current lives. In them we are presented with an appearance of something that was of foremost significance to them; one that expressed a strong wish for some kind of continuity that could only be captured through manipulating massive stones, hence a sense of the “higher” meaning in their lives. These remarkable structures seem to mark a distinctive importance given to symbolic representations of the subjects towards which humankind of the time was directing their efforts. Their efforts amounted to a devotion of attentions and actions to a whole new and broader approach to life.

How can we see for ourselves the full extent of the creative irrational in these great works at Göbekli Tepe? It was created 12,000 years before present when ancient humans were living in small isolated hunter-gatherer bands. Many believe that they were scraping out a hard life from the limited local resources. The site’s creation using highly skilled techniques of rock quarrying and carving over an extended period of time in an area without evidence of either agriculture or water, suggests a high degree of organization and coordination.

One final significance of this site is its impact on how we look at other accomplishments of early humans. Until its discovery much of human accomplishments up until that time were dismissed as the result of random chance of a few isolated individuals. It is only in recent years that modern humans have begun to appreciate the capacities for thought and cooperative action by early human. Göbekli Tepe construction and decommissioning required cooperation, planning and long-range intentions that cannot be denied. With this prominent example of human skills recorded in stone, it allows a re-examination of other accomplishments. Such organizational coordination and creative thought is now being appreciated to have played a role in the accomplishments of Homo floresiensis in sailing to the Island of Flores in Indonesia about 60,000 BCE[43]. That early sailing trip might be viewed as a rational action to find improved living conditions or irrational as a trip of pure discovery. A second example of early coordination can be found in what is now also becoming evident in the populating of North America. By 15,000 BCE humans were migrating by sailing down along the now submerged west coast[44]. The accomplishments of great deeds by early humans through cooperation and planning are just now being fully explored.

Humans’ first city of Jericho

At around the same time as Göbekli Tepe was constructed, humans were also occupying an area not far away near the springs in Jericho. They lived here in small semi-permanent settlements before the initiation of agriculture. The site is marked by the presence of volcanically produced obsidian glass that is not native to the area. Several sources for obsidian have been located at a distance in northerly Anatoly area and elsewhere. Its presence in the Levant suggests that humans, who were still hunter-gatherers, were mining and moving their products over large distances throughout the region[45].

Eleven thousand years ago the early settlements near Jericho were made up of small circular homes. This is the time when the climate was warming up from the last glacial maximum. As temperatures rose and stabilized, the residents of Jericho were taking on a permanent lifestyle. By 10,000 years before the present the site had the massive stonewalls 3.6 m high and 1.8 m wide at the base. Inside the large enclosure was a tower 3.6 m high that is reported as being for ceremonial purposes[46]. In some ways the construction of such a massive tower for unknown, and likely irrational, purposes had some similarities to what has been found at Göbekli Tepe.

At the Jericho site, 9,000 to 8,000 years before the present, civilization was pursuing a curious and mysterious practice of “last rites” in the treatment of dead bodies. In a number of cases, although the bodies had been placed in the grave, the skulls were removed, covered with plaster and shells and kept in their living spaces.[47]. Through this device of removal and enhancement, the head of the deceased would apparently have been kept closer to human activity and in a more life-like state. For what reason the burial was modified is totally unclear, although it is likely that the altered skull effigy could have been regarded as a memorial to any expression of the former revered person. It is obvious that the culture took this remembrance very seriously. Hence the effigies illustrate to us the earliest evidence of the alteration of human remains in practices that we might understand as reaching toward a spiritual order. We regard it as indicating another appearance of the irrational impulse, but this one signifying the possibility of a quite new conception of transcendence beyond ordinary life. Perhaps their actions were a recognition of a perception of the arising within oneself of another sense of one’s own individuality?

Summary of Pre-literate insights into the Creative Irrational

It is evident that humans lived on this earth for hundreds of thousands of years working out the basic necessities of meeting rationally their life requirements. They started out using tools much like many other animals use. Eventually their skills at tool development, production and use, reached levels still not seen in other primates. Evidence that humans overcame their fear of fire, and began creating and controlling fire, is still being sought and discussed. While fire appears in close association with human occupation for possibly a million years, it is not until much more recently, around 125,000 years ago that we see consistent and conclusive evidence of its use[48].

There is evidence that hominins buried their dead least 100,000 years ago. As Philip Lieberman suggests, it is apparent that burial of deceased bodies may signify a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life.[49]" This most certainly fits our definition of the creative irrational that extends beyond the rational. Coincidentally, this is about the time that the human occupants in South Africa were using decorative red ochre, carving shells and manufacturing silcrete arrowheads.

It is not until Göbekli Tepe that we find humans exercising their creative and organizational skills to construct truly inspiring places. Their work was not an isolated event. It appears to have started a lineage that continued in places like Jericho and Çatal Höyük[50]. While there is no literature from this time, it is evident that humans were behaving and expending effort in ways not seen among other animals. More and more of their efforts appear to have been placed on what we often call the non-essential. While this may be the result of an expanding luxury of time and resources, it is striking that so much attention was going to the irrational, thence quite likely spiritual aspects of life. It is impossible for us to say whether the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe would have been created without the irrational. One can scarcely imagine all of the work and organization of such a site going only to increase their food intake, but it doesn’t appear to have been so. There is also the possibility that it was built to predict alignment with the stars and predict the changing of the seasons, but it is way “out of scale” for such a simple task in a time when the hunter-gatherers would have many other natural indicators of the changing seasons and weather. Some authors have proposed that the site offers a record of a major world disaster and a warning of future catastrophes[51]. We leave it to the reader to decide which would be more amazing in the consciousness of early hunter-gatherers: On one hand would be the recording of major climate changes or, on the other hand, realizing that there is more to life than simple food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Our ancient ancestors seem to have had the capacity for awareness of both.

But while the irrational may be relatively easy to see in humans, we are more interested in that special expression of the irrational that is tied to the spiritual nature of humans. The consistent expression of the spiritual in all of the world’s cultures over the full time-period of our cultural evolution may be tied to the underlying irrational functioning. But in modern day over-rationalized Western societies both are inadequately appreciated. By recognizing the importance and connection between the irrationality and the spiritual in humans, we raise questions about the possible implications for our future. These are questions that we shall need to consider more fully in what follows.

—————————— Chapter 4 - The Spirituality Spectrum ———————-

————————— Table of Contents ———————

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/books/a-new-book-and-film-about-rare-amazonian-language.html

[3] McDougal, Christopher. 2009. Born to Run, A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Alfred A. Knopf.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

[6] Harari, Y.N. 2016. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. McClelland and Stewart. 450 pp.

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

[9] http://johnhawks.net/weblog/archaeology/lower/trinil-shell-engraving-2014.html

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

[11]http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils-found-morocco

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)

[14] Fenton, B. 2017. The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution. Ancient News Publishing. http://brucefenton.info/into-africa-theory/

[15] http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-we-became-human.html

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

[17] http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/congo-a-group-of-chimpanzees-seem-to-have-mastered-fire/

[18] https://www.livescience.com/5946-chimps-master-step-controlling-fire.html

[19] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcN7lHSD5Y

[20] http://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-fire/

[21] https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-fire/

[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave

[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Point

[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

[25] Diamond, J. 2012. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? Viking Adult.

[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silcrete

[27] Fenton, B. 2017. The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution. Ancient News Publishing. http://brucefenton.info/into-africa-theory/

[28] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave

[29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Altamira

[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave

[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pech_Merle

[32] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grottes_de_Cougnac

[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouffignac_Cave

[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines

[35] Hancock, G. 2006. Supernatural - Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. Disinformation Books.

[36] http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/hand-stencils-rock-art.htm - oldest

[37] http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/6/e1700564.full

[38] Schmidt, K. 2015. Premier temple (Le): Göbekli Tepe. CNRS.

[39] Collins, A. 2014. Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods: The Temple of the Watchers and The Discovery of Eden. Inner Traditions Bear and Co.