I would say that I got the “six years” figure mainly as a result of YouTube displaying that “published 6 years ago” info on your videos, but also noticing the year 2013 (or later — especially 2014 on Bakker’s blog) on some of your pieces, while missing that some are, indeed, dated earlier (and I also missed that huge calendar on your blog). So, that’s that.
As for entheogens and arguing, I used the term “argue” in the sense of “exchange [of] diverging or opposite views”. Alas, as I said before, my English can be atrocious to the point when I use terms and idioms that mean exactly the opposite of what I intended to say. Thus, what I meant to say is that I suppose that you would not disagree that “animism, and in extension all religions without fail, are tied to entheogens.” That, or I completely missed what you say in those two pieces and many other comments you’ve made in this regard.
Well, with misunderstandings hopefully out of the way, let me address the crux of the topic.
First, let me adjust some details — as it seems, social stratification started sooner than I was aware of. Today, I came across a paper about Varna cemetery in Bulgaria, a necropolis with large accumulation of objects of wide range discovered in 1972, which moves that dating several hundred years earlier (4600–4200 BC, as opposed to beginning of 4th millennium BC). According to Tom Higham et al., “Although the specific social structure underpinning the Varna I cemetery is disputed — from early state formation to chiefdom — there can be little doubt of the hierarchical nature of the social relations that resulted in such a massive accumulation of exotic prestige objects.” However, even the authors are not completely certain if the distribution of wealth (grave goods) differences can be localized in time, or if it’s rather spread throughout the time during which the cemetery was used.
Looking further into it, I came across archaeological site at Provadia-Solnitsata, the second oldest known fortified city c. 50 km west from Varna (first being Jericho few millennia earlier). The city was a local center of salt production with a population of 150–350 people (the actual size is debated), and it was used for a pretty long time (c. 5500–4200 BC). In the beginning it had a fortification in the form that included a wooden-earthen palisade, and later (4700–4200 BC) got walls entirely made of stone. Even though the size of population and the existence of otherwise rare fortification (third oldest known fortified city is apparently Uruk several centuries later) might be tied to the unique purpose of the location, it’s, nevertheless, something to seriously consider.
Another, quite substantial, detail I forgot to mention is the advent of metallurgy, i.e. copper smelting, around 5000 BC (the graves at Varna were, among other things such as gold objects, full of copper tools and jewelry). It’s also uncanny that “the worldwide oldest securely-dated evidence of copper smelting at high temperature” was found at the archaeological site of Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, some 500 km west from Solnitsata and Varna.
Anyway, the time would nicely correlate with later social changes in Levant, because, although the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis puts Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) into the region almost a thousand years later (which would make my musings rather moot), 1) we actually have no clue where PIE came from or who exactly they were, 2) the second best candidate (Armenian hypothesis) “suggests that Proto-Indo-European was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in ‘eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia’”, and 3) almost all hypotheses assume the arrival of PIE into Levant from Anatolia. Pretty much a match.
And this leads me to Hinduism.
Although your summary is accurate and reasonable, it completely ignores the fact that the concept of Absolute (Brahman) was “present in […] the oldest layer of the Vedas dated to the 2nd millennium BC.” That would mean c. 1500 BC when the Vedas were compiled (not “invented” — the tradition must date further back if it was codified into that complex mnemonic code surviving to this day). Frankly, it’s not surprising since the original Brahmanic Hinduism (as you discovered, too) is indistinguishable from all polytheistic religions of Levant (Sumer, Canaan, etc.) or Europe (Greco-Roman, Celtic, Nordic, Slavic) and later also e.g. Japan (but what happened with Shinto is beyond the point and also my knowledge), but most importantly, and this I must stress, it is almost identical with Judaism, the only one of the aforementioned religions that kept at least a semblance of Absolute in the form of a singular albeit external God (I would say that that’s why they pride themselves with preserving the “true knowledge”, not realizing that what they preserve is in itself a perversion of much deeper truths, which later Jesus, whoever he was, tried to set straight, but that’s, too, beside the point).
As for sadhus, I don’t know, they seem either as an unfortunate response to an already established corruption or an esoteric form of Hinduism, but they could also be a revival of a tradition that has its roots in the original animism of the area. I would say that no one, not even the sadhus themselves, can tell. Anyway, with their disregard for “world of flesh” (which is strongly indicative of dualism, probably due to Samkhya which forms the theoretical foundation of Yoga), I would call them gnostics of the East with all obvious implications. Buddhism then is merely a response to Brahmanic Hinduism and sadhus and their inability to provide satisfactory answers (according to Buddhist lore, Siddhartha had a few ascetic teachers who could take him only so far), and was essentially the same attempt as how Christianity was meant to reform Judaism.
All in all, maybe it’s the fact that you “don’t deal much with the interregnum […] the five thousand years of egalitarian civilization” that you also don’t deal much with the actual time when the civilization as we know it started to take shape (you seem to skip from misrepresented animism straight to some time around 3000–2000 BC). Alas, we cannot simply leave out this crucial phase if we hope to understand the shift in social structure, etc.
It amuses me that I appear to you as if my starting point was that “the entheogens and mystical religions […] present us with ultimate truth”. I would say that it is actually my last resort. It comes into play when science lacks answers, and it serves merely as a navigation tool — a pointer of sorts. But until one contradicts the other there cannot be any talk about answers to questions pertaining to ultimate truth. Sure, you may object that I may be biased in the way I come to “the merger”, then again, as far as I can tell, the problem of consciousness is pretty much solved in those ancient traditions. What can I say, I don’t wonder that e.g. whole Jungian or transpersonal psychology are heavily influenced with both entheogens as well as spiritual mysticism, too.
Btw. if you read carefully, I’ve never said that animism is monistic. Quite to the contrary. All I ever said is that there’s a missing link that got lost sometime before the rise of our civilization, and that its loss (or better said perversion) practically caused our society to become a hierarchical immoral nightmare. Well, that link is not exactly missing as it exists in the form of Advaita Vedanta, which is however bogged with all kinds of BS that does not hold water in the face of science, and it is also present at the core of all major world religions (sans maybe animism) but is obfuscated beyond recognition. So, it’s not technology, not fear of nature, not existential angst, but simple loss of truth leading to primitive and pragmatic fear of death which inevitably results in greed (and frustration if it cannot be satisfied). Wait, is that what you mean by existential angst? I guess, not.
Well, and as for how that’s all supposed to challenge your account … hm, good question. Do I really do that? I guess, I only tried to point you to the fact that we are (more than) godlike, but we’re just oblivious of the fact (as I clearly stated around the beginning of our conversation in July). I assume you disagree with such proposition. Well then, who are you?
