See, the reservation I have with this is that I actually have. I built a framework around that time scheme and used it to predict where/when to find evidence of each event described. Nearly every time it led me right to what I was looking for.
So while I understand rationalizations built around the assumption that surely nobody actually lived 900+ led to ideas like this one about the ruler-priests and the like, I have significant amounts of empirical data that leads me to doubt that’s accurate.
Two examples of predictions made through this model that will hopefully illustrate why I’m so married to all my BS.
The tower of Babel story - according to the timeline and framework I put together, I should find an event that closely resembles the Babel story happening about 1 century after the flood in southern Mesopotamia. That’s when I found the 5.9 kiloyear event (3900BC/ southern Mesopotamia) …
“It triggered human migration to the Nile, which eventually led to the emergence of the first complex, highly organized, state-level societies in the 4th millennium BC.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.9_kiloyear_event
Behavior change that matched what’s described (this was a big one) - according to the timeline and framework, I should find a significant behavioral change that resembled what’s described in Genesis happening to Adam/Eve that began in southern Mesopotamia and spread all throughout the world from there. That’s when I found these two books describing a behavior change exactly as predicted, originating exactly where/when predicted …
Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World by James DeMeo
The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era by Steve Taylor
I would just like to say that James DeMeo is a follower of Wilhelm Reich, has drunk the Reichian Kool-ade all the way: orgone, weather control, weird theories about the nature of biological life, and so on. Nobody should attach any credence to anything in that book. Don’t know anything about Steve Taylor.
Yeah, I know. I’ve read some weird things. But I don’t doubt the evidence in the book. It’s not even so much a book as a catalog of evidence. I bought it to read it, only to find out it’s not much of a “reader”.
He equates the psychological change he’s tracking with climate change, the hardships that caused, leading to Reich’s concept of psychological “armoring” as the cause he’s postulating, but that’s not the bit that interests me. In gathering this evidence he keyed in on specific evidence that shows behavioral characteristics of various cultures and mapped these findings across a map to find where/when these ‘pockets’ could be found.
In doing so he identified a pattern that Taylor then takes the ball and runs with in some really relevatory ways. Unlike DeMeo’s book, Taylor’s book is an entertaining and fascinating read. It takes this behavior pattern and ties them all up with theological and mythological views of all these various cultures. I recommend it.
To test my timeline/framework where this behavior change was involved, I was looking at the daunting task of doing basically what he spent 8 years doing. What a relief it was to find someone already had.