Dodge , duck, dip, dive, and dodge! 
How did those with no âfree willâ get âfree willâ just by being told about it?
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I think Jeremy is very carefully equivocating on many points, including what counts as civilization, a city, social stratification, Sumerian civilization, Chinese civilization, free will, and so on. According to Wikipedia, the first Sumerian city was Eridu, around 4000 BC. But he dates Sumer to earlier communities similar to those which, when he looks at China, he doesnât consider to be cities. He picks what he wants and ignores everything else because it doesnât fit his structure.
I know. The sport is in catching him in the direct contradictions and watching him splutter and fumble for an answer. 
Scroll up. I answered that.
HmmmâŠ
Massacres, torture and mutilation: Extreme violence in neolithic conflicts
Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally than has been known so far. This emerges from a recent anthropological analysis of the roughly 7000-year-old mass grave of Schöneck-KilianstÀdten by researcher of the Universities of Basel and Mainz. The findings, published in the journal PNAS, show that victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated.
It was during the time when Europeans first began to farm. To what degree conflicts and wars featured in the early Neolithic (5600 to 4900 B.C.), and especially in the so-called Linear Pottery culture (in German, Linearbandkeramik, LBK), is a disputed theme in research. It is particularly unclear whether social tensions were responsible for the termination of this era. So far two mass graves from this period were known to stem from armed conflicts (Talheim, Germany, and Asparn/Schletz, Austria).
Researcher from the Universities of Basel and Mainz now report new findings after analyzing the human remains of the mass grave of Schöneck-KilianstĂ€dten (Germany), a massacre site discovered in 2006. Their results show that the prehistoric attackers used unprecedented violence against their victims. The researchers examined and analyzed the bones and skeletons of at least 26, mainly male, adults and children â most of them exhibiting severe injuries.
Torture and mutilation
Besides various types of (bone) injuries caused by arrows, they also found many cases of massive damage to the head, face and teeth, some inflicted on the victims shorty before or after their death. In addition, the attackers systematically broke their victimsâ legs, pointing to torture and deliberate mutilation. Only few female remains were found, which further indicates that women were not actively involved in the fighting and that they were possibly abducted by the attackers.
The authors of the study thus presume that such massacres were not isolated occurrences but represented frequent features of the early Central European Neolithic period. The fact that the Neolithic massacre sites examined so far are all located in some distance to each other further underlines this conclusion. The researchers thus suggest that the goal of this massive and systematic violence may have been the annihilation of entire communities. The research team was led by Prof. Kurt W. Alt, former Head of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Mainz and guest lecturer at the University of Basel since 2014
All done before âfree willâ. Golly.
No you didnât. Here is what you said
The serpent influenced Eve by speaking to her. How did those with no âfree willâ get âfree willâ just by being spoken to?
Please quit dodging the question.
"It is an error, as profound as it is universal, to think that men in the food-gathering stage were given to fighting⊠All available facts go to show that the food-gathering stage of history must have been one of perfect peace. - Archaeologist WJ Perry
âFor the first ninety-five thousand years after the Homo sapiens Stone Age began (until 4000 BCE), there is no evidence that man engaged in war on any level, let alone on a level requiring organized group violence. There is little evidence of any killing at all.â - Anthropologist Richard Gabriel
âThe prevailing view is still that male dominance, along with private property and slavery, were all by-products of the agrarian revolutionâŠdespite the evidence that, on the contrary, equality between the sexes - and among all people - was the general norm in the Neolithicâ -Riane Eisler, American Scholar, Cultural Historian
âThere is the same lack of evidence for violent conflict throughout the simple horticultural period of history as in the hunter-gather era. Graves donât contain weapons; images of warfare or weapons are still absent from artwork; and villages and towns arenât situated in inaccessible places or surrounded by defensive walls.â - Steve Taylor, The Fall
âIn any case, anthropological studies have shown that scarcity of resources does not necessarily lead to conflict between groups. Data collected by the anthropologists Carol and melvin Ember establishes that "chronic, ordinary resource shortage is not a significant predicator of war." Or, in the words of R. Brian Ferguson, "the data just does not support a direct association of increasing [population] density and increasing war.â - Steve Taylor, The Fall
" Eridu appears to be the earliest settlement in the region, founded ca. 5400 BC" - Eridu, Sumeria.
4000BC was around the time the Ubaid period of Sumer ended and Uruk began. Ubaid period existed 1500 years prior to that and the founding of Eridu was the beginning of it.
Itâs not me that doesnât consider them cities. Theyâre not. Not for a very long time did anything exist that resembled a city.
Your inability to comprehend my response isnât my fault. Free will isnât magic. Itâs reflected in behavior. Behavior can be influenced.
It just so happens that Sumer, in its earliest dynasties was unusually empowering to women. Over time, exposure to Indo-European culture from the east seems to have nudged them progressively towards the typical Eastern view of subjugated/protected females. While Elam (and Elam speakers) appear to be non-Indo-European (like Sumerians), and similarly the Kassites, the Elamites and Kassites are presumed to have been progressively influenced by the Indo-European culture to their East, which eventually influenced Sumer itself.
What do you mean by âunusually empoweringâ? Because the change over to male-dominance is what was most unusual at that time. Egalitarian cultures that treated men and women equally was the norm for a very long time.
Where are you getting this? Because the timing really doesnât line up âŠ
" Indo-Europeans: general name for the people speaking an Indo-European language. They are (linguistic) descendants of the people of the Yamnaya culture (c.3600-2300 BCE) in Ukraine and southern Russia, and settled in the area from Western Europe to India in various migrations in the third, second, and early first millenniums BCE." - Indo-Europeans - Livius
Something that should be noted in the midst of all this talk of spans of time a culture existed and just how quickly they went from a settled community to a full blown civilization, in Sumer thereâs not a progression that works up to these things like in other cases. Eridu was established right from the start. And Eridu, as well as all other city-states established afterward, was built around a temple at the center.
Nowhere else is there much of any spiritual practices beyond animism, yet Sumer, according to their writings, built city-states around a temple. Each city-state had a god who lived in that temple. And the people basically existed to serve this god.
Such a pronounced spiritual/religious concept so early on. Something else unique to them.
Youâre too good to answer basic science questions but youâre willing to talk about a stupid book written by stupid people. Youâre willing to waste your time talking about a flood that didnât happen with a guy that is defending a book that he doesnât really believe is exacty true. Youâre willing to waste your time trying to show a guy that the God he believes in isnât perfectly good. But you couldnât be bothered to straighten me out and possibly educate some others in the process.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer
Continued dodging of the question noted. Looks like your whole idea is pretty worthless since you canât explain how âfree willâ got passed from one who had it to one who didnât have it. The lame excuse âinfluence!â doesnât provide any information on the process at all.
Something is sure reflected in your behavior of ignoring evidence and dodging every question but it isnât very flattering.
Everyone has their own preferences. So @John_Harshman is spending his recreation time on what he wants to do.
There is at least one journal article (I will try to find it) that points out how much more status and rights had in the early Sumerian dynasties⊠and that they slowly but steadily became more and more âembracedâ by what we call patriarchal restrictions.
The timing is that some âsourceâ from Indo-Europeans (rather than from Semite culture) seemed to be influencing Sumerian culture. Elam isnât Indo-European. And the Kassites werenât Indo-European. But the the Farsi (future Persians) and the western Scythians were becoming more and more influential. And Indo-Europeans also entered the picture to the West of Sumer - - the Hittites and the Mittani.
Because of the documents left between the Hittites and the Anatolians⊠we can vividly note the source of the influence and its proximity!:
From the Wiki article on the Mitanni-Aryans:
In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni (between Suppiluliuma and Shattiwaza, c. 1380 BC), the deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked. Kikkuliâs horse training text ( circa 1400 BC) includes technical terms such as aika (Vedic Sanskrit eka , one), tera ( tri , three), panza ( pañca , five), satta ( sapta , seven), na ( nava , nine), vartana ( vartana , round). The numeral aika âoneâ is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper (Vedic Sanskrit eka , with regular contraction of /ai/ to [eË]) as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has *aiva ; compare Vedic eva âonlyâ) in general.[1]
Probably Dravidian, as I understand it.
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Genesis 1 doesnât mention Adam and Eve
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