Oleg Kot - The Dot of Noah’s-Darwin’s - the Ark, evolution, totemism and interspecific wars. Correspondence with anthropological journals

3.10. PTSD-3. Tower of Babel (Genesis 11, 1—9). The first “Babylon” means the place, where Noah’s tribe tried to realize the only possibility in those conditions not to dissipate all over the earth in search of rare then game animals (Kuraev 2009, p. 263). By this time, each family had its own opinion, which animal is better for the tower. This is and have those very same languages mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 11, 7). After the season of hunt all families of the Ark’s tribe gathering together on the plain Shinar. This idea to build a city and a tower was born in the next border state of the psyche of hungry people. Collective response to the planet without animals and birds was the idea of creating a whole agrotechnical complex. For this purpose, the biblical tower and the satellite city were built, which in the smallest details repeated the experience of the first world.

The implementation of this plan would have avoided starvation thanks to the producing economy livestock farm or poultry farm (the author’s reconstruction). As a result, God has activated the “tongues”, or the personal conviction of everyone that it is this or that kind of beast, the birds are the best for the tower. Everyone praised and extolled the hunting qualities of his beast or animal. It is clear that soon the hunters and gatherers, who had not yet lost their memory of agriculture and the cities of the first world, ceased to understand each other. Scattering and gradual savagery became inevitable (Men’ 1992, p. 112).

The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré, a woodcut depicting the Tower of Babel. By Gustave Doré.

The hostility of the phratries in the best way possible explains the plot of “the confusion of tongues” in the Bible. In poultry farming, most often engaged by women. In fur farming by men. It may well be that because of the birds, quarrels between the descendants of Noah began. They could act as the most acceptable option in the conditions of protein starvation. Speed of reproduction of bird’s meat is several times higher, than in livestock production. The conflict between men’s and women’s phratries forms the basis of this biblical episode.

“The Australian concept of what we have here termed opposition is a particular case of using Association through opposition, which is a universal feature of human thinking and that encourages us to think in pairs of contrasts: high and low, strong and weak, black and white. But the Australian notion of opposition combines the idea of a pair of opposites with the idea of a pair of rivals” (Ibid, 118) – grabs from the lecture of analysis of the phratries of Radcliffe-Brown Levi-Strauss (Levi-Strauss [1964] 1991, p. 90).

“This contraposition of primitive ‘collectives’ is reflected in the myths about the struggle between totems (myths about the battle of the wedge-tailed eagle with a crow and the like). It is not by chance that these myths and other traces of the hostility of the groups refer mainly to phratries – the oldest of the social groupings of Australians – and to their totems. The mutual alienation of phratries, each pair of which was a primitive tribe, was, apparently, a very characteristic feature of the life of that era. The traces of this estrangement of phratries have been preserved, as is known, in the customs and folklore of very many peoples of all parts of the world. Totemism in its most ancient form – the totemism of phratries – was, apparently, the most direct expression of the opposition of phratries and the inner isolation of each of them. After the fission of phratries into smaller generic groups and after the loss the value of the main social groupings in phratries, the features of totemism was transferred to ‘clans’ (‘totemic groups’), that is, early-term communities” (Tokarev 1990, pp. 63—64).

“In any case, it is impossible to forget that totems of phratries were the most ancient totems, and them are, as a rule, birds whose communication with any certain territory could never be solid. In a word, the choice of a totem could be defined by the reasons which don’t have for us essential value” (Tokarev 1990, p. 66).

Spencer and Gillen (Spencer and Gillen 1899, pp. 179—183) have opened at Australians the ceremony of Intichiuma – multiplication of the totem, which, however is not used natives during usual time for food. The vegetarianism is identical tabooing concerning the totem’s of clan. Caregiving behavior in relation to animals of the Ark is identical to ceremonies of the multiplication of everything living. G. Roheim intuitively notes, that the totemic repositories Churinga’s of the tribe Arunta are nothing but the symbols of the mother’s womb, and Churingas themselves are symbols of the human embryo (Roheim 1925, p. 355).

Awareness of the reality of the annihilation of all living things on the planet is the main reason for the practice of Intichiuma, which at first was universal in the multiplication of all living things. “Which of the elements of the totemic complex existed in the era of totemism? On the basis of archaeological data, it should be recognized that in this complex, along with the belief in the origin of the totemic ancestors, only Intichiuma, for, as we recall, a significant part of the images can only be interpreted in this sense. It should be noted that the rites of reproduction, like hunting magic, concerned not one species of animals, but many. This shows that communication with one species of animals has not yet been established” (Khaitun 1958, p. 106). The rite of Intichiuma in Australia. To its execution start hungry, completely naked and at first one or more young people shedding their blood on the ground. Because “so established by the ancestors”. And the duration of this period is said by the rite of Intichiuma, the staging of which could last several months in a row. And sometimes only a few hours.

“At the same time, all Australian tribes of the Intichiuma are associated with myths about the ‘ancestors’ of the times of Alcheringa, the adventures of which are staged, dramatized or glorified. The presence of these ‘ancestors’ is considered necessary for the effectiveness of the ceremony” (Khaitun 1958, p. 44). Noah and his descendants it and there are those selfsame “ancestors”. Their presence is necessary, because they were the first to pray for the multiplication of all living things and their prayer was heard. They survived and became the beginning of a new civilization. Recollection of these “ancestors” bear a characteristic detail: they all violate exogamous prohibitions. The absence of exogamy in the marital relations of the distant past explains why exogamy is disturbed during the rendition of the Corroboree in Australians (Spencer and Gillen 1899, pp. 418—419) It is not difficult to understand, why. There are four pairs of people left on Earth. Of them are reproductive – three.

Aboriginal Bora ceremony (early 20th century).

Inasmuch as in these groups the biological prevails over the social, let’s consider them from the point of view of the synthetic theory.

4.1. If you look at the ship Noah with the view of an evolutionist, the supporter of the modern synthesis, he will say this: “In relation to all living things, the method of artificial selection was used, on the gap. Changes in nutrition (forages), waters, violation of biorhythms, restriction to a minimum of a locomotion, manipulation of objects, inactivity, the hypodynamia, sensorial starvation, a chronic stress, neighborhood animals antagonists could lead to a surge of mutations among pairs of individuals that represented all the former species diversity”.