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THE CATASTROPHIC EMERGENCE OF CIVILISATION: THE COMING OF THE BRONZE
AGE CULTURES

Gunnar Heinsohn

_University of Bremen, P. O. Box 330 440, 28334 Bremen, Germany_
_e-mail: gheins at uni-bremen.de_

Throwing of barley grains or small stoned showering of ashes, public
defecation and obscene exhibition, panic yelling as well as manic romp
and frenzy, mortal duels of humans and animals in strange costumes
making them look like snakes or mixed creatures, entire burning of
slaughtered beings - these and similar activities took place in
extremely carefully choreographed blood rituals which emerged at the
beginning of the Bronze Age. The holy precincts in which these
sacrificial ceremonies were staged provide the archaeological markers
by which the Bronze Age can be told apart from the Stone Age. The
theory of religion is at a loss when it comes to understand this
tremendous turn in the history of religion which, after all, brought
about the first stage of civilisation. This perplexity did not always
dominate the scholarly world. Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759), a
French civil engineer and sociologist' had deciphered the great
ceremonies of man as ritualised memories of deluges and revolutions of
the earth's crust. It was the dogma of evolutionism which slowly
obscured past global catastrophes from the view of learned men. Yet,
the religious texts were still there. Eventually, they were regarded
as mere emanations of exalted souls. The cataclysms described in them
supposedly had nothing to do with earth and cosmos but everything with
the unconscious. This paper tries to prove the basic correctness of
earliest cuneiform sources which explicitly state that the first "cult
places" with their priestly personnel were established to give
"counselling" to people who were left "beclouded" after a "flood had
swept over the earth." Counselling, indeed, meant that the therapeutic
capacities of a child's play were used to heal entire communities. The
confused survivors were assigned roles in which not only the
disturbing behaviour of man under the impact of cataclysms but also
the catastrophic cosmic agents themselves were re enacted. The scene
of 'cosmic' clashes ended in the spilling of blood and the killing of
at least one contender. In this gruesome act the tense aggression -
bottled up in the helpless survivors - was released in one dramatic
and cathartic shot Reconciliatory acts in

front of the corpses of the victims required their elevation. Bowing
and asking forgiveness before the natural agents who had acquired the
human or animal shape of their skilled impersonators constituted the
worship of--freshly slaughtered--idols. After the gradual abandonment
of blood sacrifice in the Iron Age, which was no longer struck by
cosmic cataclysm, they were replaced by their portraits in wood, bone
or stone giving shape to the typical statuary gods of high religion.
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GUNNAR HEINSOHN (* 1943 in Gynia/Poland) studied sociology, history,
psychology, economics and religious studies at the _Freie Universität
Berlin_. He holds a university diploma in sociology (1971) and
doctorates in the social sciences (1973) as well as in economics
(1982). His publication list exceeds more than 400 tides. Since 1984
he has been a tenured professor at the _Universität Bremen_ where he
is director of the _Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie und
Genozidforschung_ in 1993. His research focuses on the history and
theory of civilization. Population and family history was dealt with
in _Theorie des Familienrechts: Geschlechtsrollenaufhebung,
Kindes-vernachlässigung, Geburtenrückgang _[1974] (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1976, with R. Knieper) and_ Menschenproduktion: Allgemeine
Bevölkerungstheorie der Neuzeit_ (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979,
with R. Knieper and O. Steiger). The Great European Witch Hunt became
the subject of _Die Vernichtung der weisen Frauen: Beiträge zur
Theorie und Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Kindheit_ (München: Heyne
[1st ed. Herbstein: März; 1985], 1994, with O. Steiger). On the
emergence of the rate of interest and money he has published
_Privateigentum, Patriarchat, Geldwirtschaft_._ Eine
sozialtheoretische Rekonstruktion zur Antike_ (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp 1984). His attempt at laying the foundations of economic
theory resulted in in _Eigentum, Zins und Geld. Ungelöste Rätsel der
Wirtschaftswissenschaft_ (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1996, with O. Steiger). On
the origin of Jewish monotheism he wrote _Was ist Antisemitismus?_ _-
Der Ursprung von Monotheismus und Judenhaß. - Warum Antizionismus?_
(Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1988). On Hitler's peculiar brand of
anti-Semitism and the Holocaust he has written _Warum Auschwitz?_
_Hitlers Plan und die Ratlosigkeit der Nachwelt_ (Reinbek: Rowohlt,
1995). The reconstruction of ancient history was lined out in _Die
Sumerer gab es nicht_: _Von den Phantom-Imperien der Lehrbücher zur
wirklichen Epochenabfolge in der "Zivilisationswiege" Südmesopotamien_
(Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1988), _Wann lebten die Pharaonen?
Archäologische und technologische Grundlagen für eine Neuschreibung
der Geschichte Ägyptens und der übrigen Welt_ (Frankfurt am Main:
Eichborn 1990, with H. Illig), _Wer herrschte im Industal? Die
wiedergefundenen Imperien der Meder und der Perser_ (Gräfelfing:
Mantis, 1993), as well as _Assyrerkönige gleich Perserherrscher! Die
Assyrienfunde bestätigen das Achämenidenreich_, Gräfelfing: Mantis,
1996). His most recent book is devoted to the rise of high culture in
the bronze age when blood sacrifice dominated religion: _Die
Erschaffung der Götter: Das Opfer als Ursprung der Religion_ (Reinbek:
Rowohlt, 1997).
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Presented at the SIS Conference: [1]Natural Catastrophes during Bronze
Age Civilisations.

References

1. file://localhost/www/sat/cambconf.htm