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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: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age
Civilisations.
<../cambconf.htm>