Hacker News Reader

Comment by 8bitsrule | Hacker News Reader

Favorite part:

"Until now, the Temple Culture was thought to have centered on the worship of a mother goddess, but Malone thinks it was more of a clubhouse culture, focused on ritual and feasting but where food—rather than a deity—was revered."

(The word'Temple' has for too long been a placeholder for 'we don't know.')

View on HN

> Until now, the Temple Culture was thought to have centered on the worship of a mother goddess, but Malone thinks it was more of a clubhouse culture, focused on ritual and feasting but where food—rather than a deity—was revered." > > (The word'Temple' has for too long been a placeholder for 'we don't know.')

This reminded me of The Motel of the Mysteries[1] where modern-day objects and franchises are similarly turned into temples and objects of worship or religious tools.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MotelOfThe...

When we look back on past civilizations we do it with a relatively slim understanding on what, why, or how they did things besides the basic drives and needs of life. The further back in time, the more we have to "guess" what we're looking at. So usually we just assume that so far back in time the civilizations must have been simple enough that their main focuses (besides... living) were religion or war. It's sort of a running joke among archaeologists that when something is unexplained you immediately attribute it to religion/ritual. [0] Sometimes it's hard to imagine that once in a while, people many millennia ago might have behaved just like modern humans since we haven't changed that much in the meantime (biology/evolution). [1] [2]

[0] https://www.quora.com/Do-archaeologists-have-a-tendency-to-s...

[1] https://satwcomic.com/humans-never-change

[2] https://me.me/i/lesbianshepard-if-an-archaeologist-says-an-a...

I really think we didn't change that much in depth. Just reading Marcus Aurelius quotes gives a hint. That said cultural context seems to matter deeply too. Some guy told me that no matter how educated they were, a high % of migrants will become impatient, selfish and violent after a month of struggle. All in all you'd have to factor in their lifestyle. Small village in a calm and abundant enough area ? probably very similar to us. You can see african tribes living in isolated places.. they're not different. They sit around, care for young ones, listen and rebel against elders, clean and cook. They have near zero fancy distractions though (they make their own I suppose).

So many statues of well endowed naked ladies and every one is labeled as a ‘fertility goddess’

Ritual, Feasting and Food are still reverred in Malta to this day :)

As a Maltese, I can confirm :) Sahha!

I love that you spoke to this. It seems to me that there's as particularly strong aversion to acknowledging how much we don't know when it comes to talking about these things.

The "if we dont know its part of a ritual/temple" joke was being told the first class in archaeology and it was repeated thoroughly. Everyone knows it's just a convenient placeholder.

Even Harry Dresden jokes about "ceremonial objects" (ironically while looking at a bunch of them).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com