The Illustrated Guide to Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
Pg 138: “A Dark Age”
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PANEL 1:
Overhead establishing shot of the land around the Acropolis. The land is brown, with green on the elevated hills. Two yellow streams from the east pass to the north and south of Athens before merging to the southwest. A flock of multi-colored ibises flies just below us. Several tiny villages are scattered around the plain. A scale of miles and kilometers is inset to the northwest.
NARRATION:
The year is 950 B.C.
Athens’ world fell into a dark age over 200 years ago. But of course you wouldn’t know that.
You’ve never heard of a town called “Athens.” (Or of such a thing as a “town,” for that matter.)
Your home is a tiny farming village, one of several that surround the Acropolis.
They all seem to get along okay. Nobody’s bothered to erect so much as a fence around their village.
For all you know, this is how the entire world lives—has always lived—since long before your grandfathers’ grandfathers’ grandfathers’ grandfathers were born.
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PANEL 2:
Village scene. Everything is sere and dry. A thatched apsidal house is visible from the front, with a bit of another visible to the right. In the foreground, a bearded man wearing a woolen chiton and a woolen round petasos hat carries a wooden pitchfork on his shoulder. Behind him is a domed earthen oven. A young woman sits on the ground, grinding grain. There is a terracotta bowl of unground grain and one of ground grain next to her. Behind her, some skewered meat is cooking on a small clay grill. Two goats laze nearby. A girl and a younger boy are running hand-in-hand from around the apsidal house. Another man stands in the veranda of the apsidal house, leaning on the wattle fence. He is pointing to something inside the house. A jar and some farming tools lean against the wall behind him.
NARRATION:
It’s a life of labor.
You scratch what food you can from the dry earth. Wheat and barley, lentils, fava beans… and grapes, of course. (But not olives! Even during the Bronze Age, Athenians hadn’t cultivated olives.)
Even in good years, there’s barely enough to go around.
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PANEL 3:
Another view of the village. More apsidal houses are clustered together. In the foreground, a woman wearing a woolen chiton and a headband is angrily gesturing at a man while holding a broken terracotta jar. The man, also wearing a woolen chiton, is gesturing defensively. Behind them, three women of different ages gossip as they look on.
NARRATION:
That said, life’s not awful. Everyone in your village gets along okay, all working together as a team. Which is hardly surprising, as your households all belong to the same tribe… you’re literally one big happy family.
Nobody needs to be told what to do. Folks just naturally know right from wrong, and everyone pulls their own weight.
It’d be weird- no, it’d be wrong if anyone thought they could tell the rest of you what to do.
Your neighboring villages are much the same, each its own tight-knit family of decent folks. Sure, there are team rivalries, but you can always count on the other villages to pitch in when needed. Where do you think everyone’s wives and mothers originally came from, after all?
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PANEL 4:
A view of a path between two arid hills. A few scraggly trees and bushes here and there. Two women walk along the path, one with a large basket of fish on her head, another carrying a smaller basket of fish in one hand.
NARRATION:
And that’s really your whole world.
Your little cluster of villages doesn’t belong to any larger group of settlements. You aren’t part of any larger culture on the Greek mainland, much less the greater Aegean. In fact, there’s only one road to anywhere else—more a footpath, really—wending down to some fishing villages half a day’s walk to the south.
(And ancient, overgrown trail also leads away to a mountain gap far to the west, but you’ve never seen what lies beyond.)
“Athens” is very much alone. An isolated, self-contained society.
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PANEL 5:
The interior of an apsidal house. To the right is the semicircular storage room, with storage jars and an upright loom. Some weaving has been started on the loom, but some of the weighted yarns have broken and lie on the floor. A broom and some jars rest against the wall. In the center of the main room, the hearth fire burns low. Hanging on a support pillar are a tied bunch of herbs and a wooden spoon. On a bench against the far wall, a young mother plays with her infant, kissing his toes. In the foreground, a tall, richly-dressed Mycenaean man gestures at the surroundings, while a smaller man in a wool chiton holds a geometric-style terracotta jar. A richly-dressed Mycenaean woman gestures at the stone altar/shrine at the rear of the room.
NARRATION:
Imagine if some Mycenaean Athenians magically time-traveled here. What would they say?
MYCENAEAN MAN 1:
What have you done to our civilization? Where’s the urbanity? The sophistication? The art?
Ooh, a stripe around your pot! Some circles! Amazing.
No animals, no flowers, not so much as a stick figure.
Did you forget how to draw when you forgot how to read?
MYCENAEAN WOMAN 1:
They’ve certainly forgotten all about architecture.
Every building is the same stupid one-room hut, with a half-circle storage room in the back.
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PANEL 6:
To the right and left of the panel stand two more Mycenaean aristocrats, another man and woman. Between them stand two smaller Athenians, a man and a woman, showing how to put on a woolen chiton—an arms’-width sheet of wool wrapped under the left armpit, pinned at the shoulders, open on the right side, and tied with a cord belt.
MYCENAEAN MAN 2:
Look! They’ve forgotten how to sew as well.
No tailoring, no design?
All anybody wears is a plain woolen blanket pinned at the shoulders.
MYCENAEAN WOMAN 2:
I see the men have also forgotten how to shave.
And have you noticed how short everyone is now?*
FOOTNOTE:
*Rude, but true.
From burials, we know that Bronze-Age Athenians grew about as tall as they do today.
But by 950 BC, men barely made it to five feet, and women averaged around 4’10”.
They weren’t living as long, either. Men who reached maturity usually died before the age of forty. Adult women could expect to live to thirty-two.
Life was hard, and their diet was shockingly poor in protein and vitamins.
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PANEL 7:
An arid landscape with fir trees, laurel, and wild olive.
MYCENAEAN VOICE:
Certainly they can hunt for meat? And gather fruits and veggies from trees and fields?
NARRATION:
Not like before, no. Few crops could grow in this arid climate. And the fruit trees and deciduous forests all died off long ago.
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PANEL 8:
An ancient bronze sword lies forgotten in a field by moonlight.
MYCENAEAN VOICE:
Then go on campaign, and reap the spoils of war!
NARRATION:
Sorry, there’s no evidence of any warriors or warfare around these parts for more than two hundred years.
MYCENAEAN MAN 3: (Overlapping the narration)
ENOUGH! Take us up to the palace!
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PANEL 9:
Another Mycenaean man and woman.
MYCENAEAN MAN 3: (continued from the previous panel)
We need to teach the government how to run a proper command economy! How to get the gods to bring back the crops and cattle… how to-
MYCENAEAN WOMAN 3:
Eh?
What’s that?
They have no government?
NO gods?
Oh gods…
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PANEL 10:
A patch of land rising to the Acropolis. The Cyclopean walls stand tall against a dark sky. Ruins of other walls and buildings lie scattered around. A Mycenaean man in a red tunic is on his knees facing the Acropolis, beating the ground with his fist. In the foreground, two Dark Age men and a woman talk about him.
MYCENAEAN MAN 4:
YOU MANIACS!
You blew it up!
Gods damn you all!
Gods damn you to Hades!
DARK AGE MAN 1:
What’s he talking about?
DARK AGE WOMAN:
Who’s he talking to?
DARK AGE MAN 2:
Tch. Out of his mind, poor fellow. Ain’t nothin’ or nobody up there.
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PANEL 11:
A rust-colored iron framework is revealed as a coating of glue evaporates and drips off.
NARRATION:
Of course, the Bronze-Age institutions of gods and government had only ever been a thin film of glue holding together diverse societies. When that veneer dissolved, it revealed the core of kinship that had formed the underlying framework of society all along.
In fact, all those refugees who’d re-settled around Athens had quickly formed new tribes. They’d had to! Kinship was the one thing they knew that worked.
Fortunately, when the need arises. people can be really flexible about tribal identity. Without actual shared ancestry, they’d unite through mythic ancestors or heroes.
(Keep that flexibility in mind as democracy takes shape over the coming centuries…)
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PANEL 12:
In the foreground, a Neolithic man dressed in a belted tunic with fur lining, a cloth cap, wearing a satchel slung across his chest, jewelry, and a leather pouch at his waist. He is gesturing to a Dark Age family making an offering to their ancestors at their hearth.
NARRATION:
So a time traveler from the Neolithic stone age might not have felt that much had changed at all.
NEOLITHIC MAN:
Families honor their ancestors at the hearth? Check.
Multiple families can unite through a shared tribal identity? Check!
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PANEL 13:
The Neolithic man looks on as Dark Age villagers go about their business. In the foreground, a young woman shows a girl how to grill skewered meats on a clay grill, with an olive-wood tray of other ingredients nearby. In the background, two young women watch as several men labor to uproot a dead tree. One of the young women is making something with yarn. Village houses are clustered behind.
NEOLITHIC MAN:
No elites?
No rulers?
Just a natural, self-regulating, face-to-face community?
Mhm… mhm…
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PANEL 14:
A gathering of village men at a field outside the village. Hills and grazing sheep in the background. One man, holding a stick, is speaking. Some seated men are listening to him, others are talking among themselves. Some men appear to be arguing intently. Another man is getting to his feet while also speaking. The Neolithic man is among the seated men.
NEOLITHIC MAN:
For important village matters, instead of a boss giving commands, the heads of all the households just informally… I don’t know…
Assemble?
Trying to hash out a consensus as equals?
Yup! They’d have fit right in, back home in the Neolithic.
Still… They forgot how to sew? Seriously?
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PANEL 15:
An overhead shot of the village. A nearly-dry creek runs past to the left.
NARRATION:
It is 950 B.C. This is your world.
It’s how the world has always been.
This is how it will always be.
Love the Planet of the Apes reference. Appropriate since it is a visitor from the past.
Awesome, thanks!
Didn’t people ever wonder how those walls got there, or what was behind them?
That’s coming up in 2 pages! It’s a fun story, so I won’t spoil it here.
Forgetting how to read and write I can see. But why did they forget how to draw figures? And how is it possible to forget how to sew?
First, why did they forget how to draw? The short answer is, we don’t know. There are plenty of resources recounting how art rapidly ceased depicting people and narrative scenes, and was then limited to geometric patterns and motifs for the rest of the Dark Age. But it’s hard to find any authoritative accounts of why that happened.
The fact is well-known, if not well-understood. It’s so well-known, in fact, that the Dark Age is commonly referred to as the Protogeometric and Geometric Periods. The Protogeometric Period is the first half of the Dark Age, to about 900 BC, when art was limited to extremely rudimentary decorations such as concentric circles, bands, arcs, triangles, wavy lines, and diamond shapes. The Geometric Period is the second half of the Dark Age, to about 700 BC, when the designs got more varied and complex, but still remained decorative patterns instead of figures or scenes.
Why should that be, when people had been making sophisticated representative art for ages, long before the collapse of 1200 BC. From incredibly observant Paleolithic cave art to the stunning frescoes of Bronze Age civilizations, humans in western Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and Mesopotamia never seem to have had any difficulty creating such art. For that reason, many of the explanations which I have encountered are unconvincing.
For example, some blame it on the disappearance of complex social and economic systems which had supported sophisticated art (while requiring literacy). But that ignores all the Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples who lived before such systems ever existed. They were painting and sculpting all kinds of realistic and stylized figures, and all without any institutions or complex societies. Others make a similar argument, that the loss of centralized authority and elite patronage meant the resources and social incentives to create representational art had evaporated. For the same reason, their arguments also strike me as unconvincing.
Another category of explanations I’ve found is less societal, and more demographic. They go something like this: After the Collapse, populations were drastically reduced by up to 90%, and people shifted from urban centers to rural villages. In that world, there were simply fewer artists to go around. Plus, even if you had artistic skills, it was harder now to transmit them to another budding artist. The result was a collective loss of artistic knowledge in only a couple of generations, much like the loss of literacy. But again, one would only have to look at the art produced by sparsely-populated rural Neolithic peoples to refute this explanation.
If I had to speculate, I’d say the explanation isn’t societal or demographic, but cultural. I haven’t seen this argument being made, but it feels right to me. The Bronze Age Collapse was, if nothing else, a dramatic break in cultural continuity. It may be that the change in art style was simply a matter of cultural values changing, not a loss of artistic skill. In other words, it’s not that they couldn’t draw people or scenes—they just didn’t want to. Art is nothing if not culture. And whatever else art may do, it always always always reflects the culture of the artist. The culture of the Athenian villagers during the Dark Age clearly placed value in decorative patterns, because that’s what they created. And their culture clearly did not value pictures of people, animals, or events, because they never drew or painted such things.
Of course, that raises the question: Why did the Athenians of the Dark Age value one and not the other? Your speculation is as good as mine. Maybe the designs were not purely decorative, and had symbolic meaning? Writing is not the only form of symbolic representation people use, after all. Those circles and zigzags and Greek Keys, etc., may not have been purely abstract patterns. They may have been signifiers of communal values. Or perhaps their repetition and order represented some sort of cosmic harmony. Or maybe they thought the designs conveyed magical forces. They wouldn’t be the first or the last society to have used art in such ways.
But here’s an idea: Perhaps the Collapse had been so traumatic that they now explicitly rejected the cultural trappings of the Mycenaean world. Their art wasn’t representational, because to them that smacked of the time of kings and palaces. We know they hated the very idea of kings when they came out the other side of the Dark Age. So non-representational geometric art was an expression of their cultural virtues. They didn’t make art like what you’d have seen in Mycenaean palaces, not because they couldn’t, but because it would have been wrong to do so.
That leads to the question of “forgetting how to sew.” Maybe they didn’t forget. Maybe their simplistic clothing was another cultural affirmation—that WE don’t dress like THEY did. We could, but we won’t. It would be wrong.
Clothing has never been a matter of mere protection from the elements or modesty. For as long as people have worn clothing, they have done so to express cultural information such as status, group membership, and community values. Perhaps the Dark Age Athenians didn’t so much forget how to sew as they refused to do so. If they wanted to, they could have constructed garments out of shaped pieces of fabric, but they did not want to. By deliberately wearing nothing more than the most rudimentary sheet of wool folded under the left armpit, pinned at the shoulders, and tied with a string belt, they were visibly demonstrating their repudiation of the Mycenaean way of life. An ostentatious simplicity, if you will, visually signaling the fact that WE are not like THEM. A kind of virtue signaling. Also, since literally everybody wore the exact same simple garment, it reinforced a cultural value of equality that you’d expect of a tribal culture.
I have to pause here to reiterate that all these cultural explanations are pure speculation on my part. I haven’t seen them proposed by serious scholars. They just seem to make sense in my own head.
Cultural reasons aside, their woolen chiton was extremely practical. They didn’t have water-thirsty cotton or linen, and they didn’t trade with the outside world so didn’t have access to fabrics made elsewhere. All they had were goats (sheep aren’t great in arid places, but goats manage fine). So goats’ wool was the most readily available source of textiles, and because it always grew back, it was essentially free. The chiton’s draped, uncut rectangle was easy to manufacture, mend, and replace, thereby freeing up time for other tasks. Also, it was billowy, not form-fitting. As any desert Bedouin draped in black woolen robes can tell you, that’s the key to comfort. The loose fabric traps layers of insulating air that keep you cool even in the hot sun, and warm at night, and the circulation of the air in and out of the garment as you move around makes it almost like having your own personal air conditioner. Another practicality is that the chiton’s open right side allows significant freedom of movement, important for all kinds of tasks in a physically-demanding life.
But let’s not set cultural reasons aside entirely. After all, even after trade resumed and Athens grew wealthy, the chiton (and its relative, the peplos—basically a chiton made of a taller sheet of fabric with the top folded down to give the boobs some modesty) remained entrenched as the primary garment of men and women alike. The fabrics may have gotten nicer and more varied, and they may have added extra pins along their arms to make sleeves, but the basic garment remained a rectangle folded in half around the body. This persistence across hundreds and hundreds of years strongly indicates (to me, anyway) an expression of cultural value, of a shared ideology. Reformers (like Solon before the birth of democracy, and Demetrios after its demise) would even make explicit that which was socially implicit, declaring more showy or complicated clothing to be morally bad. It was morally wrong to imply you were better than anybody else by dressing better. Also, as Athens developed its form of democracy, the wearing of an essentially identical garment by men and women, boys and girls, would have visibly reinforced notions of equality and communal identity. (Yes, I know it was only men, and only some of them, who participated as equals. But that doesn’t mean the cultural value didn’t apply to all.)
I’d better stop now. Once again, I’ve turned what a quick line in the comic into a long lecture in the comments. Aren’t you glad this is a comic, and not a blog? Imagine what a dense brick of text this comic’s 936-and-counting pages would have been if I’d written about every little detail like this (or worse, you know I can do it). If you’ve read this far, you deserve special recognition, so respond with a comment that uses the word “simulacrum” somewhere inside. Those who know will know: you’re one of the few and the proud who made it this far. They will regard you with respect and a kindred spirit. Those who don’t know will be puzzled by what’s going on, and you can silently judge them. Nobody said we have to be egalitarian.
simulacrum
If the chiton was always folded on the left side, some of the people in the comic have theirs on backwards.
I actually like your expositions in the comments as much as the comic. I usually come back a week of so after a page drops just to read the comments.
Perhaps they’re backwards. Perhaps they’re left-handed.
And thank you! Though my favorite part is everyone else’s comments. I learn so much from you guys.
So your hypothesis is that a reticence to artistic expression was born of some kind of notion akin to a sumptuary law; that finery tempted a simulacrum of that which came before and led to ruin? I don’t doubt this and follow the logic, but I would ask of something a little more practical: was the mode of life so primitive and rustic that goods didn’t get ornamented because they frequently saw hard or destructive use? You paint your hot rod and keep it in the garage so you can drive it into town and show off; you don’t use it to pull the cultivator and plow on the farm. That’s what the tractor is for, and though you keep both in good working condition, you don’t tend to artistically decorate the equipment that gets driven through dirt, ditches, and the occasional overhanging branches on an almost daily basis. Also “time spent pot-glazing is time NOT spent crop-raising.” ;-)
That’s a good point. Life was hard, and conditions were hard, so who has the time to waste on elaborate decoration that’s just going to get ruined anyway? Without the luxury of free time, that effort would be a sacrifice. Perhaps that explains why some subsistence societies created art and others didn’t? I haven’t looked this up, but maybe those that did employed their art specifically as a sacrifice, especially in a religious context. Sacrifice is a great social bonding tool, as we’ve seen, and when employed that way can be well worth the, uh, sacrifice. But the people around Athens weren’t religious at this time, so there was little incentive to waste time like that. I like the way you think!
Also, my thoughts above, like here, were pure speculation, not coming close to even the merest simulacrum of a hypothesis. But thanks for the compliment!
It’s also worth mentioning that, in a time of scarcity, a dead-simple garment, that doesn’t require several more hours to produce, is a Good Thing. No cutting, No sewing. You’re still stuck with the time-sinks of carding, spinning, and weaving, but you’re not wasting a huge chunk of your material by cutting it away to make sleeves and pant legs. You also have a garment that you won’t grow out of.
Which brings up the question; did they sew rents, just not sleeves, or did they not sew, at all?
I was thinking about the representation of humans. Perhaps, the early ones at least, refused to create idols, and stretched that definition all the way to creating images of themselves. Perhaps there was a superstitious association between the image of a thing, and the thing, so a piece of pottery, easily broken, with the face of a person, was a threat and a curse.
All speculation, of course.
Oh, and it’s worth asking. Do COLDER CLIMATE sustenance societies create more art than do WARMER CLIMATE sustenance societies? If I had to guess, I’d guess the ones that get snowed in for months are more likely to create art, like quilts and such, than the ones who can farm or ranch twelve months out of the year.
I think you’re on to something with your “dead-simple” explanation. It makes a lot of sense.
As for your sewing question, no, there is no evidence that they used needle and thread for any sort of sewing.
Which is weird, since Europeans had been sewing with eyed needles for about 25,000 years before this point, so it wasn’t exactly exotic technology. (And some recent finds suggest they might have been doing it for even longer in Siberia and other parts of Asia.)
I can’t find any sources that authoritatively describe how they’d have mended torn fabric, but some suggest that they’d have re-woven rips and holes. Re-weaving is a technique as old as weaving itself, so that makes sense… except, since the fabric is already woven, you can’t use a loom to spread the alternate strands, and instead you’d use something like a needle to maneuver the new yarn over and under the existing strands. If that’s what they were doing, it makes the fact that they did not also use needles for sewing even more noteworthy than it already was.
As for your question whether climate affects how much art a subsistence society creates, I haven’t found anything that makes that argument. Climate seems to affect the things that art depicts more than the kind of art that is made. There is research, however, showing that subsistence societies are more likely to create art during periods of communal aggregations, like when communities come together for seasonal rituals like initiation ceremonies, when there is intensive symbolic activity like storytelling and communal creation of art by many people acting together. And colder climates seem to have more communal gathering, while warmer climates have more mobile hunters and herders who don’t aggregate like that as often.
While researching that last question, I actually found a couple of sources supporting my speculation that the difference lies in culture, and that religious subsistence societies produce representational art while those that don’t sacrifice to gods stick to more geometric patterns. But I also found some that suggest yet another cultural explanation:
Apparently, egalitarian societies are much more likely to create repetition of the same decorative elements over and over, no matter who made the art, and they are more likely to create symmetrical designs and patterns. More stratified societies, on the other hand, are more likely to create unique and asymmetrical images, which seem to be necessary qualities of representational figurative are. Hierarchical societies also frame their art within some sort of bordering element, while egalitarian societies let the patterns stretch on forever. John Fischer, in “Art Styles as Cultural Cognitive Maps,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 63, No. 1 (1961): 79–93, suggests that the reason for this distinction is that egalitarian societies don’t value individualism or uniqueness, while stratified societies emphasize differences and boundaries. William Dressler and Michael Robbins, “Art Styles, Social Stratification, and Cognition: An Analysis of Greek Vase Painting,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1975): 427-434, conclude that the evidence from ancient Greece strongly supports Fischer’s idea. And in the decades since then, other researchers have found this to be true of other societies.
The explanations seem to be growing! So far, it looks like Greek art changed so dramatically after the Bronze Age Collapse because of a combination of factors, including a transition from a hierarchical society to an egalitarian one, a transition from a religious society to one without religion, and a transition to a world that offered little opportunity or reward for creating figurative art. Let’s keep coming up with more ideas! Then one of you can write a paper and get tenure somewhere. (Just remember to put the rest of us in the acknowledgements footnote that nobody but us will read.)
I just saw your boots research. Those were stitched, according to what you posted.
Maybe they DID mend torn garments, but none have survived to today. Maybe they meticulously recycled them, to the point where anything that had a tear became something else. Like a hat. Or bedding.
Although, for garments that had only been mended once, to have never been found, when examples of garments that had never needed mending have been found, makes this highly unlikely.
It’s still possible that there was already another need for slightly-used wool, that had enough demand that no one thought twice about repurposing garments when they got torn, but it seems unlikely. I know felt is a thing, but did they use a lot of felt? Maybe for hats? Walls? Curtains?
Those were indeed stitched. But they are from another time. And yes, those hats are made of felt!
I’m surprised no one mentioned the *religious* prohibition of much (any?) representational art in Judaism & Islam.
So there is a lack of evidence for belief in gods of any sort during this period. To what extent can this be taken as evidence of absence?
Personally I am atheist pending better evidence or argument for the existence of a god of any sort, but I had the impression that religion has been almost ubiquitous in societies, so I am surprised at the claim that it was absent in this place & time.
Religions with gods are certainly not ubiquitous. Broadly speaking, you only get them where you have complex, hierarchical, institutional societies. And sometimes not even then. Having a religion with a pantheon of gods does help large, complex societies work together with a shared identity and loyalty, but it’s not a prerequisite. (And having a religion with only a single god who actually rules over humanity? That’s extremely weird, mostly limited to Judaism and its offshoots.) If you’re interested in a little more detail, I go into all this in the beginning of this section on the Institution Revolution. If you’re interested in a lot more detail, I can recommend some sources to get you started.
During the Bronze Age, Athens had been part of a complex civilization with a correspondingly complex pantheon of gods. But by 950 BC, it was a tiny world of simple, egalitarian tribal villages, and gods didn’t serve any societal purpose. Deistic religion was a narrative that didn’t work any more, and didn’t serve any purpose, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they’d abandoned it. I’ve repeated a few times in the comic that narratives which fit people’s reality tend to stick. Something we’re going to start seeing more and more in the comic is the flip side of that: when a narrative stops fitting people’s reality, they get rid of it. It can take a while, especially if the narrative has been institutionalized, but inevitably narratives that no longer fit get abandoned. (And if a new narrative comes along that does fit their new situation, people will switch over to the new one almost overnight!
We’ll see in the coming pages how Athens dealt with narratives of gods and religion, as its society grew more complex again. It’s actually an important part of our story, so I won’t spoil it here.
…and complex, hierarchical, institutional societies are the ones that create written records of their beliefs. Thus a bias in what societies I have heard much about.
So I guess the growth of atheism in the last few centuries is because the narrative of theism serves less purpose than it did before.
I’d certainly agree that atheism gets more common as societies grow less reliant on the social functions served by having gods. In today’s world, there are plenty of ways to form communal identities and cooperative attitudes without religion. But I’m not a fan of the word “atheism” in this context. To me, the word smacks of belief: a belief that there is no capital-G God, no Abrahamic supreme deity. There ought to be a word that’s not about a belief that there are no gods, but describes the absence of the concept of gods in the first place. A word that doesn’t mean people don’t believe in gods, but means that gods aren’t a thing for people to believe in or not.
Atheism isn’t necessarily a problem for religion. As mentioned elsewhere in the comic, before the Abrahamic religions came along, whether you believed in gods or not wasn’t important. What was important was whether you performed your civic duty by participating in sacrifices and other rituals. Thanks to written evidence, we know there were atheists and agnostics walking around in ancient times, and so long as they didn’t try to ridicule or undermine their societal function, it wasn’t a problem. (But when they did, boy howdy it was a problem indeed.)
Speaking of written evidence, you are absolutely correct to bring up documentation bias. There’s certainly going to be documentation bias whenever you’re looking at ancient societies, because it’s only the literate societies who left written evidence. You can’t simply conclude that only literate societies did the things they wrote about. They left written evidence that they farmed, after all, and it would be absurd to conclude that only literate societies were doing any farming. If documentary evidence was all we had, any conclusions about whether non-literate societies also had gods would be merest conjecture.
But when it comes to gods and religion, we have more than written records. There is linguistic evidence—granted, from written texts, but linguists are pretty good at tracing cultural artifacts from before those people learned to write. More tangibly, there is the archaeological evidence of altars, shrines, temples, offerings, ritual objects, and the other physical things that come with the worship of gods. Non-documentary evidence tends to support the conclusion that the invention of gods generally coincides with the development of complex societies. (And once such societies have developed an institutional religion with gods, that’s when they seem to blast into the stratospheres of complexity.) Sure, there have been complex societies that didn’t develop gods, and there seem to have been a few places that came up with a conception of a god on their own, without getting the idea from somewhere else, without also developing complex society. But as a rule, the concept of gods is one that comes with, and contributes to, the increasing complexity and institutionalization of societies.
(I’m not limiting “gods” to “moralizing gods,” which seems to be a focus of some academics for some reason these days. But I’m also not including animist spirits or forces of nature. I mean supernatural beings with human personalities and control over some defined aspect(s) of the natural world, who have a symbiotic relationship with humans whereby they may choose to aid humans in return for the humans performing sacrifices and rites for the god’s benefit.)
“I see the men have also forgotten how to shave.”
How does shaving become normalized in some cultures, others encourage facial hair, and others leave it to a man’s discretion? I wish the golden age of facial hair of the latter 1800s would come back.
Where I was, its comeback was steadily building from about 1999 to 2007 or so. Then it got subsumed into hipsterdom, which by definition meant it could never be mainstream. And then the Mayan calendar ran out, and they shot Harambe, and here we are in this inferior timeline. With any luck, our counterparts in the good timeline are rocking facial hair that puts Ambrose Burnside, Hercule Poirot, and ZZ Top to shame.