Talk:Neolithic religion
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[edit] AID Nominations
The nomination has been removed (Only 3 votes, needed 6). ~ 18:08, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Re-nominated
I want to say that I went through the trouble of renominating this article in hopes of that more people will take interest in is and vote for it, since it is far to interesting and, currently, lacking in info to be left behind. Satanael 20:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
- Neolithic religion is interesting but this article is total, irredeemable bollocks. adamsan 22:54, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd say I disagree, this article isn't that bad, especially not if it gets some context to it. There are now 3 votes, and if only those three that voted last time votes this time, we can get the nomination through. Satanael 12:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] WikiProjects
I think that this page (and related pages such as Semitic gods and Proto-Indo-European religion) go into the Religion WikiProject or another WikiProject such as, for example, WikiProject Pimal Religions. Any comments? ~ 17:26, 25 February 2006 (UTC) Never mind. ~ 17:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Starting source material
Moved from article.
Some of the info used to create the stub of this article came from these internal sources: (for the record)
Linear Pottery culture#Religion
Proto-Indo-European religion#Mythology
Semitic gods#Proto-Semitic Gods
ike9898 08:33, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Fundamentally flawed
I'm afraid I have to concur somewhat with adamsan's analysis above, for there are many problems apparent. As presently written the whole article appears to conflate a good deal of neopaganist speculations with highly-conjectural linguistic reconstructions, to come up with a belief system supposed to be cohesive. It seems not to recognise that neolithic actually describes a particular set of traits and technologies found in different cultures, regions and time periods, and does not refer to some specific, unified culture who might have possessed "the neolithic religion". No-one is denying the likelihood that some forms of religious belief systems featured in Neolithic peoples' lives, but if these are to be accurately discussed at all it can only be in the most general of terms given the extreme paucity of data. At least the Proto-Indo-European religion article makes some effort to stress the conjectural nature of the linguistic reconstructions; this article however presents linkages between cultural (proto-)deities with an unwarranted confidence.
If an article on this topic is to have any value at all (in which case it might better be titled Neolithic religions, belief systems in Neolithic Europe, or some such), it needs firstly to decide upon and define who the Neolithic peoples may be, identify (by the various Neolithic cultures) any archaeological sites and artefacts for which some religious significance has been proposed, and separate these out from reconstructions which are based on purely theoretical linguistic grounds. It also needs to take care not to rely upon what may be termed "neopaganist" applications and sources, which are really modern syntheses and are in no way justified as terms and beliefs practiced by hypothetical or actual Neolithic peoples themselves. Above all, conjectural statements need to be clearly identified as such.--cjllw | TALK 07:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
- I suppose we could move the page to one of those titles, but in my opinion we need to find parts from other language families, such as Uralic, Altaic, and the other Afro-Asiatic languages, in which case we could move the page to Nostratic religion, as it would be the hypothetical religion of the hypothetical language. ~ 16:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Ghetae, given the Nostratic hypothesis has only a minority of adherents, I don't think that presenting a belief system based on a reconstructed proto-proto-language would be a useful or informative exercise, even if you were to explicitly note it was hypothetical. It seems to me that there are two possible encyclopaedic topics here, which however need to be treated separately:
(A) There were real, not hypothetical, societies, who have variously been characterised as Neolithic by virtue of their technology, practices, location, time period, or some combination of these factors. About these peoples' beliefs (note the plural, there was not a unitary Neolithic society) we actually know very little, and we certainly are almost completely ignorant as to what languages they spoke. For all we know any given one of these societies spoke a language which is unrelated to any that we know of today. It may be supposed that certain of these peoples spoke languages which were antecedant to languages found only later in the region, but this remains a supposition, so linguistic reconstruction techniques won't be much help. We do however have some clues, in the form of artefacts and the like, which can and have been (cautiously) used to frame some ideas about their possible belief systems. But these ideas are necessarily restricted to a high level by the archaeological record, and we certainly cannot pretend that we know the names by which they called their deities, or even just who their deities were.
(B) Some neopaganists, general authors and even a few scholars have amused themselves by coming up with various proto-names for deities, by using (and sometimes abusing) linguistic techniques. This is all very well as an intellectual exercise or diversion, but there is really no hope of establishing the reality of these reconstructions. If scholarship (leaving aside pseudoscholarship) cannot agree on where the hypothetical PIE-speakers lived, there's no way to associate any of these supposed names with any real culture, even less so for Nostratic.
So, if you want to write about (A), which the present title suggests, then I'd suggest the course of action per above- decide on the scope (whether 'Neolithic' in Europe only, or further afield), identify the cultures which have been called Neolithic, survey and describe the relevant portions of the archaeological record from these cultures which might provide some insight as to their belief systems, and discuss whatever notable theories have been produced based on this. For example, the ideas of Marija Gimbutas could be reviewed, but also those of her critics. However, strip away completely the linguistic conjectures and so-called deities' names.
If however you are more interested in (B), then the article definitely needs to be retitled (to what, I'm not sure- hypothetical proto-language reconstructions of deities' names?), and to clearly identify that it is about a linguistic exercise only, and not an account of any real society's beliefs. Assumptions and conjectures need to be made explicit, and care needs to be taken (refer WP:RS) that modern neopaganist syntheses are not relied upon, or if used that they are identified as such and not mis-attributed. Personally I'm not that convinced as to the need for this kind of article, and the proto-Indo-European religion article covers similar ground in any event (I think it too ought to be retitled, but that's another matter).--cjllw | TALK 00:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
- It does say in the introduction that it is about the religion from the Levant and Europe, but yes, it does need a title rename. But why do you say that the article suggests that we are trying to reconstruct the names for these deities? Anyway, I think that, if the article is renamed, it would be renamed (list of) hypothetical neolithic deities, or something like that. ~ 16:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I say that Ghelae because that is what the majority of the article consists of. For example, *Dg'hōm as a Proto-Indo-European word for "mother goddess" is precisely that: a linguistic reconstruction. We obviously have no direct evidence for what PIE-speaking peoples called this deity, or even if they acknowledged such a deity, or even when, where or whether an actual discrete society which spoke PIE ever existed. The techniques of Historical linguistics can at most hope to produce an account which might be regarded as plausible at best, but cannot recover the actual. There are several different techniques, and even within the comparative method itself there are many different ways one could go about the reconstruction, each yielding a potentially different result. Thus it is misleading to say or imply (for example) that "*Dg'hōm was the Proto-Indo-European word for "mother goddess"; all that can accurately be said is that *Dg'hōm has been proposed as a PIE word by some particular model, based on some particular technique, perhaps another technique would yield another result anyway. "hypothetical proto-language reconstructions of deities' names" is actually more accurate (if lengthy) descriptive title for most of the present article's contents.
And again, even if restricted to just Neolithic Europe and the Levant, calling it "the Neolithic religion" is not a justifiable statement. There is no basis for supposing all Neolithic societies shared the same belief system, just as there is no basis for supposing that all (or indeed, any) Neolithic peoples were PIE-speakers. --cjllw | TALK 02:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
One more point: many researchers in fact appear to associate the hypothetical PIE-speakers with a later technology than the Neolithic, and so their inclusion here could be seen as somewhat anachronistic.--cjllw | TALK 02:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
yes, the article as it is is fundamentally flawed. It presents a hodge-podge of concepts, lumped together as "Neolithic religion" in Wikipedia's voice. What it should do instead is present an overview of authors who have an opinion on the subject (Marija Gimbutas, Walter Burkert etc.) BTW, we have a few articles on reconstructed deities, Dyeus, Hausos, Perkwunos, Proto-Indo-European religion, but these are not Neolithic, they are Bronze Age, and maybe Chalcolithic. There is bird goddess, but most of the deities mentioned here have no case for being Neolithic. dab (ᛏ) 08:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC) dab (ᛏ) 08:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
- Over the weekend I will put in some material re significance of ancestors and theories about ritual monuments - no names of gods though or other whacky stuff. I have also removed the Palaeolithic references in the article as it is difficult to say the least to demonstrate religious continuity anywhere over a period of 200,000 years. adamsan 16:06, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
