Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #1: Explaining Humanity's Transition to Agriculture

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #1: Explaining Humanity's Transition to Agriculture

Okay, so in this first lecture, I want to ask a question. The question is, why did humanity transition from hunter-gathered society to agriculture? And in the traditional paradigm, paradigm, paradigm is a very sophisticated English word, And all it means is story or model or understanding, okay? So in the traditional story paradigm, we transitioned because we're first hunter-gatherers, and we lived in groups of about 20 to 50 people, and we roam the land looking for food. It was uncertain, it was unstable, and then suddenly there was a revolution. We discover farming, and farming provided a stable source of food that we can control.

Okay? The word we use is domestication. Domestication just means that we bring it under our control. And because of farming, we can now create more food than we need. And the word we use for this is surplus. And because there's a surplus, plus or plus, people now could do things besides farming. So for example, we could have leaders,

which creates the idea of politics, right? We could also have priests, which introduces the idea of religion. We can have creative people, which then gives us arts. And slowly over time, these villages grew into cities. And because there was a lot of people in our surplus, we could now have literature, reading and writing. So we can now store knowledge and then pass it from generation to generation and across cultures. We can now have science and technology.

And slowly, over the course of this process, we create modernity, which is the world that we live in today. So the pivotal step towards modernity was this transition into agriculture. And this is traditionally what we believed about the world. Unfortunately, there's no evidence for this, okay? And in fact, the more evidence we collect, the more we realize this is not true. In fact, what we now know is it was actually pretty stupid to transition from hunter-gatherer into farming, for a variety of reasons. The first reason is that when you're a hunter-gatherer, it's actually a pretty easy life

because there's food everywhere. When you're a farmer, it's a hard life because you have to grow that food. So maybe as a hunter-gatherer, you're working maybe an hour. day but as a farmer you were working six seven hours a day it was very hard to grow that food so in the book Sapiens the israeli historian named Yuel Harari he's very famous it's also very famous book there's a very famous sentence okay and sentence is like this we did not domesticate wheat wheat domesticated us, okay? So we thought that we made wheat, okay, the food wheat into our slave,

but in reality, wheat made us its slave. And the reasoning for this is this, out in nature, if you're wheat and you want to survive, you have to make yourself attractive to other people and to animals, okay? So you have to be tasty, and you have to be easy to find. You have to do a lot of work. But when you're on a farm in your wheat, you can just lay back, do nothing, and make humans do all the work. So it was a bad deal for humans and a very good deal for wheat. So that's the first problem. You actually do more work on the farm than you do as a hunter-gatherer, which means that now you have to have more children, right?

You need to have labor to do all that work, which creates a problem of over-ponterer. population, which means that you are using too much land and then eventually the land becomes dead, okay? Or not Araboy anymore. So it's the first problem. Second problem is that we're able to take up the skeletons of hunter-gatherers and farmers. And what we see is that hunter-gatherers are a lot taller than farmers. Why? protein right food as a hundred gatherer you have access to meat you have access to fruits and nuts

and vegetables okay your diet is very um and very nutritious but as a farmer you're eating only what you grow which is mainly wheat and some vegetables okay so you're not getting that much nutrition then the third problem is that is as a farmer you were much more likely to die early than if you're a hunter-gatherer. Why? Have you guys been to a farm? What's a problem? On a farm? Exactly, thank you. Pigs, right? Animals. They're everywhere. Plus, where do you put the garbage? Where do you go to the restroom, right? So because people are together in a very unclean place, it's much more likely to contract disease and then die.

Okay, so for these three reasons, the transition from hunter-gatherer to farming makes no sense. And even today, we are not able to explain to you why this transition happened. Okay? We don't know why we did this. So the only thing we can do is construct theories as to why. this might have happened. So even though we can't go in the past and look at why we did this, we can do some research and collect evidence and then create theories as to why this might have happened, okay? So there are four different disciplines from which we can collect evidence. The first

discipline is called archaeology. Archaeology is just the study of the past. So basically you go and you dig stuff up and you see what you can find, okay? Maybe you can think of someone's house, or you can think of someone's skeleton, or someone's clothing, okay? And from that, you're able to figure out what happened in the past. And so three pieces of evidence from archaeology we will look at today are Gobelike Tepe, Jericho, and Kataya Hoagak, okay? And these are places that we've actually dug up and we know what life is like in these three places.

So that's archaeology. Second discipline we can look at is anthropology. And anthropology is the study of other cultures. So in other words, there are places still on this planet where people live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. maybe in the Amazon, maybe in Australia, maybe in Africa, okay? And so we're able to go and study these people to understand why, how originally we thought, and why we might have transitioned into farming, okay? So anthropology.

The third field that we can look at is psychology or neuroscience. Basically how the brain works. How do we feel? What motivates us? Why do we behave the way we behave? Okay, so that's a third field we can look at. The last field we can look at is primatology, the study of primates, okay, or monkeys.

Because guess why, guys, we're monkeys, we're primates. 99% of our DNA are monkey DNA. So we can look at certain groups of monkeys to understand how they behave. And there are three types of, primates that we look at very closely. Okay, the first is gorillas. We also look at chimpanzees and we look at banal balls, okay? Chimpanzees and bonoboles are very close to us.

Genetically, they're the closest to us of all the primates. So by looking at these four different fields, we're able to collect evidence to construct theories as to why we transition from hunter-gatherer into farming. So now I will share some of these theories with you. And again, what's really important to understand is we don't know what happened. We can only guess about what happened. So the first theory is the idea of coercion. What this basically means is that there's an elite group of people who didn't want to work.

they made everyone else work okay so that's coercion and the evidence for this is that well guess what gorillas do this right if you study gorillas you will see that they always have an alpha male the male who's bigger than everyone else and who makes everyone do all the work he just sits and naps every day but he gets all the girls and he gets all the food okay so gorillas That's the first theory. The second theory is war. And the idea here is that if you are on a farm, it's easier to protect yourself in a time of war

than if you're out in the forest, right? You can build walls around your farm. You can defend yourself a lot easier. You can see the enemy coming. Okay? So, war. The evidence for this is that chimpanzees, okay, again, who are like us, they go to war a lot. They're very violent.

They're always fighting each other. So the argument here is that we human beings are just a violent people who are always at war and we must be afraid of each other. And therefore, when we have the chance, we'll settle down, be able to be able to be able to be. fortifications, build walls, and fight each other, okay? That's the second theory. And again, the evidence for this are champion seas. The third theory is respect for elders,

meaning that as a hunter-gatherer, it's very hard on old people, right? So at a certain point, you're going to have to leave the old people to just stay there, and die. And maybe we as human beings, we are biologically programmed to take care of elders for whatever reason, okay? And again, the evidence for this is anthropology where every culture respects its elders, right? So that's a third theory. The last theory is religion, okay? Meaning that we settle down in order to celebrate a religion, to practice a religion. And just to be clear, there's evidence and arguments for all four theories, and there are scholars who argued for different theories, okay?

But the consensus, what most people agree on today, okay, most scholars, not every scholar, but most scholars is, religion okay so let me explain why we think the answer has to be religion slowly all right okay so portion while it is true that with gorillas there's an alpha male who controls everything the problem is that if you look at gorillas the alpha male is huge okay and male are a lot bigger than females. So it's possible for one gorilla to exert force and pressure on the others, okay?

But human beings, that's harder, right? Because let's just say a nine foot giant human being comes into this room and it's like, I'm now your boss, you have to grow fruit for me, you have to give me all your woman, okay? What can we do as a class? the crap out of him, okay? You understand? Because we have big brains, and these big brains allow us to cooperate together, okay? So this guy's around, and at first we're afraid of him, so we let him do whatever he wants. But then he goes to bed, and then we as a class discuss, hey, what can we do?

Well, we can make weapons, right? Or we can trap him, or we can trick him. We can give him poison food. Okay? So coercion among humans, is very, very hard to do. The worst case scenario, we can't beat them up. What we'll do is just run away. Does that make sense? So we don't think coercion is an explanation because there's so many ways for us

to fight back and to rebel against bigger people. So coercion doesn't really work. War. Okay, so. We don't think war is a good explanation either. So it is true that chimpanzees are naturally violent, okay? They're always being the crap out of each other. But guess what?

Bonobos, who are actually closer to us genetically than chimpanzees, they're actually very peaceful. They don't fight each other. Okay? So there's no evidence that we human beings are naturally violent. Also, if it is war, then we should be able to find weapons. And we don't really find weapons, okay? In archaeology, we don't really find weapons of early humans.

Now, there is a lot of violence in early human history, okay? There's human sacrifice, there's group burials where a group of people are killed, but that's basically violence within a group. We don't find evidence of large violence among different groups, okay? We don't find that. So war, we don't really think it's a possibility. Now it's possible that in the future we'll find evidence. But I'm just saying that right now, in archaeology and anthropology, we're just saying that we're We do not have any evidence, okay?

The last, then we look at respect for elders. And even though this is a valid theory, there's an argument that back then, they didn't really care about dying that much. The reason why is that for most of human history, we human beings have seen life history as a story circle right so for example right now it's summer it's going to turn in the fall then winter then spring then summer again okay so the world history moves in a cycle well human life also moves in a

cycle you're born you die then you're reborn then you die again then you're reborn okay So back then, they really didn't care if you died. In fact, if you're an old person, you're probably like, you know what, I'd rather be dead. And then, so if I die, I'll either be reborn or go into the spirit world, okay? So they didn't really fear death or they really didn't see death like the way we saw death. Yeah? Okay, that's a great question, okay? So the evidence for this is what we understand about their religion, which we will discuss

later on and in next class. Okay? All right. The last, so that leads religion as the most likely possibility. And this, again, this is what most scholars believe happen. And so we're going to look at three different archaeological sites. The first is Gobiata-Tepai, the second is Jericho, and the third is Katai-Hoyak, okay? All right, so I'm going to draw up a,

we'll first see a picture of Gopoitepe. And guys, these places were only discovered in the past few decades, okay? So these are new places. We're only starting to understand these places. And so this place is in Turkey, in central Turkey, and this dates back about 9,500 BC. So this is this is a little bit of the city.

about over 11,000 years old. And we don't even think this is the oldest place, okay? So if you did your research, you will know that this is basically a place of religious worship. You can see that they constructed this place so that there are these T-shaped pillars, okay? And these things are huge, right? This is a human being and this is a T-shaped pillar, okay? We think, again, this is all theory. This is all what we know.

We don't know that much because this is all recent. We think that these T-shape represent human beings, okay? And within these T-shape are animals. You can see that they align or they built this T-shape in a way that they can practice a ritual or a worship, okay? So the people who are leading this were probably who we call shamans. Or religious leaders that help us bridge our world with the animal world and the spirit world. So these are shamans.

And so Goboletepe is a place of religious worship. Now what's interesting about Goboletepe is that the religious site is the oldest, but we're also find houses that are built later on. Okay? So what we think might have happened here is that hunter-gatherers will come to a place now and then to practice religion because ultimately as human beings and we discussed this last class, we have a yearning or we have a need to understand why. And religion solves this problem for us.

Also, as a hunter-gatherer, you need to associate with other hunter-gatherers in order to find mates, okay, to find husbands and wives to reproduce. And so this sort of religious center, it's a great time to come and practice religion, but it's also a great time to feast and to meet someone you can marry and have children with. So that was the original function of the temple. Now, these places are often led by shamans. And what makes them special is that they are charismatic leaders. Charismatic leaders.

Charismatic leaders are people like Maldstone, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton. They're people who, for the reason, people just love them and want to follow them. Okay? And so maybe what happened was that these charismatic leaders, they built this place and they became like celebrities and people came from all over to meet them, to hear the religion and to meet other people. And over time, some people even chose to stay with them and build houses to celebrate them, okay? And then when they died, what happened was they still worship them in their death.

And so this place became a temple. Does that make sense? So that's one theory about Kobblete. There are other theories, okay? There are some people who will tell you that space aliens came down and built this place because it's so sophisticated. Okay? But, so there are different theories, but the one that scholars most agree with today, okay, is that it was a religious center.

Any questions before I move on to, before I move on? Okay, so that's a great question, okay? Where is, where does religion come from? And this is something that we will look at very closely next class. And the answer is this, okay, even though we all have the need for religion, we don't all have the ability to produce religion. So who these charismatic leaders are are people who have visions or dreams of God or the spirit world, okay?

And then they present their visions to other people. And we have people like this throughout human history, right? So think of Jesus, think of Muhammad, think of Buddha. freak of Confucius. These are people who have these visions of God or of spirituality or of a new world and present to people and because they're charismatic, they're able to attract followers and spread their religion. And that's what probably happened here as well.

Because as you can see from this picture, it was very hard work to build this temple. okay this is 11,000 years ago they didn't have bulldozers they didn't have shovels okay this all by hand so for them to want to dedicate their lives to building this temple because it took a long long time right it took years and years and hundreds of people well you needed something called religious devotion right faith does that make sense okay and again throughout human history we've seen this, right? So think of Christians, think of Buddhist,

think of Muslims, religious faith. So that's what built this. Okay, so does that answer your question? Okay, any more questions before I continue? Yeah? Okay, so that's a good question. Why is a temple structured like this? Okay, and the answer is that there's

cosmological significance to the structure. Meaning that on a certain time of the year will happen is that the sun will hit this place in a certain way. So it's almost like a clock. Does that make sense to you guys? They designed this in a way so they can tell time. But their intention was not to tell time. Their intention was to connect with the outer world. Does that make sense to you guys?

So they were extremely sophisticated. They knew a lot about the way the stars worked. Okay, so basically for them, this is science, okay? We, today we say this is a religion, but their science back then is no different from our science today. Okay, does that answer your question? Okay, and you got a question? Okay, so if you talk to any religious people, they saw it, okay? They were there, they talked to God, right?

So we're like, well, you know, that doesn't make any sense, but they really believe it. why they're able to convince their followers okay so you go so so in the future we will look at someone like Mohammed who had religious visions in a cave and like you're like did he really see an angel well he thought he really did okay and in fact if we in our research what we discovered is that people use who use something called psychedelics okay do you know what psychedelics are Second drugs are drugs.

What drugs, and what these drugs do is they shift your neural system so that you see the world in a different way. When you do that, you're able to have different visions, okay? But we also know that if you go hungry for a long time, or if you meditate for a long time, you're able to see different things. So from their perspective, they actually saw this thing, okay, even though like we don't think it actually happened. Does that make sense? For them, it's true. But maybe for us, it's not so true. Okay? All right. Any more questions before I go on? All right. So, so these are great questions,

and keep on asking them, okay? And these are hard questions that we will go over the next few classes on. So let me show you another picture. Okay? This is what is in the pillars at Gobente Tepe. Now, what's really interesting about these pictures, okay, is that these are animals in the motion of hunting. So the fox, right? The way the fox hunts is the fox jumps up in the ear and then goes down and attacks the prey. So this is in the motion of attack. Why would they do that? what's the point of having animals on these pillars?

What would they do that? Good. Okay, yes. Okay. So what's really important to understand is that back then, and again, I'll explain to you over the next couple of weeks, back then we human beings did not see us see us as separate from the other world. Okay? Does that make sense?

Animals, trees, humans, all equal. So, first of all, if you're going to kill these animals, you need to ask for their forgiveness. Otherwise, their spirit, their soul will haunt you, okay? They'll take revenge on you. So if you kill them, you must ask for their forgiveness, okay? And the one way to do that is by paying tribute to them. Okay, that's number one. Number two is that we can learn from these animals, right?

They're the best hunters in the world. So before we go on a hunting trip, we might have a ceremony to channel their energy and power and wisdom. Does that make sense? Okay. And the third thing is basically to appease them or to become their friends, right? Because we don't want to hunt foxes. We want to hunt gazelle. There's more meat than gazelle.

They're easier to capture. But we want to be friends with the gazelle. We want to be friends with the live. in okay we don't be enemies so it's a sign of respect to the animals so that that was basically their religion and coming together the religious festival was about celebrating their relationship with these animals as well as channeling channeling their power their energy and the wisdom so that they could go hunt as well it doesn't make sense okay so this is probably one of the earlier

religions that we have Is this clear to you guys so far? All right? All right. Let's move on. Okay. So now this is Jericho. Okay?

And Jericho is part of something called the Natufian culture. And the Athenian culture appeared about 13,000 years ago, or even more, actually, maybe 15,000 years ago, in a place we call the Levant, okay? The Levant is basically the Middle East, Israel and Syria. What was special about an Attafian culture are three things. First of all, they were sedentary. Sedentitary basically means that they basically stayed in one place. Remember, hunter-gatherers, they robed around. They moved from place to place.

But they were hunter-gatherers who were sanitary, okay? They were not farmers, they were hunter-gatherers, but they stayed in one place. And the reason why we know, there's all evidence, but one reason why we know is that they basically hunted gazelles. Gazelles are like dears, right? And the thing about gazelles is their teeth color is different according to the season. So in the summer and in the winter, it's because they eat different foods, okay? So the tea color is different. So we're able to dig up these gazelle bones, look at their teeth, and recognize that, oh,

They were hunting Gazelle in this area both in the summer and the winter, which meant they did not move. Okay? So they were sanitary. That's the first thing. Second thing is that they had domesticated crops. And the reason why we know is we're able to dig up seeds of crops, okay, vegetables and wheat and barley, which meant that they have the capacity, the technology, to farm, but they totally. not to farm. Does that make sense? Okay? So basically the way they developed this

technology is for gardening, right? They were hunting gathering most of the time, but some of them for fun, for pleasure, have their own garden. And that's how they develop the technology. Okay? And the third thing that was very important is that's something called the cult of the skull. Okay. So they probably worship animals but they also worship ancestors and the reason why we think so is we're able to find a skull in these places okay so they basically took someone's head skull and put clay on it to protect it and they put in their houses to worship it okay so this is the beginning of ancestor worship okay does that make sense

you guys so I want to show you this and it's called the power of Jericho when we first discovered this we thought oh this must be a evidence that Jericho went to war okay because that walls and there's a tower right the wars are to protect you again from your enemies the tower is to see your enemies coming but then they did more research and realized that, oh, no, no, no. This tower is a religious monument. It's the same as Gobiata Tepe, where it is cosmological,

meaning that at the longest day of the year, the mountain over here will cast a shadow over the tower. The tower will cast a shadow over the entire village, covering it all up in darkness. Okay? Does that make sense, you guys? Why would they want to do that? What does that do for you? Have the entire village cover up in darkness? Any guesses? What would they do that? Excuse me? What do you mean by that? I know, but if that were the case, you just move, right? So, okay, so what's really important is that this is like right after the last ice age, okay? So it's actually pretty cold.

Okay? They did this for religious reasons, right? Because when you cover your village in darkness, you feel as though you are in connection with the sky. Does that make sense? So they must have a religious belief in which part of the worship is to cover the village in darkness. That's a good question, okay? So space is dark, right? Do you understand? So when you're dark, you think that I'm bringing space to our village.

So I'm collapsing the distance between space and my village, right? I understand that, but your village is bright anyway. And if you're able to make your village dark, that's magic, right? Do you understand? Okay? So they designed a town in a certain way so that it would cover the village in darkness. And they could see that as magic, and that's evidence that your religion is correct. Does that make sense?

right because otherwise how do you know your religion is correct only by performing magic can you show that this charismatic leader okay who came up this idea it speaks to god okay does that make sense okay so let's look at sort of pictures of skulls okay because this was actually very common back then okay so basically this is a skull they covered up with clay and they carried around with them all the place and this is true throughout the world at that time okay and just a ancestor worship okay so this is another picture all the skull okay let me ask you why they would do that their ancestors dead why would they do that why would they have to school around where's the ancestors now which is a dead person

the spirit world right someplace in another world and therefore having a scroll around allows you to communicate with that world and learn its secrets you understand and some of the secrets may be like how to construct a tower in a way that you're able to cast a shadow over the village okay so that's their method of scientific discovery does that make sense to communicate with the spirit world through your ancestors does that make sense okay the point I'm trying to tell you is that their level of intelligence or their understanding the world it's just as sophisticated as our understanding

the world okay understand we think that when we go to science class we're learning facts and knowledge but guess what maybe a thousand years from now people will look at our science like the physics and be like oh that was a religion too okay does that make sense so in terms of intelligence they were just as creative and as sophisticated as we are today but they just had a different set of beliefs okay all right so the last place I want to look at is kind of Kaulyak okay so Kadaai Hoyak is a huge place okay in Turkey as well pretty far from Gopla-tepe but about the same place and this dates back about 7,500 BC and as you

can see it's a huge village and and we think that at its height okay maybe this was around for about 2,000 years but at its height of development of civilization, it had about 8,000 people. That's a lot of people, guys. And the thing about Khamahak that stands out is, first of all, it's huge, okay? Second of all, they didn't have a place of worship or government, meaning that all the houses

were the same. It was a very egalitarian society. society, everyone was the same. What's even more interesting is that if you go to every house, there's a site, the living room is basically a temple onto itself. It was a place of worship and religion, meaning that the first, like kind of holliac is a place where religion permeated or was in every place they were, okay?

Okay? So we think that Karykoyak is one of the first religious communities. Remember that before religious sites or places you went to maybe once in your lifetime or maybe once a year, okay? But it wasn't part of your everyday life. Whereas in kind of Holyak, religion was in your life from birth to death. Okay, does that make sense? And the thing about kind of Holy Act, that's very interesting, very interesting is at this point their religion is extremely sophisticated, meaning that they can explain everything using their religion. Okay? So their everyday life and their religion was completely aligned together. So let me show you some evidence of this.

Okay. So this is a painting that you will see in every house or most houses in kind of hoya, okay? All right, so you're like, what is going on here? So again, there are different theories, but let me explain to you what most scholars believe to be the accurate theories, okay? So this is just a theory, we have no evidence for this, but this is what we believe. We believe that the people at Kana-Hoyak, they worshipped a mother goddess. Because the mother goddess is what gives life to everything, right?

Think of mother nature. Think of a woman giving birth to a child, okay? So they worship a mother goddess. And the mother goddess is represented by the bird. Because the bird flies all around the sky, right? So the sky belongs to the bird. Now, the bird can take different forms. This is a vulture, right?

So the mother goddess can also take the form of a vulture. So what's going on here? Why is the vulture with headless people? Okay? Because the way that they combine ancestors of worship with their belief in the mother goddess is they believe that when a person dies, what they'll do is they'll put that person's dead body out in the open.

It's a sky burial, right? You're to Tibet, they have sky burials. the vowsers will come and eat all the flesh and that is the tribute or the sacrifice made to the mother goddess okay so the mother goddess basically cleans the body and then you take the bones and you bury it back in your house and you take the skull and you keep the skull in your living room to worship your ancestors does that make sense so in other words it is an extremely comprehensive or complete religion understanding the world okay is that clear to you guys what the religion is any questions so far again but by the way guys a theory okay but right now the most useful theory that we have about this place and any questions before I move on okay okay so what's going on here okay now this again also is in Cateholyak many houses so what's going on here okay so different scholars

have different interpretations of this, okay? Clearly, this is a hunt, right? This is a hunt. And some people believe that these human beings who are, you know, part of the Catehoyac people, they are mocking or taunting or laughing at the animals as a way to subdue them, to tame them, okay? To domesticate them.

That's one theory. But another theory is that what they're really doing is dancing because they are worshipping or paying tribute to these animals they're about to kill. So this go back to Kobayetei, right, where they're trying to respect the animals, right? Dance with you, we're friends. I'm sorry I have to kill you. But hey, we're only taking your meat. Your soul, right? It's still going to be reborn or it's going to go to the spirit world.

So this is a way of paying tribute or respecting the animals they're about to kill or about to hunt. To maintain the harmony of nature and their relationship with nature. Does that make sense, guys? Again, what's really important is that this is a pretty complete religion, right? that explains everything to these people and that's why it's so attractive to people right if you're a human being you like you want to know why well kind of like the religion there explains why okay doesn't make sense so far any more any questions okay so this is a picture of the mother goddess okay again we have we

have debate about what this is some people believe that it's just a fertility goddess okay but others to believe this is the mother goddess. And you think about it, if you are a place like Catehoiac, you're most concerned about giving birth, right? Because giving birth is what rejuvenates your society. So it makes sense that your God, the person you worship the most, would be a mother goddess, okay? This is clearly a bull. And if you see pictures of Catea Hoag, you will see that they have many, many depictions are pictures of bull in their house, okay? And what we believe, again, this is a theory, okay?

What we believe is that if the mother goddess represents life, okay, giving life, the bull represents vitality energy. And so it's the bull that gives the mother god's the energy to give birth. Right? Doesn't that make sense? So the bull represents the male, the modern goddess represents the female, but only the male and the female conjoined, they come together, are where you have life. Okay, so this is another picture. Clearly, okay, they're not hunting, okay? Clearly, they are worshipping the bull.

Does that make sense? They're paying tribute to the bull. So, are we clear about this? how religion was a fundamental part of people's existence when they chose to become sanitary, okay? Or they chose to settle in one place. So let's go back to the original question, and now I'll take questions. The original question is, why did people transition into agriculture? And the theory that most scholars believe is because of religion.

It was because people had a religious need that they came to. together to have these religious festivals. There are some charismatic leaders who were so brilliant that people chose to settle down with them, okay? And so they became sanitary, they developed a religion around the centenary lifestyle, which included ancestor worship. But over time, because you're in one place,

you're gonna deplete the resources of the area around you, of the forest, which means that you only, you must go to farming, okay? Does that make sense? So, but then eventually, because you have so much population and you farm too much,

you're forced to move somewhere else. And when you move somewhere else, you actually put your religion with you, okay? And that's how we can explain the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture. And there was no one spark or one moment when this happened. We think it took thousands of years

time because ultimately the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was so much more attractive to people so much easier and attractive to people than the farming lifestyle okay but the benefit of the farming lifestyle is that you had a religion and and that's why people chose ultimately to farm okay so that's that's it and next class we'll continue this discussion about early religion and how people develop these religious visions Okay? So next class we'll look at ice cave paintings that goes back 40,000 years, meaning that they practice this sort of religion,

or something like this religion, 40 to 50,000 years ago. We know through ice cave paintings. Okay, so questions before we finish class. Is this clear to you guys? Okay? Anything you're confused about? Any questions? before we conclude.

Okay. Do you say it more clearly? And again, this is all on the internet, by the way. So if you're interested, you can go online and just read up more on Catea Hoia. These places are very famous. We'll be discussing these places throughout the semester, okay? Gabova Tepe, Jericho, and Catahoyak.

Excuse me? We discuss all three. But I'm introducing you to these three places. In future classes, we'll go more in depth into these places, okay? because Guadaletepe is a very interesting place. Okay? And we're slowly, we're only slowly discovering all that's there.

Basically, we basically uncovered about 5% of Kobayetepe. So over the next two decades, we'll know more. Any more questions? Any more questions? Okay, all right. So next class, we will do IHK paintings.