Desert vs. Forest
A few months ago, I read a fabulous article entitled “Are the Desert People Winning?” in Discover magazine. I then totally forgot to post about it. I remembered it today, so here it is. If you are a subscriber, it can be read on the Discover site. Since most of you are not, it’s a good thing Arthur Magazine published it in its entirety.
The article is inspired by a 3,000 page paper written in 1967 by a Stanford University anthropologist by the name of Robert Textor. In the paper, he simply sought out correlations between various attributes of cultures around the world. As it turns out, ecology was an excellent predictor of all kinds of things about a given culture. Textor’s work shed light on a prominent dichotomy. Most of the world’s cultures arose in either deserts or rain forests, and their ecological backgrounds had a huge effect on religion, among other things.
I highly recommend reading the entire article, but here are some of the paragraphs that deal with religion:
Begin with religious beliefs. A striking proportion of rain forest dwellers are polytheistic, worshipping an array of spirits and gods. Polytheism is prevalent among tribes in the Amazon basin (the Sherenti, Mundurucu, and Tapirape) and in the rain forests of Africa (the Ndorobo), New Guinea (the Keraki and Ulawans), and Southeast Asia (the Iban of Borneo and the Mnong Gar and Lolo of Vietnam). But desert dwellers the bedouin of Arabia, the Berbers of the western Sahara, the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert, the Nuer and Turkana of the Kenyan/Sudanese desert are usually monotheistic. Of course, despite allegiances to a single deity, other supernatural beings may be involved, like angels and djinns and Satan. But the hierarchy is notable, with minor deities subservient to the Omnipotent One.
This division makes ecological sense. Deserts teach large, singular lessons, like how tough, spare, and withholding the environment is; the world is reduced to simple, desiccated, furnace-blasted basics. Then picture rain forest people amid an abundance of edible plants and medicinal herbs, able to identify more species of ants on a single tree than one would find in all the British Isles. Letting a thousand deities bloom in this sort of setting must seem natural. Moreover, those rain forest dwellers that are monotheistic are much less likely to believe that their god sticks his or her nose into other people’s business by controlling the weather, prompting illness, or the like. In contrast, the desert seems to breed fatalism, a belief in an interventionist god with its own capricious plans.
So, as if you don’t already know, which type of culture comes out on top?
Which kind of culture would you prefer to get traded to? When it comes to the theistic part, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other to me. As for the other correlates, desert cultures, with their militarism, stratification, mistreatment of women, uptightness about child rearing and sexuality, seem unappealing. And yet ours happens to be a planet dominated by the cultural descendants of the desert dwellers. At various points, the desert dwellers have poured out of the Middle East, defining large parts of Eurasia. Such cultures, in turn, have passed the last 500 years subjugating the native populations of the Americas, Africa, and Australia. As a result, ours is a Judeo-Christian/Muslim world, not a Mbuti-Carib/Trobriand one.
So now we have Christians and Jews and Muslims in the wheat fields of Kansas, and in the cantons of the Alps, and in the rain forests of Malaysia. The desert mind-set, and the cultural baggage it carries, has proven extraordinarily resilient in its export and diffusion throughout the planet. Granted, few of those folks still live like nomadic pastoralists, guiding their flocks of sheep with staffs. But centuries, even millennia after the emergence of these cultures, they bear the marks of their desert pasts. Our vanquished enemies in Afghanistan, the Taliban, and our well-entrenched Saudi friends created societies of breathtaking repressiveness. In Jerusalem in recent years, Jewish Orthodox zealots have battled police, trying to close down roads on Saturday, trying to impose their restrictive version of belief. And for an American educator with, say, a quaint fondness for evolution, the power of the Christian right in many parts of this country to dictate what facts and truths may be uttered in a classroom is appalling. Only one way to think, to do, to be. Crusades and jihads, fatwas and inquisitions, hellfire and damnation.
If nothing else, this article gives us a better understanding of why monotheists are the way they are. Of course, having been raised in a desert culture, it may also explain some things about me.
~I AM~
October 14th, 2005 at at 2:19 pm
Wow, fascinating. Another way our beliefs evolve from the environment around us. Excellent, I AM.
October 14th, 2005 at at 2:29 pm
Really interesting article, I AM. Thanks for the link to the original, too! I’l l have to read it when I have the time.
And as usual, I find myself nodding in agreement – just call me the Bobble-Head Radi doll *wink*
October 14th, 2005 at at 2:30 pm
Also explains why I keep looking for new posts from you, I AM, and find myself really frustrated when you don’t post at least one new article per day.
October 14th, 2005 at at 2:36 pm
Radi:
I can’t post every day, but I don’t think I’ve ever taken more than one day off, except when I was out of town. Of course that can mean a 72 hour wait. If I post at 12:01am on Tuesday and 11:59pm on Thursday, that’s one day off the way I count things.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
October 14th, 2005 at at 4:16 pm
I remember that article. It is excellent, and worth reading all the way through.
If you ask me, there is no better populizer of new science than Discover. I’ve lost count of the number of times Discover has published scientific news years before it makes the cover of Time or other mainstream news sources.
October 14th, 2005 at at 4:22 pm
Tanooki Joe:
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had a subscription to Discover for the last 18 years, and I will be a subscriber until I die or they stop printing it, whichever comes first. I was worried about if for a while after Disney took it over, but they worked out the kinks, and it’s as good as it ever was.
October 14th, 2005 at at 4:28 pm
So that’s my problem. I’m from a desert culture, with rain-forest personal ideals. No wonder I wound up atheistic.
October 14th, 2005 at at 5:32 pm
I was taught that religions built up along with the language and culture. Animism comes first in a hunter/gatherer society, then polytheism in an agricultural society, then monotheism in pastoral and urban cultures. There were exceptions, of course, depending on language and culture, but this was the basic format. I’m sure setting had to do with it, too.
I prefer polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones, and animism over all. It holds true to the roots of language and human concepts. Minus the supernatural bent as a result of ignorance, I could seriously see bringing such “beliefs” back. Nothing helps one connect with nature like animism.
October 14th, 2005 at at 6:55 pm
Can’t say its 100% right, but its definatly a cool idea. It does give an interesting new perspective on things
October 14th, 2005 at at 8:54 pm
I can’t say I’m convinced. It sounds like evo-psych just-so stories, and even then it is inaccurate in its details. Most ancient near east religions were polytheistic, before the advent of monotheism. The artile doesn’t mention cultures in other great deserts, such as the Gobi in Central Asia or the Mojave in North America. And not all deserts are hot places. Arctic regions with little precipitation are classified as deserts too. Surely life in such places are just as hard, demanding and rugged as the deserts of the Near East. Yet Inuit (Eskimo) religion is shamanistic and hardly similar to Judaism, Xianity or Islam.
As regards to fatalism, the Filipinos (from the Philippines of course) are very fatalistic, epitomized by the common refrain “bahala na” (leave it to the gods!). Such attitudes predate the introduction of Catholicism in the 16th century, and has let to the development of a culture that is seemingly defeatist. Unable to fight the will of the gods, Filipinos resign to the facts of nature and let it keep its course. The Philippines is in Southeast Asia and is one of the most ecologically diverse places in the world.
The article seeks to explain too much, and ends up not giving an explanation worthy of belief.
October 14th, 2005 at at 9:10 pm
Aside from the !Kung, those regions, oddly enough, all connected to each other. It’s more like monotheistic religion developed in that area and spread from there. Connected to the desert? Possible. But pretty much everybody at some point was polytheistic. The Vikings were polytheists, and were as violent as you could ask.
I think monotheism is better adapted to the application of force, because of the power it has to create fanaticism (why would a polytheist really care that their neighbors worship a different god?) and the creation of the concept of the infidel, which is a necessary concept for monotheists.
October 15th, 2005 at at 12:53 am
I think I would have to agree iwth Heathen Dan. The only monotheists are Jews, Christians, and Muslims, right? They did originate in a desert climate, but it’s probably not becuase of it. Egyptians, Carthaginians, Mesopotamians, etc. etc. were polythestic, no?
October 15th, 2005 at at 1:12 am
Heathen Dan:
The article seeks to explain too much, and ends up not giving an explanation worthy of belief.
I don’t think the article was really trying to explain anything. I think it was just a broad overview of the correlations that were discovered. While the article implies it, correlation is not necessarily indicative of causation. I’d kinda like to read the original study, but I don’t have that kind of time.
Toxic:
But pretty much everybody at some point was polytheistic.
That’s not universally accepted anymore. Some theorists believe that religion began as a primitive, lost form of monotheism and then developed into polytheism before a monotheistic resurgence. The original deity, according to those who promote this perspective, was either a mother goddess, a sun god or both.
Pyro_Shark:
Egyptians, Carthaginians, Mesopotamians, etc. etc. were polythestic, no?
Yes and no. The article talks about systems that have one main deity and many lesser deities. Later Egyptian religion essentially followed this model, centering around worship of Amon. I believe Baal was the chief god for the Carthaginians. In Mesopotamia, you also see some of this kind of thing. The Babylonian god Marduk was definitely in charge. In fact, if you look closely at the god of the pentateuch, this is what you’ll find. Yahweh, also called El or El Shaddai, was clearly not the only god, but was the most powerful. He was the only “portable” god, who had power over the local gods no matter where you went.
October 15th, 2005 at at 1:21 am
It’s a general rule, not an airtight law. But I’m not as knowledgable about indigeneous religions as I’d like to be, so I can’t really say much about it. Of course, the original paper is 3000 pages in length, so it probably covers all these points in depth.
Man, I wish I had time to read a 3000 page paper.
October 15th, 2005 at at 8:52 am
Interesting correlation’s.
I wonder what they would describe the area around where I live( Memphis) as. Used to be as dense as the Amazon almost, now most trees cut down. But we have greater selection/availability at Wal-Mart, K Mart, Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, Schnucks etc than any forest I can think of, and they take debit cards. Will the two theistic concepts meld into one? Or will we continue to see lots of variations of monotheistic faiths as a prelude to a resurgence of a polytheism taking hold again as abundance influences us?
Thanks for the posting, an abundance of food for thought so I will go and not believe in lots of gods.
October 15th, 2005 at at 3:58 pm
Thanks for sharing – very interesting. I’ve had vague thoughts about climate affecting everything from temperment to religion, and this article really puts forth a facinating case.
October 16th, 2005 at at 8:25 pm
One question for all of us “desert people”:
The choice is open. We are perfectly free to swear off all technology and modern conveniences and move into a rain forest utopia. Why not?
I’ve always respected Discover as a science magazine, which makes it all the more disappointing when they try to smuggle in glib little moral sermons against the “Christian Right”.
October 20th, 2005 at at 3:20 am
As a general observastion this is interesting, and correlates to some thoughts I’ve had in the past. When compared to what we’ve actually learned about some ancient civilizations it doesn’t fall perfectly in line, but nothing is absolute and black and white. I think it still has its merit, and is nevertheless intriguing.
Whatever that’s worth.