Ancient World Review

The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross

The Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, John Allegro, is probably best known for his controversial book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross:

"The book relates the development of language to the development of myths, religions, and cultic practices in world cultures. Allegro argues, through etymology, that the roots of Christianity, and many other religions, lay in fertility cults, and that cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants to perceive the mind of God, persisted into the early Christian era, and to some unspecified extent into the 13th century with reoccurrences in the 18th century and mid-20th century, as he interprets the fresco of the Plaincourault Chapel to be an accurate depiction of the ritual ingestion of Amanita muscaria as the Eucharist. Allegro argued that Jesus never existed as a historical figure and was a mythological creation of early Christians under the influence of psychoactive mushroom extracts such as psilocybin." (Wikipedia)

Fresco showing mushrooms in Plaincourault Chapel, France.

I've made several attempts to read The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross, but it's a difficult book for a layman to understand because it focuses almost exclusively on the etymology of words in ancient languages:

"As a philologist, Allegro analysed the derivations of language. He traced biblical words and phrases back to their roots in Sumerian, and showed how Sumerian phonemes recur in varying but related contexts in many Semitic, classical and other Indo-European languages. Although meanings changed to some extent, Allegro found some basic religious ideas passing on through the genealogy of words. His book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross relates the development of language on our continent to the development of myths, religions and cultic practices in many cultures. Allegro believed he could prove through etymology that the roots of Christianity, as of many other religions, lay in fertility cults; and that cultic practices, such as ingesting hallucinogenic drugs to perceive the mind of god, persisted into Christian times." Source: JohnAllegro.org.

Often referred to as a maverick, Allegro was actually a diligent scholar whose book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth is a brilliant piece of work on the beliefs of the Essenes and the possible origins of the early Christian communities which seemed to appear so suddenly in the ancient Mediterranean world. Highly recommended. I don't claim to be able to follow his linguistic arguments in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, but the idea that the origins of Christianity and Judaism can be traced back to prehistoric fertility cults doesn't seem all that outlandish to me. In fact, it seems pretty likely.

Allegro sometimes said, in interviews, that Jesus was a mushroom and that Christianity was originally a cover for a secret mushroom cult. He apparently meant that literally, but I think the real message of his book is that Christianity evolved via Judaism from much more ancient shamanistic practices and that the mushroom symbolism of these old cults still survives in church artwork and theology to a certain extent. The basic idea is that the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and other religions originated in ancient fertility cults which used psychedelic mushrooms to make contact with God.

There's nothing inherently unreasonable about any of this. Religions, like ancient cultures, don't just appear fully formed; they all have deep roots in the prehistoric world. The same thing can be said for a lot of our modern holidays. Halloween and Christmas, for example, were originally pagan festivals and their ancient roots can still be seen in things like the Christmas tree and trick-or-treating. Many Christian symbols, beliefs and rituals have also been traced back to the pagan world and it seems to me that all John Allegro was doing was tracing them back even farther, perhaps to the very beginning.

Fertility religions go all the way back to the rise of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution. They could be even older than that and traces of these ancient beliefs can still be seen today:

"Many ancient fertility rites have persisted in modified forms into modern times," according to Infoplease. For instance, "The Maypole dance derives from spring rituals glorifying the phallus." The Easter bunny and eggs are another example of this kind of survival from a pre-Christian past still found in the Christian church. The Easter egg in particular is a fertility symbol. So is the Ichthys, the Christian fish symbol. And it's quite possible that modern religions still contain elements that can be traced back to really ancient shamanistic rites that involved the use of psychotropic plants.

Mushrooms in Christian art. Unfortunately the artworks themselves aren't identified in this video.

The presence of mushrooms on very old church walls and stained-glass windows is undeniable. Perhaps they're a kind of vestigial symbolism, traces left behind by a primordial religion that had already faded into the unconscious minds of the artists who created them. That could be. If Christianity did evolve from an ancient mushroom cult, the question of whether the cult was still in existence when the church first came into being is a different matter altogether. Allegro's idea that the church was created as a cover for a secret and still active fertility cult is what I like to call a Jesus Cult Conspiracy Theory. If he meant that literally it's no wonder that his reputation went into decline after his book appeared. I'm not saying he was wrong; after all, how would I know? It's an entertaining idea, but I'd have to see a lot more evidence before I'll believe it's true.

Ancient Chinese Tombs Hold Remains Of Warriors Possibly Buried Alive

"The 3,000-year-old tombs of a wealthy clan, including the remains of warriors and warhorses that seem to have been sacrificed at their funerals, have been unearthed in an ancient capital city of China." Source: Live Science.

"The complex of 24 tombs was discovered at an archaeological site within the city of Anyang in Henan province, less than 2 miles (2.4 km) from the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site of Yinxu at the city's center. The ruins there are from the ancient city of Yin, the capital of the Shang dynasty, which ruled between about 1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C. — the earliest dynasty ever recorded in China.

"The newfound tomb complex includes several pits that hold war chariots, the remains of horses that drew them and the remains of warriors. Some of the warriors were wearing hats decorated with strings of shells when they died, while the foreheads of some of the horses were decorated with gold veneer and a bronze backing, according to a statement [Chinese language only with lots of pictures] from the government's Xinhua news agency."

Note: There is evidence that ritual suicides and voluntary live burials were conducted at this and other Shang dynasty sites:

According to a Penn State study, "A sizable portion of the oracle bones uncovered in Shang archaeological sites contain script specifically concerning human sacrifice ...These written records are also corroborated by the discovery of numerous  sacrificial mass-graves in those sites. In most Shang sacrificial rituals, only animals and valuable chattels (such as bronze wares) would be used as offerings. There were only two exceptional circumstances where human sacrifices were made: xunzang 殉葬 and renji 人祭.  Xunzang 殉葬  (lit. 'burial sacrifice') refers to the practice in which personal slaves and servants of Shang king, upon their master’s death, were expected to commit ritual suicide or to 'volunteer' themselves to be buried alive alongside with their master.  While the practice of committing ritual suicide upon the master’s death has lingered throughout Chinese history, the second type of human sacrifice, renji 人祭 (lit. 'human offering sacrifice') is practiced only during the Shang dynasty period, and also the most massive in scale in terms of number of people killed in a typical  renji ceremony."

Massive Pyramid, Lost City & Ancient Human Sacrifices Discovered In China (2018)

Video from 2018.

"A 4,300-year-old city, which has a massive step pyramid that is at least 230 feet (70 meters) high and spans 59 acres (24 hectares) at its base, has been excavated in China, archaeologists reported in the August issue of the journal Antiquity." Source: Live Science.(2018)

"The remains of numerous human sacrifices have been discovered at Shimao [the name given to the city]. 'In the outer gateway of the eastern gate on the outer rampart alone, six pits containing decapitated human heads have been found,' the archaeologists wrote."

Video from 2019.

The Phoenician Diaspora In The Westernmost Mediterranean: Recent Discoveries

Video from 2020.

"Important discoveries over the past 15 years in the coastal area between Huelva and Málaga in Spain have illuminated the beginnings of the eighth-century BC Phoenician diaspora into the Western Mediterranean. Here, the authors combine Bayesian modelling of recently published radiocarbon dates with the latest archaeological data to investigate the Phoenician presence in southern Iberia. Their assessment of its significance for the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the Western Mediterranean contributes not only to understanding the integration of the Phoenicians into local communities, but also to apprehending the mechanisms of colonisation and pre-colonial situations elsewhere in protohistoric Europe and other world contexts." Source: Antiquity (2021).

The Origins Of The Phoenicians

Video from 2020.

"The Canaanite culture that gave rise to the Phoenicians apparently developed in situ from the earlier Ghassulian chalcolithic culture. Ghassulian itself developed from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing the domestication of animals during the 6200 BC climate crisis, which led to the Neolithic Revolution in the Levant. Byblos is attested as an archaeological site from the Early Bronze Age. The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically, even though the Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite languages proper.

^"Some scholars suggest there is evidence for a Semitic dispersal to the fertile crescent circa 2500 BC; others believe the Phoenicians originated from an admixture of previous non-Semitic inhabitants with the Semitic arrivals. Herodotus believed that the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain, a view shared centuries later by the historian Strabo. The people of modern Tyre in Lebanon, have particularly long maintained Persian Gulf origins. The Dilmun civilization thrived in Bahrain during the period 2200–1600 BC, as shown by excavations of settlements and the Dilmun burial mounds. However, recent genetic researches have shown that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population." (Wikipedia)

The Oldest Snake Cult In The World?

The 2006 article quoted in this video can be found here.

"The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS), consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves in southern Africa. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its unique religious and spiritual significance to local peoples, as well as its unique record of human settlement over many millennia. UNESCO estimates there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site." (Wikipedia)

Some of the petroglyphs can be seen starting at app. 1:27.

"People have used the Tsodilo Hills for painting and ritual for thousands of years. UNESCO estimates that the hills contain 500 individual sites representing thousands of years of human habitation. The hills' rock art has been linked to the local hunter gatherers. It is believed that ancestors of the San created some of the paintings at Tsodilo, and were also the ones to inhabit the caves and rock shelters. There is evidence that Bantu peoples were responsible for some of the artworks at the hills. Some of the paintings have been dated to be as early as 24,000 years before present."

Related: A 2012 hiker's travel report for the Tsodilo Hills.

A Modern Analysis Of Australian Rock Art

Video from 2010. The rest of this series can be found here.

"Rock art of human figures created over thousands of years in Australia's Arnhem Land has been put through a transformative machine learning study to analyse style changes over the years. The study has tested different styles labelled 'Northern Running figures', 'Dynamic figures', 'Post Dynamic figures' and 'Simple figures with Boomerangs' to understand how these styles relate to one another." Source: Science Daily (2021).

Video from 2017.

This was an interesting study because machine learning can apparently be used to establish a chronology for different types of rock art. In this case the results were surprisingly accurate, confirming earlier work carried out by archaeologists:

"One amazing outcome is that the machine learning approach ordered the styles in the same chronology that archaeologists have ordered them in by inspecting which appear on top of which."

Note: "Arnhem Land has been occupied by Aboriginal peoples for tens of thousands of years and is the location of the oldest-known stone axe, which scholars believe to be 35,500 years old." (Wikipedia) Closed to tourists, the region is one of Australia's last true wilderness areas and I can only imagine what it must have been like trying to survive there ten thousand years ago.

Ass Hybrids Bred For Warfare In Mesopotamia The Oldest Example Of An Animal Hybrid Produced By Humans

Closed-captions useful.

"Before the introduction of the domestic horse in Mesopotamia, valuable equids were being harnessed to ceremonial or military four wheeled wagons and used as royal gifts, but their true nature remained unknown. According to a palaeogenetic study, these prestigious animals were the result of a cross between a domestic donkey and a wild ass from Syria, now extinct. This makes them the oldest example of an animal hybrid produced by humans." Source: Science Daily.

"Vast" 4500-Yr-Old Network Of Funerary Avenues Discovered In Saudi Arabia

"Archaeologists in northwest Saudi Arabia have discovered 4,500-year-old 'funerary avenues' — the longest running for 105 miles (170 km) — alongside thousands of pendant-shaped stone tombs." Source: Live Science.

"They are called funerary avenues because tombs are located beside them. While funeral processions could have taken place on them this is uncertain. They would have linked oases together and formed an ancient highway network of sorts, the researchers said.

"Some of the avenues are delineated with red rock, but most 'were simply formed as the ground was worn smooth by the footfall of ancient people — and especially by the hooves of their domestic animals,' Mat Dalton, a research associate at the University of Western Australia and lead author of a recent paper on the avenues published in the journal The Holocene, told Live Science in an email. 

Ancient Peruvians Spiked Their Beer With Hallucinogens To Make Allies

"Lacing the beer served at their feasts with hallucinogens may have helped an ancient Peruvian people known as the Wari forge political alliances and expand their empire, according to a new paper published in the journal Antiquity. Recent excavations at a remote Wari outpost called Quilcapampa unearthed seeds from the vilca tree that can be used to produce a potent hallucinogenic drug. The authors think the Wari held one big final blowout before the site was abandoned." Source: Ars Technica.

An old dig in progress at Quilcapampa. Video from 2015.

The Wari, and presumably other cultures of the time, used the Anadenantherea colubrina tree, aka the vilca tree, for a variety of purposes, and its beans contained a powerful entheogen:

"The beans of A. colubrina are used to make a snuff called vilca (sometimes called cebil). The bean pods are roasted to facilitate removal of the husk, followed by grinding with a mortar and pestle into a powder and mixed with a natural form of calcium hydroxide (lime) or calcium oxide. The main active constituent of vilca is bufotenin; to a much lesser degree DMT and 5-MeO-DMT are also present." (Wikipedia)