What Paleolithic Burial Sites Tell Us about Human Spirituality

After dismantling some recent attempts by scientists to explain the origins of religion, Russell Saltzman suggests a theory of his own:

The role of death in religious or spiritual awareness is an element not entirely overlooked, but it is never accorded a primary role in the development of religion, beyond cryptic acknowledgment that the practice of burial may suggest the spiritualization of death. When our ancestors understood the finality of death, something got knocked loose in the lower-Paleolithic mind, something requiring a ritualization of grief. . . .

The first intentional burial of anatomically modern humans was found at the gates of Europe, in Israel at the Skhul and Qafzeh caves on Mount Carmel, [having taken place] roughly 100,000 years ago. Fifty thousand years on, human burials become more elaborate with the use of red ocher. By 40,000 years ago . . . burials were marked by more ocher, grave goods, [and] Venus figurines, all matched by compellingly complex cave art and swift technological developments.

And there is this: burial marks a felt loss, a sad wistful yearning never satisfied, something that must be expressed spiritually and addressed. This is a human need that arose 40,000 years ago, to voice our heartache and sorrow. But to whom may we finally, ultimately address it? Is there a prehistorical analogue to Martin Buber’s I and Thou? God speaks to humans in wrenching natural events, like death, as senseless then as today. Perhaps it is there, in that hammering grief universally shared, that God created a meeting ground for conversation with an early humanity, a revelation disclosing the ultimate Thou giving solace to my devastated I.

Read more at First Things

More about: Archaeology, Death, Martin Buber, Prehistory, Religion & Holidays, Science

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF