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On Civilization 22

The Ever-unfolding Marriage of

Loewenmensch and Venus of Hohle Fels

It was nearing the end of that time that most of the world, for some reason, refers to as BCE (Before the Christian, or Common, Era), but that we are now labeling BP (before the present). The time I am relating to now is roughly 3,000 to 2,500 BP. Mensch and Hohle Fels were traveling along the eastern Mediterranean, taking time to muse about the changes they had seen since their coming together, some 25,000 to 35,000 years before – they had lost track by now.

One may wonder why Hohle Fels and Mensch are still on the scene of this disjointed narrative; but as we all have begun to discover, history is very much about what has been written (and by whom), and Hohle Fels and Mensch just happened to have found an author who is insistent about continuing to write them in. Ergo they endure – in addition to Bes, nee Leowen, and all their descendants.


As case in point, about the indeterminacy of the historical record, so much is made about Athens being the birth place of democracy, a loosely defined, or understood, term even now. But there is increasing evidence of deliberative assemblies elsewhere on the planet, before Athens took up arms and recreated itself. It occurred in towns and villages and cities throughout Mesopotamia; like Kish and Uruk and Babylon – and in the independent “republics” of India. The noble, and sometimes common, populace having voice in, and selecting, their leaders, including their kings and priests.

Yes, those kings and priests often assumed monarchical powers. They made laws and took decisions about bringing the populace to war (sometimes dependent upon voter consent) – and often recreated themselves as gods. But it is also true that there were village councils and voting mechanisms that set these leaders on course; an idea that may have later navigated its way toward Greece and helped switch on the lights inside the heads of Cleisthenes and Pericles.