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Man As The Prayer: The Origin and Nature of Humankind

by Yup Lee; co-published with Shin Ho Publishing

199 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0121; ISBN 1-55212-456-8; US$30.00, C$45.00, EUR29.30, £20.30

In this book, a totally new picture of five million years of human evolutionary history is presented.

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about the book      about the author      sample chapter      catalogue info

About the Book In this book, a totally new picture of five million years of human evolutionary history is presented. Male and female hominids lived separately in different areas for most of the last five million years. They met together once a year and stayed together for a brief period. What they did for and during this annual mating season is the key to the proper and correct understanding of human evolution. Five million years ago, the last common ancestors of the African great apes and humans lived in an extensive rain forest encompassing a river and a lake. There was a system of mountains, a lake and a river, all of which were linked together. Ever since then, mountains, rivers and lakes were intimately involved with humankind. When the climate turned arid, the riverside forest broke into fragments of small forests. In desperate need of food, the last common ancestors were forced to visit the trees which dotted the river shore. They developed a unique mode of terrestrial locomotion to move between the main forest and the scattered patches of forest. One day, during drought, a small group of apes ventured to a faraway tract of forest beside the river. On the road, they were caught in heavy rain and in the resulting frenzy, they lost their way back home. During their wanderings, they evolved into gorillas. Almost at the same time, another small group of apes met the same fate, and evolved into chimpanzees. As the climate grew increasingly arid, the year divided itself into dry and wet seasons. During the dry season, males were forced to remain in the nearby mountain ranges because there weren't enough food in the home forest to support both males and females. As a result, males and females parted ways during the annual dry season. These were the ancestral hominids, who evolved into australopithecines. Two and a half million years ago, as the climate became incresingly arid, the forest surrounding the lake began to break up and disappear. Finally, the female hominids, the inhabitants of the forest at the margin of the lake, were forced down to the ground. They became fully terrestrial, but they did not know where to find food and water. Consequently, females began to follow herds of Hipparion horses. Later, they switched to one-toed horses. Following these migrating horses, some hominids ended up in East Asia from Africa about 2 million years ago. In the same fashion, some hominids later wound up in Europe. In the meantime, male hominids developed and acquired unique behavior. As rain began to fall, they went downstream to their courting ground. There, they beat the ground with sticks to attract and seduce mates. They beat pebbles, sand, the bones of dead animals or anything else on the ground, leaving behind piles of fractured, dented, and broken bones. These stone debris are erroneously called Oldowan tools by archaeologists and anthropologists. Rain was so important to our remote ancestors because the rain was a harbinger of the brief annual mating season. They prayed for the coming of rain as the climate became arid. They prayed earnestly by beating the ground with sticks in their place of courtship. In due course, hominids became prayers. Later as rain began to fall irregularly, the rain lost its foremost importance. Instead, the horse ascended in importance. Now, males prayed for the coming of the horse, accompanied by their mates. About 32,000 years ago, Upper Palaeolithic Europeans began to pray for the coming of the horse by carving, engraving and painting horses on the cave walls. Painting was simply another version of prayer. The same was true for language. Human language was developed out of verbal prayer. In this book, the common thread running through the entire history of human evolution is crisply and clearly explicated. The origins of construction, music, sculpture, handicrafts, painting and languages are all clarified as variations of the same theme. That theme was prayer.

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About the Author Yup Lee was born in 1947 Korea. He has studied in Korea, Europe, and America.

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Sample Chapter

Chapter Twelve - A Sculptured Raindrop

     The more difficulty male hominids experienced in finding their mates, the more often they had to beat the ground. They did so desperately and earnestly, sometimes for months, sometimes for years. While tracking down the horses, they beat the ground frequently. Whenever they stumbled across something novel or strange, they beat it to determine if it was harmless. When they found dry dung, they beat it to find out whether it was horse excrement or not.
     As time went by, beating acquired more and more significance and became equivalent to praying for their wishes. Originally, they used to beat the ground with a pair of sticks to make sure the ground in front of themselves was solid and secure. Later, they beat the ground to attract and seduce their mates. Now, they learned one more trick. They beat the ground to pray for their wishes. They prayed for rain, begged for the horses, and pleaded for mates by beating the ground earnestly with a stick. Some of them saw their wishes realized. Others went extinct. Then males took it one step further.
     There was no wet season any more. It rained only intermittently throughout the year. Whenever rain fell, they went downstream to their courtship areas and beat the ground. Most of the time, they failed to meet their mates. If they were lucky, they saw them once a year. If not, they met them once in two or more years. Eventually, some of them began to believe that only one particular kind of rain brought their mates. Accordingly, they hit upon the idea that all they had to do was to beat the ground in a certain way to summon such a rain. Beating acquired the added meaning of magic making.
     As they came to believe in magic, they started to take an enormous interest in how to use the sticks. They believed that if they could recreate the sound of the right sort of rain, it would start to fall. They were eager to experiment with beating various objects with different notes, tempos, and tunes and were obsessed with artificially recreating the sound of the falling rain. They discovered that different kinds and sizes of stones and bones produced diverse sounds. In the course of such experiments, they hit on the fact that flint gave off sparks when struck hard with a stick. They thought that the brilliant flashes of light were a miniature version of lightning. In due course, they learned how to produce and orchestrate a series of sounds such as rolling thunder, rain-carrying gusts of wind, spattering raindrops, rain at its climax, and abating rain, peppered with miniature lightning. They practiced rain-making magic.
     They beat pieces of flint to create sparks. If flint was not available in the vicinity of their courting ground, they searched for it.¹ Sometimes, sparks from the flint ignited parched grasses nearby, resulting in a small-scale fire. A stroke of lightning was thus recreated effectively. Traces of such fires are still visible in areas such as the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Numerous patches of clay baked by fire about 1.5 million years ago can be found there.² Beyond a doubt, the intentional production of sparks by hominids began before then.
     Hominids did not content themselves with recreating the scene of lightning and the sounds of thunder, gust, and rain by waving, swishing, and beating sticks. They went one step further to make raindrops themselves in order to call in the right sort of rain.
     They beat a block of stone held in the left hand with a stick gripped in the right hand and chipped it carefully into the shape of a raindrop. Stone raindrops as old as 1.4 million years were discovered at archaeological sites in areas such as Konso-Gardula in Ethiopia, Peninj in Tanzania, and 'Ubeidiya in Israel.³
     Archaeologists and anthropologists call these stone raindrops Acheulean hand axes. They were described as being shaped in the form of a pointed tongue, a pear, or a teardrop.⁴ But 1.4 million years ago, hominids did not make anything like hand axes near rivers and lakes. They made raindrops out of stone blocks as part of rain-making rites.
     Their descendants continued to practice rain-making rites generation after generation. About 250,000 years ago, some of them refined their stone raindrops by adding another symbol of rain. In the Middle Gravels at Swanscombe, Kent, in England, they chose a piece of flint containing a fossil sea urchin (Conulus sp.) and fashioned it into a raindrop.⁵ Swanscombe hominids were careful to select blocks of flint which contained such a fossil because in their minds, it was associated with the coming of rain. In fact, a heavy rainfall today still brings such pieces of flint from chalk to the surface.⁶
     A similar stone raindrop was found at West Tofts in Norfolk, England, but this one was fashioned out of a piece of flint containing a fossil mollusk shell (Spondylus spinosus).⁷ It can be reasoned without difficulty that the shell was associated with rain in the minds of West Tofts hominids. As a matter of fact, the so-called Achulean hand axes were not the extensions of hominid hands but of their brains. No doubt, the English words rain and brain are more than just a pair of rhymes.
     In short, beating with sticks exerted a decisive influence upon the course of human evolution. About five million years ago, male hominids began beating the ground with a pair of broken branches in a heavy rainstorm to make sure that the ground in front of themselves was solid and secure. As time passed, beating the ground with sticks turned out to be an important way of attracting females. It became an important component of courtship displays of males for females. Later, beating acquired the added significance for males of praying for their wishes.
     As their prayer was eventually answered, they came to believe in its effectiveness. Subsequently, their prayers became more earnest. With the passage of time, they became more and more confident to the extent that they began to believe they could work their will by praying in the correct way. They became magicians, and their beating sticks turned into magic wands. Thus, beating with sticks acquired yet another meaning of practicing magic.
     Shamanism is not free from the influence of the magic wand. In fact, beating with sticks is an important part of shamanism. For instance, shamans go into a trance simply by beating a percussion instrument, especially a drum, at a certain tempo.⁸ Such being the case, our remote ancestors may have experienced an unusual state of mind when they beat various objects in a certain way. Taken together, stick beating underlies religious and magical beliefs as well as shamanism.

1. F. Clark Howell, "Recent Advances in Human Evolutionary Studies," Quarterly Review of Biology 42 (1967): 491.
2. Harris, 26.
3. Larick and Ciochon, 542.
4. Oakley, "Skill," 25; Jolly and Plog, 283; Tattersall, 63.
5. Oakley, "Higher Thought," 209.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Michael Harner, "A Different Drummer," Natural History 106 (2): 55 (1997).

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Catalogue Information

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