PYTHON WORSHIP IN AFRICA 70,000 YEARS AGO

[world-science.net, December, 2006] An archaeologist claims to have discovered mankind’s earliest ritual: worship of the python in Africa, 70,000 years ago. Until now, scholars have largely held that the first rituals were carried out over 40,000 years ago in Europe, according to Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo. Coulson said she discovered evidence of the python ceremonies while studying the origin of the San people of Ngamiland, a sparsely inhabited area of northwestern Botswana. She was seeking Middle Stone Age artifacts in the Tsodilo Hills, an isolated cluster of small peaks in the Kalahari Desert. They’re famed for having the world’s largest concentration of rock paintings and still a sacred place for the San, who call them the “Mountains of the Gods” and the “Rock that Whispers.” The python is one of the San’s most important animals. Their creation myth states mankind descended from the python. Ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been made by the snake as it circled, ceaselessly seeking water. Coulson said her find shows that people from the area had a specific ritual location associated with the python: a small cave on the hill’s’ northern side, so secluded and hard-to-access that it was unknown to archaeologists until the 1990s. When she entered it this summer with three master’s students, they noticed a mysterious rock resembling a huge python’s head, she said. On the six-meter-long by two-meter-tall (20 feet by 6.6 feet) rock, they found three-to-four hundred indentations that she argues could only have been man-made. “You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python. The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving.” There was no evidence that the rock had recently been worked on; its surface was heavily worn, she said. The researchers dug a pit directly before the python stone and found many stones, which they said were tools used to make the indentations. Along with these, some of which were more than 70,000 years old, they found a piece of the wall that had fallen off during the work. In the course of their digs, they found more than 13,000 artifacts, all spearheads and items that could be connected with ritual use, they said. The stones that the spearheads were made from are not from the Tsodilo region, Coulson added, but seem to have come from hundreds of kilometers away. The spearheads are better crafted and more colourful than other spearheads from the same time and area, she added, and surprisingly, only red spearheads had been burned. “Stone age people took these colourful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there. Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site. “Our find means that humans were more organised and had the capacity for abstract thinking at a much earlier point in history than we have previously assumed. All of the indications suggest that Tsodilo has been known to mankind for almost 100,000 years as a very special place in the pre-historic landscape,” said Coulson. She said she also noticed a secret chamber behind the python stone. Some areas of the entrance to this small chamber were worn smooth, indicating that many people had passed through it over the years, she argued. “The shaman, who is still a very important person in San culture, could have kept himself hidden in that secret chamber. He would have had a good view of the inside of the cave while remaining hidden himself. When he spoke from his hiding place, it could have seemed as if the voice came from the snake itself. The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect.” The shaman could also have “disappeared” from the chamber by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft. While large cave and wall paintings abound throughout the Tsodilo Hills, this cave has only two small paintings, she continued: an elephant and a giraffe, painted, surprisingly, exactly where water runs down the wall. Coulson thinks San mythology might explain this. In one San story, the python falls into water and can’t get out. A giraffe pulls it out. The elephant, with its long trunk, is often used as a metaphor for the python. “In the cave, we find only the San people’s three most important animals: the python, the elephant, and the giraffe. That is unusual. This would appear to be a very special place. They did not burn the spearheads by chance. They brought them from hundreds of kilometers away and intentionally burned them. So many pieces of the puzzle fit together here,” Coulson argued. Coulson said she is preparing to submit a paper on the findings to a research journal such as The Journal of Human Evolution. Normally, she acknowledged, to bolster the credibility of new findings, researchers should wait to announce them publicly until a research paper is accepted for publication. But she made an exception in this case, she said, because the findings have already been publicized widely on Botswana television and radio. MORE SCIENCE NEWS HERE

PAGANISM AND WITCHCRAFT IN MELBOURNE

[Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) August 11, 2004] A long-running dispute between two Christian city councillors and pagans in Australia is heading for the courts, where the public officials face complaints of vilification under a law which some Christians fear is being used to stifle free speech. Rob Wilson, the mayor of a city on the edge of Melbourne, will defend himself Thursday before a judge against accusations that he vilified Olivia Watts, a transsexual witch. The hearing will take place under Victoria's state's Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), a body that operates like a court to settle complaints of discrimination under a 2001 law, the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. Early last year, Watts stood for election for the Casey city council and lost. Several months later, in an article in a local newspaper, shpublicly identified herself as a witch. After the report appeared, Wilson -- a council member, but not mayor at that stage -- issued a press release expressing concern that a series of scandals involving the council "had all the trademarks of being linked to the occult." Wilson suggested that local Wiccans may have attempted to plant on the council a candidate who was sympathetic to their cause. The statement, which named Watts, also called on Casey church leaders to hold a special day of prayer about the matter. Wilson was backed up by another councilor, Brian Oates, who also said people linked to witchcraft may have wanted to get a representative onto the council to push through building permits for facilities for such groups. Watts subsequently launched legal action against the two under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, saying her life and business – she worked as a naturopath -- had been ruined. In a separate action, a national organization called the Pagan Awareness Network (PAN) brought a complaint against Wilson and Oates. Watts has since dropped her complaint against Oates and is focusing on Wilson. She is receiving help from the state's legal aid fund to take him before the tribunal. In the other case, the PAN dropped its complaint against Wilson after the mayor agreed to issue a statement saying none of his reported comments were intended to incite fear or hatred. But the network is pursuing the case against Oates, and that hearing has been set for next month. A number of press reports have claimed that Wilson "outed" Watts as a witch. Five days before he issued his statement, however, a local newspaper published a report, complete with a full-color picture of Watts, in which she discussed witchcraft and how it was becoming more popular, especially among young people who saw it as a symbol of rebellion against mainstream faiths. Wilson has declined to speak to the press, but Oates was happy to do so Tuesday. He said it was ludicrous that the PAN was accusing him of vilifying pagans when it was the network itself that was disseminating the allegedly discriminatory comments. Not only were they available on the Internet, but the network had also published and distributed flyers in Casey carrying the remarks. "I would have thought that if somebody was saying things that vilified me and they weren't true, I would certainly be asking for them to be suppressed -- I wouldn't be taking them around to every household." Oates said the complaint was nothing more than "a publicity stunt" on the pagans' part and said he hoped VCAT would agree to drop it. According to the tribunal's operating procedures, "if you are a respondent to a complaint and you believe that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious, misconceived, lacking in substance or an abuse of process, you may apply to have the complaint struck out." Gavin Andrew, coordinator for the PAN in Victoria, said Tuesday the network saw the case as "a very important one for all pagans and followers of other earth-based religions because it will determine whether or not we have the same rights and protections under the law as any other religious group. "There seems to be a trend towards discrimination and vilification growing within our community," he added. Asked whether the case had brought pagans welcome publicity, Andrew said that was not the intention. "Paganism is an umbrella term that covers a number of different earth-based spiritualities," he said. "Most pagans aren't really interested in converting other people to their own beliefs." Andrew said the PAN was providing Watts with support during her case, which he expected would centre around Wilson's press release and the effect it had on her life. "That press release, in our view, is an extraordinary attack on followers of minority religions, and we feel that the mayor should at the very least be made to apologize [publicly] for making these statements." In a national census back in 1996, 0.02 percent of Australians describe themselves as pagans, 0.01 percent as Wiccans and another 0.01 percent as followers of "nature religions." But between 1996 and the next census in 2001, the number identifying themselves as witches grew more than four-fold, while the number calling themselves pagans more than doubled. When the Racial and Religious Tolerance Bill was first being drafted, many Christians in Victoria raised concern that it could be used to suppress freedom of expression. In submissions to parliament, some Christian groups argued that offences such as slander and defamation were already adequately covered by common law provisions. The law was enacted and came into effect in early 2002. Several months later, critics' concerns were realized when the state's top Islamic body and three individual Muslims brought a complaint against two Christian pastors, accusing them of vilifying Islam during a seminar. The case ended up in the VCAT, where after hearings were held over many months, a decision is expected within the next month or two. Oates said Tuesday that he believed the law was introduced with good intent, but he was "concerned about the way it's being used." "These people have found a loophole, a way to publicize their activities at the general public's expense -- the ratepayers of this city and taxpayers as well." He complained that the way the anti-discrimination process was working in practice, "you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent." Read more stories at CROSSWALK