Homines sapientes are one of their own kind; they can question the nature and try to find out more about it. Questioning the nature had supplied us with precious knowledge since the first truly intelligent hominids, which is about two million years ago. Most of the advances of the current civilisation can be said to be a result of the common and yet also useful greed of this unique species: curiosity. Curiosity, which has illuminated the paths for philosophy and sciences since the prehistoric times, laid down the foundations of the modern world we live in today by questioning the unquestionable.

This curiosity has made them concern about most things we see in the nature, including themselves. Origins of the human race have been a great concern by most people that have lived until now. To answer the questions "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?", they have established major religions, mythologies and cultures. As an intelligent species, they have been trying to find out the meaning of "life".

Creationism was a widely accepted perspective for many millennia in order to answer those questions. Creationism, whether being monotheistic or polytheistic, very simply states that; we, as an inferior and yet sublime species, were created by the superior being, "God(s)", and have been placed to a specially prepared place, Earth, to “live”. Maybe it was our unrivalled intelligence that has provoked us to think that we were the superior species on the planet, and to think that the environment, the planet, and the universe have all been created for us "to use".

The belief explained above formed the basis of more sophisticated religions and cultures, each slightly or quite varying from each other. The variations are less apparent in religions which originate in the same area, such as Abrahamic religions and their common roots in Sumerian mythology and environmental conditions and catastrophes. A good example of this can be the story of Noah’s Ark. The Black Sea was a freshwater lake until about 5600 BC.[1] It used to be an inland lake, it did not have any connections to any seas and was fed by rivers such as Volga and Danube. The ancient shoreline was more than 100 metres below the present sea levels and the nearby coasts were thriving with high agricultural yield and human population. However, around that time, end of Quaternary Period and subsequent warming of the Earth initiated ice cap melt and sea level rise. The rising sea levels overflowed the Bosporus (in today’s Turkey), breaching a huge waterfall and flooding an area of more than 100 thousand square kilometres together with many communities.[2] This probably had a catastrophic impact on the civilisation at that time proving the existence of an "angry creator" to unaware people at that time, and had its place as a worldwide catastrophe in early Middle Eastern mythologies that are descendants of that flooding. However, it can be seen that neither the people of Asia nor the Americas had known the Great Storm until they met those religions, not as a worldwide event but more like a local one.

The variations in the nearby religions may depend on the local culture, customs and social status of the community. For instance, three major religions that originated from the Middle East, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, have different culinary views and laws, such as the strict ban on the consumption of alcohol and pork in Islam and Judaism.[3] Ban on pork consumption can be classified as a measure to tackle the spread of zoonotic diseases and also to reduce the production of pigs in a dry environment, which is probably an economically wise and healthy thing to do at certain times of droughts and poverty. Christianity might have a greater liberty on those as the powerful Roman elite at the time might not have wanted to get any restrictions on food.

People who were assigned a religion upon birth lived with the beliefs of their religion, regarding other beliefs as lesser true or completely wrong. We have given sacrifices and wars to satisfy our Gods.

These belief systems and mythologies result from the vagueness of nature. We did not know anything about it, so we invented stories about it. An average Sapiens, who might not know a single thing about modern sciences, and functioning and laws of the nature, would still have the urge, out of his curiosity, to link the unknown and fill the gaps. The idea of "superior, unearthly being" dominating the entire universe around would satisfy all of the interest.

The Golden Age of Islam was defined by the advances of the Middle Eastern civilisation in philosophy and science. The observations were made to understand the sublime creation of the highest being: God. Mathematics, astronomy, medicine and engineering have experienced notable improvements. The initial knowledge at the time was not of great significance, and the findings and observations were consistent at macro-scale as it was "written" in holy books. This was the case too in Newtonian physics later on. As said, God was in the centre of the scientific advance as us inferior beings tried to understand this superior spirit, and it was not until the middle of 19th century that the scientists first truly started to question the meaning of "God"; which was examined before by several ancient philosophers such as Socrates, but was never truly sympathised by the common as it was easier not to.

The first illumination in the Western world came with the Renaissance in the 15th century. The preceding dark age of extreme ignorance could never put out the fires of curiosity of the "chosen ones" to find out the truth. "Chosen ones" were the ones who had the most curiosity and the initial courage to question the reality of teachings; they were not the "chosen ones" just because of a heavenly talent they were given with. "Eppur si muove" was a rebellion against the vagueness and inferiority.

Martin Luther’s printing was an initial spark against the ignorance of the common. Although his main objective was to print Bibles at large scales, it then started to print other books as well. Availability of knowledge to population has enabled more people to learn, much like the internet of today. It was only after this period of illumination that the Church had subsequently lost its control over the people and had a more tolerant approach to science. However, it cannot be denied that the intent of the advances and inventions at that time were similar to those of the Islamic Golden Age, and were mostly in harmony with the existence of God.

19th century saw a more Baconian approach to science. With the scientific advances of pre-industrial ages, the puzzle of vagueness began to fill. Proper scientific method based on observation and experimentation became the mainstream way to understand science and the laws of nature. Most strikingly, Charles Darwin, who was fascinated by the links of fossils and species as he travelled around the world, developed his famous "Theory of Evolution" which quaked the pillars of basic modern mythology, the creationism. For the first time, without a need for a "superior intervener", science could explain the origin of many species and their links; destroying the unquestionable "facts" of Abrahamic religions, such as Adam and Eve.

Lately, with the advances in physics at macro-scales, Sapiens began to understand how the universe functions. The vast universe, which had always fascinated human beings, now taught them that they were just a collection of stardust. These advances caused another quake for the second pillar of creationism, namely the question of how God created the universe and the environment that we live in. Two theories of modern science, evolution and the Big Bang, are capable of explaining most things we see today. Unlike creationism, both are quite compatible with scientific laws and nature, and can be explained and evidenced via observation.

From that point on, the scientific revolution has taken off with an exponential scale, impacting our lives significantly at all scales.

Today, many people around the world support the heavenly theory of creationism, pointing out several stages that science cannot fully explain yet. However, I humbly believe that, with the improvements in technology and greater availability of information to the masses, the questioning of the "unquestionable" will eventually reach out to everyone. There will always be something that we don’t fully know yet. However, we will be finding much more about the sublime nature soon.

References

[1] Ryan, W., Pitman, W., Major, C., Shimkus, K., Moskalenko, V., Jones, G., Dimitrov, P., Gorür, N., Sakinç, M. & Yüce, H. An abrupt drowning of the Black Sea shelf. Marine Geology, 138, 119-126. (1997).

[2] Ryan, W., Major, C., Lericolais, G. & Goldstein, S. Catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 31,525-554 (2003).

[3] Harris, M. The Abominable Pig. in The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig: Riddles of Food and Culture, 66-79 https://etnologija.etnoinfolab.org/dokumenti/82/2/2009/harris_1521.pdf (2009).

Photo: KEEM IBARRA, Unsplash.