Some semi-academic fun from being misled by sci-fi (The importance of yeast in prehistoric human development)

Sometimes when reading for pleasure I get an enjoyably exciting sense of learning something. Like many things, it’s often just illusion, but if illusion sparks imagination, that’s hardly all bad. Neal Stgephenson’s 1992 ‘Snow Crash’ is a case to point. The world’s best swordsman and hacker par excellance finds trouble working pizza delivery, crashing a Mafia-owned car but meeting a 15-year-old avatar of the goddess of the world’s first recorded religion (and root of Easter, sort of). OK, but at about page 200 it became thought-provoking for me, the subject becoming ‘speech with magical force.’
I quite like mythology, of which there seems to be much more than I can absorb. The multitude of Hindu deities alone would demand more than a lifetime to much absorb, and for all I know, Vodun (Vodou) may be about as rich. With somewhat herd-like instinct, I follow along too much with absurd Eurocentric ‘Greco-Roman’ narrative, despite having spent almost half my life in Asia. I know the plays attributed to Shakespeare weren’t composed by the son of an illiterate small-town glover, and that English is no magical formula, and I even think sometimes in Thai, but training and habit are harsh masters. ‘Snow Crash’ mentions ‘a self-fulfilling fiction’ while giving a, to me, new slant n the Tower of Babel legend. This led me to collect some data, which I present here. I do not pretend it to lead to understandings, although I had hoped.

Viruses have been suspected of influencing human thought processes, and we know some fungi most certainly can, but what about yeast?
Yeasts, an early domesticated organism (man’s oldest industrial microorganism), were used before the development of a written language. Hieroglyphics show that ancient Egyptians used yeast - the process of fermentation to produce alcoholic beverages and to leaven bread dates back past 3000 BCE. Early fermentation was possible due to natural microbial flora: wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria often found with cultivated grains and fruits. Leaven, a soft dough-like medium, is used to start new batches of bread dough. Over the course of time, the use of starter cultures helped to select for improved yeasts, through saving of “good” batches (of wine, beer or dough) to use for the next batch. Cheeses were also made through action by bacteria and molds. In East Asia fermented foods including yogurt and other fermented milk products, pickles, sauerkraut, vinegar (soured wine), butter, and a host of traditional alcoholic beverages became popular.
Archaeologists have found early grinding stones and baking chambers for yeast-raised bread, and 4,000-year-old drawings of Egyptian bakeries and breweries. It’s likely the first fermentation was accidental, occurring when salt with harmless microorganisms was incorporated into food, and it fermented the food making it more delicious and nutritious.
This was taken a step further, perhaps 1000 years later, by Chinese who inoculated basic foods with molds, which created enzymes, in salt-fermented soy-foods like miso, soy sauce, soy nuggets, and fermented tofu; these aided salt-tolerant yeasts and bacteria. These have important distinguishing characteristics: the most important use mold; dairy products and other animal proteins (excepting fish) aren’t widely used, as they are in the West. Mold has mainly been used to make koji (mold-fermented grains and/or soybeans), which serves as a source of more than 50 enzymes in much the same way that, in the West, the enzymes of malt (steeped and sprouted barley or other cereal grains) are used to make alcoholic beverages, just as Japanese make saki and shochu (spirits), and also rice vinegar (yonezu).
The nature of koji is embodied in the characters with which the word is written. In the more traditional form - used with most miso koji and especially with barley koji - the ideographs for ‘barley’ and ‘chrysanthemum’ are placed side by side. In the more recent form - used especially with ready-made rice koji- the ideographs for ‘rice’ and ‘flower’ are conjoined. The first form is said to have originated in China, the latter in Japan about 1,000 years ago. In both, the notion of grain covered with a bloom of mold is vividly expressed. The only traditional East Asian fermented soy-food not prepared with molds is Japan's natto, and its relatives thua-nao in Thailand and kinema in Nepal; these are bacterial fermentations. Some have suggested that molds are widely used since they grow well in areas having a humid climate and long rainy season during the warm months.
Modern fermentation processes and technology are based largely on traditional processes.
In the West mold-fermented foods are limited primarily to cheeses with strong flavors and aromas: Camembert, Blue, Brie, and related others. Because of the widespread use of mold-fermented foods in East Asia, ‘mold’ there has had a rather positive connotation, something like ‘yeast’ in the West. Most Westerners still have a deep-seated prejudice against moldy products, and they generally associate the word ‘mold’ with food spoilage. This may help explain why so little has been published in English about the history of fermentation and knowledge of the fermentation process in East Asia.
The earliest records of the koji-making process can be traced back to at least 300 BCE in China and to the 3rd century CE in Japan. Molds differ in one important respect from yeasts and bacteria in that they can be easily observed with the naked eye. In East Asia it was probably understood that fermentation was a life process long before it was in the West. By the 6th century CE, as recorded in the Ch'i-min yao-shu (the earliest encyclopedia of agriculture), the Chinese had distinct names for two types of molds used in fermented soyfoods; what we now call Aspergillus was then called ‘yellow robe’ and Rhizopus was called ‘white robe.’ These cultures were carefully distinguished and propagated from year to year. By the 10th century a koji starter or inoculum was deliberately being used in the preparation of koji for fermented foods.
These nutritional additions might well have had incredible importance due to the change from hunting and gathering from the wild to sustained agriculture limiting the nutrients obtained. The B-vitamins in yeast were likely of great help for dealing with the stresses of civilization!

Possibly related?

The Mesopotamian pantheon’s most important Gods were a trio: the sky god An (or Anu); Enlil god of storm and the earth; and the water god, Ea (or Enki). Next was another triad: the moon god Nanna (or Sin); the sun god, Utu (or Shamash); and the goddess of fertility and war, Inanna (aka Ishtar). In the later stages of Mesopotamian civilization, a local god, Marduk, became head of the pantheon.
Mesopotamia had a much different climate when it was first settled about 8 to 10,000 years ago; then it was a grassland and marshes. Humans began intensive farming in the area as early as 3,000 BCE, utilizing irrigation, bringing water to fields through man-made ditches or canals. Most anthropologists believe that local tribes came together to dig the canals. The semi-nomadic (wandering) way of life from before was altered; they settled in large communities near the canals. Eventually these became city-states like Ur and Lagash - powerful forces in the region by about the middle of the 4th millennium BCE.
The earliest written records of the first Sumerian societies date from about 4,000 BCE. These records, written on tablets of clay from the river beds, were about the operation of temples. By the time of the first towns and cities in human history, Mesopotamian religion was well organized. Various clay tablets found detail the religion, as well as sacred vessels and architectural remains of temples.
The first written language of Mesopotamia was Sumerian, an ‘isolate’ of no known language family. Along with Sumerian, Semitic languages were spoken in early Mesopotamia. Then Akkadian became the dominant language, with the rise of the Akkadian Empire (founded by Sargon c. 2360 BCE), and also during the Assyrian empires, but Sumerian was retained for administrative, religious, literary and scientific purposes. Different varieties of Akkadian were used until the end of the Neo-Babylonian period (7th to 6th c. BCE). Old Aramaic became common, then was made the administrative language of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and next of the Achaemenid Empire. Akkadian fell into disuse, but both it and Sumerian retained use in temples - the last Akkadian texts date from the late 1st century CE.
Early in Mesopotamian history (about mid-4th millennium BCE) cuneiform was invented for Sumerian language; cuneiform literally means ‘wedge-shaped’, from triangular stylus tips used to impress signs on wet clay. The standardized form of each cuneiform sign seems to have developed from pictographs.
Mesopotamian gods were worshiped in temple complexes forming the center of every city. Made of mud bricks, these tall, conical structures were stepped, or built in receding tiers, on platforms of different shapes, and crowned at the top by a shrine or temple. The whole, called a ziggurat, averaged about 150 feet (45.7 meters) tall. Ziggurats formed a bridge between Earth and heaven, like sacred mountains. Each Mesopotamian city had at least one temple complex, and each was dedicated to the worship of a single deity. The temple complex in Ur, for instance, honored the moon god Sin (also called Nanna by Sumerians). The city of Uruk had both a temple to Inana and a ziggurat dedicated to Anu. The complexes were managed by specialist priests, the only people allowed to worship the deities.

Gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon:
Anu: The sky god, King of the Gods. At the beginning of time, Earth was separated from heaven. Heaven became Anu’s home but sometimes he must go on missions to Earth to avenge other gods.
Enlil: The god of air, wind, and storms. Enlil guards the Tablets of Destiny, on which the fate of everything on Earth is written.
Ea/Enki: Lord of the Earth; fun-loving god of fresh waters, wisdom, and magic. Anu’s eldest and wisest son by a concubine, and protector of humanity. In a myth similar to the story of Noah’s Ark, Ea reveals to Utnapishtim that Enlil intends to destroy mankind in a flood. ‘He Who Fashions Things’ was wise and skillful at all crafts, a brilliant scientist, geneticist and engineer.
Ishtar/Inanna: Queen of Heaven and goddess of love and war. Ishtar journeyed to the Underworld to retrieve her love, Tammuz (the Hebrew name for the Mesopotamian god Dumuzi). She’s described as violent and depicted holding several weapons, standing on a lion.
Sin, or Nanna: The moon god, Anu’s grandson via Enlil, was lord of the calendar and oversaw the seasons. Sin wore a beard of the blue stone lapis lazuli and rode a winged bull.
Utu, or Shamash: the sun god, god of divine justice, son of Nanna and Ningal; Inanna’s twin.
Marduk: The god of Babylon who later came to be the supreme god. Marduk fought an army of demons led by the goddess Tiamat. The New Year's festival celebrates the king's fitness to rule through a ceremony in which he bows to a statue of Marduk.

Tammuz was an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with shepherds, and also the primary consort of goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar). His sister was Geshtinanna, the goddess of vegetation. In the Sumerian King List, Dumuzid is listed as an antediluvian king of the city of Bad-tibira and also an early king of the city of Uruk. He competed against the farmer Enkimdu for Inanna’s hand in marriage, but Inanna preferred the farmer. Utu (aka Shamash, god of the sun, justice, morality, and truth, and twin brother of the goddess Inanna) and Dumuzid gradually persuade her that Dumuzid is the better choice for a husband, arguing that, for every gift the farmer can give to her, the shepherd can give her something even better. In the end, Inanna marries Dumuzid. The shepherd and the farmer reconcile their differences, offering each other gifts. In Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld, Dumuzid fails to mourn Inanna’s death and, when she returns from the Underworld, she allows the galla demons to drag him down to the Underworld as her replacement. Inanna later regrets this decision and decrees that Dumuzid will spend half the year in the Underworld, but the other half of the year with her, while his sister Geshtinanna stays in the Underworld in his place - resulting in the cycle of seasons.

Of course there were 12 in the main pantheon, to go with the 12 lunar months. Anu’s half-sister and wife Antu, their son Enlil’s wife Ninlil (or Sud), their son Ninurta, Enki’s spouse Ninki (Damkina), Nanna/Sin’s wife Ningal, and Anu’s grandson via Enlil, Adad/Iskur and well, to keep things complicated, Ninhursag/Ninmah/Ninti, Anu’s eldest and wisest daughter by concubine Nammu. Oh, and Ereshkigal, Queen of the dead. And a plethora of others… Not that there are exactly 12 lunar months, and addition of olive oil to a yeast-enriched diet may not have changed as much for ‘Ancient Greeks’ as Eurocentric believers in Greco-Roman roots to Enlightenment might have us believe… we still have many fascinating mysteries to linguistic development, much as we do with evolution in general.

The god Ea (whose Sumerian equivalent was Enki), with Anu and Enlil one of the three most powerful Mesopotamian gods, was god of wisdom, fresh water, intelligence, trickery and mischief, crafts, magic, exorcism, healing, creation, virility, fertility, and art. Iconography depicts him as a bearded man wearing a horned cap and long robes as he ascends the Mountain of the Sunrise; flowing streams of water run from his shoulders, emphasizing his association with life-giving water, while trees representing the male and female principle stand in the background. He resides in the ocean called the abzu (Akkadian apsû, an important place in Mesopotamian cosmic geography), far underneath the earth. Sumerian texts about Enki include overtly sexual portrayals of his virile masculinity. In particular, there’s a metaphorical link between the life-giving properties of the god’s semen and the animating nature of fresh water from the abzu. Ea represents wisdom, magic and incantations. He’s the ultimate source of all ritual knowledge used by exorcists to avert and expel evil. Ea was patron of the arts and crafts, and all other achievements of civilization; his connection with water meant he was also patron deity of cleaners.

Inanna was the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and also of war. She became identified by the Akkadians and Assyrians as the goddess Ishtar, then with the Hittite Sauska, Phoenician Astarte and Greek Aphrodite (among others). Her’s was the bright star of the morning and evening, Venus. Inanna is cited as the subject of the Burney Relief (better known as The Queen of the Night), a terracotta panel dating from the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon (1792-1750 BCE) – but it’s her sister Ereshkigal more likely depicted.
In some myths she’s the daughter of Enki, god of wisdom, fresh water, magic and a number of other things; in others she’s the daughter of Nanna, god of the moon and wisdom, and twin sister of the sun god Utu/Shamash. Her power of provocation is almost always a defining characteristic in any of the tales told of her.
Inana/Ištar, by far the most complex of Mesopotamian deities, displays contradictory traits. In Sumerian poetry, she’s sometimes a coy young girl under patriarchal authority, while at others she’s an ambitious goddess seeking to expand her influence - e.g., in the myth Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld, her marriage to Dumuzi is arranged without her knowledge, either by her parents or by her brother Utu. Even when given independent agency, she’s mindful of boundaries: rather than lying to her mother and sleeping with Dumuzi, she convinces him to propose to her in the proper fashion. These actions are in stark contrast with her portrayal in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where she’s a femme fatale. Taken by the handsome Gilgameš, Inanna invites him to be her lover. Her advances are rejected - the hero accusingly recounts a string of past lovers she has cast aside and destroyed. There is, arguably, a persistent commonality between these two natures of Inana/Ishtar: her sexuality. The young Inanna of Sumerian poetry, who says ‘Plough my vulva, man of my heart’ is no less desirous than the Inanna/Ištar portrayed in Gilgamesh: ‘Let us enjoy your strength, so put your hand and touch our vulva!’. Accordingly, she was the recipient of prayers regarding (im)potency or unrequited love. Also the patron goddess of prostitutes, she was equally fond of making war and of making love: ‘Battle is a feast to her’. Her warlike aspect tends to be expressed in politically charged contexts in which she’s praised in connection with royal power and military might. This is already visible in the Old Akkadian period, when Naram-Sin frequently invokes the ‘warlike Ištar’ (aštar annunītum) in his inscriptions and becomes more prominent in the Neo-Assyrian veneration of Inana/Ištar, whose two most important aspects in this period, namely, Ištar of Nineveh and Ištar of Arbela, were intimately linked to the person of the king. The warrior aspect of Inana/Ištar, which does not appear before the Old Akkadian period, emphasizes her masculine characteristics, whereas her sexuality is feminine.
The role of the goddess in legitimizing political power was not, however, restricted to her masculine aspect as the warlike Ištar but is attested also for the sexual Inanna in her female aspect. Many third-millennium rulers described themselves as her spouse, due to Inana's significant agency in wielding political power.
Some mythological narratives dwell on the astral aspect of Inana/Ištar, albeit indirectly. In the myth Inana and Šu-kale-tuda, the clumsy gardener boy Šu-kale-tuda has intercourse with the goddess while she is asleep under a tree. Enraged at this, Inana/Ištar goes in search for the hiding boy. The course she takes in searching her violator has been suggested to mimic that of the astral course of the Venus star. Likewise, her movements in the myth of Inana and Enki, in which the goddess travels first to Enki’s city Eridu from Uruk and travels back again, recalls the cycle of Venus. Presumably the same journey was carried out terrestrially in festivals.

A liminal, that is, in-between, role may also be ascribed to Inana/Ištar by virtue of having travelled to and back from the underworld. In her mythological descent to the netherworld, she sits on her sister Ereškigal’s throne, rouses the anger of the Anunnaki and is turned to a corpse. Only through the agency of her minister Ninšubur, who secures the help of Enki/Ea, was she able to come alive again and return to the world above. In one myth, she takes from Enki/Ea are those associated with ‘going down into the netherworld’ and ‘coming up from the netherworld’. It’s been argued that Mesopotamian grave goods reflect the iconography of Inana/Ištar more than that of any other deity because of this inherent association with transition between the world of the living and that of the dead.

The Exaltation of Inana:
Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent [dazzling] light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Urac! Mistress of heaven, with the great pectoral jewels, who loves the good headdress befitting the office of en priestess, who has seized all seven of its divine powers! My lady, you are the guardian of the great divine powers! Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the foreign lands. When like Ickur [god of storms] you roar at the earth, no vegetation can stand up to you. As a flood descending upon those foreign lands, powerful one of heaven and earth, you are their Inana.
Raining blazing fire down upon the Land, endowed with divine powers by An, lady who rides upon a beast, whose words are spoken at the holy command of An! The great rites are yours: who can fathom them? Destroyer of foreign lands, you confer strength on the storm. Beloved of Enlil, you have made awesome terror weight upon the Land. You stand at the service of An's commands….

And a somewhat fragmentary hymn to Utu:
Emerging …… below and gazing upwards, Utu (Shamash), great physician, father of the black-headed,
Utu, great hero, focus of the assembly, king, bison running over the mountains!
Utu, bison running over the mountains!
A young wild cow ……, a young gazelle (?) caught in a trap, Utu, the son born (on Earth) with the city
to Ningal (Nannar / Sin‘s spouse) in the E-nun-ana, a bull,
a cedar fed with water thriving among cypresses, holy (?),
patient-hearted, playful, radiating light, he is iridescent radiance!
Then, as my king comes forth, the heavens tremble before him and the earth shakes before him.
After he has left the palace he …….
The heavens …….
May the bolt of heaven …….
The stars …… are awe-struck.
His mother …… in the streets.
She spreads her protection towards Utu.
He has raised his head over the mountains; he is indeed their king!
Utu who decrees judgments for all countries,
the lord, the son of Ningal, who renders decisions for all countries, the lord who is highly skilled at verdicts, the son (grandson) of Enlil,
highly knowledgeable and majestic Utu, the son of ……(Nannar / Sin)–
Utu has placed the …… on his head.
The lord, the son of Ningal, holds the 50 …… in his hand
and thunders over the mountains like a storm.
He has lifted his head over the Land.
My king Utu (Sun God), you cross all the shining mountains like an eagle!
He has lifted his gaze over the mountains.

Sumerian language is an isolate - unrelated to any other known language, dead or alive. It’s been theorized that a virus changed human mental workings and language utilization, but might it have been instead a simpler nutritional thing, namely yeast? Sumerian became an esoteric language of religion, Sumerian deities transformed into other deities, society transformed as diet transformed, and what was once one thing became another, sort of. What goes on in the gut heavily affects what goes on in the brain.

There are about 100 known language isolates (between 75 and 129). The only large ones are Korean with 42 million and Basque with over 580,000 speakers. Only a few others are widely familiar (Ainu (Japan), Waorani (Ecuador), Cayuse and Zuni (USA), plus some Australian and Papuan Aborigine languages). There are ~350 independent language families (including isolates); families for which a genetic relationship with any other language family can’t be shown.
Some language isolates may have had relatives which disappeared, as with Ket of Siberia, the only surviving language of the Yeniseian family. It’s possible that Basque once had relatives; Basque scholars accept that Basque descended from Aquitanian, but maybe they were two members of a language family, rather than Aquitanian being a direct ancestor of Basque. Maybe Aquitanian had a sister language, diversified from an earlier common ancestor, and that Basque descends from that.
Many evolutionary linguists believe that all human languages descended from a single, primitive language, which itself evolved from the grunts and noises of the lower animals. MIT linguist Noam Chomsky argued that the innate ability of children to acquire the grammar necessary for a language can be explained only if one assumes that all grammars are variations of a single, generic ‘universal grammar’, and that all human brains come ‘with a built-in language organ that contains this language blueprint’. But explaining this ‘innate ability’, a ‘universal grammar’, and the ‘built-in language organ’ of humans seems impossible. He also questioned whether AIDS came from a virus (of course he did this with excellent linguistic utilization, never out-and-out saying very much). Steven Pinker, an MIT psychologist wrote: ‘best minds have flung themselves at the puzzles for millennia but have made no progress in solving them.’ ‘Problems such as how a child learns language or how a fertilized egg becomes an organism are horrendous in practice and may never be solved completely.’ However, the existing state of human language suggests that our variety of dialects and sub-languages developed from a relatively few (perhaps less than 20) languages. These original ‘proto-languages’ were distinct within themselves, with no previous ancestral language. How 20 proto-languages metamorphed into a hundred language isolates I can’t imagine. Research has shown young children to use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all. They classify the world into categories (people or objects, for instance) and develop understandings the relations among things, according to experience. I note my four-year-old losing a less biased approach to emotional and pragmatic matters with language development (i.e. socialization). Beginnings and early development remain mysterious. Junkie William Burroughs claimed language to be infectious, exerting limitations and controls over people’s minds by its very existence and utility, and that the ability to think and create was limited by the conventions of grammar and usage. While I seem to remember enjoying reading his ‘Book of Breeething’ (sic) (aka ‘Book of Breathing’) while standing at a podium in the Rare Book Room of the Library of Congress in DC, sometime in the early 70s, that ‘language is a virus from outer space’ seems to me a dictum of no utility. Somehow the ‘methods of mind control being used by The Nova Mob, a gang of intergalactic criminals intent on destroying Earth’ don’t worry me much. This was a guy who fantasized 1000 boys jacking off into a stream (or river, I forget) simultaneously… but with the advent of AIDS and computer viruses in the 80s, related speculations became rampant.
Some sources use the term ‘language isolate’ to indicate a branch of a larger family with only one surviving daughter. For instance, Albanian, Armenian and Greek are commonly called Indo-European isolates. While part of the Indo-European family, they do not belong to any established branch (such as the Romance, Celtic or Slavic and Germanic branches), but instead form independent branches. Despite their great age, Sumerian and Elamite can be safely classified as isolates. Elamite, an extinct language used in present-day southwestern Iran from 2800 to 550 BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear around the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great. Elamite is thought to have no demonstrable relatives and is usually considered a language isolate.
Etruscan is sometimes claimed to be Indo-European. Although most historical linguists believe this is unlikely, it’s not yet possible to resolve the issue. Ancient Mesopotamian languages Hattic, Gutian, Hurrian, Mannean and Kassite are also believed to be isolates, but this status is disputed by a minority of linguists. Similar situations pertain to extinct isolates of the Americas like Beothuk and Cayuse. A language thought to be an isolate may turn out to be relatable to other languages once enough material is recovered, but with unwritten languages, that’s unlikely.
Reduced access to plant foods may have led to more meat-eating and, as a result, a bigger brain. The enlarged brain led to premature births, and in consequence a protracted childhood, during which mothers cooed and crooned to their offspring. An upright stance altered the shape of the mouth and vocal tract, allowing a range of coherent sounds to be uttered. However enough food to feed their rather oversized brains was found, man’s ancestors happened on the trick of language, and a whole new mental landscape opened up. Man became more self-aware and perhaps self-possessed.
For all I know, the invention of stable, easily storable dry noodles was as important in human development as yeast, garlic, olive oil or advanced meat or fish storage methods. And if nutrition, or a virus, did awake something in the human brain, there’s an action-reaction situation to be dealt with vis-à-vis the question of how the brain had the capacity to be opened up in the first place!


The Whole Worm Hole

Thousands of million years ago
There was little life and all of it small.
Every cell, then as now, was the first cell.

Before there was either before or after
All was full.
Somehow bubbles of emptiness dropped in
Plop plop, start stop, drip drip
Emit or express, rest
Emit or express, rest
Expanding vacuity until its nothing
Attained virtual ubiquity
With little of matter scattered about
And some, somehow, without oxygen,
Exploding into flame.

All residue, perhaps remains
Of a vast myopic multi-dimensional
Dragon-worm that bit its own hind-end
When the Great Collector of Intellectual Property
Too long forgot to feed that guard worm.
Pain caused scales to fall from its eyes.
It died of fright, then resurrected
As us.
To know
Is to replace those dragon scales
On your own eyes.

Does not the past change
More than the Future?