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When Zarathustra Spoke: The Reformation Of Neolithic Culture And Religion (Bibliotheca Iranica: Zoroastrian Studies) (Hardcover)by Mary Settegast (4 customer reviews)
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Product Details
Hardcover: 161 pages
Publisher: Not Avail (June 30, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 1568591845
Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 6.2 x 9.0 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.0 pounds. (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: based on 4 reviews. (Write a review.)
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #822,809 in Books
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:When Zarathustra Spoke, August 4, 2005
Reviewer:
Thea Tenenbaum - See all my reviewsClean, clear, and scrupulously documented, When Zarathustra Spoke is a must-read for anyone interested in the origins of civilization. Mary Settegast has found good and sufficient reason in the archaeology of the Neolithic Middle East for taking seriously the passages in ancient literature that place Zarathustra in the late-seventh millennium BC. I found her argument to be both intelligent and persuasive, offering a fresh approach to the question of why the agricultural way of life spread so quickly after 6500 BC. As a concerned environmentalist, I was particularly struck by the depiction of Zarathustra as not only the moving force behind this rapid diffusion of farming but also the first to designate man as steward of the earth. Fascinating. Was this review helpful to you?
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:New insights on the "Neolithic Revolution" , July 20, 2005
Reviewer:
Jeffrey Fuller (Boulder, CO, USA) - See all my reviews I loved it! What a treat to find a truly original - and radically controversial - idea backed up by solid scholarship. This elegantly written book owes its existence to the fact that the author refused to dismiss the accounts of ancient Greek and Roman historians (Pliny, Eudoxus, Xanthus, Plutarch) that mention Zarathustra and place his life thousands of years before conventional estimates. Armed with new information made possible by advanced archaeological techniques, Settegast makes a compelling case for linking one of the great puzzles of Neolithic archaeology - the "sudden and irrevocable diffusion of the agricultural way of life" - with the simultaneous spread of Zarathustra's religious imperative emphasizing the role of farming in the religious life. A fascinating read.Was this review helpful to you?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:A Fresh Look at the Neolithic, July 16, 2005
Reviewer:
John David Ebert (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews Is it possible that Zarathustra, the famous founder of the Persian religion which bears his name, could have lived during the seventh millenium? The great German mystic Rudolf Steiner, for one, thought so. And so did the Greeks, for some of them regarded him as living at about 6500 b.c. Most modern scholars of the subject vacillate between the two dates of 500 b.c. and about 1500 b.c., and since the language of the Gathas bears many similarities with that of the Sanskrit Rig Veda, many favor this latter date. But Mary Settegast has revived the tradition of dating him in the seventh millenium, for she believes that the archaeological evidence from this period most closely fits with the narrative schemas of Zoroastrianism. The middle of the seventh millenium was a time of great change in which the preceding period, known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, with its skull cults and worship of male virility in the form of statues and bull's heads, was begining to fade away. The making of weapons, furthermore, in the form of arrowheads and speartips, simply vanishes during the new period, that known as the Pottery Neolithic, as farming communities in both Greece and Iran began to take up the practice of agriculture in earnest. This phenomenon is interesting, according to Settegast, in light of the fact that Zarathustra privileged the farmer over the warrior class. The newly dawning Pottery Neolithic also brought with it new culture forms, such as the making of the world's finest painted pottery on vessels which apparently had no practical use, copper and lead metallurgy, irrigation and generally smaller settlements. The iconography of the pottery from this period is elaborate and amazing. Far from being--as some scholars think--mere decoration, the motifs articulated on these vessels have a definite cosmological and mythological significance. Whatever such significance was, it is now lost to us since no writings--or even oral traditions--have survived from this period, but Ms. Settegast believes that its iconography becomes intelligible in the light of Zoroastrian mythology. The emphasis on dark and light contrasts, checkerboard patterns, double axes, all are motifs based on the principle of cosmic polarity, which is, of course, the whole basis of Zoroastrian cosmic dualism. Other phenomena from this period may also fit well with the Zoroastrian ethos. Irrigation, for example, which appears during this phase for the first time, was known in later Zoroastrian texts such as the Vendidad as a sacred duty. We also find miniature mortars and pestles from this period, which is interesting in light of the later Zoroastrian ritual of the yasna ceremony, in which the cosmic mortar and pestle were used to grind the sacred haoma plant. Ms. Settegast's book is full of such wonderful speculations--such as the totally fresh idea of Catal Huyuk as a possible early stronghold of Indo-European traditions, which turns its conventional associations upside down--and if the book has a major flaw, it is that it is too short. At only 154 pages it is only a fraction of the length of her earlier masterpiece Plato Prehistorian, and one can only wish that this book had been longer, so full of fresh ideas does it seem. Ms. Settegast is able to look at the Neolithic with a gaze undiminished by the bland writings of the Levantine specialists in this field, and one can only hope that she will write another book soon.Was this review helpful to you?
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:The Mother of All Middle Eastern Religions, July 5, 2005
Reviewer:
Kamron Parsa (Irvine, California) - See all my reviewsWhen Zarathustra Spoke The Reformation of Neolithic Culture and Religion Mary Settegast Ancient Greek and Roman historians ventured very few absolute dates in recounting events of great age. And yet several of them -Xanthus, Pliny, Eudoxus, Plutarch-individually and specifically gave dates ranging from 6500 to 6200 BC for the time of Zarathustra (Greek Zoroaster), the legendary Iranian prophet whose missionary-borne message was said to have reached far beyond his native land. Until quite recently these ancient, almost mythic claims could neither be proved nor disproved and have generally been ignored by both the Zoroastrian religion, which places its founder in the middle of the first millennium, c. 630 BC, and modern western scholars, who find that date far too recent and believe Zarathustra is more likely to have lived in the second millennium BC. The archaeological record of Iran offers little support for either of these conventional chronologies, however, while there are unmistakable indications of an ideological change sweeping across Iran and Iraq in the last half of the seventh millennium. Manifested in dark-light designs on extraordinarily fine ceramics, this new symbolic system accompanied the founding of a multitude of agricultural settlements from Turkmenistan to southeastern Europe, the final phase of the Neolithic Revolution. A thorough comparison of the archaeology of this period with texts from the oral traditions of ancient Persia (modern Iran) suggests that the leader of this new movement was indeed Zarathustra, living at precisely the time in which he was placed by the Greek and Roman historians of antiquity. Modern religious scholars have long been challenged by the lack of reliable information about even the most basic elements of Zarathustra¹s biography. When and where he was born, where he found refuge after being cast out of his homeland, what the early communities of his followers were like, and what might his relationship have been to the Magi (whose order he is said to have founded) are all subjects of intense controversy whose resolution is dependent on the accurate placement of Zarathustra in time. In the course of his teachings, Zarathustra is known to have urged the individual men and women of his time to choose between asha (right order, associated with light) and drug (bad or false order, associated with darkness). Precisely what action was to be taken by those choosing the path of asha is unclear in the Gathas (archaic hymns of unknown age that are believed to have been composed by the prophet himself), but later Zoroastrian texts repeatedly referred to the essential position of agriculture in the religious life - "He who cultivates grain, cultivates righteousness." (Vendidad III.3.31) In addition, many scholars believe that the primary struggle addressed by Zarathustra was between agricultural and nomadic ways of life. If the ancient Greek and Roman historians were correct in placing him in the last half of the seventh millennium, the proliferation of new agricultural settlements that sprang up across the Middle East after 6500 BC would suggest that the way of asha lay in cultivating the land - and it was this choice, made again and again by individuals converted into this intensely missionary faith, that reformed and secured the Neolithic Revolution. The historical impact of that choice, which led to an irreversible spread of the agricultural way of life, attendant increases in population, and ultimately the development of cities, is explored at the end of our investigation - as is the possibility that the teachings of Zarathustra have had an equally profound impact on western religion and philosophy. Historians of the Zoroastrian religion claim that he was the first to give voice to ideas that would become articles of faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The belief in one supreme God, creator of the world, who is opposed by an evil power not within his control is fundamental to Zarathustra's teachings - as is the vision of a world moving toward a final state of perfection, an idea which today is embedded within the western psyche, fueling our linear sense of time and our faith in infinite progress. The perspective taken in this book is admittedly unconventional, and the congruence between seventh-millennium archaeological events and Zarathustra¹s teachings might be dismissed as nothing more than extraordinary coincidence were it not for the indications in the literature of antiquity. The Greek and Roman historians in question lived in different centuries and used different points of reference in recording their seventh millennium dates for Zarathustra, making it unlikely that they were all borrowing from some common myth. Only recently have advances in archaeological techniques, including the extension of calibrated carbon-14 readings back into the Neolithic period, enabled us to judge the acuracy of these ancient claims and to give their authors a long-overdue day in court. The evidence presented here will challenge both the conventional dating of Zarathustra and the widely held view that the spread of farming must be tied to the economics of survival. But if there is any truth in the ancient claims, two of the great puzzles of prehistory - the late-seventh-millennium resurgence of agriculture and the placement in time of one of the world¹s most influential religious leaders - might be resolved as one. Modern translations of the Gathas have corrected Nietzsche¹s fabricated verison of what Zarathustra said. Perhaps modern archaeology can tell us when he spoke. Was this review helpful to you?
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