Neolithic 'Mountain Cult' May Have Shaped the Spirit of Today's Great Religions

Moses wasn't the first to climb a mountain to meet his god. For at least 10,000 years people in the Negev and Sinai deserts were climbing skyward, leaving silent hints at purpose beyond functionality in the shape of standing stones and altars on the hilltops.

Whether Moses was a historic figure or where Mount Sinai might be – we do not know. We can say that Israel's southern deserts feature sites that whisper of a "mountain cult" that appeared in the Neolithic period, between about 9,500 to 7,000 years ago, and arguably helped shape religion as we know it to this very day.

At least 405 prehistoric mountain cult sites have been identified in the southern Negev so far - and most of the desert remains to be properly surveyed, says Uzi Avner, an expert on desert archaeology at the Dead Sea & Arava Science Center. In addition, he has identified 234 open-air sanctuaries (aka open-air sites) in the Negev and southeastern Sinai dating to about 9,000 to 4,000 years ago.

The mountain cult sites are called "Rodedian sites" because more than 120 of them cluster in an area 3 by 4 kilometers (1.8 by 2.5 miles) on the rugged mountains above Nahal Roded – a 13-kilometer-long wadi in the Arava near Eilat. The relevant section of this seasonal stream is 8 kilometers long.

The open-air sanctuaries were large, the biggest being 30 by 13 meters in area. The Rodedian sites were small, with one exception. They had no particular orientation, by the way.

The Rodedian sites and open-air sanctuaries may have been built by the same people, for different purposes, Avner postulates: the open-air sanctuaries were devoted to gods. The Rodedian sites were associated with an ancestor-cum-fertility cult, he believes. It is these we will be discussing.

These sites were delineated by a low perimeter of stones and some were erected on artificial platforms: low, flattened surfaces on slopes that were supported by retaining walls. Their paraphernalia included regular masseboth (standing stones), alone or in groups of repeating numbers; perforated masseboth; anthropomorphic stone images; vulva-shaped stones; stone bowls; small "vase"-shaped installations; and miniature houses.

These all attest to the cultic nature of the sites, Avner says. He believes the masseboth represent gods, while the figurines – which are crude but clearly anthropomorphic in shape – represent ancestors.

It is the date of the mountain cult sites, about 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, that puts paid to a popular theory about the rise of "complex religions."

The previous thinking had been that after humans' forefathers spent a million-plus years roaming about and hunting and gathering, the shift to settling down and farming had its upsides but also caused tremendous new stresses partly because of sudden crowding and territorialism. All this drove a religious "explosion."

But these Rodedian sites predate all that. When they were built, agriculture was just starting to emerge in the Fertile Crescent – and we must point out that the Negev and Sinai are not part of the Fertile Crescent. Agriculture wouldn't come to the desert region for another thousand years.

It is even possible that the roots of the Neolithic rituals lie even earlier: In the Natufian, an explosively innovative culture that emerged in the Levant about 15,000 years ago and which was also a time of profound change. The Natufians built stone habitations, kept dogs and seem to have "invented the wheel" in the form of spindle whorls.

They may also have "invented" the standing stone, in this region at least. The earliest one we know of was found in a Natufian habitation site featuring circular homes at Rosh Zin from about 13,000 years ago, Avner says. One room in this habitation may have been devoted to cultic activity, based on the discovery of a broken massebah. Also, beads and pieces of decorated ostrich eggshell – which isn't surprising: Israel once had ostriches, and separate work identified trade in decorated ostrich beads in Africa going back tens of thousands of years.

Another terminal Natufian-era massebah was identified at Mount Harif, one of the highest mountains in the Negev. This isn't a mountain cult site; it's a habitation that contained a massebah, Avner clarifies.

Natufian mysticism may also be inferred from elaborate burials, such as the lady "shaman" interred 12,000 years ago with a whole zoo of animal remains, including from three aurochs, 86 tortoises, an eagle and a leopard.

So what have we so far? Natufians lived from about 15,000 to 11,500 years ago and created the first masseboth in our area. By about 10,000 years ago agriculture emerged in the Fertile Crescent, but it would take about 2,000 more years for these newfangled practices to reach the Negev and Sinai. Following these developments, cultic and elaborate burial sites appeared around the Levant, including the Rodedian "mountain cult" installations for ancestor worship in the Negev, Sinai and possibly in Jordan as well.

Interpretations of mysterious phenomena may differ, but it's hard to interpret the mountaintop installations in the middle of the desert in any way other than spiritual, Avner insists.

The interpretation that the Natufian masseboth and later mountain cult masseboth represented gods is based on early texts, albeit dating to thousands of years later. It seems that standing stones served as representatives of spirits among a vast swath of prehistoric peoples, Avner says.

Which spirits is another question. Menhirs (single upright rough monoliths) elsewhere in the world may have mainly represented ancestors, while the masseboth on desert mountains and elsewhere in the Levant mainly represented gods, he suggests.

If so, then the mountain cult wasn't monotheistic. Some mountain cult sites feature solo standing stones, but others have pairs, suggesting belief in a sacred couple. (We just note that before belief in Yahweh, apparently there was belief in Yahweh and his wife.) Yet others feature a triad of standing stones. Some had five stones, some seven and outliers had as many as nine, representing complex belief in a whole pantheon, Avner posits.

Many relatively smaller masseboth are perforated, a phenomenon unique to the Rodedian sites, Avner adds.

As for the figurines, their human shape is implied. They look like columns with a head and neck chipped out. Many were natural rocks with a coincidental human shape that had been intentionally selected, the archaeologists say.

Animal bones identified at one excavated Rodedian site were all from raptors, mainly the kite. Maybe it is another icon of ancient ritual that persisted – note the bird's role in ancient Egyptian culture: Isis transforms into a kite, reunites the parts of her dismembered husband/brother Osiris, and fans the breath of life back into his nostrils with her wings.

Avner points out that revering a bird didn't mean the people wouldn't ritually kill it, or just kill it. For instance, an animal taken as representative of some seasonal deity who arises anew each year would not know old age.

The mountain cult format of paired temples honoring a sacred couple and pantheons persisted into the Chalcolithic and appeared in Bronze Age temples, which would predate the rise of the three "great religions" – and lend to them too.

Are we saying Judaism sprang from the Neolithic? We are not. That would be a stretch. Prof. Yonatan Adler of Ariel University, who researches the history of Judaism from the archaeological and historical perspective (and who was not associated with this research), posits that "Judaism" in the sense of practice by the people, not just texts, began in roughly the second century B.C.E.

But perhaps we can say that theological concepts that Judaism and other religions embody were born in the desert, before the advent of civilization as we know it, says Avner, summing up his theory. Such as the concept of seeking god/s on the mountain. The Torah tells us all about it, complete with helpful tips.

Where not to fight the mountain god

According to the Bible, the King of Aram warred on the god of Israel – a god of the mountains, Avner points out.

It did not go well. The Aramaeans suffered a great slaughter, following which their king was advised by his wise men: "Their God is a God of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they" (1 Kings 20:23). That didn't work either, but the point is clear.

Moving north to Ugarit, we find letters mentioning Zephon, the mountain on which Baal-Zephon the mountain god dwelled. When he came home, holy hell would ensue – lightning and storming, the mountain shaking. Sound familiar?

"And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a horn exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled," Exodus 19:16 tells us. "Now mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly" (Exodus 19:18).

Other peoples also seem to embrace mountain-related beliefs. In Japan, the god Susanoo is said to have climbed the mountain Takamagahara to greet his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu. A terrible noise ensued and the land shook.

Moreover, the multiple masseboth representing groups of gods culminating in the pantheons described in ancient and classical literature debunks a precious theory, says Avner: That complex religions with whole communities of deities emerged only with the appearance of the city – which means about 5,000 years ago.

"The argument was that only people organized in complex hierarchical societies could describe a complex society of gods like their own," he says. "But in the groups of masseboth from the eighth millennium B.C.E., we see a complex pantheon that attests to a complex mythology – all this appears 4,000 years before cities arise."

"They sacrificed unto demons, no-gods, gods that they knew not, new gods that came up of late" – Deuteronomy 32:17

Avner also stresses that masseboth weren't unique to the mountain cult. Aside from those in the Rodedian sites, most are found on low ground, next to habitations and ancient roads, he says.

What is the conclusion, aside from our cherished having unsuspected ancient roots? Perhaps the desert societies of the Neolithic weren't as simple and egalitarian as was thought?

Avner answers that all we can say is that they were tribal, living in extended family networks, but we don't believe they were associated with some greater political entity. They were more egalitarian than the future city societies, yet still had a complex world of gods.

"It's an interpretation, but it's the only possible one," he says. "How can one understand repeating groups of masseboth otherwise, when we see groups of gods in prehistoric art?"

Also, the mountain cult sites in the Negev and Sinai do not exist in a vacuum. Southeast Turkey features sites starting 12,000 years ago that are richly decorated with humans – many sexualized – and animals. The Turkish and German archaeologists excavating these sites shrink from calling Karahan Tepe, Göbekli Tepe and the others early temples. They don't have hallmarks of what we call temples, featuring no singular point for reverence such as an altar. Yet clearly they were gathering sites for ritual.

The Turkish village of Çatalhöyük from about 9,000 years ago has a wealth of female figurines and also a heavy emphasis on "male" art, depicting animals and humans with erections. In short, perhaps prehistoric society in Turkey was both egalitarian and spiritually complex, and our assumptions are off.

We must mention that back in Israel, one of the Neolithic vulva-shaped stones was engraved with a snake. A ritual pool in Turkey's Karahan Tepe also features a serpent winding around its rim. The snake could represent male fertility, Avner suggests, or maybe sagacity – another commonly suspected if fanciful attribute.

Maybe our ophiolatreiac obsession also predates history, though the identification of a giant python statue in Botswana's Python Cave, and the theory that it represents a 70,000-year-old snake faith that persists in modern-day local lore, may be a stretch. Whatever the truth, the locals call the spot in the Tsodilo Hills the Mountain of the Gods. That doesn't mean they have called it the Mountain of the Gods for 70,000 years, but the point is clear.

"It sounds reasonable to associate standing stones found in certain contexts with deities. It also sounds completely reasonable that cultic practitioners might seek the gods in the mountains," Ariel University's Adler says. "It wouldn't be surprising to find that sort of thing in humanity everywhere."

So, it may be a stretch to suggest that Judaism and its offshoots, Christianity and Islam, arose directly from deep roots in the Neolithic. It might be less of a stretch to suggest that the Neolithic beliefs continued with the requisite tweaks unto this very day, and that they themselves may have stemmed something greater and deeper, and earlier, that is common to all humanity – since humankind seeking godkind on high apparently wasn't confined to their descendants in what would become the heaven of the Middle East.

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