Some think so, saying the python was worshiped in African caves “as 70,000 years ago–30,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human rites.”
That would be an interesting twist on the Gnostic Gospels, which themselves render a variant on the Genesis story, by articulating the serpent as the initiator of knowledge rather than as the villainous Promethean who stole esoterica from the divine and transfered heavenly trade secrets to humans.
The serpent is also identified with the kundalini in Hindu traditions.
The site is found in Botswana; there “The researchers found a large rock inside the cave that they say resembles a giant python, with natural features in the stone forming an eye and a mouth.
The 20-foot-by-6.5-foot (6-meter-by-2-meter) stone was also scarred by several hundred human-made grooves that may have been meant to resemble scales.”
This discovery would suggest earlier development of certain mental processes: “Until recently most anthropologists believed that ‘modern’ human behavior requiring symbolic thought did not originate until 40,000 or 50,000 years ago–around the same time that early humans first migrated out of Africa. ”
Some scientists are skeptical, and argue that the rock is just a rock, and not a snake carving.
It’s much like the passage in the Upanishads in which the deluded person sees a rope and is frightened, perceiving it to be snake.
Then again, maybe the snake was the earliest object of deification and propitiation by humans.
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Law Offices of Michael H. Cohen offers general corporate legal services, litigation consultation, and expertise in health law with a unique focus on alternative, complementary, and integrative medical therapies.
Michael H. Cohen is Principal in Law Offices of Michael H. Cohen and also President of the Institute for Integrative and Energy Medicine (also known as the Institute for Health, Ethics, Law, Policy & Society), a reliable forum for exploration of legal, regulatory, ethical, and health policy issues involved in the judicious integration of complementary and alternative medical therapies (such as acupuncture and traditional oriental medicine, chiropractic, massage therapy, herbal medicine) and conventional clinical care. The most recent published book by Michael H. Cohen on health care law, regulation, ethics and policy pertaining to complementary, alternative and integrative medicine and related fields is Healing at the Borderland of Medicine and Religion. This is the fourth book in a series, following Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Legal Boundaries and Regulatory Perspectives (1998), Beyond Complementary Medicine: Legal and Ethical Perspectives on Health Care and Human Evolution (2000), and Future Medicine: Ethical Dilemmas, Regulatory Challenges, and Therapeutic Pathways to Health Care and Healing in Human Transformation (2003).
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