35 Books Like The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture

I love Carl Jung’s ability to see into the nature of consciousness and make the connection between the experience of being a being on Earth and the true nature of our being. He is one of the first scientists to describe the near-death experience and to see it as another trick of the dualistic world.

Jung explains how, during his heart attack, he died and was transported above the earth to a doorway guarded by a cosmically dangerous spike. Jung’s observations as a scientist and doctor about what makes us tick are a foundation for people realizing their true nature through people like David Bingham today.

Campbell, to me, is the dean of writers on myth. I met him once, through a professor at Hollins University who, at her graduation, had awarded Anna, my wife-to-be, the first three volumes of The Hero of a Thousand Faces, as a prize in English Literature (the fourth, Creative Mythology, was yet to be published).

After we met, I learned that Campbell had edited the Penguin Portable Jung – and it is that book that set me on a course of study and writing on myth and literature that I have pursued ever since.

As a final note, Campbell also co-authored A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, a book that many years later led me into James Joyce’s masterwork, Finnegans Wake – to me, the apotheosis of mythic literature.

Of seminal importance to an understanding of the world is the conception of a collective unconscious grounded in inheritable archetypes. These evolve: how could it be otherwise—everything in nature evolves. And that means that our consciousness, too, evolves. Its evolution is, in a sense, teleological: from the less conscious to the more consciousness. This is to say that the evolution of the archetypes permits the increasing distillation of consciousness from the vastness of the collective unconscious. I believe that language, which is indivisible from consciousness, did not begin to materialize until about 10,000 BC. I may have been virtually alone in this view, but computerized models of evolutionary linguists today suggest that the key to language capability may have been enfolded in our make-up from our earliest beginnings.

Cognitive neuroscientist Merlin Donald posited that, at the most fundamental level, humans have a hybrid mind, one that consists of a gene-based mammalian, analogue brain, onto which is grafted a culture-based, symbolic brain. The former, the primitive mammalian brain, is a space where “the lines between consciousness and the mind’s inaccessible unconscious modules are drawn very deep in the sand” (p. 286).

As to myth, Donald noted that virtually all hunter-gatherer societies observed in the modern era have or had elaborate mythological systems, all structured along the same lines, in which myth informs every aspect of life: “myth permeates and regulates daily life, channels perceptions, determines the significance of every object and event in life. Clothing, food, shelter, family – all receive their ‘meaning’ from myth” (p. 215).

When it comes to discussions about meat, wouldn’t you like something balanced rather than strident? Denis and Gail Hayes offer a well-researched and well-written look at the role of cows in our history and diets. The book’s appeal is that it is both too radical for most cowboys (except the couple hundred ranchers actually doing it right) and too honest about the important role animal protein played in human evolution for the vegans. Cowed also delivers an array of quotable facts, such as “Eating a pound of beef has a greater climate impact than burning a gallon of gasoline.” 

Women were integral to everything in Mesopotamia—politics, religion, economy, society, you name it—for the entire multi-millennium lifetime of the culture. I find this book, which is the catalogue of an exhibit for the Yale Babylonian Collection, to be a particularly interesting study, and it has gorgeous illustrations. The six chapters include two that focus on prominent women, the priestess Enheduanna and Queen Sammu-ramat (Semiramis), as well as discussions of many women who were not well known. The objects that were displayed in the exhibit are illustrated in the second half of the book, each described with a paragraph or two. These really give you a sense of how archaeologists and historians draw their conclusions from ancient evidence, and how individual lives can be reconstructed from objects and texts.

This most revealing book explains how, over 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, an area corresponding roughly with that of modern Iraq, urban living began.

The region where this remarkable phenomenon first occurred is known as Sumer. Where its people originated remains something of a mystery and the still imperfectly understood Sumerian language appears unrelated to any other known tongue, ancient or modern.  

When this book first came out, I was just beginning work on my Ph.D. dissertation and it had a big influence on me. Stephanie Dalley writes in a wonderfully accessible style for general readers about the people of the 18th century BCE cities of Mari and Tell al Rimah, and throughout the book she quotes from the personal letters found there. She overcomes a common perception that the ancient world can seem removed and remote, by letting the ancient people speak directly to the reader. All the while, she also makes fascinating observations about what the documents reveal, and also includes discussions of archaeological evidence (such as culinary molds that were used to make fish-shaped bread, in the section on food preparation!).

Now I realize that this isn’t a narrative history, but I think you will find it fascinating. It’s a big compendium of excerpts from more than 750 letters that were found in the archives of the ancient palace of Mari, organized by topics such as “Dynastic Marriages,” “Crime,” “Caring for the Gods,” “Death and Burial,” and many, many more. It’s a book to dip into rather than to read from beginning to end, and it’ll help you get a sense of the vast amount of detail about real people that is to be found on Mesopotamian clay tablets (especially ancient letters). Jack Sasson’s enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the subject is palpable in his many explanatory paragraphs and long footnotes.

Another series. When I was a kid, Time-Life Magazines ran a kind of book club. My family had several complete sets—The Seafarers, The Old West, the Science Library. We used to joke that Time-Life Books were the source of all knowledge. 21 titles in the Great Ages of Man series cover the entire span of civilization from ancient Mesopotamia to the 20th Century, each an overview of its period. For The Last Viking I used Barbarian Europe and Byzantium, but Age of Kings is my favorite; I’ve always been fascinated by the violent, glorious 17th Century. Though long out of print, you can still buy them by the set on Amazon. Easier, though, to pick your era and purchase by the title.