Ideas and Quotes from Riveting Reads :

A HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS : FROM THE STONE AGE TO THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES - BY MIRCEA ELIADE

II. The Longest Revolution : The Discovery of Agriculture - Mesolithic and Neolithic

The end of Ice Age around 8000 B.C. brought about great changes in climate, flora, and fauna.  Mesolithic cultures developed during the following millennia. Domestication of first animals and beginnings of agriculture took place in Southwest Asia, especially Palestine. Other inventions like bow, nets, hooks and boats take place. The imagination discovers new analogies among different levels of the real. Symbolism and sacredness pervades the world of work and tools. With the end of the unity of Paleolithic populations, divergences between groups take root. As the cultivation of food begins, warriors and conquerors are seen to carry on the symbolism of the hunter. Blood sacrifices continue, as " A type of behavior that, for one or two million years, had been inseparable from the human (or at least the masculine) mode is not easily abolished".  

Agriculture, properly speaking, developed in Southwest Asia and Central America. Vegeculture may have predated "cerealiculture". With this revolutionary change, man was forced to change his ancestral behavior and to determine future dates more accurately for the sake of harvest. Also the duty of assuring means of subsistence fell upon women. Origin myths of vegeculture sometimes involve a brutal murder of a divine entity and the springing up of plants from its corpse. Certain myths speak of a civilizing hero who made available to humanity the seeds jealously guarded by the gods. 

" In addition, woman and feminine sacrality are raised to the first rank. Since women played a decisive part in the domesticataion of plants, they become the owners of the cultivated fields,...."

"The fertility of the earth is bound up with feminine fecundity; hence women become responsible for the abundance of harvests, for they know the 'mystery' of creation. It is a religious mystery, for it governs the origin of life, the food supply, and death. The soil is assimilated to woman. Later, after the discovery of the plow, agricultural work is assimilated to the sexual act."

Vegetable life provides fresh metaphors and feeds the poetry and philosophy regarding the mystery of birth, death, and rebirth.

The Cosmic Tree, thought to be at the center of the world, unites three cosmic regions, its roots clutching the underworld and the boughs embracing the vault of heaven. 

Mythology of the Iron Age: Metallurgy of terrestrial iron (meteoric iron was scarce) made it fit for everyday use. Celestial sacredness of the sky was supplemented with telluric sacredness of the earth. Caves and mines became wombs, the ores, embryos. The artisan must perfect the growth of these embryos ripped from the bosom of mother earth. The furnaces become artificial wombs. The metallurgist, like shamans, medicine men and magicians, become a master of fire. 

" In assuming the responsibility for changing nature, man took the place of time; … Millennia later, the alchemist will not think differently... the struggle to take the place of time that characterizes the man of modern technological societies, had already begun in the Iron Age."