Gimme That Old Time Religion.

      One of the religions practiced all over the Middle East in Old Testament times was the worship of Baal and Astarte.  Together, they were fertility symbols;  Baal, whose symbol was the bull, represented male sexuality, and Astarte, whose symbol was a bare breasted woman holding a snake, represented female sexuality.  It was known that this cult was ancient, and may have started with agriculture---or did it?   I just finished watching the DVD of "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams."   This is a photo tour Chauet Cave,  a Cro-Magon cave discovered only in the 1990s, which contains the oldest cave paintings ever found.  Mostly, they are beautiful paintings of Ice Age animals.  If you have not seen this film, by all means, rent the DVD. But at one place in the cave is a figure of a nude human female--the only human depicted anywhere in the cave---shown alongside a bull bison.  And these paintings were made 32,000 years ago.   Was the cult of Baal and Astarte Europe's original religion?  Makes you wonder.