The idea that I really really want to emphasize is
the connection between religion and architecture. This is the idea thats been buzzing in my head for days whose implication only grows the more I think about it.
- The people who built these megalithic tombs/temple in the arabian penisula where obviously very concerned with the afterlife .
- The farming civilizations of the middle east did not care about life after death and had no real conception of an afterlife. They only believed in God's who lived in the sky who came down to the small box shaped temples to communicate.
- The pastoralist civilizations of northeast Africa believed in an afterlife . But more than that they believed all their gods also lived in the underworld. The ancient eygptian deities all lived in Duat which is the underworld i.e ( the gods lived underground ).
The implications when you think about it are staggering. People stopped building megaltihs and tombs/cairns in the arabian penisula why ?
If you look at the beliefs and temples of the pagan Arabs and jews its exactly the same as that of the ancient mespotomias and levantines. No real afterlife. And temples that are "houses of god" in the form of small rectangle boxes like the kaaba and solmons temple .( even prophet Ibrahim who originally built the kaaba was from mespotomia )
There's more that could be said about the fact that the main ancient eygptian deities used to be human (osiris,horus, isis, etc) and became divine after their death. ( which seems to hint at pastoral relegion beginning as a cult of ancestor worship) while none of the main mespotomian deities were ever human .