Did cattle dreams found in Bible, Quran and Ethiopia's remote Konso tribe really predict the future?

As I listened to the elders of Ethiopia's Konso tribe tell me about their dreams, one nocturnal story really stood out. They explained that when they dreamed of red cattle, they would have a good harvest that year. A number of the elders reported this Red Cattle dream.

On several trips to the Konso tribe in Ethiopia's Omo region, the elders told me that when they dreamed of red cattle, they would have a good harvest that year. This is my illustration of the Konso Red Cattle dream. Konso tribe, Omo region, Ethiopia, Africa.

As the Konso elders described their Red Cattle dream, I couldn't help but recall the Bible story of Joseph interpreting the Pharaoh's seven cattle dream.

Pharaoh had two bad dreams. In the first, seven fat cows are devoured by seven lean cows. In the second seven thin ears of corn eat seven full ones.

Joseph, who was the Pharaoh's prisoner at the time, interpreted the dreams to mean that Egypt will soon have seven years of plentiful harvest followed by seven years of very poor harvest. 

This woodcut artist Hans Holbein the Younger did in 1538 shows his interpretation of  the Bible story of the  Pharaoh's seven cattle dream.

So is this coincidence? Both the Konso and Bible cattle dreams predict future harvest.

While the Bible story confirms the truth of Joseph's interpretation, I cannot scientifically confirm if the Konso Red Cattle dream works.

While I'm not a scholar of the Quran, I found the same seven cattle dream story there:   Surah Yusuf (Joseph) beginning with Verse No:43

This is part of my 15-year Project which is looking for a definitive name. Now I call the Project:
We All Have Five Fingers 
One seeker's journey to find Modern Man's First Stories






Here is the Bible's predictive cattle dream story found in the book of Gensis:

The king told Joseph:

I dreamed I was standing on the bank of the Nile River. ¹⁸ I saw seven fat, healthy cows come up out of the river, and they began feeding on the grass. ¹⁹ Next, seven skinny, bony cows came up out of the river. I have never seen such terrible looking cows anywhere in Egypt. ²⁰ The skinny cows ate the fat ones. ²¹ But you couldn’t tell it, because these skinny cows were just as skinny as they were before. Right away, I woke up.

²² I also dreamed that I saw seven heads of grain growing on one stalk. The heads were full and ripe. ²³ Then seven other heads of grain came up. They were thin and scorched by a wind from the desert. ²⁴ These heads of grain swallowed the full ones. I told my dreams to the magicians, but none of them could tell me the meaning of the dreams.

²⁵ Joseph replied:

Your Majesty, both of your dreams mean the same thing, and in them God has shown what he is going to do. ²⁶ The seven good cows stand for seven years, and so do the seven good heads of grain. ²⁷ The seven skinny, ugly cows that came up later also stand for seven years, as do the seven bad heads of grain that were scorched by the east wind. The dreams mean there will be seven years when there won’t be enough grain.
²⁸ It is just as I said—God has shown what he intends to do. ²⁹ For seven years Egypt will have more than enough grain, ³⁰ but that will be followed by seven years when there won’t be enough. The good years of plenty will be forgotten, and everywhere in Egypt people will be starving. ³¹ The famine will be so bad that no one will remember that once there had been plenty. ³² God has given you two dreams to let you know that he has definitely decided to do this and that he will do it soon.

Did we (modern man) or Neanderthals create the first religion (myths) trying to answer life's big questions?

Could this be what the dawn of man looked like? On my research trip this year, I took this photograph of a sunrise over the remote Mursi tribal village of Belle in Ethiopia's Omo region. During my stay in this village, I imagined that our modern man ancestors lived like this before a few walked out of Africa to populate our planet.

In 1856, in a cave in Germany's Neander Valley, Neanderthals were the first hominid ancestor to be discovered.

Comparison of the DNA of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens suggests that they diverged from a common ancestor, probably Homo heidelbergensis, who originated between 800,000 and 1,300,000 years ago. This evolutionary ancestor continued living in Africa, Europe and Western Asia until they vanished about 200,000 years ago.

Then, for some unexplained reason, between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago the African branch is thought to have started evolving towards modern humans and the Eurasian branch towards Neanderthals.

About 50,000 to 60,000 years ago modern man walked out of Africa to eventually populate our planet, according to Mitochondrial DNA. DNA also tells us that modern man and Neanderthals mixed.

In all of this evolutionary history, which of our ancestral storytellers tried to answer our mysterious big questions of life on earth?  Who created the first myth?

Was it Neanderthals or us modern Homo sapiens who first began asking about the creation of earth, and the creation of man? 

And what about archetypal dreams?

The Myth Project: We All Have 5 Fingers

My favorite African village, the Konso tribe community of Busso, at the edge of Ethiopia's Omo region.

When he understood that I was recording his tribal myths and archetypal dreams, this Hammer elder invited me into his cozy home. He said that I must be very smart to write down all the stories he told.

The Myth Project:
Beginning in 2000, I journeyed to the most remote tribes in Africa to interview the elders, chiefs, shamans, storytellers and witch doctors about their myths and archetypal dreams. I wanted to see what lessons their oral stories offered about the mysteries of life, about how to live on our tiny planet and about Man’s big questions—like what happens after we die, where did the first person come from and is there a god?

I conjectured that these oral stories and collective tribal dreams arise from the deepest wellspring of our (Man’s) being.  After all, DNA tells us that we as modern man, all walked out of Africa. So it makes sense that we took these stories with us stored somewhere deep in our beings.

When I started The Myth Project, my goal was simply to record the stories so that they would not become extinct. Tourists, seeking something, were flooding over the tribes, for ever changing their traditional ways of life. Anthropologists tell me I am the only person who has ever recorded the oral stories of all but one of the 13 tribes I visited.

During a half dozen intense trips I collected massive amounts of information and photographs. Then I set The Myth Project aside to gain perspective. During these last four or five years of Project hibernation, I kept thinking about the answer a Konso tribe (from Ethiopia’s Omo region) elder gave when I asked what advice he would offer to world leaders. In 2001, this elder didn’t have much of a global concept of countries and cultures. He knew about neighboring tribes.

Yet his advice to world leaders truly moved me: “All people in the world are created by God. We’re all the same, we all have five fingers,” he said holding up his hand, “even if we have different beliefs (religions).” 

That simple statement profoundly shifted my focus for The Myth Project. Now the questions that haunt me are more like: What can these myths teach us high-tech modern man? How can we use these stories as a springboard to realize that “We all have five fingers, even if we have different beliefs”?

In order to better understand tribal life, I usually camped in my tiny tent at the edge of the village or was invited to live in an elder's home. This is my humble home for four weeks at the edge of a Suri tribe village in Ethiopia's Omo Region.

Epic Journey of Spiritual Discovery

When I look back at my behind-the-scenes adventures while gathering Ancient Myths and Architypal Dreams from Africa's most remote tribes, the stories are amazing. For example, one night I hear a lion roaring while I'm reading Shakespeare in my little backpacking tent at the edge of a Karo tribe village along the Omo River. Hearing that lion roar was a truly a reality shift for me.  This wasn't a zoo.  The next roar is closer. Then closer.  Do something. I looked around my tent to make sure that I didn't have any food inside. (Later a friend reminded me that indeed I was the food.) 

Come to the Epic Journey Presentation to hear how the story ends.

(Above) This is the Konso tribe village called Busso, one of my favorite villages in all of Africa.

(Above) The Konso tribe witch doctor has a region-wide reputation of being able to pull out evil spirits to cure diseases. So in the interest of spiritual science, I had to go and check him out. 

He wanted to charge me to take photographs, but he wanted some professional photographs of himself.  When he told me his fee, I replied in a very surprised voice, that my fee was exactly the same. What to do? He wouldn't give in, nor would I. Finally, the culture minister who was traveling with us, paid the fees. He actually wanted the witch doctor perform magic on him.

This boy had severe headaches before he went to the witch doctor and reported that he felt better after the "operation." Unfortunately, I never did a long term follow  up.

 (Above) This is the evil spirit the witch doctor pulled from the subject. Looks pretty nasty; so does the witch doctor's hand.

(Above) On my first visit to Busso in 2001, I photographed an old man. I printed lots of the photographs I snapped during that first trip and took them with me on the second trip. It turns out the old man had died. When I gave the photograph to the son, he cried. It was the only thing he had to remember his father. That's the power of photography.


Epic Journey of Spiritual Discovery live presentation
July 1, 2012   4:00 to 5:30pm
Mumm Napa Gallery 
8445 Silverado Trail
Rutherford, CA 94573
RSVP  707-967-7740