Open Questions Register
This file is the engine. Tier-3 synthesis emits gaps here; gaps re-task gatherers. Gather to answer questions — don't synthesize whatever happened to be gathered. Each entry should eventually become a
templates/question.mdnote in the relevant domain; this register is the dashboard.2026-06-11 rewrite (synthesis writer, wave 1): Q1–Q3 retained from Methodology; Q4–Q11 emitted by the first motif notes (great-flood, dying-rising-god, sky-father) and the synthesis essay (what-religions-do). A "Suggested gathering action" column is added so gatherers can pick work directly off this table.
2026-06-11 harvest (wave 2, fixing BiasAudit-2026-06-11 critical #4): 47 questions emitted inside domain notes (01–08) were harvested. 5 sharpen existing rows (noted in their actions); near-duplicates across domains were merged; the 15 most load-bearing — those blocking motif transmission verdicts or tradition-origin claims — are added as Q12–Q26. The remaining 18 are parked in QUESTION_BACKLOG.md (see Q-backlog row). Register-sync is now a gatherer checklist item: a domain note's "Open questions" section is a draft entry for this table, not a terminus.
| # | Question | Target domain | Status | Emitted by | Suggested gathering action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | How do scholars empirically distinguish descent vs. contact vs. convergence in myths (phylogenetic methods vs. diffusion studies)? | 09_comparative | partially answered (wave 3) | Methodology | Addressed by tier-1 dhuy-phylomemetics-mythology (+ existing berezkin areal method) → tier-2 distinguishing-descent-contact-convergence-methods: the three discriminators (sequence-level parallels > dated corridor > tree/areal congruence). Still open: running the discriminators on the two domain-emitted test cases — near-simultaneous figurative cave art on two continents (Chauvet ~37 ka vs. Sulawesi ~45.5 ka) and Shang vs. Mesopotamian/Vedic ancestor-cult similarity with no documented connection. |
| Q2 | Which function theory (cohesion / Big Gods / anxiety / by-product) best survives cross-cultural evidence? | 09_comparative | open | Methodology | Narrowed but not closed by what-religions-do (layered model proposed). Needs tier-1 notes on Durkheim 1912, Norenzayan 2013, Boyer 2001, Barrett 2004, Malinowski 1948 so the synthesis's inline citations gain proper source records |
| Q3 | How far back does responsible reconstruction reach — PIE religion? Laurasian mythology? Paleolithic? Where does evidence end? | 01_prehistoric | open | Methodology | Tier-1 notes on Witzel's Laurasian thesis and its strongest peer critiques; pair with the sky-father note's class-3 boundary discussion to draft a tier-2 claim on where reconstruction becomes speculation. Sharpened by australian-aboriginal-dreaming: what independent test — beyond internal consistency with genetic migration dates — could falsify Witzel's Gondwana stratum? Make falsifiability the organizing criterion of the claim note |
| Q4 | By what route and date did the Mesopotamian flood narrative reach the Genesis authors — Late Bronze Levantine circulation (Atra-ḫasīs at Ugarit, Gilgamesh at Megiddo) or Neo-Babylonian exilic contact? | 05_abrahamic | open | great-flood | Tier-1 source notes on RS 22.421 (dating, findspot), the Megiddo Gilgamesh fragment, and Genesis composition scholarship (Carr 2011; Day on Genesis 1–11); a tier-2 claim weighing LBA vs. exilic vectors |
| Q5 | Is the global flood-myth distribution consistent with independent invention, or do Berezkin/d'Huy-style data show deep descent lines (e.g., into the Americas) — and how badly does post-contact missionary contamination distort the dataset? | 08_indigenous | partially answered (wave 3) | great-flood | Advanced by tier-1 popol-vuh-flood-colonial-transmission → tier-2 new-world-flood-convergence-test: one clean New World convergence case, with the missionary-contamination filter handled by privileging non-Genesis structure + pre-conquest corroboration. Still open: Berezkin Africa-sparsity claim as its own tier-2 note; a documented missionary-seeding case study. |
| Q6 | Does any securely pre-Christian deity both die and return in dated texts beyond Baal — i.e., does Mettinger's restricted set (Melqart, Adonis, Dumuzi) survive case-by-case scrutiny? | 09_comparative | open | dying-rising-god | Per-deity tier-2 claim notes with dated attestations: Melqart egersis epigraphy (mqm 'lm titles), Adonis testimonia timeline (Sappho → Lucian), Dumuzi half-year coda textual history; gather in 02_mesopotamian and 05_abrahamic as needed |
| Q7 | Is the Osiris mythos independent of Mesopotamian Dumuzi traditions, or does Early Bronze Egypt–Mesopotamia contact (Uruk-period influence on Naqada Egypt) provide a plausible transmission vector for the dying-god pattern? | 03_egyptian | open | dying-rising-god | Tier-1 notes on earliest Osiris attestations (5th-Dynasty evidence) and on Uruk-expansion archaeology in Egypt; tier-2 claim assessing whether any narrative (not just iconographic/technological) transmission is evidenced. Sharpened twice by ancient-egyptian-religion: (a) chase the claimed pre-5th-Dynasty Osirian iconography horizon (Griffiths) against Smith 2017's caution; (b) record an explicit per-motif verdict for the Osiris–Adonis–Tammuz parallel rather than leaving it implied |
| Q8 | After the 2021 retraction of Whitehouse et al. 2019 (Nature), what does the corrected Seshat-style evidence say about whether moralizing gods precede or follow social complexity? | 09_comparative | open | what-religions-do | Tier-1 notes on the retraction notice, the Beheim et al. reanalysis, the authors' 2023 republication, and at least one neutral methods commentary; tier-2 claim on the current state of the causal-order question |
| Q9 | Do costly-signaling findings (religious communes outlasting secular ones — Sosis & Bressler 2003) replicate beyond 19th-century communes and kibbutzim? | 09_comparative | open | what-religions-do | Tier-1 notes on Sosis & Bressler 2003, the kibbutz field studies, and any replication/critique literature (Power's South India fieldwork; Hall et al.); tier-2 claim on generalizability |
| Q10 | Why do inherited gods rise or fall — Zeus stayed central while his exact cognate Dyaus became residual; does function (current group work done by the god) predict which inherited deities survive? | 04_indo_european | open | sky-father · what-religions-do | Comparative tradition notes on Dyaus, Zeus, Jupiter, Týr cult prominence with dated evidence per branch; tier-2 claim testing "vocabulary is inherited more faithfully than importance" |
| Q11 | Are the Chinese Tiān and Turkic Tengri sky-father-like figures fully independent of IE *Dyḗus, or are steppe contact vectors (Tocharian, Iranian, or earlier) plausible — and what are their earliest dated attestations? | 07_east_asian | open | sky-father | Tier-1 notes on earliest Tiān attestations (Western Zhou bronzes; oracle-bone Di vs. Tian debate) and Tengri (Orkhon inscriptions, 8th c. CE; proposed Xiongnu antecedents); tier-2 claim on contact plausibility |
| Q12 | What is the actual oldest Rigveda manuscript — c. 1040 CE (Nepal) or 1464 CE (BORI Pune), on which the vault currently contradicts itself three ways — and how much textual drift should be assumed across the ~2,500-year oral gap? | 06_dharmic | open | proto-indo-european-religion · rigveda-oral-gap-composition-vs-attestation (04) · rigveda-oral-composition-attestation-gap (06) | One agent verifies the manuscript record against the NGMPP Nepal catalogue and BORI collection descriptions (tier-1 note); merge the two near-duplicate claim notes per BiasAudit #3; tier-2 claim on oral-transmission fidelity evidence (Staal and Witzel on recitation invariance vs. documented drift), including whether paleography of the Nepal manuscripts extends the attestation chain backwards |
| Q13 | Does Anatolian preserve reflexes of dyeu- (Hittite šiu-, Luwian Tiwaz) or not — and is the Anatolian situation a gap that threatens the Dyḗus reconstruction or an attestation anchor for it? | 04_indo_european | open | dyeus-sky-father-cognate-set · proto-indo-european-religion | Tier-1 notes on West 2007 ch. 4's Anatolian treatment and Kloekhorst's etymological entries for šiu-/Tiwaz; resolve the flat 04-vs-09 contradiction (BiasAudit #5) by stating both halves in both notes: root reflexes attested, theonym-as-sky-father absent; then revisit whether "pan-PIE vs. late-dialect" religious vocabulary can be distinguished |
| Q14 | Can ancient DNA and archaeology (Narasimhan et al. 2019 steppe pulse; Yamnaya/Sintashta burial practice; BMAC and Cemetery H contexts) independently constrain the dating and the religious content of PIE and early Vedic religion, or do the evidence lines stay incommensurable? | 04_indo_european | open | proto-indo-european-religion · rigveda-oral-gap-composition-vs-attestation (04) · vedic-religion · rigveda-oral-composition-attestation-gap (06) | Tier-1 notes on Narasimhan et al. 2019 and on Sintashta/BMAC ritual archaeology; tier-2 claim drawing the line between what archaeogenetics can date (population movement) and cannot (religious content), tested against the c. 1500–1200 BCE Rigveda composition estimate |
| Q15 | Is the Mitanni Indo-Aryan superstrate a direct ancestor of the Rigvedic dialect or a sibling that diverged earlier — i.e., how directly does the c. 1380 BCE Šattiwaza treaty deity list date Rigvedic tradition? | 06_dharmic | open | rigveda-oral-composition-attestation-gap | Tier-1 note on the Mitanni treaty deity list (Thieme 1960; Witzel's assessment of the dialect's position); tier-2 claim scoping exactly what the treaty anchors — this matters because Mitanni is the vault's honest 2-text anchor for Vedic dating (BiasAudit #9) |
| Q16 | How much of Vedic religion is pre-existing subcontinental substrate absorbed by Indo-Aryan speakers vs. steppe inheritance — and is late-Harappan/Cemetery H "fire-altar" archaeology ritual continuity or coincidental convergence? | 06_dharmic | open | vedic-religion | Tier-1 notes on the substrate loanword evidence (Witzel 2005 para-Munda; Masica 1979) and on a critical assessment of the Kalibangan-type fire-altar identifications; tier-2 claim with an explicit descent/contact/convergence verdict for the fire-altar continuity thesis |
| Q17 | Does the Egyptian "Shasu of yhwꜣ" toponym (Soleb, Amara West) attest the divine name Yahweh in the 14th–13th c. BCE, or is the phonological correspondence coincidental? | 05_abrahamic | open | israelite-religion-origins | Tier-1 note on the Soleb/Amara West inscriptions with both a proponent and a skeptic (e.g., Adrom & Müller 2017 in The Origins of Yahwism); tier-2 claim — doubles as the dissenting-source purchase BiasAudit #10 orders for 05 |
| Q18 | When and where did the El-Yahweh identification consolidate (pre-settlement, tribal confederation, or monarchic literary construction) — and why does Yahweh's theophanic profile (storm, warrior) look like Baal's rather than El's if his original identity is with El? | 05_abrahamic | open | israelite-religion-origins · el-yahweh-identification-canaanite | Tier-1 note on Day 2000 (Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan) as the counter-school source; tier-2 claim that separates presence-of-identification (high) from mechanism-and-date (medium) explicitly — fixing the flattened confidence BiasAudit #15 flags |
| Q19 | How much of Second Temple angelology, dualism, and eschatology reflects Zoroastrian transmission vs. parallel development under similar monotheizing pressures — and is there a datable contact threshold? | 05_abrahamic | open | israelite-religion-origins | Tier-1 notes on the Iranian-influence debate from both sides (Hultgård; Barr 1985's skeptical JAAR treatment); tier-2 claim with a contact-vs-convergence verdict and the earliest dated evidence for each candidate borrowed element |
| Q20 | Is the Ubaid-period population at Eridu culturally-linguistically continuous with historical Sumerians, or is "Sumerian religion" a later label projected onto a pre-Sumerian substrate? | 02_mesopotamian | open | sumerian-religion | Tier-1 notes on the "Sumerian problem" (Rubio 1999 on the alleged substrate loanwords; Ubaid–Uruk continuity archaeology); tier-2 claim — also supplies the missing second counter-evidence prong for the sumerian-religion profile (BiasAudit §2) |
| Q21 | Can priority between the Sumerian (Eridu Genesis/Ziusudra) and Akkadian (Atrahasis) flood traditions be established beyond their near-simultaneous Old Babylonian attestations — including Civil's suggestion that the Sumerian text depends on the Akkadian? | 02_mesopotamian | open | sumerian-religion | Tier-1 notes on Civil's Eridu Genesis treatment (in Lambert & Millard) and Chen 2013 (The Primeval Flood Catastrophe); reconcile 02's "possibly older oral tradition" lean with 09's Civil-dependence lean (BiasAudit §6) — directly feeds the great-flood motif verdict |
| Q22 | Do deliberate Neanderthal burials (Shanidar Z, La Chapelle) evidence proto-religious cognition, or are hygiene/attachment explanations sufficient without supernatural inference? | 01_prehistoric | open | paleolithic-mortuary-religion | Tier-1 notes on Pomeroy et al. 2020 (Shanidar Z stratigraphy) and Gargett's skeptical re-analyses; tier-2 claim that sets the vault's evidential lower boundary for "religion" — load-bearing for everything 01 asserts about origins |
| Q23 | Is Dumézil's trifunctional hypothesis a reconstruction or a retrojection — and which PIE-religion claims in this vault silently depend on it? | 04_indo_european | open | proto-indo-european-religion | Tier-1 notes on Dumézil and on a named critic (Belier 1991 Decayed Gods; Gonda's objections); audit 04's notes for hidden trifunctional dependencies; doubles as the comparative-method critique source BiasAudit #10 orders for 04 |
| Q24 | What would falsify the Clottes/Lewis-Williams neuropsychological (shamanism) model of Upper Paleolithic cave art, given sustained criticism (Bahn) and no displacing alternative theory? | 01_prehistoric | open | paleolithic-mortuary-religion | Tier-1 note on the strongest critique (Helvenston & Bahn 2005; Bahn's "Membrane and Numb Brain") — also the missing dissenting source for 08's Lewis-Williams holdings (BiasAudit #10); tier-2 claim on testability, cross-linked to shamanism-animism-baseline-religion-hypothesis |
| Q25 | Is Shang Di a high deity distinct from the royal ancestors or the apex of the ancestral hierarchy — the Keightley/Eno/Allan three-way disagreement the oracle-bone syntax cannot settle? | 07_east_asian | open | shang-religion | Tier-1 note on Allan's position to complete the existing Keightley/Eno rival pair (the vault's best calibration pattern); tier-2 claim stating what each reading implies for Q11's Di-vs-Tian continuity question; cross-link both |
| Q26 | Can the theological content of the Dreaming (not mere territorial occupation) be anchored earlier than 20th-century ethnography — and is there any tradition-internal dating method (linguistic change rates, genealogical transmission depth) that could corroborate or refute the 7,000+-year Nunn-Reid coastal-flooding claim? | 08_indigenous | open | australian-aboriginal-dreaming | Tier-1 notes on Henige's response to Nunn-Reid (the dissenting source BiasAudit #10 orders for 08) and on archaeology of dated ritual sites; tier-2 claim defining what would count as anchoring content rather than occupation |
| Q27 | Can convergence be demonstrated at proof grade on a pre-contact Mesoamerican/Andean/Pacific test bed where no transmission route to the Old World exists — closing both the sample-coverage gap (Mesoamerica, sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania currently enter only via ethnographic-era material) and the braided river's unproven third leg? | 08_indigenous · 09_comparative | partially answered (wave 3) | final-answer · PeerReview-2 | First leg delivered: tier-1 popol-vuh-flood-colonial-transmission → tier-2 new-world-flood-convergence-test runs the motif machinery on the K'iche' wood-people flood (medium-confidence convergence, scoped to the case). Still open: Dresden Codex + Chavín archaeology as tier-1 corroboration to lift this above one case and toward proof grade. |
| Q28 | Where does the gender dimension of religious authorship and authority begin in the dated record, and how much of the early evidence is structurally invisible (royal/male cult over-represented)? | 02_mesopotamian · 09_comparative | open (wave 3) | enheduanna-first-named-author-religious-literature | Tier-1 enheduanna-temple-hymns-exaltation-inanna → tier-2 enheduanna-first-named-author-religious-literature opens it (earliest attributed author is a woman, medium-confidence on the biographical link). Next: priestess/female-cult attestations across domains (entu/nadītu institutions; goddess-cult prominence) to test whether the male-royal bias is real history or recording bias |
| Q29 | Is the "Axial Age" one convergent phenomenon or several loosely-contemporaneous, partly-connected traditions — and can any datable discriminator separate the readings? | 09_comparative | open (wave 3) | axial-age-as-convergence-claim | Tier-1 jaspers-bellah-axial-age → tier-2 axial-age-as-convergence-claim sets it as a contested heuristic; next: per-region earliest-attestation dating of the "transcendence breakthrough" to test whether the synchrony survives the vault's own date-or-label rule |
| Q30 | Does ritual-first survive as more than an evidential default — i.e., is there a dated case where organised cult activity demonstrably drives (not just precedes) a social transition, post-Göbekli-Tepe-revision? | 01_prehistoric | open (wave 3) | ritual-precedes-belief-as-origins-default | Tier-1 rappaport-whitehouse-ritual-first-theory → tier-2 ritual-precedes-belief-as-origins-default adopts the evidential default; next: track the post-2014 Göbekli Tepe domestic-features re-reading as its own tier-1 note so the flagship case's contestation is documented, not just cited |
| Q31 | What does day 4 of the Babylonian Akitu festival actually prescribe, per the surviving ritual tablets themselves — which steps are attested in the tablets, which are scholarly reconstruction? | 02_mesopotamian | open (experience-blocking) | ritual-walkthroughs (idea) | Tier-1 note on the Akitu ritual-tablet edition (Linssen 2004, The Cults of Uruk and Babylon) so the /rituals Akitu walkthrough can be captioned step-by-step; pairs with the existing Enūma Eliš day-4 recitation evidence |
| Q32 | What is the attested śrauta procedure for the Vedic fire offering (agnihotra/yajña) — kindling, oblations, priestly role-division — and how much of it is later śrauta-sūtra systematization rather than Rigvedic-period practice? | 06_dharmic | open (experience-blocking) | ritual-walkthroughs (idea) | Tier-1 note on śrauta procedure (e.g., Staal's Agni documentation or a śrauta-sūtra edition) so the /rituals Vedic walkthrough can be captioned; every frame must carry the composition-vs-attestation caveat from rigveda-oral-composition-attestation-gap |
| Q33 | What is the documented scene-sequence of the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ceremony (Otto's 1960 edition; New Kingdom tomb attestations) — and which episodes are securely attested vs. reconstructed? | 03_egyptian | open (experience-blocking) | ritual-walkthroughs (idea) | Tier-1 note on Otto's 1960 two-volume edition of the rite and New Kingdom tomb scene-cycles; the vault currently has no note on the rite at all — the /rituals walkthrough stays a stub until it lands |
| Q-backlog | 18 further harvested domain questions (cult detail, internal periodization, single-branch follow-ups — real but not blocking motif verdicts or tradition origins) | various | open | wave-1 gatherers (01–08) | See QUESTION_BACKLOG.md; draw from it only after Q12–Q26 are assigned |