Author(s): Cüneyt ÃZ
Humanity, who has defined so many materials from antiquity to present, has appropriated these for their religion, language, and art by adopting symbols. Even though the symbols, which refer to these materials, have formally transformed through history, their leitmotivs remained unchanged. In the society it shaped, in order to be comprehensible, to differentiate itself and to disseminate knowledge humanity, in the its own belief system, have sanctified certain materials. Tree is one of these certain materials. Having been stylized as it gained divine prominence, tree emerged in Mesopotamia in 4000 BCE. and resurfaced again and again in Egypt, Sumer, Hittite and late Hittite, Assyria, Scythia, Urartu, Phrygia, Ancient Greece, in Aegean Civilizations, Seljuks of Rum, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and in current cultures. While having been named in some cultures as sacred tree and in others as tree of life, its divinity has persisted until today. The reason for this is the cultural continuity, which is a symptom of cross-cultural connectedness. This work aims at contributing to the studies in the field by focusing on the cross-cultural continuity of the underlying divinity of sacred tree or tree of life from antiquity to present in the context of cultural continuity.
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