Epics of Humanity

1 Comment

The Epic of Gilgamesh survived only by being buried. Its survival is perhaps less surprising than its discovery after having been lost for many centuries. Reading Andrew George’s translation of the tale reminded me of reading Beowulf. Not only are the two of them hero tales, they are both “sole survivors” in the sense that they define the literature of their respective eras in a way no other text does. Yes, there are other Mesopotamian epics, but Gilgamesh, it was immediately recognized, deals with existential issues in a way that’s thoroughly modern. It is set apart from other ancient literature for that singular achievement. Fear of death leads Gilgamesh to amazing feats even if it only ends in a yad wa-shem. We can feel for Gilgamesh. Although he’s a king, he has to face the demise common to all people, and the language used to express his emotions is touching even today.

Beowulf, while singular in a way Gilgamesh isn’t, also leaves the reader wondering what is left of life if not some kind of fame. Beowulf may defeat Grendel, but the dragon mortally wounds him. If his tale had not survived in the back of an old book we wouldn’t be discussing him still today. How narrow that gap between fame and obscurity turns out to be. For the vast majority of us obscurity awaits since few can be recognized by the many. Like Gilgamesh or Beowulf, we know the consciousness inside this head and we feel that somehow we have a purpose. It takes daily life to drive that out of a normal person. The hero, however, refuses to let the odds win. There’s a profound hope here, in these narratives of denying the final fear the final say. In George’s edition the inclusion of other Gilgamesh tales outside the epic texts reinforces that point repeatedly.

Humans are meaning seekers by nature. Some simply accept the illusion of apparent reality and ask for little besides. Others cannot rest knowing that there is more to be understood, or, in the parlance of outmoded means of expression, to be conquered. When life says “Enough,” Gilgamesh refuses to acquiesce until his options run out. For many centuries his story was set to be lost forever. Latter-day restless minds, however, dug in the dirt until something truly extraordinary was discovered there, free for the interpreting. So it is that heroes come from nothingness. Many return to obscurity. Those that are found and venerated experience a resurrection the envy of many a god. Speaking to strangers across millennia is indeed immortality, even for those whose lives must end like all others.

Interior Theodicy

Leave a comment

Photo credit: Richard from Canton, Wikipedia Commons

Speaking of theodicy, I have a dentist appointment today. Now, if you were raised with the Protestant guilt that used to be so pervasive in this nation, you’ll understand. I do brush my teeth twice a day. I even use floss and that mouthwash that burns away a layer of mouth lining every night. But there’s always more you could do. I’m not particularly good about visiting the dentist, though. Partially it’s a memory thing, partially it’s a pain thing, but mostly it’s a time thing. No matter how far back I jam the toothbrush, well beyond my gaging threshold, cavities seem to appear. And I don’t even have a sweet-tooth. What kind of deity allows cavities in a person who eats very little sugar and brushes so assiduously that last time the dentist told him to ease up a bit since he was scraping away the enamel? (People tell me I’m too intense.)

One of the real ironies of all this is that for all the trouble teeth give us during our lifetimes, they are our most durable parts after we die. Archaeologists find mostly teeth. In fact, it seems that Neanderthals might have practiced some primitive dentistry. I wonder what they thought of their neanderthal deity? So teeth are pretty useful, no matter whether the gray matter above them is dead or alive. I can explain this to my dentist, but he only seems interested in me as a specimen of carnassial curiosity. Maybe it all goes back to my belief that fillings were meant to last forever. Or all those root canals that seem to come in pairs that cost as much as a semester at a public university. Mostly it’s the memories.

In Edinburgh I had a tooth go bad. The Scottish dentist was surprised. “You’ve got a twelve-year molar erupting,” he said (you’ll have to imagine the accent). I asked if that was unusual. He owned that it was as I was a post-graduate student in his late twenties and the twelve-year molar was so precise in its timing that child labor laws used to be built around its presence. Years later in Wisconsin a different dentist asked about one of my fillings. I told him it was from Edinburgh. He called all the other dentists in announcing, “You wanna see a real Scottish filling?” Or maybe the fears go back to my earliest dental nightmares where the cheap doctor seemed unaware that teeth actually had nerves in them. I always left with a guilt trip. “You should brush —“ (more, better, longer, with a more gentle touch) you fill in the blank. I’m afraid of another kind of filling. And I know as it is with Protestant guilt, so it is with teeth. There’s always more you could be doing.

Historic Crossing

Leave a comment

If Washington crossed the Delaware, I figured, so could I. Of course, I have a car and I was going from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, but history doesn’t always repeat itself precisely. In New Jersey, the landing side of the crossing, a modest park marks the spot, along with plenty of space for outdoor activities. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has a tripartite park which includes sculptures, an historical village, and a tower. The tower was built from 1929 through 1931 in commemoration of the momentous crossing. My mother visited the site as a teenager, some few years after it opened. On a mission to recapture part of her childhood, I made a visit to see a bit of history, and also to experience the great views. As far as towers go, this one isn’t the tallest, but in Bucks County, it is among the highest points and you can see for many miles on a clear day. On the top of the tower I overheard a man explaining to his family that Washington built the tower in the 1700s and that it was used in the Revolutionary War. He lamented that it would be easy to be trapped on top of the tower, and urged his kids to imagine what it would have been like.

DSCN4865

My thoughts went to the Bible. We’ve come to know through archaeology and comparative sources that many of the events portrayed as history are about as accurate as having Bowman’s Tower built by a long-deceased George Washington. And yet we continue to teach children that stories for which no evidence exists are history. We don’t always have a good grasp on how to tell the difference. In the United States George Washington is nearly divine in reputation. His travels are attested on an almost omnipresent scale; even my childhood home of Franklin, a tiny burg near the Ohio border in Pennsylvania, saw visits from the general. I grew up knowing little of the history of the man who would become the first president. I did know, however, that he’d crossed the Delaware.

History is not so easy as it seems. What “actually happened” on the ground may not offer much meaning to those who seek it. Only when the events become story—sometimes sacred story—do we start to get a sense of why the Bible has such a grip on a large swath of the human race. It is story with no apology. Its historicity is far beyond recoverability: who saw the creation of the world? Even the events in the human timescale were written, for the most part, centuries after the occurrence, with all the liabilities that entails. Built by members of the Washington Crossing Park Commission, the park I’m visiting intends to demonstrate the importance of a singular event that led to the freedom of an entire nation. Indeed, the crossing of the water to free a nation has a distinctly biblical feel to it. And even if that first exodus never happened, we tell our children it did, and we have no less a figure than George Washington building a tower to prove it.

Explained Away

Leave a comment

The premise seems sound. Although science tends to indicate that God is not necessary to explain anything, religion itself may still be useful. In a nutshell, that’s the basis of Alain de Button’s TED talk, “Atheism 2.0.” We don’t need to believe in God to find religion a useful paradigm. There’s so much more to being human than being simply analytical. De Button begins from the premise that there is no god, but that religion teaches us many useful lessons. It is a fascinating concept. I’ve had de Button’s book on the topic on my reading list for some months now, but like so many pressed for time, I find it simpler to watch a 20-minute TED talk than to read an entire book. It is refreshing to see someone on TED not simply dismissing religion. My friends in the STEM community often recommend TED talks, and they usually leave me feeling small and insignificant. Now I can at least show my face.

A deep irony pervades this condescension to religion. Scientific study of the past (known by the collective term archaeology) has recently given strong indication that the religious impulse is what led to civilization itself. The mysterious site of Gobekli Tepe, as I’ve mentioned before, seems to reveal that even before high antiquity what drew people together was the emergence of religious belief. Religion leads to culture, and culture leads to science. Science rejects religion and what happens to culture? Just take a look around. I’m still a naive man with working class values. In the course of my business travels I’ve often ended up in what might be considered the sketchiest kinds of neighborhoods. The suburbs keep moving further out. What happens when we run out of space? God only kn— wait, that’s a forbidden premise. Materialism only knows.

De Button’s talk is fascinating in that he doesn’t simply dismiss religion. Like most non-specialists, he focuses on the accidentals that reveal something savvy religionists have always known—there’s a healthy dose of psychology in any religion. Call it neuroscience, or call it truth. Religions have something to teach us. Civilization, it seems, began because of religion. De Button is clearly correct that we need not believe the minutia of religious doctrine to get something out of it. Atheism is not always evil nor is piety always above moral suspicion. Being human, we can’t help but wonder what is really real, however. Religions claim to know, as do some sciences. Little can be said beyond the fact that none of us know. Of course, TED will ask some of us to speak to the issue and the rest of us should just sit still and pay attention. To be noticed is to be an expert.

The eternal struggle (photo credit JuanMa, Wikipedia)

The eternal struggle (photo credit JuanMa, Wikipedia)

Stone Age Henge

2 Comments

At a hotel during a recent excursion, I saw a National Geographic (I think) special on Gobekli Tepe (this is the fate of those of us kept from a daily sustenance of academic listservs bearing the most exciting news). Gobekli Tepe is an archaeological site in Turkey, discovered several years ago by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute. It is an odd site, dating back to some 11,000 years ago, that consists of megalithic (big stone) constructions earlier than Stonehenge or the great pyramids of Egypt, both dating from the Bronze Age, roughly. The complex of odd buildings seems to be religious in function because they bear no practical purpose, and the implications of the site are that our earliest steps towards civilization have been misinterpreted from the beginning. We have been taught that domestication of plants and farm animals led to fixed centers of living. Gobekli Tepe suggests that religion led to settled life and farming came later.

375px-GobeklitepeHeykel

The implications of this are rather startling for those of us who’d been working on the assumption that religion developed as a way of keeping the gods happy after people had the luxury of surplus food brought on by agriculture. It turns out that hunter-gatherers learned to live in settled locations because of religion. That is, religion, instead of being just another component of culture, is what led to culture in the first place. In a climate where the most vocal intellectuals insist that religion must be shut down, chopped off at the roots, and burned in the oven of rationality, we see that none of us would be enjoying our urban lifestyles if religion hadn’t brought us together in the first place.

There is no doubt that religion may be taken to extremes, and that when it is, it becomes dangerous. Religion, however, is no foe to rational thinking. Gobekli Tepe is a site of astounding engineering for Stone-Age hunter-gatherers. Engineering is applied science, and so these people were using their understanding of the world to establish a ritual site for the practice of their religion. They needed to live nearby, although they still had to spend their days chasing animals and gathering foodstuffs along the way. Religion made them realize that life together was a necessity for humanity to thrive. We should take a more balanced view before declaring religion a source of evil only. We may never be able to coax the gods into the laboratory, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a very important function for human civilization. If they are taken in reasonable doses, they might even lead to astounding transformations.

In Touch with History

3 Comments

A friend recently sent me a package with a Roman jar handle from Caesarea Maritima. It’s not everyday that I receive 2000 year-old artifacts in the mail. Holding that ancient jar handle reminded me of my short stint as a wannabe archaeologist, not far from Caesarea at the site of Tel Dor. There’s no thrill like unearthing an artifact that has been buried for millennia, knowing that you are touching something a fellow human being dropped for the last time back in the days of the early Roman Empire. It is a humbling experience. In all probability the final touch was a heave into the dump, since clay jars are easily broken. But as I finger this ancient piece of useless junk, I can plainly make out how fingers like mine twisted the clay and pressed it on the jar body, much as I once did in art class, decades ago. I am connected with a stranger over the millennia by this simple bit of clay. We are united in an ancient family.

IMG_0555

Archaeology began as a biblical venture. Anyone who watches Raiders of the Lost Ark with archaeological sensibilities, after rolling their eyes (yes, it’s deserved) can’t help but realize a kernel of truth is buried here. Archaeologists don’t search for the ark, but it was religion that gave them the idea in the first place. Travel to the Middle East and begin digging up the places mentioned in the Bible. Those early archaeologists wanted to prove that the Bible story happened just as it was laid out. Only it didn’t. Archaeology soon began to reveal a more complicated picture. Jericho was uninhabited in Joshua’s day. And was there even a historical Joshua? What began as a charge to demonstrate that the Book of Books never gets it wrong transformed into a science with its immutable commitment to objectivity. And objects.

The desire for historical proof meets a deep need in people. We want to know what really happened. This simple jar handle before me tells a mute story of a person like most of us—never famous, never noticed in the noise of first century Palestine. Just some Jane or Joe throwing out the trash. That is the story of archaeology. That is the story of human life.

Every once in a while I ponder how insignificant we are. The vast majority of us will be remembered only a few years or decades beyond our demise. What will our artifacts say about us? One of the relics that will be found in the rubble of my life will be a Roman jar handle from an even earlier age. Long ago deemed junk by a person so different, but not so very different, from me. It was discarded two millennia ago. When it was found in the twentieth century it was a treasure. Thanks, Susan, for putting me in touch with history.

Rock Hard Cafe

1 Comment

IMG_0518

At first glance it may not appear to be much. A small chunk of rock, probably limestone. Hardly large enough to be used in a sling against a giant in a pinch. Still, it is special. What makes this rock special is the context from which it was removed. A friend has recently returned from Israel and he brought this rock for me. It is from the Mount of the Temptation, atop which sits a lonely monastery cared for by a single, elderly monk. The thought of someone thinking of me in such a (literally) God-forsaken wilderness is touching. My brief travels through the desert of Judea offered plenty to occupy my restless mind. I’m pretty sure we zoomed by the base of the Mount of Temptation in an air conditioned bus one day on our way to somewhere less desolate. Or more. The sharp-voiced little skeptic in my head immediately kicks in: if Jesus was alone when tempted, how could anybody possibly know where it happened? I can’t picture him leading a tour there later—“and this is where I almost turned stone to bread; don’t those pebbles look like challah to you?”

But then, it’s not about historical accuracy. This little stone in front of me is a symbol. Broken off of the karst geography of the rocky spine of the Holy Land, this shard is meant to remind me to avoid temptation. A nearly identical piece of stone from Israel sits among my teaching trinkets. One of my students went to Israel back in my days at Nashotah House and returned with a bit of limestone for me. She said, “you can keep it as long as you put it on top of my gravestone when I die.” This was a custom I’d observed long before I’d even heard of Nashotah House. Long before religion grew flinty and unyielding. Stones bear remembrance. Although Israel is not as arid as many people believe it to be, rock is a natural resource of uncommon abundance. We age and die, but the rock remains. The rock remembers.

My six weeks in Israel were spent among the rocks of an ancient settlement known as Tel Dor. Archaeology, I learned, is mostly just removing the dirt from the rocks in the ground—at least at the entry level. Those stones tell a story. They were once a city, a district administrative center. Now they lie in dusty profusion, and only the most ardent of Bible readers will recall ever seeing Dor’s name in the pages of Holy Writ. Built by Solomon, the Bible grandly claims. Now all is ruins. The grandeur of a king toppled with the passage of time. My mind is drawn back to a treeless stretch of a mountain devoid of even the hardiest plants. A person can grow mighty hungry there. Mighty hungry indeed. Temptation comes, unbidden. Life is an unbroken chain of temptation, for those willing to be honest in the desert. That little stone is, in truth, bread.

Leggo My Congo

2 Comments

When I first saw the trailer for Congo, back in 1995, I was a new father and my interest in talking apes understandably took a back seat. While the movie sat back there like a quiet child, it was slowly forgotten. Something prompted my memory over the weekend, so I finally watched it. Now, I had plenty of time to read the negative reviews, but I have a soft spot for both talking apes and bad movies. The really fascinating aspect of Congo, however, was the fantastic liberties it takes with the ancient world, particularly the kingdom of Solomon. Solomon has been under investigation over the past few decades. Archaeologists have not found evidence of the biblical opulence concerning both his wealth and fame. It seems likely that he was an actual king, but the king of a small nation that did not have quite the pull that later tradition granted to it. Still, Solomon has become a cultural trope for great wealth and splendor, and if a movie-maker wants an easy frame of reference, well, some people will recognize old Sol. Those who do recognize Solomon probably won’t have a ready inventory of his assets to interrupt their enjoyment (that presumes a lot) of the movie.

The motive factor that brings our unlikely traveling companions together in Congo, are the fabricatedly mythical diamond mines of King Solomon, located in the Congo. A self-styled archaeologist and professional con-man from Romania assists to finance a flight to Africa to help return a homesick gorilla (Amy) who also, by the way, talks. The only realistic aspect of the heroes is that the university professors are the ones who are completely broke and have to rely on corporate funding to get their monkey off their back (well, actually she’s an ape). And then there is the huge communications giant (TraviCom) that needs the diamonds for their communications equipment. And a bunch of Africans who just want to stay alive (most don’t succeed). Solomon was never really associated with diamonds in the Bible. His wealth is described in terms of gold, silver, bronze, peacocks, and suprizingly, apes. Why and how he would have managed a mine in central Africa when even the Egyptians didn’t travel there is never explained.

Well, I shouldn’t be so hasty about the Egyptians. Our Romanian con-man is also able to translate Egyptian heiroglyphics, liberally scribbled on the walls of the fortress surrounding Solomon’s mine. These preserve the story of the “myth of the killing apes” that generated an honest-to-god guffaw from my cynical self. New mythology and corny characters aside, the movie didn’t fail to reach me. I’m always a sucker for talking apes and under-funded education, both of which represent a kind of extinction. If Solomon really had a reach all the way to the Congo, and if he extracted the huge diamonds the movie showed scattered around on the surface of the ground and if universities could actually get media attention for causes other than the shortcomings of their football programs, there could be cause for hope. In what is a bit of probably unintended social commentary, after the mine is destroyed in a volcanic eruption, only one diamond remains. And that diamond benefits neither the single surviving African nor the underfunded university professor. It becomes a weapon in the hands of a large, private corporation.

Ancient Wisdom

2 Comments

The Huffington Post recently ran a story on Stonehenge. Part of the endless fascination with the ancient monument is that no one really knows why it was constructed. Given the tremendous amount of effort the building represents, it is clear that this was important to the cultures constructing it. The article in Huffington cites archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson as suggesting that Stonehenge was a monument to the unification of Britain. While not as sexy as explanations that draw on human sacrifice, precision astronomy, or alien visitation, something rings true about it. In the long course of human development, we’ve had to overcome many, many hardships. At one time humans were relatively easy prey animals for large predators. Our evolution didn’t endow us much in the way of body armor or built-in weaponry. Our eyesight and other senses pale next to various other animals. Even with all these deficiencies, our biggest challenge hasn’t been nature, but other people.

Archaeologists have also been discovering that a peaceful prehistory to humanity does not match the facts. Warfare and strife have been as much a staple of human behavior as the perennial hunt for food and safe shelter. Civilization involved cooperation at unprecedented levels. People had to trust one another and work to maintain the infrastructure that allowed diversification of talents and abilities. Fighting and wars still occurred, of course, but less frequently and with less brutality. With economies of surplus, however, capitalism also eventually evolved. It is an aggressive organism. It is visible in the greed embodied in the thought process that the only good in life is financial and the only worth of humans can be calculated in dollars and cents. It is this thinking that has erected the monuments more familiar to us today in our cities and centers of civilization.

Stonehenge could never have been a money-making venture (not until the development of capitalism at least). It is in the middle of nowhere, in a sense. The Salisbury Plain is fairly empty—no large cities nearby, no grand scenery as one might find in Cornwall or the Grampians. According to the theory, its location has to do with it being in a very rough middle between various regional cultures. Building impressive monuments is very difficult to do if one has to watch constantly over one’s shoulder. I suppose in my Romantic notions Stonehenge will always represent a mysterious past suffused with unanswered questions. For the present, however, Pearson’s explanation seems more than likely—it sounds absolutely vital in a world so dangerously divided as ours. Perhaps it is time to start a truly monumental building enterprise involving every nation. It will give future generations something to wonder about.

Time to build another henge.

Artifacts or Theodicy?

1 Comment

Last week the Huffington Post ran a story that ties archaeology, religion, and monsters together in a package too neat for some researchers. Digging in a sixteenth-century grave for plague victims (something that strikes me as being so foolhardy as to be religious) archaeologists found a corpse with a brick in its mouth. The preliminary conclusion? Sixteenth-century Italian plague-weary society was attempting to stop a vampire. The find has, of course, been disputed. Other archaeologists, the story notes, claim that a loose brick could have fallen into the cadaver’s agape mouth just making it resemble the little-known technique of stopping a vampire by bricking its mouth open. This story, written with Huffington Post’s usual pluck, raised an issue I quite often encountered as a doctoral student in ancient Near Eastern religions: anomalies are generally categorized as religious.

When my wife first pointed this story out to me I thought I might learn something of vampire lore—itself inherently religious—from the sixteenth century. The fact is, however, that artifacts (including people) under the ground accumulate a lot more than dirt. Mystery attends the lives of yesteryear, and the further back we go in time the less we understand. It was a standing joke among those of us in the textually-based field of religious studies that any artifact for which no function could be discerned would most certainly be labeled “religious” by archaeologists. When no logic attends an action, call it religious. This might be a motto for academics and their approach to the study of religion. There are some who claim religious studies is not a proper field of inquiry at all. Excuse me, but where are you intending to fly that plane?

Vampire scares (whether or not that’s what was found in Italy) do, however, follow their own logic. Although early scientists may have made connections implicating rodents (and their fleas) as carriers of plague, the average citizen would have only seen the supernatural dimension. Morbidity on the scale of the Black Death is almost inconceivable and as Europe suffered through periodic outbreaks of plague it seemed that a good God couldn’t be behind it all. Evil creatures, such as vampires, get God off the hook. They are a device of theodicy. “Theodicy” is the jargon for the theological justification of God in a world full of suffering. When God’s goodness effaces to such a point that people grow frightened, well, isn’t it just easier to say a vampire is behind it all? The conclusion that logic draws is quite different. Nevertheless, I think I’ll be replacing the garlic on my nightstand with a brick. What will the archaeologists of the future say?

Holy Land Grabs

2 Comments

Civilization began in the “Middle East.” Ever since then, it has been a struggle to keep it together. One of the sad realities of the last century and continuing into this is that peace in this region seems as elusive as a Tea Partier with compassion. Claims to land are among the most complex of human inventions. Having never been a property owner, I’ve only ever watched this from the sidelines, but I know the endless surveying, assessing, and negotiating that goes into drawing invisible lines across the surface of our planet in order to determine who owns what. At least as early as the Code of Hammurabi, the placing of property markers was considered the concern of the gods. Humans are clearly among the most territorial of animals.

When my wife showed me a CNN story about an archaeological dig at Khirbet Qeiyafa in Israel, this old issue raised its weary head once more. The site, whose ancient name is not yet known, is being suggested as “the city of David” by archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel. The evidence for the suggestion, as far as I can tell from news reports, is that the city fits the right time period and lacks pig bones. With the Bible’s great claims for David’s very large kingdom, archaeologists have been unable to find evidence that such a grand entity ever existed. David himself is not historically attested outside the Bible. Those who make land claims based on a putative gift of God, however, must find physical evidence to back it up. This wish hovers like a dove over every excavation.

The death of an archaeologist

Archaeology has frequently been commandeered by special interest groups. The field of study began in the “Middle East” to find evidence for the historicity of biblical stories, some of which were never intended as history. Daunting emotional claims, however, weighed heavily on the minds of those who led the excavations. The Bible made what they supposed to be historical claims, so the physical evidence had to back it up. When Jericho was excavated and found to have been abandoned at the time of Joshua not a few heads were scratched. Archaeologists returned to the city in later excavations to try to question the results. Jericho was a ghost town long before Joshua came along because the story of Jericho has something more important than history to convey. That larger message, applicable throughout the world, seems to be: don’t base claims to special privilege on the Bible. Tea Partiers could even learn a thing or two from that message as well.

The Politics of Dentistry

2 Comments

A story from the Associated Press on NPR this week announced the discovery of some teeth. No ordinary teeth, these perhaps belonged to Homo sapiens at 400,000 BP (“Before Present,” no apologies to gas-guzzlers). And they were found in Israel. Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University are quoted as stating this could rewrite the story of human evolution, suggesting that modern humans emerged some 200,000 years earlier than thought, and in Israel instead of in Africa. Now those are some ambitious choppers! Coincidentally, the discovery was announced the day I was discussing the earliest human occupation of the Levant in my Winter Term class. Of course. One of my students pointed the article out to me.

One of the endlessly fascinating aspects of archaeology and paleontology is the constant surprise of discovery. Often I have to remind myself that the past only exists in reconstruction. Once the moment is over it is lost forever, only to be rebuilt by specialists in documents and artifacts. Reconstruction, however, often comes with a political price tag. Anyone who follows the claims based on archaeological finds knows the folly of discovery. In disputed territories the work of archaeologists is used to stake claims to modern land ownership. Who in the world would not want to own the first location where modern humans emerged on the planet? What staggering claims could be made!

I have always sensed a comfort when thinking of human origins in Africa. Far from the (modern) industrialized mayhem of “civilization,” early hominids took their first tentative steps in Africa. Cut off from the rest of the post-Pangean continents except via the narrow passage of the Sinai, Africa harbored our pre-sapiens ancestors. Once they reached Asia and Europe, they interacted with Neanderthals, as genetics now demonstrate. Interaction led inevitably to extinction, so politics had to have been involved. To find the pre-political Garden of Eden, we need to cast our eyes on Africa. Anthropologists are even now disputing whether the teeth are of Homo sapiens or not. I find, when I’m in the dentist’s chair, it is best to leave politics out of the discussion.

From the Associated Press

Which Way is Up?

1 Comment

In an article full of rare academic tropes and staid paronomasia, MSNBC announced yesterday, through LiveScience, that what appears to be an ancient “sex toy” has been found in Sweden. The object, of uncertain utility, is made of antler and dates to the Mesolithic era in that region. What has surprised the archaeologists is that the artifact apparently represents a male, rather than the more usual female, image. Two common ambiguities of antiquity come together in such a find: the sacredness with which the ancients seems to have held reproduction, and the fact that the way you look at an artifact is certain to express interpretations in line with the assessor’s.

Scholars of religion have long had to roll their eyes as archaeologists, particularly in Israel and “biblical” regions, unearth artifacts of uncertain function. Not knowing what this item might be, it is common for a find to be labeled as “religious.” This is perhaps a larger issue in “biblical” regions since so many archaeologist, particularly the influential ones of late last century, began their careers as biblical scholars or potential clergy. In the days when academic career mobility still actually existed, they could easily make the jump to archaeology, caring all their biblical baggage with them. Efforts to bolster the historicity of the Bible provide a special impetus to see objects as religious. Their actual function remains lost to history.

Even scholars see what they wish to see. It is a form of pareidolia, the finding of significance in what might otherwise be random noise. Is the Stone Age Swedish antler really a phallus or not? It is unlikely that the answer will ever be known. The context is ambiguous and the object itself is open to interpretation. Modern humans, with our own issues about sexuality, are inclined to snap suggestive objects right into that pattern. Even the specialists admit that maybe it is an object to knap flint, a common use of bone and antler material in ancient times. Or maybe it was intended as a thank you to the gods. Its interpretation may depend on which way you look at it.

Ambiguous artifacts abound

Older than Stonehenge

7 Comments

MSNBC ran a story yesterday concerning a little-known henge in Dartmoor, England. Images of these remote Dartmoor megaliths transported me back to my years in the British Isles when my wife and I spent every available tuppence traveling around to see antiquities so old that the Roman fortifications along Hadrian’s Wall seemed like throwbacks to the 1950s. With some English friends we met in Edinburgh we drove through the bleak moors of Dartmoor and Exeter, down into the forgotten curiosities of Cornwall, and back to Salisbury Plain to see Stonehenge. One year for my birthday we flew to the Orkneys (on a plane designed like a shoebox with wings) to explore the islands with the highest concentration of preserved prehistoric sites in Europe. Suffering from a killer head-cold, I accompanied my wife on hands and knees into tombs constructed thousands of years before William turned his conquering eye onto the British mainland. Colossal stone rings larger than Stonehenge, but less bulky and lacking capstones, stood out in the middle of a field where the locals barely threw a glance; such monuments had become part of the daily backdrop.

Archaeologists constantly attempt to discern the function of these silent remains. The MSNBC story suggests, based on the remains of porcine bones, that the Dartmoor site may have been associated with funerary rites. Carbon dated to 3500 BCE, they predate Noah’s putative ark (dated precisely to 1657, thank you Bishop Ussher) by more than a millennium. That they may have been associated with death is no surprise – the great feats and structures of humankind seem to be exactly that, efforts to cheat death. To leave reminders that we were here and we had something to say. What exactly they had to say, however, is muffled by the eons of lost communication.

A phenomenon I have noticed for many decades now is that when an unexplained structure or artifact is recovered, first recourse among many archaeologists is to attribute religious significance to it. Religion is the default fall-back when we can’t explain why people were expending tremendous resources to articulate a primal, deep concern in stone or clay. In many respects, the same is true today. Religious leaders still raise funds like no other class of professionals, simply by suggesting that death itself may be cheated of its due. All that money, however, can’t stop the inevitable. Instead of running away, I side with the archaeologists as I poke my head into some dank, dark space no other person has explored for many a month or year. Sitting quietly in an empty tomb left by an ancient society rendered completely mute by high antiquity, you are nevertheless in touch with what it means to be truly human.

Biblical Science Fiction

2 Comments

1950s science fiction films are perhaps the most parsimonious celluloid genre. Standard Saturday afternoon fare in my childhood, I still have a soft spot for the unapologetic self-confidence of these movies with their painted backdrops and hokey effects. The messages are frequently self righteous and often biblical. So yesterday as I treated myself to a viewing of The Mole People, I went on instant alert as the biblical references began right away for an audience that would have known the Bible well enough to take it all in. Set in “Asia,” the archaeologists are digging for Sumerian artifacts when then discover a stone tablet “below the great flood level.” That makes it at least 5,000 years old, the assembled academics declare. A diffident Dr. Roger Bentley tells his fellow excavators, “in archaeology all things are possible!” When a young boy of the indigenous population discovers an oil lamp shaped like a boat, the archaeologists note, “the flood’s been proven to be a historical fact.” The boat is a model of Noah’s ark, the Sumerian version. The scene of the expedition climbing Mount Kuitara includes footage from the 1955 Fernand Navarra trek up Mount Ararat during which a wooden beam was found, reputedly from Noah’s ark.

If you can stomach the bogus Sumerian you’ll learn that ancient Mesopotamians also survived the flood, a kind of “children of Cain” motif. These Ishtar-worshiping pagans are practitioners of a kind of social Darwinism, killing off their own kind when resources in their underground world become strained. Their great underground civilization parallels that of ancient heathenism while more advanced civilization on the surface of the globe has the benefit of an enlightened Christian worldview. Even the Sumerians whipping the actual mole-men is reminiscent of the Egyptians whipping the Hebrews in the Ten Commandments (released the same year).

Fast forward fifty years. We now live in a technologically advanced civilization where the myths of ancient people have little place. Science provides logical explanations for most of what we encounter in the world around us. Yet there are still otherwise intelligent people seeking Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat. The past is impossible to escape. The Sumerians in the film (whose walls are inexplicably decorated by Egyptian artwork and hieroglyphics) represent those who hold onto a confused religion that has become a form of terrorism in the eyes of the more advanced archaeologists. Perhaps the paradigm has shifted, and those who use religion today to gain political power and personal gain have become the self-righteous Sumerians of The Mole People.