ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology is the study of what our ancestors made and did in prehistoric years, that is, the years before writing came to be. It also is the study of how our own way of life came from theirs. It is remarkable how far back our ancestry goes, and how unknown most of it is.
Humans have passed slowly through a vast time span, gradually coming to value the world and the things in it—wood, stone, bone, fiber, earth, other living beings —more and more. In the earliest time of humanity on earth, before much use of stone was made, and the possibilities of stone to take on new shapes when cracked or flaked weren't yet understood, people used implements made of sticks or bones; and often no durable implements at all. Finally, about two million years before the present, the earliest stone choppers were made. The great new material was beginning to be understood. The old stone age, the Paleolithic, had begun.
About 10,000 B.C. instead of chipping stones to make a tool, men began to grind hard river stones against sandstone to shape them, and the new stone age, Neolithic, of polished stone ax heads began. A new and more patient technique, different from chipping or flaking had come to be; based on rubbing, perhaps a gentler motion. These new stone axe heads wouldn't chip as easily as flint and more brittle stones did. They were needed to cut trees and for the new economy of agriculture. Agriculture meant that the value of the earth which men and women had walked on but not planted in began to be seen newly.
A seed in the earth will grow, nourished by the power of the earth, and present food. The older hunting way of life gave way to agriculture and the old gods of the hunt, which tended to be masculine, bowed to the new Earth Goddess.
Trying always to like the world, as Aesthetic Realism puts it, to see as much value in it as possible, new ways of life developed, and prehistory entered the Bronze Age about 5,000 B.C. Soon writing was developed in some parts of the world, and for Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and later Native America, prehistory gave way to recorded history.
The Iron Age, which we are still in, began about 500 B.C.
As time went on, in the old stong age, there was an increasing sense of aesthetics. Greater and greater care is taken in the shaping of stone tools, the regularity of the surface, its smoothness, and the symmetry of the whole implement. The late Acheulean hand axe is very pretty, while the early Abbevillian is cruder.
Human beings have always needed the world to complete them, make them more free. Archaeology illustrates this. Objects of the outside world were used by an Australopithecus, one of the early species of men, to assist him. An Australopithecus took a stone from the world and shaped it to help him cut or pound something he couldn't cut or pound with his bare hands. He was more competent in the world using his chopper.
We want to be more competent too. At the same time he needed the world more; he was more dependent on something other than just himself to get work done. What a subtle mingling of dependence and independence life is, and was.
Even the simplest implements have a meaning that goes beyond what we can see. A chopper is more geometric than the smooth stone it is chipped from. The creater of stone tools had abstract shapes in mind: straight lines, triangles, S-curves. I believe the distinguished archaeologist Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago was first to argue that abstract ideas were in the minds of the earliest men and women. A chopper of 2 million B.C., a hand axe of 500,000 B.C., a blade tool of 20,000 B.C., all are simple and complex at once. They are of stone, and the early ones are so crudely chipped, yet the geometric thoughts of the toolmakers are immortalized in the stones they shaped, lying now on shelves in museums for people to admire.
Olduwan choppers for instance are now found by archaeologists deep in the beds of African lakes that have been dry for ages. Once the sun shone on those tools of stone for the first time, then they were under the earth, and now they are with us.
Humanity has changed vastly in two million years, and the early person did not consciously think, "I will make this stone as beautiful as possible." Yet he or she unconsciously wanted to give a stone or basket or garment a pleasing shape that would also be useful. We find, for instance, the outline of a hand axe to be two curved lines meeting in a point, and so is the outline of a jumbo jet. The desire to give pleasing form to shapeless matter is more conscious now, and more successful. A cathedral has greater form than many grass huts have had. But the trying to find beauty in the world was present then, too. Andre Gide wrote on the beauty of Congo huts, and he was very convincing.
Archaeologists have discovered a whole orchestra of objects, early to late: choppers and chopping tools, core tools, flake tools, oval stones with painted lines and dots, paintings on cave walls, and occasionally a carved figure in mammoth ivory, looking demure.
The hope of the archaeologist is to infer, from all this, what designs for living men and women had in past years. We can be sure, within the variety, that people were trying to put together such opposites as selfishness and altruism in themselves. A Homo erectus of prehistoric Java can be thought of, by the bank of a jungle river, with something like a turnip in his left hand and a large stick in his right. He is hungry. A face appears. It is his friend. Should he share or fight? The self-conflict he has, we have. It is a situation of opposing forces in one's mind.
In Homo erectus times people were hunters and lived dispersed on the land in small groups of no more than thirty or so. Their tools and weapons were also dispersed in that they did not put things together. There were no spears made of wood and stone. There was nothing like sewn clothing made of many parts. Thair language undoubtedly did not make long sentences. Life was simple and scattered, and nomadic: following the animals they hunted for life.
By the time of Egypt life had more density and multiplicity. People lived in large villages and even in cities, thousands of people at once. They were sedentary, not nomadic. Their tools, weapons, clothing and houses were richly compound: bronze and wood and bone t^ paint and gold could all be found together in one decorated spear. The Egyptian way of life, by 2,000 B.C., was more diverse and more integrated than the nomadic hunters half a million years before.
The trend of cultural evolution, as Herbert Spencer said, was to increased integration and increased diversity. The human mind wants both integration, which is the same as unity, and diversity. Hilda Rawlins in Self and World is described by Eli Siegel as wanting both:
Miss Rawlins' distress arises from her not being able to manage the problem of unity and diversity in her. Sometimes, Hilda has a corrupt and intense drive towards the unity, the purity of herself. It is then she doesn't want to see anybody. She wishes to stay in bed. She is not interested in the events of the world, or in the events of her friends' lives.
Nevertheless, Hilda, being human, had that in her which needed more than herself. . . .She flung the bed clothes off her. She called up friends. She talked bouyantly, raptly. She went out. On the subway, she was interested in everybody... (pp. 114-115) .
My opinion is that because cultural evolution is going towards more unity and more diversity at once, as Herbert Spencer might have said, it's going towards a more complete satisfaction of the big unconscious need of people. It is the need described by Eli Siegel this way:
Every person is always trying to put together opposites in himself or herself.
The human mind drives cultural evolution, is behind it. And the human mind has opposing drives within it, and the desire to unify these. It has the desire to take in more and more knowledge about the world and the desire to organize and unify it. It has the desire to be critical and the desire to be kind. It has the desire to go forth and the desire to retreat. It has the desire for pleasure and the desire for self respect; and much more. These opposites are in play in every phase of life.
Take an instance from the scientific field, for example. The adding machine invented by Pascal in 1642 is more organized and more diverse than the three-part stone axe of 10,000 B.C. That machine had many more working parts than a handle, a blade, and connecting gum. And all those parts depended on one another intimately (that is, they were well integrated).
Also take an instance from the field of military strategy. The prudent courage of George Washington often showed great intelligence and passion about the opposites of retreating and advancing. But a rash Homo erectus, or classic "cave man" who darted angrily out of his cave and then back in again, on seeing a crows of enemies, let's say (in central China 500,000 B.C.) was less usefully aware of retreat and advance, two opposites that are large in the history of warfare.
And conclude with an instance from art. The respectful and pleasing paintings of deer, horses, cattle, and predators made in caves of France and Spain some 15 or 20 thousand years ago are a step in advance of a much earlier (and less respectful) desire of hunting folk simply to kill and eat an animal without depicting in color on a wall its shape, shading, posture, emotion.
The evolution of culture arises from the human desire to make a one of opposites in oneself. Where that evolution has made humanity larger, greater, it has lessened contempt and increased respect. Just how this is so, in all its details, it will take more sources than this to document. I do say, however, that because Aesthetic Realism makes conscious this purpose of humankind, and provides a method of consciously achieving it, I view Aesthetic Realism is the thing most needed for the successful, kind advancement of culture. This is an anthropologist's conclusion.
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Go to Part 3. Physical Anthropology
