More Musings on Civilization and Its Discontents with a Rousseauian Undercurrent and Constant Sideways Glances at John Zerzan and the Kids in the Trees.


(This Idle Chatter entry is probably best understood with reference to the posting of Tuesday, July 20th.)

A couple of years ago Steve Olson published a lovely little book called "Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins." The fact that all human beings living on the planet today share a descendant, one single female human being living roughly 150,000-200,000 years ago in Africa is remarkable enough. But recent research into genetics and archeology has begun to reveal other interesting facts about the origins of human civilization.
It turns out that modern humans descend from a group that traveled up out of Africa into the Middle East and then slowly made their way over through Europe where they eventually displaced the Neandertals. The modern humans seem to have had more sophisticated basic cultural resources than the Neandertals and may have developed some basic agricultural techniques. The struggle between the modern humans and the Neandertals is thus classically, almost perfectly, almost absurdly, the struggle between the birth of civilization and its other. The fact is that there were clearly some good things about being a Neandertal. As Olson puts it:

"They gathered the fruits and seeds that grow in the region--pistachios, almonds, and chickpeas. They hunted wild animals, especially gazelles and deer, in the rugged terrain bordering the Mediterranean. They were continually on the move, following the seasons and migration of game."

Noble savages indeed, bumbing around the caves of Europe munching on pistachios. Not so bad. Why didn't it last? Why couldn't it last? Was there some greater force of history or logic of development that pushed modern humans toward agriculture and civilization? In another passage, Olson writes,

"One last glimpse at the Neandertal reveals both the tragedy and the inevitability of their demise. In a cluster of limestone caves southeast of Paris, archeologists have found a distinctive assembly of modern-looking tools, beads, and ornamental objects dated to about 36,000 years ago. Initially, scientists assumed that these artifacts, which belong to a culture known as the Chatelperronian, were the work of early modern humans in Europe. But then fossils were found with a Chatelperronian deposit, and they were clearly those of the Neandertals.
Whatever their other limitations, Neandertals apparently were able to learn. They watched the modern humans who were growing more numerous all around them. They copied the tools and other artifacts that seemed to give the moderns an advantage. Perhaps they learned to speak the moderns' language.
We will never know how much the Neandertals were like us. My suspicion is that they had more of our abilities and desires than the common caricatures of them would suggest. But by 30,000 years ago their time had past. The future belonged to the new people coming out of Africa."

There is something terribly melancholy about the idea of the Neandertals desperately trying to copy the techniques of the modern humans and slowly fading away as they do. But there is also something vaguely terrifying about the idea of the Neandertals roaming around with their pistachios generation after generation endlessly reproducing exactly the same. If it is a bliss it is somehow an empty bliss. Olson puts the whole story under the auspice of 'inevitability' and, in the last paragraph, the vague reference to 'abilities and desires'. Is it possible to desire civilization from outside of it, to dream it as a possibility? Who knows? The story of the last days of the Neandertals suggests that accidental steps may drive over a boundary toward inevitability. Either way these questions of origin are intriguing and mysterious, even scary. Perhaps Aristotle was right all along. 'Human Being' and 'desiring to know' are wrapped around each other rather tightly.

- posted by Editor @ 1:11 PM