Chapter 2: Documents (Life and Afterlife of Mesopotamia and Egypt)

As discussed in the earlier blog, most of the documents cover the beliefs of the literate powerful rulers that governed the masses. Whether the majority of the people also believed in the divinity of their cultures is hard to tell; however, the standards set forth by the leaders in the civilizations appear to manifest their own interpretations of the afterlife and the promise of another world beyond their living one. Most of the cultures seem to have produced epic mythologies to embellish the ways in which their customs and ethos had been created to mold out of their former primitive (or animalistic) lifestyle into one that would benefit a “civilized” population of obedience. With Mesopotamia for example, not only did they have the mythologies like the Epic of Gilgamesh to encourage the importance of mortality and what one does with their life, but they also had written laws and conditions to enforce their justices in which they were to live their lives. For the Egyptians, they also relied on their good deeds and magical incantations for a smooth transition into their realm of eternal life.

The Egyptians grew to understand the key to immortality relied on the specialists dedicated to perfecting the written language. Robert Strayer recalls an Egyptian passage elaborated within Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature by explaining, “Man decays; his corpse is dust; all his kin have perished. But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter” (Lichtheim in Strayer’s Ways of the World, p100). Within the passage to Be a Scribe, the timbres of the teacher to the aspiring scribes were that of a motivational speaker to the sedentary crowd. The writings depict the other possible fates the potential scribes could have found themselves within the least desirable occupations. Instead of becoming an outworker, merchant, or a lesser peasant, the passage identifies the scribes’ role of being removed from any physically intensive labor. It is also advertised within the text the climb up the social class; it is evident regarding the people the scribes can work directly for, as well as the many different classes of people that work directly under them. The selling point towards immortality is implied by the relevance of the texts; the names of peasants, soldiers, and other commoners would fail at ever achieving noble recognition to endure the test of time (omitting the possibility of passing down the surname between the generations).  In contrast, the written language has no lifespan, and the concepts and knowledge within the text can inhabit a new life with every reader willing to spend time with the written material.  I believe this was their greatest source of power considering that their written language is what transcribed the words of the leaders to the ears of the masses.  Documentation served as the focal point to clarify their code of justice within any domestic or public disputes, and was ordained by the leaders of their communities—and these leaders needed to articulate their messages to the scribes in order to spread the word.  Essentially speaking, the scribes could potentially have more power than the leaders that govern them if they ever had the desire to corrupt their messages.  Above all else, the primary sources are what we use in today’s world to understand the methods of the Ancient Era, which prove their theories that their voices would indeed become immortal.

I believe even to this day, people are still looking for meaning and significance to their lives.  I would even include myself into the statistic of people compelled to leave something behind to benefit the future generations.  Perhaps immortality truly is the ultimate source of power; in relation to other organisms that cannot escape their inevitable deaths, the undefined lifespan of the written languages are the only thing that can out last any life expectancy rate.  Not mentioned in these documents were the writings found in extinct civilizations; regardless of the native speakers that could translate the dead languages, there is enough content found within the artifacts that could clue scholars in on the true interpretations.  This method may not be accurate; however, the evidence to support the documentations that have out lived entire civilizations prove the strength of written language.  Whether people understand the meanings of the text or not, people today continue to search for their meanings, and pass down the discoveries for the future scholars to decipher.  We will maintain our current understandings with the advancements of technology, the traditions of religious writings, and the laws that secure our safety.

Chapter 2: First Civilizations

                In this chapter, we’ve transitioned from the Stone Age of the Paleolithic era into the Neolithic Age, or “New Stone” era, and then finally into the Ancient era.  The primary transition between the ages was the innovation of agriculture, which allowed the gatherers and hunters to settle down from the life of migrating to where the food was at.  Agriculture created the domestications of plants and certain animals to produce an abundance of food, and this solution to regulate the rations brought upon specialization geared towards perfecting different skill sets.  By late Neolithic into early Ancient era, some of these specialized skills that launched forward into civilization were the developments of the written language.  As the other civilizations began creating tools and manufacturing goods, they had also created their writing systems in order to keep track of their trades between the other developing societies.  Continuing developments within the Ancient era appear to flourish in places close to water which regulated their irrigation systems, coupled with the cultivation of security, aesthetics, and spirituality/religion.  Anthropologist Robert Carneiro argues the rapid rate of growth within the colonies could be rooted with the competitive nature of man.  With the continual attempts to out produce, out populate, and expand their territories, Carneiro believes that the neighboring populations would continually participate in wars with each other—the victor would acquire all of the lands and resources, while the conquered inhabitants would succumb into the roles of lower classed people. (p69)

            For me, I felt that this transition into the Ancient cultures was fascinating because it appears that all of the civilizations had approximately the same rate of evolving into this newly organized way of life.  At the same time however, as the picture becomes clearer of how the different countries came to fruition, I do share the remorse over the course of actions that lead to creating inequalities.  Perhaps it would be inevitable anyways considering how people today strongly rely on competition in order to strive for perfection.  While I do believe that a healthy venue for competition is needed in order to evolve, I also draw the line to how the victors generally regard their bested opponent.  The competition also becomes absolutely ridiculous when the discriminations of superior genders, class, race, and religion cost the lives of their rivals as well as the hostility towards their own citizens.  Not only does the inequality enforce slavery and self entitlements, but this behavior has been governed as part of the social norm for thousands of years.  It makes me think that to fight these social and gender inequalities worldwide, it would take much longer than a single lifetime to counteract the generations and millennia of mistreatments.

            Something else I found myself thinking about when reading Strayer’s work regarding how previous historians concentrated on the written texts of the ancient documents and recordings.  On page 77 to be specific, Strayer elaborates how revolutionary the written language became for these developing cultures saying “it was a powerful and transforming innovation, regarded almost everywhere as a gift from the gods, while people without writing often saw it as something magical or supernatural”.  In other words, the people educated in the written language were closer to their gods (or at least regarded higher in class) when compared to the illiterate.  This leads me to speculate on the accuracy of these ancient archives since we are only able to receive the works and perspectives of the elite and divine individuals, rather than hearing the voices of the repressed and conquered individuals.  While learning of the powers the Kings and leaders practiced over their less powerful citizens, we can only contemplate what their lives would truly be like when accounting the consistent oppressions the elite regarded their slaves and poorer class.  I would still believe these ancient texts to be more reliable sources than the speculations of undocumented artifacts found in the Paleolithic Period; however, I am also able to recognize that the primary sources of history taken place within the Ancient era is primarily recorded by the self appointed upper class.  This also makes me curious to know if the future textbooks that depict what life was like for the residents of 2000-2100 C.E. would be accurate on the middle and lower class’s perspective, or if history will erase the voices of the powerless, and only consider the perspectives of the people powerful enough to shape the future as they saw fit.  At this moment in time, I feel the wish for an egalitarian life in today’s society is becoming more and more like a dream—as long as the people in power continue to protect their influences and personal agendas from the less fortunate, we will never find true equality. 

Chapter 1: Documents (cont.): Are the sources reliable?

                So as I’m writing this blog, I realized that I messed up on the assignment; the previous blog was specifically meant to focus on Marjorie Shotak’s documentary of Nisa and her egalitarian lifestyle.  I probably should have realized that the documents greatly contrasted one another, and as a result I may not have many insightful thoughts to fuel this particular blog.  To paraphrase on the material covered for this assignment, author Robert Strayer went on to site other worldly anomalies that surfaced from the Paleolithic period and how vexing and complicated our current understandings are of their world.  His examples included the mysterious cave paintings that depict humanoid animals and symbolic markings adjacent to the artwork, sculptures and artifacts that resemble stoical deities and communal inventory outside of gathering and hunting, and he also included structures and buildings like Stonehenge.  Many of his examples all have a specific element in common; despite their existence of a life before our modern civilizations, confirming the exact detail of the history within these discoveries continue to be elusive.  Most of these discoveries after many educated speculations; however, the overall consensus to these mysteries are concluded as just that—a speculation.  We will never completely understand what life was truly like in those days without something as reliable as written text from the primary sources.

                When comparing the sources between Nisa’s story and these Paleolithic discoveries, I felt that the actual artifacts were more useful than the credibility of Nisa’s documentary.  I was not able to verify or consider her material of whether or not she was truly an egalitarian descendent from the Paleolithic era.  I believe she gave an excellent analogy (or glimpse) of what that lifestyle would be like; however, with all of the transitions between different timelines, I find it difficult to believe that her lineage would keep to themselves—this would have phased them out if they were not able to adapt to their surrounding environment.  There were no mentions of other egalitarians that lived within proximity to Nisa, the documents were more concerned with her day to day life.  I also find that the artifacts and discoveries would prove to be more accurate; many of the materials would undergo carbon-dating in order to discover the approximate age of the item.  These items in my opinion have more of a direct contact within the Paleolithic communities; as a result, these direct contacts would be closer in relation to the people who’ve actually used the artifacts when compared to a present time person that honors the traditions of her ancestors.

                Considering all the years of research without conclusive evidence to the purpose of these findings, a part of me believes that this period would continue to stand the test of time.  Perhaps the generations after our living years will create technology that could better analyze the current findings, and optimistically find some innovative minds to discover a new perspective and solution to these historical mysteries.  I also would like to believe like Strayer that the Paleolithic inhabitants were truly egalitarian.  I believe that if there was a world of gathering and hunting people who regarded everybody as equal, perhaps our society and other cultures could implement this level of equality and contribute to improve the synergy among one another.  While I do approve of some standards of leadership in the presence of a crisis, I believe self entitlement and hierarchies are what have severely crippled the spiritual evolution of mankind.  The fight should be for the survival of the external forces that threaten the community, not with each other, and especially not for the exploitation of others for personal gain.  So with this romantic view of Paleolithic people and how they knew how to live when compared to the modern human being, I found that a part of me agrees and hopes that Strayer is correct with his view.  If we harnessed the ability to regard everybody as equals before, then I can find hope that we can still live harmoniously in today’s world.

Were Paleolithics egalitarian?

          The question addressed in our classroom was our opinion whether the Paleolithic people were more egalitarian than the later generations when comparing both societies in wealth, status, power, or gender. To be egalitarian is to believe in, and practice the equality of all people—there is no hierarchy of political, economical, nor social aspects within the egalitarian lifestyle. Author Robert Strayer signified the mysterious and elusive nature of this time period by highlighting the lack of consented source material. Historians, Anthropologists, Archeologists, and scholars do not have the privilege of documented data like the later years of written texts; therefore, most of the discoveries and understandings have been widely accepted based on observations, pattern recognition, and educated speculations. There are some who study living societies of gatherer-hunters within the remote regions to collect the first hand knowledge of their ways of life. Admittedly this is not the most conventional source of valid information considering the variations of culture contaminations and evolutions that may have occurred when compared to the people of the past.

          With that in mind, Strayer presented the works of Marjorie Shostak and her interview with a woman named Nisa who practiced the gathering and hunting skills acquired by her ancestors. Nisa’s life was a simplistic one; she was minimalistic in her material possessions, she gathered most of her food while one of her husbands’ would hunt for meat every once in a while, loved her first husband but was not confined to one sexual partner, and she was spiritual but distrusting of her God. Although the modern people would see her as being “poor” because of her choice in lifestyle and the lack of possessions, she was still very happy according to her standards. She was an example of what life could have looked like in the “Stone Age” of commodore and equality. Not much else of the document was of significant value to Strayer’s allegory of the Paleolithic life, but one thing that he mentions that was not covered in Nisa’s memoir is the occurrence of cave paintings. Some of the paintings and sculptures found in caves and burial sites depict various art forms of men with wildlife, some creatures would portray humanlike characteristics, and other symbolisms resembling praiseworthy women. Strayer also mentions discovering fossilized remains of people within the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods—although the research could suggest how some of these people were killed, questions arise as to what they were up to in the first place that got them killed. His last example of these mysterious realms before modern man involves the construction and resourcefulness to the creation of Stonehenge. No matter what approach people begin to ponder about where the materials came from to construct this piece, what the construction was for, or why it was made in the first place, we will never truly know what took place on this island to promote this structure.

          Unless I missed it in the reading, there is no clear indication to me whether Paleolithic people were more egalitarian than the people of today’s world. I would like to believe that they were egalitarian due to the artifacts that portray both men and women to equally important standards, because I feel that if the Homo sapiens in the past had wealth, status, and power, our evolution would have progressed much quicker than it did. I believe they had a better sense of balance with gathering only what they needed, hunting whenever necessary, and not allowing hierarchy to govern people over others as severely as the future kings of the future regions. I had personally felt that monogamy was inherited within our culture as another form of control; most other creatures do not share the same values as man, for their main mission is to multiply to keep their specie prosperous. For us humans, since we are the top of the food chain, we are not confined to the same survival instincts as the lesser animals are and thus we’ve held ourselves to a higher standard of living and self control. I also find it interesting that for a while the women were regarded as the powerful deities since they could bring new life into the world; however, after agriculture began to take place, the roles have switched to the male’s side as being the providers with the harvests. I feel that with the change into the Neolithic era, and how accustomed people grew into losing their instincts of gathering and hunting, they became just as domesticated as their farming and agriculture. This drastic change is the only evidence that I can currently conceive of regarding an egalitarian lifestyle; because as soon as people began to become unequal, the Paleolithic world became a thing of the past.

Chapter One Review: Agriculture

                For the most part, chapter one stressed the importance of Agriculture, and its impacts into the development of the world in which we live in today.  Traditionally speaking, most world history courses in the past would have omitted the Paleolithic Era (or “Old Stone” when translated) from being taught among the general students.  This is not to say that this time period was not as vital as the later events of recent human history; rather, when compared to governmental developments within the different regions of the world, progress during the “Stone Age” phase of life was slow, and there is a severe lack of recorded documented data that historians use to confirm the way life used to be like.  The later stages of life had the abundance of written texts; without the text, historians and archeologists rely on relics, preserved remains, and the locations in which the items were found, in order to piece together what may have happened in this land before time.  From this collected data, we can confirm four important details within the Paleolithic Age:  the human species emerged and evolved into Homo Sapiens from the human like creature, humans used basic and really old stone tools to perform tasks, they had formed into bands of 20-40 people of “gatherers and hunters”, and they initially migrated out of Africa into other continents (list of simplified key points created in class by Ms. Patricia Andrews).

Our instructor pointed out a subtle and clever observation of the way the author (Robert W. Strayer) described the culture as being “gatherers and hunters”, rather than the traditional “hunters and gatherers”.  Strayer purposely did this to demonstrate a very important fact—the majority of food was 70% gathered materials (berries, nuts, previously killed creatures, etc.) while the other 30% of the food was through hunting.  This is also aimed to eliminate the gender-typing associated with this method of life; it had been presumed that a “gathering” role took on a more feminine characteristic, while “hunting” was seen more as a masculine trait.  In reality, evidence suggests that these primitive people were egalitarian by nature (meaning they were equal in all aspects of life), and both men and women would be classified equally as gatherers.

The dawn of the Neolithic Era (or Agricultural Revolution) was what transitioned the Stone Age into further evolutional development.  By directly manipulating plants and domesticating certain animals, people were now able to produce their own food rather than digging around for what would be available.  Consequently, by affecting the previous balance of the world, the abundance of food allowed populations to rise, and while people began to lose the skills of traditional gathering and hunting, the domesticated animals and plants also became dependent on humans for survival.  Strayer also conveyed the push for agriculture was the value of intensification after the Ice Age; by discovering the efficiency of creating more food and resources, and minimizing the surface area of land in which they previously gathered and hunted, the people could prosper by expending less energy to live when compared to their former lifestyle.  After the survival of the Ice Age, Strayer suggests the evidence of growing populations occurred during the global warming to prepare and prevent a future global event.  With this “food crisis”, people were motivated to explore new ways of producing food and technologies which combat these earthly forces.  This also greatly hindered the people from maintaining their former skills of survival in order to produce for the future masses.

I personally found it interesting how crippling they grew to be as a direct result to this new way of life.   I know that people today do the same thing with calculators, meal preparation, or any other means of having someone (or something) do the most basic and difficult work for them if they can avoid it; yet without acquiring those necessary set skills, people struggle to do the work themselves.  For me, I’m personally embarrassed with my inability to create my own food—not in the traditional sense of finding a cow to create my own steak (which I also don’t know how to do), but even traditional home cooked meals are an impossible challenge for me to create because I always had somebody willing to do it for me.  I am grateful that I can make my own bowl of cereal (barely), but I know that I would have an extremely difficult time in the Paleolithic Era if I were to make a desirable meal for my band of brothers and sisters.  If I also proved myself useless within the pack, I would most certainly be exiled.

I also found it interesting that with the birth of agriculture, and the development of societies, that not only did the later generations lose their primitive skills of survival, but they also lost a bit of their morals and ethics as well.  Earlier in the chapter, archeologists were able to find artifacts and sculptures that indicated the praise of women (or women like deities), for their role in bearing and producing life.  When farming became prominent in the agricultural realm, in some societies the males took on the work load to produce the harvest and life giving sustenance.  In other societies, with the fewer numbers of adult female remains compared to male, there is a notion of preference toward male offspring, and quite possibly the elimination of female babies.  It makes me think of the foundation of human nature, are we inherently good?  Are we inherently evil?  I believe in the balance of needing some bad with the good, and some good with the bad.  Not everything can be distilled into black and white concepts, and morality and integrity can all be relative to the person performing the acts.  That being said, I know the methods of creating a selective society in favor of infant genocide is pretty extreme, but for their survival and improper assessments to invest in their future, I can understand their actions.  

All of the societies involved with producing agriculture in fears of another worldly disaster reminds me of the Y2k scare.  For those of you too young to remember it, there was a wide spread panic of the fall of computerized technology due to the programming of dates within the internal memory was (in theory) only set for the 1900's.  People truly thought at the time that after New Year's Eve, the counters in all computerized systems would reset back to 1900 instead of 2000.  With duplicate time entries, it could have messed up records, cause ATM's to crash, and other systems that humans became dependent on.  In fearful responses for the end of the world, some people began stocking up on food to prepare for the anarchy, others joined cults involving mass suicides to avoid the hardships of technological collapse.  Fearful surviving methods enables crazy behaviors for people, and for most part the actions taken to controll one's fate is made by selfish motivation.  With the rising civilizations embracing a brand new way for living, I can rationalize that people today would most likely do the same thing if their methods would secure their future.  I don't exactly agree with the methods people take to secure their chances of survival, but I understand that it has been an instinct embedded within us through the many generations of mankind.

Prologue to Ways of the World (2nd Edition) By Robert W. Strayer

DISCLAIMER/SPOILER ALERT: I've never written blogs before, so what you see below will read like an essay rather than something entertaining.  However, if you are able to endure my musings, any feedback as to how I can make my blogs better, or if you would like to add some insight to the material covered in the blogs, please feel free to do so!  Thank you in advance for your time :)

In our World History course this semester, we will be diving into the work of Robert W. Strayer, PhD with his book, Ways of the World.  Strayer’s work specializes into African, Soviet, and World studies, and he has been awarded Excellence in Teaching, as well as an Excellence in Scholarship by the Chancellor’s Awards at the University of New York College in Brockport.  At this point we have only covered the prologue to the textbook, but his strength lies within putting the context into tangible concepts that are easy to put to scale.  For example, when Strayer presents the chronological order of events into perspective, he illustrates the aftermath of the Big Bang phenomenon into a “Cosmic Calendar” that correlates January 1^st as the beginning of time with the “Big Bang”, and December 31^st as the Earth that exists today.  I was impressed to learn that on the scale of this metaphorical calendar, the appearance of the first human like creature that evolved into the everyday man and woman occurred approximately around the late evening time of the very last day on this calendar.  In other words, the lifespan of mankind is merely a fraction within a fraction of time when compared to preexisting single celled organisms, the creation of the planet Earth, and the formation of the entire universe.

 

Another interesting approach Strayer announced in his prologue was how he simplified the stages of human evolution between three major phases: the Paleolithic Age, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.  He explains that the entire existence of mankind was primarily spent in the Paleolithic era; at least 95% of the time humans roamed the earth was set in the “stone age” of hunting and gathering.  The other 5% of time was spent developing resources needed to regulate the basic needs of human life.  The Agricultural Revolution was essentially spent domesticating plant and animal life with farming and irrigation systems, and was the beginning of establishing societies and cities.  The Industrial Revolution that followed the agricultural stability greatly advanced mankind into more efficient productivity, accumulate more wealth, and created inventions to manufacture and self regulate other conveniences which can improve the quality of life.

I find this information both alarming and incredible because for the limited amount of time that the Homo sapiens specie existed, the developmental growth of the human mind accelerated at an exponential rate, and this skill enabled their ability to forge tools and manipulate technology.  Humans harnessed their knowledge to increase the duration of their lives with medicines, they have built intricate colonies with irrigation and agricultural systems, and they have also developed importation systems to pull resources and inhabit most of the earth land masses.   By eliminating most of the worldly dangers of predators, famine, and diseases that kept other species in balance, humans were able to prolong death and reproduce faster, resulting in higher concentrations of populations around the globe.  Considering the preceding life forms that occupied the Earth were not as prolific as the human race, I find the prowess of mankind to be alarming in relation to the adverse conditions of the world.  The best analogy (although grim) I can compare our dominance to is by the quote within The Matrix movie written by Andy and Lana Wachowski:

"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not.  You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.  There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern.  Do you know what it is?  A virus.  Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet." ~Monologue performed by Hugo Weaving.

Although Strayer’s portrayal of human evolution was absent of any foreboding, his frame of interest is helping the reader understand the complexities of events and the rationale behind the pivotal moments in history.  Rather than strictly focusing on the developing power countries, and their rise to governments, Strayer explains that it is important to understand history from the global standpoint to remove the segregated barriers and to understand all perspectives.  In order to understand the world, he presents the “Three C’s of World History”: Change, Comparison, and Connection.  The biggest “changes” to focus on are the lives that existed before, and how they developed over time.  By understanding change, we will learn how some civilizations flourish while others parish, and understand how regions were able to progress faster than others.  The best way to identify the similarities and differences between the cultures is by “comparing” and contrasting the elements and foundations of what embody the specific groups.  After identifying the changes and evaluating comparisons, we can then draw connections of the resulting interactions and conclude on what these trends may unfold should the same events begin to reoccur.  I believe these are excellent tools to prepare the reader on what they will learn and discover when digesting Strayer’s book, and if his passages are as clear to understand as he wrote in his Prologue, I believe we will reach a deeper understanding in learning the ways of the world.