Watch the first 30 minutes of the video and answer the questions. Afterwards compare and exchange answers so that everyone has the same information
Where is Randy White?
Far under the hills of France
What is like to be inside the caves?
Downright scary, cold, dark, damp, frightening, dangerous
Randy White has found images painted on rock walls up to 2 kilometers underground.
What is his reflection on this?
It’s more than just exploration
How old was the tool making site that Rick Potts is exploring in East Africa?
Over 1,000,000 years.
What kinds of creatures lived there?
Paleolithic people – ancient stone tool people
What kinds of tools did they make and what were they used for?
All purpose stone hand axes used for digging and butchering animals – “the Paleolithic Swiss Army Knife”.
What does Rick Potts find remarkable about the stone hand axe?
It was made in the same way for about 1.5 million years without any change or improvement. It was although they had a mental template for the tool. When one compares them to modern tools, such as computer programs which become obsolete in about two years the lack of change seems absurd. He says that these Paleolithic people had no creativity, innovation or diversity of culture. One group held the same culture as any other.
Complete the evolutionary time sequence
6 mya : split from common ancestor with chimpanzees
4 mya : descended from trees
2.5 mya : modified hands enable them to create stone tools, possessed a larger brain
2 mya: some left Africa but all eventually went extinct
60,000 yrs ago truly modern humans left Africa – hunter gatherers
Comparison of two skulls – say how they differed
1) From Israel dated at 100,000 years
2) From Africa dated 40,000 years
Physically there is no apparent difference. They differed in behavior. The younger individual produced ornamental artifacts and can be considered truly human.
Where did they go?
Asia, Australia, some followed the coast of the Mediterranean
Describe the research of Steve Kuhn and Mary Stiner of Arizona University.
Working in coastal Turkey his team of archaeologists are trying to work out the routine of life of Upper Paleolithic people. They have found many shell beads and other ornaments such as the claw of a bird of prey that are as old as 43,000 years. He says that this is the earliest example of how people started to express themselves using durable items.
According to Randy White how did people living in the South of France manufacture beads?
Modern human technique would be to use a sharp object and to drill the hole. Our ancestors used a sharp stone and effectively dug a hole, later making the shell smooth. The technique of making the hole is cultural.
What was the function of the beads?
They were probably used to designate social relationships such as tribal status and personal experience. For example, to signify a mother that has given birth.
The Encounter
Neanderthals. Describe their appearance.
Approximate weight: 200 pounds for males (100 kg)
Skull shape: Frojected forwards, no cheeks, receding chin and forehead
Nose: Huge
Brain size: Same as modern humans
Treatment of their dead: Simple burial, no complex symbolism
Human Treatment of their dead: Extreme care
Research of John Shay
Complete the Table
Comparison of Spears
Material:
Neanderthal: Wooden staff with stone tip – easily and quickly made
Upper Paleolithic Humans: Deer antler, tip was cone shaped like a bullet –manufacture time consuming and tedious
Method of use:
Neanderthal spear was a stabbing weapon – like a modern bayonet – kill at close range - dangerous. Distance thrown
23-24 meters
Human spear had a cone shaped tip – like a bullet -thrown from large distance – avoid close contact with dangerous animals. Distance thrown 42 meters
Teaching of spear making techniques
For Neanderthal there was none – techniques learned through imitation, not much information exchanged, probably no speech
For humans techniques were learned through demonstration by an older individual, transmitted experience using speech and symbols-communicated over distance and time using artifacts– not necessary for the teacher to be present.
Comparison of social groups:
Neanderthal lived in small isolated groups – little communication between them.
Humans lived in complex groups – communicated with other groups – networks of exchanges – many individuals working together to a common objective – a formidable force.
Cave paintings
Technique: spit painting – saliva and charcoal methodically spat on to cave walls to produce images
Caverns are eerie, beautiful like a cathedral – they were spiritual places.
Made music in the cave tapping rock formations.
Purpose of paintings: They say we are the owners of the earth above and below ground – had a relationship with the earth and the spirits
How did the change in behavior occur?
Richard Klein:
Occurred rapidly
Steven Pinker:
Very gradual changes in brain wiring, through natural selection
Speculation about the purpose of drawing and re-drawing images of rhinocerous in the Chauvet caves.
Homework
Note for class organisation:
The results of the homework should presented as a class seminar.
- Group 1 presents the notions of sympathetic magic.
- Group 2 and 3 give examples of synpathetic magic.
- Group 2 explains the drawing and redrawing of animal figures on the walls of the cave at Chauvet. Ecologist E.O.Wilson considers this to be an expression of sympathetic magic.
- Group 3 presents the famous Hamlet solioquy. It could be argued that this, as an artisitic representation of the human condition and its fears, is a form of sympathetic magic.
Group 1
Read pages 151-154 from Edward Wilson's book Consilience in which he gives an alternative explanation for the paintings in the Chauvet caves.
"Sympathetic magic" :
Wilson(1998) reasons that with increasing intelligence came the recognition of the self, death, and that the universe was apparently chaotic and unpredictable. Art is a means to somehow master these elements.
Fundamentally we have a profound belief that by representing our anxieties artistically they are somehow lessened and put under control. This principle is represented in the notion of "sympathetic magic" and can be illustrated by the cave paintings at Chauvet. Here large dangerous animals were ritually drawn and redrawn.
The adjective 'sympathetic' can be replaced with 'interdependent' or mutually associative'. This means that there was thought to be a causal link between the symbol of something in nature and the thing itself. Wilson gives the example of sacrificial Aztec children who were forced to cry in the belief that their tears would cause it to rain.
The notion of 'sympathetic magic' was first articulated by Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer(1854-1941) in the book The Golden Bough as encompassing two types of magic: homeopathic and catagious. The terms are unfortunately quite ambigous as their original meanings clash with our contemporary uses. Anyway, homeopathic magic refers to the belief "..that things that resemble each other are the same..." Contagious magic refers to the idea that "...things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact."
The Golden Bough (1922 abridged version) was a comparative study of religious and mystical experience that was highly influential in its day. It is now available online at various sites such as Bartelby.com. Read the following extracts from the chapter entitled Sympathetic Magic which eloquently describe the belief.
IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic.....
.....Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are the same: contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact.
.....Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and the contagious, may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty
...PERHAPS the most familiar application of the principle that like produces like is the attempt which has been made by many peoples in many ages to injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him, in the belief that, just as the image suffers, so does the man, and that when it perishes he must die.
.....The most familiar example of Contagious Magic is the magical sympathy which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of his person, as his hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession of human hair or nails may work his will, at any distance, upon the person from whom they were cut.
—Sir James Frazer, Chapter III, The Golden Bough, (1922)
Source: Bartelby.com
Totemism
The drawings depicted could also be considered totems. These are depictions of large animals given supernatural powers and may constitute a tribal symbol. They act to bind the tribe together reminding the individual of a greater power. This enforced moderation in disputes and softened dissension. They were also considered source of power.
Wilson, E.O. (1998) Consilience:The Unity of Knowledge. Abacus pp.151-154
Group 2
Radio Commentary on consciousness presented by Dr.Meredith Small – professor of anthropology at Cornell University.
Questions:
1. What is the anthropological definition of ‘consciousness’?
2. Explain the experiment involving chimpanzees and red paint.
3.How do children and adults deal with self-consciousness?
Answers:
1. "I know who I am, and I know that I know." A conscious being thinks rather than reacts. Takes in information about surroundings and thinks about it. For anthropologists animals have a kind of consciousness but only humans and the great apes are self conscious. That is they realize that they are separate from others.
2. Experiment on chimpanzee in a zoo. While the chimp was asleep a research put a swatch of red paint on its face. When the chimp looked into its mirror it tried to wipe the paint off.
3. Kids hate it, they sometimes twirl until they're out of control. Adults also try to avoid existential reality. Our species likes to avoid it by reading, going to the cinema taking drugs etc.
Group 3
Hamlet Act III Scene 1
In this exercise you will read with a commentary the famous To be or not to be speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet. I would like you to explain to the class three notable lines from the speech which are incidentally part of the English vernacular, but which express much of the human condition.
Explain the following quotes:
To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
To endure pain of extreme bad luck
When we have shuffled off the mortal coil
when we have died. The body is perceived as entwined or coiled around the spirit. The act of dying is for the soul to wriggle out of the body not unlike the way a snake sheds it skin.
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns
This is the location of the after life that that may or may not exist. We cannot know because no-one has come back to tell us what it is like.
This speech can be briefly summarized as the following: The only reason those who suffer in life do not commit suicide is because they are afraid of what lies after death. That is the unknown is potentially worse than the known. This is expressed in a saying common in Shakespeare's day, that of :'Better the harm I know than that I do not know' .
To check that you have understood all that is essential for this part of the course go to Ariadne's Thread
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Nature, Art & Language
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