Some time back, I was working on a report with a coworker. One of the sites that we had to discuss in the report was located on an athletic field. The site was a simple flake scatter, a site consisting of the pieces of obsidian left over after a flaked stone artifact is manufactured. Unsurprisingly, the flakes were almost all broken.
Now, there are two ways that one tends to get a broken flake: 1) it is broken when the tool is being manufactured, and often such broken flakes indicate either a flaw in the material, or an error made by the person making the tool; 2) the flakes are broken after it is created, usually by being trampled or having some heavy object fall on it. A well-trained lithic analyst may be able to tell these types of borken flakes apart...but most of us working int he field cannot.
However, this seemed pretty simple - a site with an abnormally large number of broken flakes is located on an athletic field. One thing that will happen for certain is that the flakes will be trampled, which means that the most likely cause of the broken flakes is tramapling.
My coworker was not pleased with my conclusion. He entered my office with the site record, and said "you can't say that the broken flakes were caused by the athletic field!"
I looked up and said "uh, yeah, I can."
He got an annoyed look on his face and responded "there's alot of ways that a flake can be broken."
"Yes. Yes there is. One of those ways is being stepped on by a soccer player. Alot of soccer players will break alot of flakes."
He thought for a moment, and said "I have an alternative hypothesis. You could end up with all of these broken flakes is you have one person who is really bad at flaking stone."
This was, of course, technically true. But there's some deep flaws in the hypothesis, which I proceeded to point out.
"Okay, so let's say that you have this one lousy flintknapper*, like you suggest. Why would he be making tools only in this area, which he'd have to have been to account for all of the broken flakes."
He gave this a moment's thought, and replied "well, maybe they put all of the bad, or learning, flintknappers in this one spot."
"Right, okay," I responded, "here's the thing with that - knapping obsidian produces alot of sharp edges, obsidian is glass, after all, so it's in your best interest to limit the number of places where little pieces of it are just lying around. So, assuming that you had a number of learning flintknappers who keep producing broken flakes, why would you segregate them to spread out the area where the broken glass is lying around?"
To which he said "Well, obsidian flakes are in alot of sites, they're not usually alone"
"True, and a fair point." I responded "there are sites with clear obsidian flaking task areas, but often it's not in a designated area. Still, you're assuming that the people of this area segregated bad and/or learning flintknappers. We have no evidence of that: no ethnographic records, no archaeological sites showing only poorly formed tools and broken flakes, nothing to give us the 'bad knappers' that your hypothesis requires. You are having to make some odd assumptions for your hypothesis to make sense."
"Well," he looked at me smugly, "you're making alot of assumptions, too."
"No, I'm not. We know that the people in the area flaked obsidian. We know that obsidian flakes often break if trampled upon. We know that alot of running feet on an athletic field would trample on flakes. Those are all knowns, not assumptions. All the record does is conclude that a bunch of broken flakes found on an active ethletic field probably indicates that the flakes were broken by trampling, which makes no real assumptions and just connects a few observations with known facts."
He shook his head and walked away. I got the record, and the report to which it was appended, to say what I wanted. But for the life of me, I have never been able to figure out why this guy was so sold on a bizarre notion, and why he wanted to argue with me about it.
*Flintknapping is the generic term used for making stone tools
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Native American Ancestry, or Lack Thereof
First off - I will be away in the field for the next week, and therefore I probably won't have any site updates unless I am able to scare up an internet connection, I may not post any updates this week other than this one.
In the meantime. here's something to consider...
Last week, NPR's show Talk of the Nation had a segment on the issues surrounding individuals declaring that they are of Native American ancestry (to hear it, listen here or go here for a transcript). There's a number of issues surrounding this, but there are two that I find particularly interesting.
The first issue is that of the interests that different federally recognized Native American groups have to accept or reject individuals as members of their tribe and/or organization. This is often an issue with tribes that own casinos, as people come out of the woodwork claiming to be members in order to secure a share of the casino's money. Depending on where you are, the more prevalent issue may be individuals who are legitimately part of the tribe being rejected or dropped from the membership roles, or people who are not part of the tribe trying to be listed as such (some of whom really believe themselves to be, and others of whom simply think that it is a good way to get money). For a variety of reasons, I'll not say too much on the topic, except to note that I know of people who were dropped from the register who were, legitimately, of the appropriate ancestry...but that I have also known a large number of people who have tried to be accepted as tribal members who had no more a claim to Native American ancestry than the British exchange student who lived upstairs from me in college. There is a tendency for people to see the behavior of whatever group they are most familiar with as the norm as far as accepting or rejecting members goes, but there is actually alot of variation, for both good and ill, in how these matters are handled.
The second issue is the matter of people claiming Native American ancestry when such claims are dubious at best. One thing that a guest on the show brings up is that there seems to be a pattern of these claims that a great-grandmother specifically on the mother's side is a member of a Native American group (usually, though not always, Cherokee). While there are many, many people in the U.S. with Native American ancestry, there seem to be many, many more that simply want to be. I don't know what to make of the claim that it is usually a great-grandmother on the mother's side (well, the great-grandmother makes it essentially an unverifiable claim as the individual is usually dead, and claims of poor record keeping can be made, but why on the mother's side?), but my own experience has been that people often claim Native American ancestry because they want to be seen as somehow magical, or special, and figure that associating themselves with a group that they have insultingly simplified and/or romanticized.
There's another, interesting and bothersome, issue also brought up in the interview: the tendency for some to claim Native American ancestry, and to sell "spiritual" services based on these claims. This may include people running for-profit "sweat lodges" at a heavy fee, or selling magical items allegedly of "Native American Origin!" Generally, these individuals may actually be Native Americans, or they may simply be claiming to, but either way they are cashing in on the racist notions that most people have about alleged Native American mysticism.
Anyway, give it a listen, it's an interesting show.
In the meantime. here's something to consider...
Last week, NPR's show Talk of the Nation had a segment on the issues surrounding individuals declaring that they are of Native American ancestry (to hear it, listen here or go here for a transcript). There's a number of issues surrounding this, but there are two that I find particularly interesting.
The first issue is that of the interests that different federally recognized Native American groups have to accept or reject individuals as members of their tribe and/or organization. This is often an issue with tribes that own casinos, as people come out of the woodwork claiming to be members in order to secure a share of the casino's money. Depending on where you are, the more prevalent issue may be individuals who are legitimately part of the tribe being rejected or dropped from the membership roles, or people who are not part of the tribe trying to be listed as such (some of whom really believe themselves to be, and others of whom simply think that it is a good way to get money). For a variety of reasons, I'll not say too much on the topic, except to note that I know of people who were dropped from the register who were, legitimately, of the appropriate ancestry...but that I have also known a large number of people who have tried to be accepted as tribal members who had no more a claim to Native American ancestry than the British exchange student who lived upstairs from me in college. There is a tendency for people to see the behavior of whatever group they are most familiar with as the norm as far as accepting or rejecting members goes, but there is actually alot of variation, for both good and ill, in how these matters are handled.
The second issue is the matter of people claiming Native American ancestry when such claims are dubious at best. One thing that a guest on the show brings up is that there seems to be a pattern of these claims that a great-grandmother specifically on the mother's side is a member of a Native American group (usually, though not always, Cherokee). While there are many, many people in the U.S. with Native American ancestry, there seem to be many, many more that simply want to be. I don't know what to make of the claim that it is usually a great-grandmother on the mother's side (well, the great-grandmother makes it essentially an unverifiable claim as the individual is usually dead, and claims of poor record keeping can be made, but why on the mother's side?), but my own experience has been that people often claim Native American ancestry because they want to be seen as somehow magical, or special, and figure that associating themselves with a group that they have insultingly simplified and/or romanticized.
There's another, interesting and bothersome, issue also brought up in the interview: the tendency for some to claim Native American ancestry, and to sell "spiritual" services based on these claims. This may include people running for-profit "sweat lodges" at a heavy fee, or selling magical items allegedly of "Native American Origin!" Generally, these individuals may actually be Native Americans, or they may simply be claiming to, but either way they are cashing in on the racist notions that most people have about alleged Native American mysticism.
Anyway, give it a listen, it's an interesting show.
Friday, June 8, 2012
When is Absence of Evidence Evidence of Absence?
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So it has been said. Again...and again...and again...
Like most wise sayings that are actually wise (which, I would note, is a very small minority of allegedly wise sayings), this one is true only to a limited extent.
I used to think that this was an absolute. You could never hold a lack of evidence for a claim as evidence that the claim wasn't true. It was, instead, necessary to build up evidence that countered the claim.
However, about 15 years ago, as I was finishing my bachelors degree in anthropology, one friend of mine who had been raise Mormon began to get more involved with his church, and another two converted to Mormonism, and all three routinely wanted to talk with me about their church's alternative history of the Americas*. I would point out that the archaeological data did not support their church's claims, they would counter with data that FARMS (an apologetics group masquerading as a historical and archaeological research organization associated with BYU) had taken out of context to support the churches claims. The FARMS data was invariably poor, and when I would point this out, and direct them back to there being no actual evidence to support the church's conclusions, all would then repeat back to me a phrase that, in another context, I had taught them: The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
At first, this stopped me cold. It was a sentiment with which I agreed, how could I argue against it. And yet, I knew that there was something wrong with its use here.
This line is a favorite of people who hold to a dubious position unsopported by evidence - whether you are talking about religious beliefs, political ideals, positions on social issues, belief in paranormal claims, etc. If you press someone hard enough regarding the lack of supporting evidence for their belief, you are likely to be told that the lack of evidence doesn't provide evidence that the belief is false.
But if you give the matter some momentary thought, it becomes clear that there are, in fact, cases where a lack of evidence for a proposition does serve to forward an argument that a proposition is false.
Let's compare and contrast, shall we...
I have written before that I am a supporter of the pre-Clovis hypothesis, that is, the idea that people were in North American prior to the appearance of Clovis tools ca. 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. Although some evidence to support this view (all of it interesting, none of it overwhelming) has been trickling in in recent years, I supported this hypothesis prior to that based on some fairly basic arguments (follow the link if you want more information). Now, the early peoples of North America of whom we are aware were, generally, highly mobile hunter-gatherers who left what are typically referred to as ephemeral traces of their activities and movements. So, their sites are few and far between, and often we know them more by isolated artifact finds than full sites. There is every reason to believe that their predecessors would have had a similar settlement and land use pattern, meaning that there sites would be rare, would often be in difficult to find places (buried under alluvium, or drowned in the since-risen coastal waters), and might be ambiguous as to age or constituents (many tools aren't time diagnostic, and datable materials has to be found in order to figure out the age of a site, so there are many sites that we encounter that simply can not be dated). Given these circumstances, it is likely that pre-Clovis sites would be few and far between and might not be recognized for what they are when found. In this sort of situation, the fact that we had no known pre-Clovis sites meant that there was no material support for the pre-Clovis hypothesis, but it in no way precluded the existence of such sites.
Contrast this with the various claims of vast Old World-derived empires being established int he Americas. These types of claims are not limited to the Mormon church, there is no shortage of people who believe that the Egyptians, Sumerians, Celts, Knights Templar, etc. etc. established a strong presence in the Americas**. In such cases, the remains of the various cities, plantations, etc. that have been suggested would be pretty damn hard to miss, and would bear features that would make them easy to distinguish from indigenous settlements (in other words, if you think Cahokia or Mesa Verde or any other Native American site is evidence of Old World influence, you have demonstrated a definite ignorance of Native American culture technology AND Old World practices and material culture). Moreover, given the way that the native economies of the Americas functioned, it is beyond unreasonable to expect that artifacts associated with these Old Worlders would not be spread far and wide in Native American sites, and be especially common in the sites nearest to the Old World outposts. In other words, not only should the Old World-derived sites be obvious on the landscape, but even if, for some reason, they weren't, like being able to detect a planet by it's gravitational pull on other objects, we should be able to see evidence of a major Old World incursion by its effects on the Native Populations***.
So, in this latter case, the fact that we have no evidence of Old World empires being established in the Americas is, in fact, pretty strong evidence that they never existed. Any attempt to explain how they could have existed without having the huge impacts that they would invariably have had always results in either misconstrued claims about the actual archaeological record, or else special pleading.
*For the record, I usually didn't start these conversations. That I didn't buy their church's teachings didn't change the fact that these three were all really good people, and that I was happy to have them as friends. Even when we had these conversations, they were usually good-humored and friendly.
**Note, this is different from claims that people from outside of the Americas may have occasionally visited the Americas or established a weak presence (such as the Viking settlement known in Canada). Small and/or brief presences might leave little physical evidence, and there is always the possibility that such will be found (though it is unlikely). I'm talking here about the various common claims that various European, Asian, or African powers established cities, large colonies, or other large and long-lasting settlements in the Americas.
***For example, the Spanish missions in the American Southwest and Florida are much smaller-scale than anything proposed by the Mormon church, and no smaller than those things proposed by proponents of the notion that the Knights Templar ended up here, and they had huge impacts on the native populations of their surroundings, impacts that, 250 years later, we are still strugglign to comprehend the enormity of.
So it has been said. Again...and again...and again...
Like most wise sayings that are actually wise (which, I would note, is a very small minority of allegedly wise sayings), this one is true only to a limited extent.
I used to think that this was an absolute. You could never hold a lack of evidence for a claim as evidence that the claim wasn't true. It was, instead, necessary to build up evidence that countered the claim.
However, about 15 years ago, as I was finishing my bachelors degree in anthropology, one friend of mine who had been raise Mormon began to get more involved with his church, and another two converted to Mormonism, and all three routinely wanted to talk with me about their church's alternative history of the Americas*. I would point out that the archaeological data did not support their church's claims, they would counter with data that FARMS (an apologetics group masquerading as a historical and archaeological research organization associated with BYU) had taken out of context to support the churches claims. The FARMS data was invariably poor, and when I would point this out, and direct them back to there being no actual evidence to support the church's conclusions, all would then repeat back to me a phrase that, in another context, I had taught them: The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
At first, this stopped me cold. It was a sentiment with which I agreed, how could I argue against it. And yet, I knew that there was something wrong with its use here.
This line is a favorite of people who hold to a dubious position unsopported by evidence - whether you are talking about religious beliefs, political ideals, positions on social issues, belief in paranormal claims, etc. If you press someone hard enough regarding the lack of supporting evidence for their belief, you are likely to be told that the lack of evidence doesn't provide evidence that the belief is false.
But if you give the matter some momentary thought, it becomes clear that there are, in fact, cases where a lack of evidence for a proposition does serve to forward an argument that a proposition is false.
Let's compare and contrast, shall we...
I have written before that I am a supporter of the pre-Clovis hypothesis, that is, the idea that people were in North American prior to the appearance of Clovis tools ca. 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. Although some evidence to support this view (all of it interesting, none of it overwhelming) has been trickling in in recent years, I supported this hypothesis prior to that based on some fairly basic arguments (follow the link if you want more information). Now, the early peoples of North America of whom we are aware were, generally, highly mobile hunter-gatherers who left what are typically referred to as ephemeral traces of their activities and movements. So, their sites are few and far between, and often we know them more by isolated artifact finds than full sites. There is every reason to believe that their predecessors would have had a similar settlement and land use pattern, meaning that there sites would be rare, would often be in difficult to find places (buried under alluvium, or drowned in the since-risen coastal waters), and might be ambiguous as to age or constituents (many tools aren't time diagnostic, and datable materials has to be found in order to figure out the age of a site, so there are many sites that we encounter that simply can not be dated). Given these circumstances, it is likely that pre-Clovis sites would be few and far between and might not be recognized for what they are when found. In this sort of situation, the fact that we had no known pre-Clovis sites meant that there was no material support for the pre-Clovis hypothesis, but it in no way precluded the existence of such sites.
Contrast this with the various claims of vast Old World-derived empires being established int he Americas. These types of claims are not limited to the Mormon church, there is no shortage of people who believe that the Egyptians, Sumerians, Celts, Knights Templar, etc. etc. established a strong presence in the Americas**. In such cases, the remains of the various cities, plantations, etc. that have been suggested would be pretty damn hard to miss, and would bear features that would make them easy to distinguish from indigenous settlements (in other words, if you think Cahokia or Mesa Verde or any other Native American site is evidence of Old World influence, you have demonstrated a definite ignorance of Native American culture technology AND Old World practices and material culture). Moreover, given the way that the native economies of the Americas functioned, it is beyond unreasonable to expect that artifacts associated with these Old Worlders would not be spread far and wide in Native American sites, and be especially common in the sites nearest to the Old World outposts. In other words, not only should the Old World-derived sites be obvious on the landscape, but even if, for some reason, they weren't, like being able to detect a planet by it's gravitational pull on other objects, we should be able to see evidence of a major Old World incursion by its effects on the Native Populations***.
So, in this latter case, the fact that we have no evidence of Old World empires being established in the Americas is, in fact, pretty strong evidence that they never existed. Any attempt to explain how they could have existed without having the huge impacts that they would invariably have had always results in either misconstrued claims about the actual archaeological record, or else special pleading.
*For the record, I usually didn't start these conversations. That I didn't buy their church's teachings didn't change the fact that these three were all really good people, and that I was happy to have them as friends. Even when we had these conversations, they were usually good-humored and friendly.
**Note, this is different from claims that people from outside of the Americas may have occasionally visited the Americas or established a weak presence (such as the Viking settlement known in Canada). Small and/or brief presences might leave little physical evidence, and there is always the possibility that such will be found (though it is unlikely). I'm talking here about the various common claims that various European, Asian, or African powers established cities, large colonies, or other large and long-lasting settlements in the Americas.
***For example, the Spanish missions in the American Southwest and Florida are much smaller-scale than anything proposed by the Mormon church, and no smaller than those things proposed by proponents of the notion that the Knights Templar ended up here, and they had huge impacts on the native populations of their surroundings, impacts that, 250 years later, we are still strugglign to comprehend the enormity of.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Preconceptions and the Past
I recently gave a talk at the Fresno County Archaeological Society's monthly meeting, and while it required a good deal of prep work and stress, I am very glad that I did it - it was a good audience, and alot of fun to give the talk.
After the formal presentation, there was a Q&A period, as is common at these types of events, and I was asked a range of questions, most of which got into the information that I had left out of the presentation (when you are giving a 1-hour talk for the lay public, you have to leave out alot of interesting and important details, unfortunately. It's a matter of making sure that the audience has enough information for your main points to make sense, while hopefully whetting their appetite to look further into the topic on their own - hopefully stoking their curiosity rather than "dumbing down" the subject matter). However, there was one question that struck me as interesting, but not for the reason that the person asking it intended.
After I had answered several questions, I called on a well-dressed, middle-aged man near the back of the room. He stood and asked "so, you say that these people were hunter-gatherers, but they had to have grown some crops, so what did they do to fertilize them?" He then rattled off a description of Native American crop fertilization that could have been taken verbatim from one of my elementary school Social Studies books. He followed this up with some additional comments about how "every society must have agriculture."
Had he stopped before giving his example of Native American agriculture, I would have assumed that he was asking a slightly different, and very interesting question. But his insistence (even after I answered his question to the best of my ability) that the Chumash (the Native Californian group about which I had been speaking) engaged in some form of agriculture, complete with the intentional fertilization of planted crops, was just the most recent example of something that I have noticed among the lay public ever since I first became interested in both history and archaeology.
Most of us have preconceptions regarding the past based in part on half-remembered snippets of our educations, in part on our conception of the present, and in part on our basic assumptions about how humans behave. This fellow was unable to accept that there are human populations who do not engage in agriculture, even after I explained the full spectrum that runs from highly mobile hunter/gatherers to farmers*. Similarly, the people that I encounter very often seem to have difficulty grasping that there are, indeed, societies that don't really recognize the concept of private property, or lack clearly defined social strata (no, not every society has a leader, at least not a permanent one). Both of these ideas (private property is a natural part of human psychology, all humans follow leaders and all human society are stratified for this reason) are based on assumptions that we make which aren't actually backed up by field data. Or, to de-nerdify the way that I phrased that, we like to think that these things are true because they either justify our current society.
Similarly, we have certain notions regarding the human past based on pop culture. The very notion of "back in caveman times" is ludicrous and informed more by Warner Brothers cartoons than archaeology. Some past humans lived in caves...but, you know, some modern humans live in caves. When you think of the "caveman days", though, you are thinking of a point when humans were anatomically modern (or at least nearly so), but somehow not quite human...primitive, savage, lacking language and culture.
This was never the case. Nobody knows for sure when language began, but it was likely before we became anatomically modern humans. Likewise, culture pre-dated modern humans - the presence of stone tools and artwork associated with our ancestors demonstrate that. By the time we evolved into our currently physical form, we had everything that makes us human. When you think of the ways that the mobile hunter-gatherers of the American Great Basin lived, you are also thinking of something very close to how our common ancestors in Africa lived 50,000 years ago. All of us are, and were, human, not "cavemen."
Our prehistoric ancestors began as highly mobile hunter gatherers, spread throughout the world, and adapted to mobile conditions (and quickly changing conditions with the end of the Pleistocene, ca. 12,000 years ago). Some groups began agriculture, became sedentary, and began to form towns and eventually cities, while other remained mobile and nomadic, some adopting animal husbandry and some retaining hunter/gatherer lifeways...and there were many steps in between all of these points that various human societies adopted. In each case, though, the form of culture developed in response to local environment.
And this seemed to be where the fellow asking the question was having a problem. He seemed to think, based on how he phrased his question, as well as the follow-up comments that he made, that a lack of farming was a "caveman" trait. That I was talking about Native Americans 250 years ago, not early people on the African savannah 50,000 years ago...and therefore the people about whom I was speaking clearly must have been engaged in cultivating crops, and he was unwilling to accept the word of myself or anyone else who had actually studied the matter to the contrary.
But, of course, the fact of the matter is that humans will do what their environment** demands. For some, this means that agriculture becomes necessary. For others, it does not.
*This is definitely a spectrum, too. It is common for us to think that there is some sort of clear line where a culture "becomes" agricultural. But where does that line fall? Clearly, people who plant annual crops and engage in irrigation and fertilization are farmers. But what about people who scatter plant seeds but don't prepare fields or irrigate them? What about people who don't intentionally plant seeds, but prune or otherwise tend to plants to promote the growth of some over others? What about those who burn areas of field or forest to promote the growth of disturbance vegetation? There are many steps on the way from forager to farmer, and it's not necessarily clear where one ends and the other begins.
**This includes both the natural environment and the social environment.
After the formal presentation, there was a Q&A period, as is common at these types of events, and I was asked a range of questions, most of which got into the information that I had left out of the presentation (when you are giving a 1-hour talk for the lay public, you have to leave out alot of interesting and important details, unfortunately. It's a matter of making sure that the audience has enough information for your main points to make sense, while hopefully whetting their appetite to look further into the topic on their own - hopefully stoking their curiosity rather than "dumbing down" the subject matter). However, there was one question that struck me as interesting, but not for the reason that the person asking it intended.
After I had answered several questions, I called on a well-dressed, middle-aged man near the back of the room. He stood and asked "so, you say that these people were hunter-gatherers, but they had to have grown some crops, so what did they do to fertilize them?" He then rattled off a description of Native American crop fertilization that could have been taken verbatim from one of my elementary school Social Studies books. He followed this up with some additional comments about how "every society must have agriculture."
Had he stopped before giving his example of Native American agriculture, I would have assumed that he was asking a slightly different, and very interesting question. But his insistence (even after I answered his question to the best of my ability) that the Chumash (the Native Californian group about which I had been speaking) engaged in some form of agriculture, complete with the intentional fertilization of planted crops, was just the most recent example of something that I have noticed among the lay public ever since I first became interested in both history and archaeology.
Most of us have preconceptions regarding the past based in part on half-remembered snippets of our educations, in part on our conception of the present, and in part on our basic assumptions about how humans behave. This fellow was unable to accept that there are human populations who do not engage in agriculture, even after I explained the full spectrum that runs from highly mobile hunter/gatherers to farmers*. Similarly, the people that I encounter very often seem to have difficulty grasping that there are, indeed, societies that don't really recognize the concept of private property, or lack clearly defined social strata (no, not every society has a leader, at least not a permanent one). Both of these ideas (private property is a natural part of human psychology, all humans follow leaders and all human society are stratified for this reason) are based on assumptions that we make which aren't actually backed up by field data. Or, to de-nerdify the way that I phrased that, we like to think that these things are true because they either justify our current society.
Similarly, we have certain notions regarding the human past based on pop culture. The very notion of "back in caveman times" is ludicrous and informed more by Warner Brothers cartoons than archaeology. Some past humans lived in caves...but, you know, some modern humans live in caves. When you think of the "caveman days", though, you are thinking of a point when humans were anatomically modern (or at least nearly so), but somehow not quite human...primitive, savage, lacking language and culture.
This was never the case. Nobody knows for sure when language began, but it was likely before we became anatomically modern humans. Likewise, culture pre-dated modern humans - the presence of stone tools and artwork associated with our ancestors demonstrate that. By the time we evolved into our currently physical form, we had everything that makes us human. When you think of the ways that the mobile hunter-gatherers of the American Great Basin lived, you are also thinking of something very close to how our common ancestors in Africa lived 50,000 years ago. All of us are, and were, human, not "cavemen."
Our prehistoric ancestors began as highly mobile hunter gatherers, spread throughout the world, and adapted to mobile conditions (and quickly changing conditions with the end of the Pleistocene, ca. 12,000 years ago). Some groups began agriculture, became sedentary, and began to form towns and eventually cities, while other remained mobile and nomadic, some adopting animal husbandry and some retaining hunter/gatherer lifeways...and there were many steps in between all of these points that various human societies adopted. In each case, though, the form of culture developed in response to local environment.
And this seemed to be where the fellow asking the question was having a problem. He seemed to think, based on how he phrased his question, as well as the follow-up comments that he made, that a lack of farming was a "caveman" trait. That I was talking about Native Americans 250 years ago, not early people on the African savannah 50,000 years ago...and therefore the people about whom I was speaking clearly must have been engaged in cultivating crops, and he was unwilling to accept the word of myself or anyone else who had actually studied the matter to the contrary.
But, of course, the fact of the matter is that humans will do what their environment** demands. For some, this means that agriculture becomes necessary. For others, it does not.
*This is definitely a spectrum, too. It is common for us to think that there is some sort of clear line where a culture "becomes" agricultural. But where does that line fall? Clearly, people who plant annual crops and engage in irrigation and fertilization are farmers. But what about people who scatter plant seeds but don't prepare fields or irrigate them? What about people who don't intentionally plant seeds, but prune or otherwise tend to plants to promote the growth of some over others? What about those who burn areas of field or forest to promote the growth of disturbance vegetation? There are many steps on the way from forager to farmer, and it's not necessarily clear where one ends and the other begins.
**This includes both the natural environment and the social environment.
Monday, June 4, 2012
The difference Between Irrational and Supernatural
Over the weekend, I listened to a friend describe a conversation she had had with an acquaintance of her own. Her acquaintance would not accept that my friend did not believe in anything supernatural. Apparently, he ran down a long list of supernatural things, insisting that she must believe in at least one of them, and became increasingly frustrated as she refused to concede to believing in any of them.
I have noticed this many times before, and I have always found it either interesting or irritating, depending on my mood at the time.
First off, it should be said that everybody believes in something that is irrational. You, me, everyone. We are simply not physically capable of checking each and every one of our beliefs as they develop over time to ensure that all remain internally consistent and consistent with external information. Some people own up to this belief (for example, my sisters are very clear that they are aware that there is no evidence to support their religious beliefs, but they believe nonetheless), but more often people are either unaware of the irrationality of their particular odd belief, or they maintain some sort of intellectual fig-leaf that allows them to convince themselves that their belief is rational when even the merest pressure applied to their justifaction would reveal just how hollow it is. But, regardless, we all hold an irrational belief.
However, that does not mean that we all hold a supernatural belief. I certainly do not believe in anything supernatural - no gods, no spirits, no "mystical energies", no ESP, no ghosts, etc. etc. etc. I am a materialist - I hold to the provisional belief (that is, I'm open to disconfirming evidence, should any be made available) that the universe is governed by basic knowable (though not all currently known) laws and forces, that we live in a world of matter and energy - and not the Reiki/chi mystical energy, but the basic energy of physics. So, I can say that I hold no supernatural beliefs.
As to irrational beliefs - I am certain that I have some, but I don't know what they are. And this, in my experience, is common. I know that I had previously held irrational beliefs, since abandoned, regarding politics, basic impulses of humans (humans are basically good/selfish/seeking sex/likely to break into the Macarena/etc.), relationships, regional stereotypes, etc. etc. etc. Some of these beliefs were irrational over-extensions of initially valid observations, others were little more than wishful thinking, and some were based on prejudices. Regardless, I have held many irrational beliefs over the years that I didn't realize were irrational until confronted with strong evidence demonstrating that this was, in fact, the case.
Supernatural beliefs, though, are a specific sub-set of irrational beliefs. They are the beliefs that require that the believer hold the notion that there is some sort of force, being, or power that is not bound by the constraints that bind everything else in the universe. This may be a belief in gods or spirits that act by their own rules, or in "energies" that are somehow not tied to the physical world in the ay that real energy actually is, or it may simply be a belief in some thing that is so different from all other things in the universe that any attempt to test it is doomed to failure. It is entirely possible for someone to not believe in any of these things.
What I suspect sits at the base of the assertion that my friend encountered is something that is common amongst most people. Most, perhaps all, of us seem to have a hard time grasping that the broad assumptions that we make about the world are not shared by others. This is the reason why you will meet religious people who insist that there is no such thing as a true atheist (after all, everyone believes in some sort of divine force, right? Well, no.), or many a hard-nosed rationalist will have difficulty accepting that a strongly religious person is unlikely to be moved by evidence showing their beliefs to be mistaken (this leads to many of them making comments about how religious believers "know that their religions are bullshit" when the believers rather manifestly do not "know" any such thing), or why a fire-and-brimstone sort thinks that they can scare non-believers with threats of Hellfire and Damnation (sorry buddy, but I really not only think that these things don't exist, but also think that your acceptance of them as coming from a supposedly "good" authority means that you are a terrible person), or even people who believe in ghosts no being willing to accept that someone such as myself definitely believes that death is it, the end, fino, done.
The person with whom my friend was speaking is religious, though he follows a non-mainstream religion and might therefore buck against the statement that he is religious (though it remains true), and he believes in a number of supernatural claims - though he is not stupid and does weed out many claims based on simple observation and common sense.
Still, it is a curious thing. Many, perhaps most, people seem to be astoundingly stubborn in their failure ot recognize that the way that they view the world is not necessarily shared by all, or even necessarilly most, people.
I have noticed this many times before, and I have always found it either interesting or irritating, depending on my mood at the time.
First off, it should be said that everybody believes in something that is irrational. You, me, everyone. We are simply not physically capable of checking each and every one of our beliefs as they develop over time to ensure that all remain internally consistent and consistent with external information. Some people own up to this belief (for example, my sisters are very clear that they are aware that there is no evidence to support their religious beliefs, but they believe nonetheless), but more often people are either unaware of the irrationality of their particular odd belief, or they maintain some sort of intellectual fig-leaf that allows them to convince themselves that their belief is rational when even the merest pressure applied to their justifaction would reveal just how hollow it is. But, regardless, we all hold an irrational belief.
However, that does not mean that we all hold a supernatural belief. I certainly do not believe in anything supernatural - no gods, no spirits, no "mystical energies", no ESP, no ghosts, etc. etc. etc. I am a materialist - I hold to the provisional belief (that is, I'm open to disconfirming evidence, should any be made available) that the universe is governed by basic knowable (though not all currently known) laws and forces, that we live in a world of matter and energy - and not the Reiki/chi mystical energy, but the basic energy of physics. So, I can say that I hold no supernatural beliefs.
As to irrational beliefs - I am certain that I have some, but I don't know what they are. And this, in my experience, is common. I know that I had previously held irrational beliefs, since abandoned, regarding politics, basic impulses of humans (humans are basically good/selfish/seeking sex/likely to break into the Macarena/etc.), relationships, regional stereotypes, etc. etc. etc. Some of these beliefs were irrational over-extensions of initially valid observations, others were little more than wishful thinking, and some were based on prejudices. Regardless, I have held many irrational beliefs over the years that I didn't realize were irrational until confronted with strong evidence demonstrating that this was, in fact, the case.
Supernatural beliefs, though, are a specific sub-set of irrational beliefs. They are the beliefs that require that the believer hold the notion that there is some sort of force, being, or power that is not bound by the constraints that bind everything else in the universe. This may be a belief in gods or spirits that act by their own rules, or in "energies" that are somehow not tied to the physical world in the ay that real energy actually is, or it may simply be a belief in some thing that is so different from all other things in the universe that any attempt to test it is doomed to failure. It is entirely possible for someone to not believe in any of these things.
What I suspect sits at the base of the assertion that my friend encountered is something that is common amongst most people. Most, perhaps all, of us seem to have a hard time grasping that the broad assumptions that we make about the world are not shared by others. This is the reason why you will meet religious people who insist that there is no such thing as a true atheist (after all, everyone believes in some sort of divine force, right? Well, no.), or many a hard-nosed rationalist will have difficulty accepting that a strongly religious person is unlikely to be moved by evidence showing their beliefs to be mistaken (this leads to many of them making comments about how religious believers "know that their religions are bullshit" when the believers rather manifestly do not "know" any such thing), or why a fire-and-brimstone sort thinks that they can scare non-believers with threats of Hellfire and Damnation (sorry buddy, but I really not only think that these things don't exist, but also think that your acceptance of them as coming from a supposedly "good" authority means that you are a terrible person), or even people who believe in ghosts no being willing to accept that someone such as myself definitely believes that death is it, the end, fino, done.
The person with whom my friend was speaking is religious, though he follows a non-mainstream religion and might therefore buck against the statement that he is religious (though it remains true), and he believes in a number of supernatural claims - though he is not stupid and does weed out many claims based on simple observation and common sense.
Still, it is a curious thing. Many, perhaps most, people seem to be astoundingly stubborn in their failure ot recognize that the way that they view the world is not necessarily shared by all, or even necessarilly most, people.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Why Won't You Leave Me Alone?
A common task on my various projects is consultations with Native Americans likely to be concerned about the particular project area. Usually, this starts with me obtaining a list of concerned NAtive American individuals and organizations for a given geographic region from the California Native American Heritage Commission. Once I have the list in hand, I write up consultation letters describing the location and the project, and send them out to the groups an individuals listed by the NAHC. A few weeks later, I will make follow-up phone calls or, when possible, send out emails. Depending on circumstances, a second round of follow-ups is often necessary as well.
More often than not, I don't receive responses. However, when I do receive responses, they usually falls into one of five categories:
1) Important information regarding something that may or will be negatively impacted by the proposed work. When we get this information, we can signal to our client that this is likely to become an issue, and, if they are wise, they will be proactive in working with the Native community to address concerns. If they are unwise, they will proceed ahead only to get caught up in a public relations battle (and sometimes legal proceedings) down the road.
Responses in this category are unusual, however.
2) Statements that the respondent has no information regarding the project area (the most common response). This is usually accompanied by a request that the respondent be notified should anything be found during fieldwork.
3) Statements that the respondent has no knowledge about the area, but is concerned about the possibility that the proposed construction will impact previously unidentified archaeological sites or cultural properties. Usually, responses in this category are well-written and thoughtful, on rare occasion they are just kind of odd or even surreal.
4) Statements that the respondent knows nothing about the project area/that it is outside of their area of interest.
5) The respondent is irritated that we are contacting them and wants to know why we won't just leave them alone.
It's #5 that I want to talk about here.
Many of the individuals who we contact routinely respond that they are not interested in the various projects about which we try to consult. I have, on more than one occasion, been screamed at over the phone by a Native American who was sick of getting a constant stream of mail regarding projects in which they are uninterested, and each time they demand to know why we keep contacting them when we know that they don't want to hear from us.
The list of Native American contacts provided by the NAHC is a composed of a group of self-selecting individuals. They have to ask to be on the NAHC contact list. However, it's not entirely clear how they get removed, when they get removed. I have been told by some folks at the NAHC that it is as simple as requesting removal from the list. However, I have also been told by some of the people on the list that they have been trying for some time to be removed, but that the NAHC has failed to do so.
I take no sides, I don't presume to know the truth of the matter, this is simply what I have been told.
So, we are put into an odd situation where we are, usually, required to contact them, even if we know that they don't want to be contacted. As long as they are on the list, a regulator or a member of the public who is looking to litigate against a project can point to our failure to contact even one individual as evidence that we failed to make a good-faith effort to identify cultural resources. Similarly, a member of the Native American community who is not contacted can create a problem for our clients on the ground that they were not consulted as a stakeholder for a project. And while those who ask not to be contacted generally don't want to be stakeholders, if there is one thing that is true about humans in general, it's that they are an unpredictable lot who are prone to changing their minds.
At the same time, it is understandable that many of these individuals and organizations might want to no longer be contacted. One thing I have been told frequently is that those who signed up for the NAHC list had no idea just how many notifications they would receive in the course of a year. Moreover, when they do tell us anything, we put it in our report, and most of the time the resources that are known are avoided, so from their perspective, nothing happened. Some clients and government agencies are better than others in involving Native participation, meaning that while there are good outcomes, there are also many bad outcomes. So, on those occasions where it doesn't seem like nothing happened, there is a fair chance that it will seem like something has gone awry.
So, again, I get why being on the list may seem like a waste of time.
Nonetheless, as long as they are on the list, I am required to contact them. Which means that I can expect a future filled with unresponded-to letters, and the occasional episode of having someone scream at me that they don't want to be contacted, despite the fact that they remain on the list.
More often than not, I don't receive responses. However, when I do receive responses, they usually falls into one of five categories:
1) Important information regarding something that may or will be negatively impacted by the proposed work. When we get this information, we can signal to our client that this is likely to become an issue, and, if they are wise, they will be proactive in working with the Native community to address concerns. If they are unwise, they will proceed ahead only to get caught up in a public relations battle (and sometimes legal proceedings) down the road.
Responses in this category are unusual, however.
2) Statements that the respondent has no information regarding the project area (the most common response). This is usually accompanied by a request that the respondent be notified should anything be found during fieldwork.
3) Statements that the respondent has no knowledge about the area, but is concerned about the possibility that the proposed construction will impact previously unidentified archaeological sites or cultural properties. Usually, responses in this category are well-written and thoughtful, on rare occasion they are just kind of odd or even surreal.
4) Statements that the respondent knows nothing about the project area/that it is outside of their area of interest.
5) The respondent is irritated that we are contacting them and wants to know why we won't just leave them alone.
It's #5 that I want to talk about here.
Many of the individuals who we contact routinely respond that they are not interested in the various projects about which we try to consult. I have, on more than one occasion, been screamed at over the phone by a Native American who was sick of getting a constant stream of mail regarding projects in which they are uninterested, and each time they demand to know why we keep contacting them when we know that they don't want to hear from us.
The list of Native American contacts provided by the NAHC is a composed of a group of self-selecting individuals. They have to ask to be on the NAHC contact list. However, it's not entirely clear how they get removed, when they get removed. I have been told by some folks at the NAHC that it is as simple as requesting removal from the list. However, I have also been told by some of the people on the list that they have been trying for some time to be removed, but that the NAHC has failed to do so.
I take no sides, I don't presume to know the truth of the matter, this is simply what I have been told.
So, we are put into an odd situation where we are, usually, required to contact them, even if we know that they don't want to be contacted. As long as they are on the list, a regulator or a member of the public who is looking to litigate against a project can point to our failure to contact even one individual as evidence that we failed to make a good-faith effort to identify cultural resources. Similarly, a member of the Native American community who is not contacted can create a problem for our clients on the ground that they were not consulted as a stakeholder for a project. And while those who ask not to be contacted generally don't want to be stakeholders, if there is one thing that is true about humans in general, it's that they are an unpredictable lot who are prone to changing their minds.
At the same time, it is understandable that many of these individuals and organizations might want to no longer be contacted. One thing I have been told frequently is that those who signed up for the NAHC list had no idea just how many notifications they would receive in the course of a year. Moreover, when they do tell us anything, we put it in our report, and most of the time the resources that are known are avoided, so from their perspective, nothing happened. Some clients and government agencies are better than others in involving Native participation, meaning that while there are good outcomes, there are also many bad outcomes. So, on those occasions where it doesn't seem like nothing happened, there is a fair chance that it will seem like something has gone awry.
So, again, I get why being on the list may seem like a waste of time.
Nonetheless, as long as they are on the list, I am required to contact them. Which means that I can expect a future filled with unresponded-to letters, and the occasional episode of having someone scream at me that they don't want to be contacted, despite the fact that they remain on the list.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Tesla, Edison, and Narrative Formation
So, a cartoon on the oatmeal regarding Nikola Tesla inspired a response from a columnist at Forbes, which in turn prompted a response from the cartoonist at the Oatmeal. What is interesting about this particular case is that both authors are (correctly) pointing out that the other is engaged in cherry-picking, exaggeration, and occasional "creative interpretation" of the facts.
Contrary to the Oatmeal author's assertions to the contrary, Tesla is increasingly not only not ignored, but there is something of a "cult of Tesla" amongst a large number of people ranging from out-there conspiracy theorists who see an over-simplified version of the Tesla-vs.Edison story as a microcosm of the "us vs. the powerful conspiracy vs. the sheeple" narrative that they have, to tech gurus who see Tesla as a genius misunderstood, rather like the prefer to think of themselves (and for many of these people, the claim that Tesla is completely ignored by everyone but them is part of how they identify with the story). In defense of the Oatmeal*, the cult of Tesla is a relatively recent development, and exists largely as a pop culture phenomenon rather than a fixture of the educational system, like the cult of Edison.
Until fairly recently, Tesla has, of course, largely been ignored by most of the public. While everyone knows of Thomas Edison, it is only in the last decade or so that Nikola Tesla has gained any sort of wide recognition from the public. Tesla's genius did make him, in many ways, ahead of his time, while his deteriorating mental health made him increasingly an outsider prone to making wild claims**. Edison, meanwhile, was probably not the kindest or most generous of men, but he did play a significant role in the development of the modern world, whether or not his own grandstanding and marketing was geared towards making his role seem even larger.
What both narrative have in common is that they seek to create a hero. Either Edison was a flawed, but ultimately strong and significant, man who created the modern world, or Tesla was a lone genius capable of great things, done in by the evil dictator of engineering, Thomas Edison. While the authors of both narratives make concessions to the presence of other narratives (such as occasionally admitting when Edison did something shitty, or when Tesla was talking out of his ass), they nonetheless tend to commit to their heroic narrative to the degree that they will ignore confounding information. For example, the author of the Oatmeal notes that one of Edison's assistants died due to Edison's experimentation with X-Rays and notes that Edison jumped to human experimentation without working first with animals, but fails to note that this was not uncommon at the time (in other words, there was a cultural precedent) and that Edison experimented on himself as well as his assistant, that the assistant volunteered and was enthusiastic, and that Edison was apparently haunted by the death of the man (not the trait of an evil mad scientist or soulless industrialist).
By contrast, the author of the Forbes piece downplays Tesla's importance by pointing out that Tesla's work was often just one component of larger attempts to tackle engineering problems, while advocating in favor of Edison's genius while pointing out that, well, Edison's work was often just one component of larger attempts to tackle engineering problems. The Forbes article comes of as, frankly, a bit more honest, while it should bee noted that the Oatmeal never claims to be either thorough or factually correct.
Okay, Armstrong, so why the hell are you going on about this?
Simple, while neither the Oatmeal nor Forbes are history publications (the Oatmeal is humor, Forbes is about business), both nonetheless wade into the waters of historic narrative, and both engage in the sort of myth-making that is common when the lay public, and many professional historians, engage in this. It's worth noting this both because of it's interesting in its own right, but also because similar processes are used to sway us when someone is constructing a politically, religiously, or socially motivated historic narrative, and looking at it happen can help to sort it out.
Look at the Oatmeal comic and the Forbes article side-by-side, and reflect that both are as accurate with their facts as the other (and neither is playing particularly fast-and-loose), and yet both reach very different conclusions about the virtues of Tesla and Edison respectively. Consider that the exact same process is at work whenever you see an evaluation of a historic event or person (even recent history, say the first part of the Obama Administration or the entirety of the Bush Jr. administration) and reflect that by simply downplaying some facts, or paying greater attention to others, even someone who is not trying to deceive can reach a conclusion that is far more personal opinion than defensible conclusion.
Now consider that most people outside of academic history and Journalism (and even a minority of people within those fields) will provide historical narratives only because they want to use it to push an agenda, and as such they are often more tied to the agenda than to the facts. If you can be pushed to reach such different conclusions using legitimate information, consider just how far astray you may be led by someone who wants you to believe a falsehood.
*There's a phrase I never thought that I would write.
**Some of the more "out there" members of the cult of Tesla seem to either reject that Tesla's mental health was in poor shape, or simply ignore it, and take many of his more dubious claims about what he had figured out (such as wirelessly transmitting electricity) at face value.
Contrary to the Oatmeal author's assertions to the contrary, Tesla is increasingly not only not ignored, but there is something of a "cult of Tesla" amongst a large number of people ranging from out-there conspiracy theorists who see an over-simplified version of the Tesla-vs.Edison story as a microcosm of the "us vs. the powerful conspiracy vs. the sheeple" narrative that they have, to tech gurus who see Tesla as a genius misunderstood, rather like the prefer to think of themselves (and for many of these people, the claim that Tesla is completely ignored by everyone but them is part of how they identify with the story). In defense of the Oatmeal*, the cult of Tesla is a relatively recent development, and exists largely as a pop culture phenomenon rather than a fixture of the educational system, like the cult of Edison.
Until fairly recently, Tesla has, of course, largely been ignored by most of the public. While everyone knows of Thomas Edison, it is only in the last decade or so that Nikola Tesla has gained any sort of wide recognition from the public. Tesla's genius did make him, in many ways, ahead of his time, while his deteriorating mental health made him increasingly an outsider prone to making wild claims**. Edison, meanwhile, was probably not the kindest or most generous of men, but he did play a significant role in the development of the modern world, whether or not his own grandstanding and marketing was geared towards making his role seem even larger.
What both narrative have in common is that they seek to create a hero. Either Edison was a flawed, but ultimately strong and significant, man who created the modern world, or Tesla was a lone genius capable of great things, done in by the evil dictator of engineering, Thomas Edison. While the authors of both narratives make concessions to the presence of other narratives (such as occasionally admitting when Edison did something shitty, or when Tesla was talking out of his ass), they nonetheless tend to commit to their heroic narrative to the degree that they will ignore confounding information. For example, the author of the Oatmeal notes that one of Edison's assistants died due to Edison's experimentation with X-Rays and notes that Edison jumped to human experimentation without working first with animals, but fails to note that this was not uncommon at the time (in other words, there was a cultural precedent) and that Edison experimented on himself as well as his assistant, that the assistant volunteered and was enthusiastic, and that Edison was apparently haunted by the death of the man (not the trait of an evil mad scientist or soulless industrialist).
By contrast, the author of the Forbes piece downplays Tesla's importance by pointing out that Tesla's work was often just one component of larger attempts to tackle engineering problems, while advocating in favor of Edison's genius while pointing out that, well, Edison's work was often just one component of larger attempts to tackle engineering problems. The Forbes article comes of as, frankly, a bit more honest, while it should bee noted that the Oatmeal never claims to be either thorough or factually correct.
Okay, Armstrong, so why the hell are you going on about this?
Simple, while neither the Oatmeal nor Forbes are history publications (the Oatmeal is humor, Forbes is about business), both nonetheless wade into the waters of historic narrative, and both engage in the sort of myth-making that is common when the lay public, and many professional historians, engage in this. It's worth noting this both because of it's interesting in its own right, but also because similar processes are used to sway us when someone is constructing a politically, religiously, or socially motivated historic narrative, and looking at it happen can help to sort it out.
Look at the Oatmeal comic and the Forbes article side-by-side, and reflect that both are as accurate with their facts as the other (and neither is playing particularly fast-and-loose), and yet both reach very different conclusions about the virtues of Tesla and Edison respectively. Consider that the exact same process is at work whenever you see an evaluation of a historic event or person (even recent history, say the first part of the Obama Administration or the entirety of the Bush Jr. administration) and reflect that by simply downplaying some facts, or paying greater attention to others, even someone who is not trying to deceive can reach a conclusion that is far more personal opinion than defensible conclusion.
Now consider that most people outside of academic history and Journalism (and even a minority of people within those fields) will provide historical narratives only because they want to use it to push an agenda, and as such they are often more tied to the agenda than to the facts. If you can be pushed to reach such different conclusions using legitimate information, consider just how far astray you may be led by someone who wants you to believe a falsehood.
*There's a phrase I never thought that I would write.
**Some of the more "out there" members of the cult of Tesla seem to either reject that Tesla's mental health was in poor shape, or simply ignore it, and take many of his more dubious claims about what he had figured out (such as wirelessly transmitting electricity) at face value.
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