Re: Accounts Preceded Arts & Sciences - Blombos - A New Look

From: richard01 (richardparker01_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: 28 Sep 2004 04:32:24 -0700

richardparker01@yahoo.com (richard01) wrote in message news:<6e30eb22.0409270326.ebd17fb@posting.google.com>...
> A cursory glance at the scratched piece of red ochre found in Blombos
> cave and dated to some 70,000ya, reveals that is certainly not 'The
> World's First Art'. A more parsimonious theory would propose the use
> of the world's first 'red ink' to denote debt, and the cross-hatch
> marks as a hesitant effort at double-entry bookkeeping.
>
> Similarly, the 'World's First Beads' also found in South Africa, say
> nothing about human body decoration, but a lot about the origins of
> the abacus.
>
> The famous Upper Paleolithic Sungir burials, with their thousands of
> labour-intensive beads, are more likely to be the send-off for one of
> the world's first accountancy partnerships, conspicuously pleased with
> themselves, like most accountants, than of any real leaders.
>
> Upper Paleolithic cave art as at Lascaux, Altamira, Chauvet, etc show
> a marked majority of hatchings, scratchings, and so on over the more
> obvious animal pictures. Forget David Lewis-Williams' 'The Mind in the
> Cave' where he attempts to persuade us, with some success, that these
> are portraits of the entoptic visions of shamans under trance. They
> are much more likely to be the tallyings of troglodyte clerks.
>
> The best efforts of Alexander Marshack (portable Upper Paleolithic
> art), and Alexander Thom (megalithic monuments) to persuade us of
> early Man's noble aspirations to understand astronomy are put into
> perspective when you realise certain of them spent a lot of time and
> effort calculating the right dates for payment of taxes and tithes.
>
> All of the world's first writing systems - Cuneiform, Harappan, Minoan
> Linear A & B and probably Early Chinese, were known as clerks'
> jottings long before anyone had the idea of using writing to convey
> more profound ideas.
>
> A quick read through the biographies of Renaissance masters will show
> their urgent concerns were financial, not artistic.
>
> And even now, fully 30-50% of our daily news, via papers and TV,
> merely reflects the arcane scribblings of these people, as reflected
> by the Stock exchange, etc, and the rest of the 'financial' news.
>
> Of course, accountants can be 'creative' - see Arthur Andersen/Enron.
>
> The world's first 'professionals' - accountants, prostitutes, and
> priests, all have one thing in common - believing anything they say is
> more an act of faith than of reason.
>
> When you look at the progress of Hom. sap.'s long 'progress' via the
> Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and so on, it is a salutary check on
> our posturings to note that the Age of Reason didn't happen until only
> 300 years ago, when mathematicians invented logarithms to help
> actuaries.
>
> A good start has been made on studies of the role of other parasites
> and vermin in human prehistory, but no notice seems to have been taken
> of the crucial role of bean-counters.
>
> We can leave the priests and the prostitutes to fight it out between
> themselves, but it needs a concerted effort to rid the world of the
> scourge of accountancy.
>
> You can help.
>
> Next time you see an accountant with his smug, ineffable air of
> superiority, crossing the road in front of you, run him over. He may
> be a lawyer; in which case, stop, back up, and make sure.
>
> But be certain, first, that you don't despatch a struggling artist or
> scientist going to his day job.
>
> Richard

Oh and I forgot to mention that Leonardo da Vinci invented his mirror
hand-writing to keep his cooked books secret from the tax and
tithesmen.