Re: When Burial Begins
- From: "Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiutiuytciuyik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 19:56:23 +0100
"Lee Olsen" <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1161743633.017157.170940@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba66/feat1.shtml
PA is packed with examples of appalling 'science'.
Normally if I was to quote one here, I might be
accused of cherry-picking a particularly bad
case. But Lee has actually recommended this.
When Burial Begins
August 2002
Hundreds of millennia ago, early humans began to 'bury' some of their dead.
Then burials became more elaborate. Why? Paul Pettitt reports
(Paul Pettitt is a Research Fellow at Keble College, Oxford)
He seems to know all there is to know in
modern PA. The trouble is that it's all much
less useful than anything in Aristotle.
We are all so accustomed to the idea of burying the dead, that it takes a
moment to realise just how peculiar this behaviour really is.
All species exhibit behaviours that are peculiar
to the niche they occupy. As is standard in PA,
Pettitt either does not know or does not apply
the concept of niche. It is unlikely to be a word
he ever uses.
Most animals blithely ignore the dead bodies of other members
of their pack or herd. What makes us so different?
Pettitt does not bother to enquire into those
species outside his "most animals" category
-- which is as good an example as you could
find of PA laziness, ignorance and arrogance.
Species that live in fixed colonies -- such as
social insects -- must dispose of their dead
in some manner. Humans are no different.
When Uncle Joe dies, we cannot leave him
lie there, gently rotting away.
How and when did burial begin?
Immediately, Pettitt chases off on the wrong
track. Curiosity is not useful factor when
explaining the consistent behaviour of species.
Cats don't bury their faeces from curiosity.
It does not prompt birds to dispose of those
of their nestlings. Bees are not curious about
their dead sisters before they throw the bodies
out of the hive.
The only relevant question here is 'when did
hominids begin to live in fixed colonies?' or
(probably better) 'when did they begin
regularly use the same sites?'
We can probably assume that a degree of curiosity - at least - about the
dead body was common to all archaic human species, as it can be
observed among higher primates today. Chimpanzees are certainly
aware of the moment of death of their kin, and primatologist Jane Goodall
has observed how the attitude of mothers to their sick offspring changes
. . . But we can only speculate as to why these rituals began. . . . must
inevitably cause confusion and perhaps sorrow. . . . Among hominids, no
evidence is found for treatment of the dead until about 300,000 years ago.
But during the preceding hundreds of millennia of human development,
we can predict certain types of funeral behaviour over and above that
observed among modern chimpanzees . . .
While wandering in acres of sentimental
nonsense, Pettitt accidentally trips over an
ecological fact.
Corpses decay and must be removed from the camp or cave.
But inevitably he does not recognise it and
immediately drifts off again into the mists of
speculative fatuity.
It seems likely that the bodies of group members would be disposed of in
places of significance in the landscape - perhaps in rivers or natural holes,
up trees, even on the tops of sacred mountains. We can never prove it, of
course. A corpse left in the open air leaves no archaeological trace.
Some of the earliest evidence for the deliberate disposal of the dead was found
in Pontnewydd Cave in Wales. According to Stephen Aldhouse-Green the
fragmentary remains - teeth - of early Neanderthals suggest that at least five
and possibly up to 15 bodies may have been deliberately placed in the dark
recesses some 225,00 years ago.
Other examples of this funerary 'caching' - as opposed to burial in the strict
sense - can be found in Europe at this time. For example, at the Sima de los
Hueso ('Pit of the Bones') at Atapuerca in Spain, over 32 individuals of Homo
heidelbergensis dating to over 200,000 years ago were found at the bottom
of a deep shaft. . . .
Interestingly, it seems that some selection may have taken place with these
earliest 'burials'. Most of the Pontnewydd teeth were from males under
20 years of age. Why the selective treatment of young men?
Like every other PA person, Pettitt has not yet begun
to cope with the geological history of northern Europe.
He does not know about Ice Ages -- or, if he does,
he is not aware of their implications. Pontnewydd
would have been 'up in the hills' for nearly all the time
Neanderthals were around, and usually 'far up into
the hills'. Females, infants, and families did not go to
such places, and what happened in them had little
bearing on the life of the society.
You could joke that young men were the only members of the social group
stupid enough to go caving. More seriously, as hunters young men were
certainly very important members of the group, deserving special treatment
after death.
Idiotic trash.
We can age skeletons now with enough accuracy to know that old men
practically did not exist in Neanderthal groups. Grandfathers and 'wise old
greybeards' were almost unknown. Few lived beyond about 30. It was a
young man's world.
Even more idiotic trash. It's the sort of thing we
expect from the completely uneducated -- yet it
is quite typical what we get from standard PA.
What other slow-maturing mammal has an age-
distribution that this fool suggests is the norm
in ordinary hominids? Was this the case for
ANY known human society? Why should
their ancestors have been any different?
The earliest true burials, however, are of anatomically modern humans.
A 'true burial' requires grave goods --
even if that would rule out nearly all
modern ones.
Even as far away as Lake Mungo in Australia, an adult was buried in a sand
dune in the same broad period as Taramsa. Intriguingly, these earliest burials
are all of modern humans, which has led some scholars to suggest that the
chronologically later burial of Neanderthals in Europe may be an idea that spread
from our own species to the last archaic humans.
Fatuous. But exactly the sort of idea that
some PA 'scholars' might suggest. Maybe
Neanderthals also got the idea of eating
from our species?
We simply cannot tell, but given the non-burial mortuary activity of earlier
Neanderthals, it is likely that Neanderthals came up with the idea of burial
of their own accord.
The 'idea of burial' -- indeed. THIS is PA in the
21st century ! Has he checked any human society
where they might have got the 'idea of burial' from?
How about his own? After all, what's wrong with
leaving grandma sitting at the dinner table while
she rots away?
While our chronological handle on Neanderthal burial is poor, the latest burial
we have - at St. Cézaire in France - was placed around 35,000 years ago. After
this we have a gap in the archaeological record for some 6,000 or 7,000 years,
as there are no convincing burials from the earliest occupation of Europe by our
own species. In many respects, in fact, the Aurignacian period between about
35,000 and 28,000 years ago reflects only part of the 'human revolution' that is
said to accompany the demise of Neanderthals and the spread of our own
species.
Pettitt does not mention that nearly all those parts
of Europe that were habitable by hominids are now
deep under water. Why does he not bother to
mention this extremely relevant fact? The answer
is simple -- he does not know it. He's a standard
21st century PA dolt, decades (if not centuries)
behind the rest of science.
. . almost all buried people were male, but almost all buried figurines were
female. If these figurines represent females in general, rather than a female
goddess, this would seem to provide a shadowy glimpse into the social
dynamics of Upper Palaeolithic society.
Hopeless. It's not as though there was (nor
could have been) was one culture in operation
over all that time and space.
We often forget that it is only in the modern, Western world that burial of the
dead has been a more or less universal and commonplace practice. Not only
in the earliest periods but throughout prehistory, humans disposed of the bodies
of their loved ones by a variety of means, most of which have left no traces and
can be only be guessed at by scholars today.
What Pettitt is saying here, in essence, is:
" . . where are all the bloody graves?"
His problem is that when you don't know
what the hominid habitat is, you don't know
where to look.
Yet in some ways modern societies are turning full circle and returning to the
varied rituals of the past.
Of course, his "varied rituals of the past" is pure
speculation -- it's a grasp at a straw to justify
the pattern he finds so weird and inexplicable.
Yet he can't begin to admit that -- he's an
academic, and he's got to pretend to know.
It is not in the least surprising that Lee Olsen
and 'Chapstick' approve of this steaming pile
of nonsense.
Paul.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: When Burial Begins
- From: Lee Olsen
- Re: When Burial Begins
- References:
- When Burial Begins
- From: Lee Olsen
- When Burial Begins
- Prev by Date: Re: New Recipe: How to Make a Mass Extinction
- Next by Date: Re: When Burial Begins
- Previous by thread: Re: When Burial Begins
- Next by thread: Re: When Burial Begins
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
