I keep a tidy desktop on my computer. (Hear that, Maggie) There's just a few folders and within those few I stash all the rest of the folders such as the ones bulging with Trump lampoons, the tax receipts for the current year, projects I'm working on and a few others. Of course, I am forgetful and sometimes I have to use the "search" function to find where I put that article on functional Victoria restaurants for hearing impaired (under "restaurants", Stupid) or great pick-up lines for the octenagerian (Did someone delete that?); but mostly I can go the main folder and then locate the nested item contained therein. That's today's word - containment.
A while back I remember reading this great book review in London Review of Books – a good reviewer can save you the time and money of getting and reading the original – about an archaeological theory and it came back to me, the remember, not the review. If any of you out there in my readerland can add to my ramblings on the matter, even help me find the original text, I would be grateful. Meanwhile I'll ramble.
Here's the question for all of you budding archaeologists, and every one of you who travels has a few buds on that branch, - what was the most important invention of early humankind? When our ancient ancestors moved from the trees to the increasing savannahs of northern Africa, what one item accelerated their chances of survival?
Margaret Mead answered a slightly different question in responding to a student asking what was the first sign of civilization but her response is significant enough to deserve reposting here. She said it was contained in a skeleton showing a healed break in a femur. Here's her full answer:
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.
We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized. Back to individual items and our hunter-gatherers and their womenfolk. What invention helped them along the road to the International Space Station?
Fire? yes.
Flint tools and weapons? certainly.
Wheels? much later, but OK.
Domestication of animals? again, later, but good.
Here's the proposal from that one anthropologist/archaeologist, and as I said, I've searched through all my saved documents to try and credit the writer, but I can't find it. Help me out if you know who it was.
She said it was the container and it was probably invented by a female.
Even before the invention of argriculture. Waaay before the domestication of animals. Some time around Lucy leaving that footprint in the clay at Olduvai Gorge, there were these other lady hominids hauling stuff around for the convenience of their hunter-gatherer hunters and gatherers.
This archaeologist's theory was that the technological progress of neolithic peoples was dependent upon the container, be it hollowed-out gourd, or animal skin sack and later as fired clay pot, and they were more, or at least as important as, weapons & tools because:
containers carried foods gathered to new locations
containers kept foods out of the wood ash in the cooking process
containers kept harvested grains & other foods for later use
containers carried fire/coals for the next fire
and, my favourite: containers of story carried tribal history and instructions.
Sure, the story thing likely came much later, after the container idea had been expanded to provide winter storage for the nuts and other food stuffs, and chunks of clay had been shaped and fired to make cooking pots, but it's a great idea. Stories contain the "truths" of our past. One literary authority, Northrop Frye I believe, put it this way:
mythology answers questions of evolutionary science
legends are substitues for the history of our people
folk tales are the material for moral education
Sounds good: myth = natural science
legend = history
fable = psychology
Every kid at some point asks, "Where did I come from?" and every parent either launches into a long, mostly incoherent, lesson in biology or religion or both, or just says what's so and they all go for ice cream. That long lesson in religion/mythology was once contained in formulae - a set of stories about tribal origin - and the best way for those stories to be recalled was to code them with rhythm or repetitions (chorus) or rhyme. One other related idea I came across in a class on poetics was the relationship of body pulse to rhythm.
Think about it. The blood is doing its lub-dub, lub-dub thing through the arteries and the guys are thumping fists or spears on the table top or whatever serves as table top – likely the head of the guy in front and I'm sure I saw an example of this at the pub last weekend – and then they call for the "scoep" or whatever the local tribal term for poet-historian is. I use the Anglo-Saxon word just to show off.
And a bit later, those rhythms and all got regularized, first into iambic (lub-DUB = dah-DUM) or trochaic or all those other larynx-twisting Greek terms for poetic scanscion. I did a whole powerpoint set on poetics and those ideas are stuck in there somewhere. You can check it out here https://www.derekpeach.com/free-stuff/poetry-poetics-presentation or just take my word for it and carry on. Back to the spear butts and table-pounding.
This guy, guardian of the tribal history, finishes off his horn of mead (nice container, that), steps up to the mic, or fire or whatever and lets loose. He could give 'em the legend of Gilgamesh or Beowulf or whatever – maybe even the book of Genesis, or Exodus.
And everyone around the fire joins in on the bits they remember or shouts out some encouragement at the really exciting, gory bits.
Go, Go, Gilgamesh!
Beowulf, kill that Grendel bitch!
Yeah, slaughter them Caananites!
Exterminate those Amelekites!
Screw those slave girls, Abraham!
Go Moses, Baby, Go for it!
Or something like that. But that was a long time ago. We're a lot more civilized today.
And the stories we tell ourselves about our history have to be verified; we can't let just any politician make shit up and expect us to believe it. Or act as if it's true without personally checking it with our own sense of morality.
We hope.