“What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”

In a lecture regarding Egyptian tombs the other day, my professor mentioned how some kings were so afraid of graverobbers disrupting their tombs – thus making their afterlife more difficult or even impossible – that they had booby traps built. What he meant by this was secret doors or unbalanced rocks that may fall. Of course, what was in my imagination was more like Indiana Jones, with spikes that pop up through the floors, pressure plates that trigger poisonous darts, or a giant rolling rock ready to crush you should you disturb the tomb the of the sacred king. That is until my professor made a point to abruptly stop his lecture to add “NOT like in Indiana Jones”.

Apparently, he gets that sort of question a lot, along with questions about whether or not aliens helped build the pyramids and if there really is a curse of the mummy of Tutankhamen (no and no). He says the crazies asking him these questions are merely one of the “perks” of being an Egyptologist with a publicly accessible university email address.

And I hate to admit that I’ve gotten caught in a class discussion before with a faulty assumption I made after watching “The Mummy” – that the Egyptian Book of the Dead was a standard text that was so special that only a few copies existed. In reality it was actually called “The Book of Coming Forth by Day” and copies were buried with most elites in a practice that lasted over 1,700 years, and the content of each varied greatly based on the individual it was buried with.

This error made me wonder how much damage these myths about archaeology do to the art of science. It never seemed like a big deal to me: as a kid I was fascinated by characters like Indiana Jones and Allan Quartermain. And though they are horribly inaccurate, I credit movies like “The Mummy”, “Gladiator”, “Kingdom of Heaven”, and “Braveheart” with my early interest in anthropology, archaeology, and history.

Admittedly, I had to relearn many of the “facts” I learned from so-called historical movies, but nevertheless popular culture made me interested enough in a topic to learn the real facts behind it. So, is historical inaccuracy okay if it increases the public interest and awareness in a topic such as archaeology or history?

I guess that answer depends a lot on the story being told. For example, the Disney movie “Hercules” is infamous for its inaccuracies when it comes to the Greek traditions of Herakles – my favorite being that Zeus was such a man-whore that he fathered Herakles with another woman, not Hera. But, the Greeks had so many different versions of their own stories, that it wouldn’t seem that big of a deal to make inaccuracies now when the original myths were equally inconsistent.

But, what about a movie like Gladiator? It is meant to give an idea of life in Roman times and all of its characters are named after real people. Except none of them are represented accurately – Maximus of Hispana lived over 200 years before the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and Commodus certainly did not murder his father. So, do we damage the history and memory of these individuals by mixing their stories with fable and vilifying them without just cause? It seems a little unfair to the dead who are unable to defend their images in the face of popular culture.

Perhaps the most dangerous of these issues is when misconceptions arise about entire cultures, that still may exist. My mind jumps to the opening scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”: Indy is in Peru searching for a golden fertility idol, and ends up being chased by the “Hovitos” tribe who bow down before the idol and engage in mindless killing at the order of Indy’s archenemy “Belloq”. Except the Hovitos never existed and are dramaticized and loosely based on the “Chachapoyas” of Peru, while the artifact is actually a representation of the Aztec goddess “Tlazolteotl”.  This picking and choosing and combining of interesting imagery from various cultures is a common theme in films and seems to do a disservice to a culture of which only some traditions and values are worth retelling.

Or the ending of “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, where Indy learns that a group of aliens, which ancient peoples around the world worshiped, actually built pyramids and other major ancient monuments. As my professor pointed out:

“the belief that aliens helped the Egyptians build the pyramids is less crazy than it is a sheer insult to the engineering skills and intellect of the Egyptians, because you are basically claiming that they couldn’t have done it on their own”.

But, it is also arguable that the creative arts of film and literature should be given a bit of poetic license on a historical matter, because history is never clear-cut and unambiguous. One could argue that we never know how the true events played out because “history is written by the victors”. And many people simply want to know how to feel about a historical event in a black & white way – basically, was a person good or bad? Was an event positive or negative? And films do a good job of presenting history in this sense, in a fun and entertaining way that leaves the viewer with a clearly defined idea of what they just witnessed and how they should feel about it.

That being said, maybe the best way to look at a blockbuster film is with interest, a grain of salt, and a desire to learn the real facts. Visual imagery is a great way to spark interest, but one should never claim to have any real knowledge on the matter if their facts come from Hollywood.

“Wonder that which one would not have been able to guess”

A defense of Anthropology and Archaeology as sciences, according to this blogger.

Being an anthropology and archaeology major nearing graduation and thus the real world, I from time to time (i.e. all the time) get asked why do I study what I do. Which is the polite way of people asking “why do these things matter in the real world?”. I’ve become very accustomed to answering why I study evolutionary anthropology, especially at family gatherings, and over time I feel like I have developed my answer to form an acceptable response that actually gives credit to my academic comrades in anthropology:

The biggest problem I have is when I explain how much I love science is that people ask that if that is the case, why I didn’t study a “real” science? A “hard” science like physics or chemistry? I love telling people its because they are too easy, just to see their reaction.

Not that I think physics and quantum mechanics and all those beautiful things are easy by any means, but honestly wheres the fun in knowing a ball is always going to fall to the ground due to gravity? Heat will always travel to the colder region due to conduction? Water will always flow downhill to gain kinetic energy? A molecule will always diffuse to the lowest concentration due to diffusion? It all gets so predictable and tedious after a while.

The so-called “hard” sciences are so calculable and certain. An object will always fall at 9.8 m/s^2, always.

Anthropology has none of that monotony. Instead, we must consider a complex interaction of environment, genetics, and culture to find our answer. And there is something thrilling in knowing that you will never truly know the answer to something, because the situation is always changing. It can never be predicted.  It can never be proven.  More often than not, it can never be repeated.  And so, to me, it always remains interesting.

Anthropology is seeking to answer that which you can never truly answer. Its a very bold quest in my opinion, a never ending quest and something that keeps my interest after these years of study and something that keeps me guessing and keeps me wondering about the world.

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand
-Neil Armstrong

“Art is the signature of civilizations”

The other day I came across a photo that I was so utterly convinced was a fake that I spent about an hour of precious homework time (well, precious procrastination time) researching it. Here is the photo:

But as it turns out, it wasn’t fake and was actually from the EISP – Easter Island Statue Project (check it out!).  Did anyone else know that nearly all of the Easter Island statues have bodies? Because I definitely didn’t and am a little ashamed of that. So after all this research, I figured I might as well waste more time and make a post about it too.

Easter Island, located in a volcanic hotspot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is so named because it was discovered on Easter Sunday in 1722 by a Dutch explorer named Jacob Roggeveen. In the native language, the island is actually called Rapa Nui. The island is most famous for the “Easter Island Heads”, or more accurately called Moai.

Moai are human figures carved from stone and date back to sometime between 1250 CE and 1500 CE. Note that I said figures, not just heads, because most of the statues actually have bodies – but for some reason they are usually buried up to their shoulders. This is a major misconception for a lot of people I think, because the most common representation of these statues are heads lined along the coast, on large stone platforms called ahu.

(Like this)

Another misconception stems from the fact that most images of the Moai are like those of the statues above – a few statues lined up in a very epic and monumental fashion. However, there are nearly 900 of these statues scattered throughout the island. Most are still located in the quarry where they were carved and only about a quarter of them have actually been moved to other locations (mostly along the coast facing inward toward the island).

• The tallest statue is named Paro – it is 33 feet high and weighs in at 82 tons!
• But another statue would have towered over this one if it was completed – if finished to the standard design ratio of the Moai, it would have weighed 270 tons!

It is still unknown how the statues were transported from the quarry to their final positions. The leading hypothesis from scholars is that they were pulled along rollers or sleds by human power. Though this is the best explanation so far, it still seems unlikely because of the sheer amount of people that would have been required for this feat – the weigh of some statues suggests hundreds of people would have been needed to complete this epic feat. My personal belief as to the source of the power needed to move these mammoth statues? Aliens.

I had a hard time imagining how these might have been carved in an ancient quarry – here’s the answer.

Another debatable question about the Moai is the reason for their production. The general consensus is that they were carved as part of ancestor worship, and these giant statues represent important people in the tribe. This theory works well given the large proportions of the heads of the Moai and the fact that culture of the ancient islanders exemplified the persona as being centered in the head.

So that’s that, I guess I will get back to homework now.  Or napping….

What’s Coming Soon:

As a senior “Wolverine” at the University of Michigan, I feel like this post is obligatory before I graduate…

“Myth is an attempt to narrate the whole human experience”

Hi again! So the other night I refused to study for exams anymore and ran out of friends with whom to play Super Smash Brothers (Melee!), so I somehow ended up on Science Daily going through their awesome articles, then transitioned to Wikipedia, learned something new, and thought I would share.

Being the rabid fan of Indiana Jones that I am, and archaeology and mythology in general, I have always loved learning about the more abstract bits of history.  The really cool stuff that was potentially the result of aliens (not the stuff I am learning in my Classical Archaeology class right now that involves the statistical analysis of Pompeian housing structures and whatnot).  And I’ve always been a sucker for the borderline impossible things like Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster (Nessie exists, I know it!), Crystal Skulls, and Atlantis.  And while Atlantis is in all likelihood nothing more than a bedtime story made up by Plato and never taken seriously until semi-modern-day archaeologists decided to start looking for it, there may be a scientific basis for a lost city underwater.  And it just so happens that Helike, Greece may be this inspiration.

Helike was a thriving Greek city, one of the largest in Achaea, and an important port city in Ancient Greece.  That is, until it completely disappeared, literally overnight, during 373 BCE.  Like the city of Atlantis, it was swallowed by an earthquake that caused a massive tsunami to flood the city and wipe it from the face of the earth.  And like Atlantis, it was thought to be a myth of ancient lore – that is, until Helike was discovered in 2001 by archaeologists.

The myth is that Helike was punished for its disobedience by the wrathful Poseidon.  Poseidon was the patron god of the city and he was angry that they potentially dishonored Ionian (Greek) colonists of Asia.  Ironically he is the same patron deity as Atlantis’ and, perhaps more ironically, he is the god of earthquakes and of the sea.

What I found most interesting about this story is that the city wasn’t lost right away, and there  are reports of people sailing to the city to look for survivors, and later to try to salvage statues and stone.  It also became a sort of tourist hot spot for ancient Greek and Roman travelers.  Strabo and Ovid, among others, were known to have sailed over the city, whose deteriorating walls and statues could be seen through the waters above.

Due to the similarities between the events at Helike and the story of Atlantis, historians have proposed that this city may have been some of the inspiration for Plato’s references to the lost city of Atlantis.  Slowly, as silt built up and began to cover the city, it was lost to memory until it was rediscovered by the research efforts of Dora Katsonopoulou and her research team.  They have painstakingly uncovered remnants of the city walls during the dry season (hence why in the picture above there isn’t actually any water visible) and every summer continue to make advancements in their research.

So there you have it, all you Atlantis-believers out there.  Don’t give up hope, Helike-believers were victorious in the end and you may be too!  (But probably not, so accept that Atlantis most likely didn’t exist)

What’s coming soon:

Whoa, this is kinda weird right?  Curious yet?