On nationalistic archaeology denial

One expression of misplaced nationalism is claiming all they can come up with would come from their own country.  Or at least the country which they see as precursor.  What they then don’t know is them literally denying an entire science.  Archaeologists examine the past by starting from solid objects.  It can be garbage, lost bits and pieces, house foundations, graves and so on.  Things are dung out from the ground and examined in the laboratory.  All their results are denied by such ethnocentrics.

Moreover, all written history is denied before a certain point.  In some countries written history may stretch thousands of years back in time.  What we can get out of this is denied by such individuals.  Instead they replace it with their own fabrication.  Either a high-tech interpretation of traditional mythology.  Or arbitrary manipulations to what are viewed as their own benefit.  At worst all is denied before the breakthrough of the printing press.  As if all we know about the time before that came from undateable manuscripts.  All are not undateable!

Ethnocentrics want so much their own people to be the source of all the world’s progress.  Would the rest of humanity not be capable of this on its own?  Exactly how little do they think of all other peoples?  Moreover, one has to ask how the spread would have happened.  How could the ethnocentric’s own people get themselves everywhere?  Without motorised transportation this can’t be taken for granted.

Archaeology paints a picture of humanity’s gradual spread.  First from Africa to Eurasia and from there to Australia.  Then we spread from Eurasia to the Americas.  This spread took place over the course of tens of thousands of years.  The process was slow enough it made it possible for different populations to arise.  Culture changes a thousand times faster than our biology does.  A common cultural origin can for this reason usually not be traced.

Now we also know civilisation to have several different origins.  Agriculture has arisen separately in 8 – 9 areas.  Ceramics have been invented at several different occasions too.  But some things are harder to invent than others.  Writing has only been invented in three different places.  Sails, bronze and iron smelting has only been invented 2 – 3 times.  Moreover, certain inventions require others to already be established.  Usable wheels can’t be made without first having metal tools.

A claimed common origin neither explains differences which have been historically observed.  When different peoples got in contact with Europeans technological differences were enormous.  Even peripheral parts of Europe were many centuries ahead of West Africa.  Native Americans at best lived in the Bronze Age.  Australia’s indigenous population lacked fully developed agriculture.  Ethnocentrics are probably racists and claim them to be too stupid.  Presumably they believe these populations to still live like that.  If they don’t they imagine them to have disappeared entirely.

No racism is needed to explain these differences.  Myself I am an environmental possibilist.  This means the physical environment put limits to what a society can create.  The most important factors limiting this are:

• Where there were plants and animals suitable for domestication.

• How domesticated plants and animals could have spread.

• How it was possible for ideas to spread between people.

No-one of these factors can be taken for granted everywhere.  On the opposite there are large differences between different parts of the world.  A good introduction of the subject is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.  This book was relished in 1996 and is written by a biologist.  It contains a few smaller errors not affecting the big picture.  The largest error was to claim Papuans to be smarter then whites.  Since then no differences of this type has been found.  Instead everyone appear stupid in situations they are unfamiliar with.

 

Uploaded on the 2nd of November 2024 .