Ancient kids’ toys have been hiding in the archaeological record
sciencenews.org
sciencenews.org
"It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization."
[1] Some images here: https://wearethemutants.com/2017/12/06/david-macauleys-motel...
Here’s a wiki with some nice drawings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirligig#Button_whirligigs
We also made ropes with jute, spinning tops of wood with an iron tip etc. We could not afford to buy things such as these. It was fun :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u89j6-FI6fk
He was hard-worker his whole and he couldn't sit around all day, so he spent 6-days a week (except Sundays) building some really creative "kinetic art" from old machine parts.
The town of Wilson, NC has turned it into a park after he died:
I feel a certain knowing connection with these parents of 4,000 years ago, when I imagine them also with a shelf of inexpert yet earnest pottery.
> Archaeologists have long tended to choose the second option
One of the many reasons archaeology frustrates me. If you can't figure out why somebody built something in the past, its always for ritual reasons, rather than more mundane reasons.
For example, I went to Chichen-Itza last week. If something happened, and all the street vendors' stalls were abandoned, it's almost certain that archaeologists of a thousands years in the future would conclude that it was a major religious pilgrimage site, of a culture obsessed with miniature pyramids, obsidian miniatures, marble chess sets, and brightly glazed ceramic skulls. What they would make of the multitude of ceramic phallic hash pipes, I'm not sure I want to speculate about...
I'm not sure it's longer-lasting. I've got VHS and audio tapes I don't have the equipment to play. I've got two voice recorders - each one requiring proprietary software to extract the audio from. The last time I checked, a few years ago, the software was no longer maintained, and may not run on modern Windows machines.
If I put in the effort, I could probably figure out how the files are stored, and how to decode them, but it's not exactly a casual task.
However, to me, the tiny pyramids and other trinkets are a kind of modern day ritual - if something that has no clear explanation or practical purpose can be called a ritual.
Let's take a moment and think: why do we carry those items home after journeys? I've observed most of the time we toss them in a drawer and smile aftre discovering them 5 years later. We place them on the shelves. Do we use them to signal social status? Not really, they can usually be readily bought locally. When we gift them, do we expect the other person to remember what they meant 2 years later?
Or do we do it because "this is what people do"?
Of course, maybe there is a different answer, but to me, it looks like we produce these things to fulfill some irrational, ritualistic? need. If we do that now so often, then people in the past most likely did that too.
Why? "Ritual." Done.
But that doesn't actually answer "why" it just gives it another word.
Another example in the same light: "How was the world created?" "God" vs "How was the world created?" "Big Bang".
In both cases you have answered nothing. You just used another word. "How was God created?" "Don't know", "How was the Big Bang created?" "Don't know".
Using a scientific sounding word does not actually answer the question, anymore than using the word "ritual" answers the question.
Instead the lack of knowledge should be made explicit, and not hidden behind a "comfort" word. (I.e. a word used to make you feel better about not knowing.)
I think we lose the significance of ritual when we try to be "rational". For me, ritual is entirely rational. Without it we'd almost be stuck in a stagnant loop, trying to rationalize all of our behaviors without actually making any definitive action because we know at the brain-level it's "just" neurons firing, it's just "feelings". Ritual is an immersion in creative processes, providing not only stability but possibility.
In common English the definition of “ritual” is a lot more restricted than in sociology and archaeology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual:
”They include not only the worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also rites of passage, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, school "rush" traditions and graduations, club meetings, sporting events, Halloween parties, veterans parades, Christmas shopping and more. Many activities that are ostensibly performed for concrete purposes, such as jury trials, execution of criminals, and scientific symposia, are loaded with purely symbolic actions prescribed by regulations or tradition, and thus partly ritualistic in nature. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying hello may be termed rituals.”
With such a definition, it isn’t much of a stretch to call about anything that isn’t clearly a tool ritualistic in origin.