The Palaeolithic artist: part 22

Geological map and cross-section
of the Rising Star cave system
author: Paul H. G. M. Dirks et al

A geological survey will not just include its target, but will also include the surrounding area. An archaeological survey will only include its target.

Read this account of the Rising Star Cave finds in South Africa. You can tell right away that the excavators wanted, so badly, the remains to be a newly discovered species of hominid (which they named Homo naledi) that they completely subjectivized the classification process. Hopefully, this will be rectified. I think it is significant that they mentioned that its brain was "...not much larger than a chimpanzee. But this was no chimpanzee. This was something else. Something more human."

If you are a perceptive person, you will detect a mens rea:

"The only reliable means by which an investigator can show that a defendant was acting under the required mens rea is to gather facts the jury can use to infer or conclude that the defendant knew what he or she was doing. From the beginning of a case, investigators must look for physical and testimonial evidence that shows what the defendant's state of mind was at the time the act occurred." (Michael F. Brown, Criminal Investigation: Law and Practice, 2nd edition, Woburn, MA, 2001, p.5.)

The book is rather coy about how much more powerful mens rae is when compared to its use after a suspect has been arrested and informed of his or her rights. Not reacting to a question (or anything else rather pointed) is one of the most obvious examples of mens rea and its applicability extends much further than just criminal investigation. If you have not thought much about this subject, you are about to explore a world you might never have dreamed even existed. If you are disturbed whenever some reality is swept away from beneath your feet you had better stop reading my words at this point.

In Ian Hodder's Reading the past: Current approaches to interpretation in archaeology, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p.163, (which printing, unstated) the author says:

"Most individuals in the general public find it extremely difficult to develop their ideas about an alternative past in relation to the data from the past. They are excited by Von Daniken and films such as One Million Years B.C. and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and they develop their personal views about what the past must have been like, but they are kept at a distance from archaeological artifacts by glass cases, systems analyses and the jargon of social theory. When they do manage to gain some access to an immediately experienced past, they are often directly confronted by the archaeological establishment, or else their views are studiously ignored."

As laudable (and brave) is Hodder's statement here, it also exposes a certain bias, and this bias sweeps through the entire chapter: The public is only interested in "fringe" archaeology; those who are interested in archaeology as perceived by academia who:

"...have a broader and and more accurate knowledge of what archaeologists write. They watch more archaeological documentaries on television, go to more museums and visit sites and churches, and read about the past." ibid. p.162.

You will note that each statement in the above quote places the public in a passive light. The archaeologist mostly exists here as a hidden authority, save for when explicitly mentioned ("archaeologists write" being an aggressive action.). We see, here, Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message". Sometimes, life is just too delicious for words: Googling the second of those two links I find:

"This article relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. (July 2013)"

This is an academic call for non-scientific deductive reasoning as opposed to scientific inductive reasoning. It can also be found in the structure of a Ph.D thesis which demands a review of secondary sources (making the candidate the tertiary source.

But it gets far, far worse. It is also an enantiodromia. which is a neurosis, which, if unchecked, can lead to a full-blown psychosis. Nietzsche is one of Jung's favorite examples, and mine for that matter (Not surprising because both Jung and myself share the same personality type: INFJ or "Intuitive empath"). The last link is, by far, the best definition I have seen. Neitzsche was also an introvert (the "I" in INFJ) and demonstrates one of the most extreme historical examples of what can happen if an introvert becomes psychotic. This is why he is so fascinating to sane introverts.

We can go even further with these topics: Whenever you see an academic archaeological interpretation, it is virtually "counter holistic". Take the Gundestrup cauldron, for example. All such interpretations give disjointed meanings for each of the motifs and this disassociative method is typical of extraverted (philosophically materialist) people, some of whom are attracted to archaeology because it deals in solid objects that cannot be subjected to scientific proofs (which are inductive).

This series is not one of my hypotheses (which I label as such), it is the only theory I have posted here. It is a theory because I can provide proofs.Not only that, but these proofs are irrefutable and can only be denied in a superstitious manner. This is a very unusual situation. I actually have two ebooks in the planning stages right now. The major one has as its current working title: Mythos and Logos: Our bi-polar planet. It is virtually an opposite of  Walter A Shelburne's Mythos and Logos in the Though of Carl Jung: The theory of the collective unconscious in scientific perspective. My study will be an artistic/poetic study of the collective consciousness. but don't expect anything fluffy here. Although it will be clearly written in human language, its basis lies in quantum physics. It will deal with the collective consciousness from about where Jung left off. He mostly complained about it even though knowing what global tragedies came from it. In his day, he had few other options. I warned you about this post, the book will make this seem like nothing in comparison. While it is theoretically possible to bring about the end of wars in just a single lifetime (if you are young enough, that is). I think that two or three lifetime would be a more realistic goal. It will sell for about $5, but if you live in a country where $5 is a lot of money, I will give you a copy for nothing that you can hopefully get printed.

The second ebook will be about $1.95 and will be on fringe archaeology. After my computer meltdown on the weekend, I need to buy a more recent computer. When I plug my tablet into it, it does not know what a tablet is and appears to identify it as one of those"new-fangled and expensive digital cameras". My, how technology moves so fast. Unfortunately, I might have to take an extended break from this blog to do all of that work.

Tomorrow, the species in the cave.

 

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