Civilization: Is The West History

Niall Furgeson, who has said some really stupid stuff in the past, has produced a 6-part documentary series that I think is rather good. As far as British productions go, it's not up there with Connections or anything, but still very much worth a watch.

He makes a lot of sweeping declarations in this series with which I completely disagree. I also don't like his usage of the terms "killer apps" and "west." The former sounds too much like a desperate attempt to be hip, and the second term is one that I find incorrect at its core. How is he defining the west? Are we just a group of people? He seems to indicate that the west was defined by ideas that allowed it to dominate. But now, large parts of the world have appropriated those ideas. So isn't the west still winning?

If we are simply talking about groups of people, then the fluidity of population groups that's allowed in the modern world renders labels difficult. And if ideas are equal, saying that China will "defeat" the United States is silly. Whichever country has the largest population will necessarily have the largest economy.

We can extend the argument even to "western" civilization, today. For example, is the United States defeating Japan, Sweden, or Germany? We have the bigger economy. We're producing the most shit. But it's absurd to say that we are beating them.

My argument is in essence semantic. The West could never be consigned to history if the West's ways are what dominate the entire planet. That is unless we're defining the West as nothing more than a group of people, and today, defining culture, country, and society as simply a group of people is ignorant.

He starts the series with some sweeping statements which I think are unsupportable, but then backs off a bit and it becomes much more an entertaining journey through history. He then returns to sweeping statements in the last episode, where he argues that the Protestant work ethic, work hard and don't spend it, is what put England, the US, and Germany on top of the world.

I find this thesis absurd. I think the "killer app" for America, Britain, and Germany was the abandonment of royalty. This fosters a belief that you too can succeed and reach that brass ring. The more hope people have for being rich, the harder they're going to work to reach that goal. It's this that helps to explain why the biggest difference between the US and Europe, the sheer number of our successful start-ups, are done by those who are not religious.

It also explains why so many movers and shakers are Jewish. Or why Japan, once stripped of the focus on the group and the emperor, became an industrial powerhouse in twenty-five years, and why China is doing the same thing. It wasn't protestantism, it was a belief that you can succeed. People in China worked their bloody asses off long before the west came 'round, only now, that work helps them and not others.

I also laughed at is claim that China is importing Christianity. About 12% of believers are Christian, which works out to about 3% of the population. And since we have no data, we don't know when these people started believing. Religion was once banned, and Christianity has a habit of being strongest when it's under attack. Chinese religion is wildly difficult to measure, but the one thing we can be sure of is that Christianity is dwarfed by Buddhism, Taoism, and even explicit atheism.

I do find his insight about multiple churches competing for followers compelling, though. The only addition that I have is that protestantism had little to do with it, it was the huge expanses of land that frequently separate settled areas. This allowed multiple types of churches to spring up. In Europe, the population was much denser. Again, this helps to explain why religion is strongest in the more rural areas of the US; areas with farms, and the out-there areas of the American South West.

Feruson closes by voicing his fear that the west is losing its edge. He says some frighteningly Randian things about the importance of property rights, which highlights a big issue I had with his overall concept. He thinks that the United States became dominants because people could become land-owners and thus voters. He assumes that land was valuable in the US like it was in Europe, which I think is wrong. Land the US was worthless. The issue was that in Europe, there was no land. It was all taken up. Land was valuable, money wasn't, because you knew that your land would always produce more.

In the US, this was reversed. Yes, people could become land-owners, but it was what happened after land acquisition that was actually important: the vote. The land itself simply came along for the ride because people thought that land was valuable. That was of course, until they came here and found out that even being a land-owner sucked. Being the money holder is what became important in the US, which again helps to explain the rise of Jews in the US. They had a lot of money.

He takes a swipe at governments who "violate our property rights" to tax us and "waste our money." Again, sounding dangerously Randian, here. What rights? How are they violated? Is the money actually being wasted? How is it being wasted. This was a massive statement to make that he just casually tosses out there.

Property isn't important. It's only seen as important because there's so damned little of it in Europe. And by that, I mean the assumption that people need to be land owners to succeed. Are property laws important? Yes. Of course they are. But they're just as important as any law about shit that is "mine" or "yours."

When Ferguson remains conservative in his statements, the documentary is at is best and most credible. When he gets sweeping, it falls on its face.

Right-Handedness Gives Hints to Why We're Human

A study has come out indicating that we might have been right-hand dominant as long as 500,000 years ago.

This is a very significant finding, if true, because it gives us a possible hint as to why we suddenly rocketed to the top of intellectual heap. I've long thought that the only explanation for our intellectual capabilities was the formation of a complex, logical language. Because there was something that was nearly a magic bullet in our evolution. In the geological timespan of a fart, we went from being overgrown chimps to walking on the moon. We had spent the previous 200 million years evolving and didn't do that. We've spent the last 500,000 years evolving with all of our primate cousins, and none of them did that. What was that magic bullet?

The only answer that makes sense is language. Specifically a logical language, whereby we can encode data into a verbal broadcast than can then be decoded and interpreted by an entirely separate brain. Unlike body language, or primal communication like hoots and hollars, the amount of information that can be wedged into complex logical language is multiple orders of magnitude more.

This is why art is usually seen as indicative of modern human thought. It's an internal thought made external through some sort of coding. Some other primates seem to be making strides towards this, like with female orangutans teaching their children, but we're the only ones that definitely did it. If logical language emerged in our common ancestor 500,000 years ago (modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, perhaps as long as 300,000), that has implications for Neanderthal study, namely, they likely did have language of some sort.

It would also give us greater insight into the evolutionary magic bullet that produced Mozart, which is a pretty big deal.

The Early Birds

Finally, some hard evidence to show that Monte Verde wasn't first. It's been pretty much accepted by everyone that Clovis wasn't first, but the oldest, certainly datable materials have been from Monte Verde. There have been tons of people claiming carbon from a fire or hearth dating to some absurd number, like 24,000 years, but nothing concrete. It's something that people in the know have been pulling their hair out over, since everything in them says that people were here earlier, but we had nothing to prove it.

This isn't the kind of date I would have fantasized about, that date is 20,000+, but 14,340 is pretty damned good. I just feel, with a degree of understanding about human nature, that if we were building boats, or roaming 20,000 years ago, we found our way to North and South America. Too bad the fuckers were so transigent that they likely never stayed in one place too long. And if Monte Verde, way in the southern part of Chile, was dated at more than 13,000 years, where are all the earlier people that traveled down? Did they come straight from the Pacific Islands? I find that hard to swallow because of the length of the journey, but damnit if Heyerdahl didn't make it. Granted, he was heading west which is easier than east. Still, it's possible.

And the theory of people following the coastline is impossible to deny. A group following the coastline and ignoring big game in favor of fishing could make the journey very quickly, maybe in a decade or less. And the fact that the feces discovered had little bison in it seems to indicate a reliance on smaller game.

And, for me, the Solutrean hypothesis is also hard to ignore. Again, a journey is possible, and a group following the southern glacier via small boats could make the journey quickly. If only we could find evidence in the Eastern US indicating an early presence. Still, this does not explain the first people to come to the continent.

These fecal droppings, otherwise known as poo, confirm East Asian origin, so Solutrean or not, people from Asia were certainly here and I would wager they were the first. I just know that there is evidence out there waiting to confirm a first steps date of well more than 20,000 years ago.

Again, I'm copying the whole Yahoo! article since they delete the articles after a week or so.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Thu Apr 3, 7:20 PM ET

WASHINGTON - New evidence shows humans lived in North America more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than had previously been known. Discovered in a cave in Oregon, fossil feces yielded DNA indicating these early residents were related to people living in Siberia and East Asia, according to a report in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

"This is the first time we have been able to get dates that are undeniably human, and they are 1,000 years before Clovis," said Dennis L. Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, referring to the Clovis culture, well known for its unique spear-points that have been studied previously.

Humans are widely believed to have arrived in North America from Asia over a land-bridge between Alaska and Siberia during a warmer period. A variety of dates has been proposed and some are in dispute.

Few artifacts were found in the cave, leading Jenkins to speculate that these people stayed there only a few days at a time before moving on, perhaps following game animals or looking for other food.

The petrified poop — coprolites to scientists — is yielding a look at the diet of these ancient Americans, Jenkins said.

While the analysis is not yet complete, he said there are bones of squirrels, bison hair, fish scales, protein from birds and dogs and the remains of plants such as grass and sunflowers.

The oldest of several coprolites studied is 14,340 calendar years old, said co-author Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at Denmark's University of Copenhagen.

"The Paisley Cave material represents, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas," he said. "Other pre-Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained."

The date for the new coprolites is similar to that of Monte Verde in southern Chile, where human artifacts have been discovered, added Willerslev.

Jenkins said it isn't clear exactly who these people living in the Oregon caves were, since there were few artifacts found. He said there was one stone tool, a hand tool used perhaps to polish or grind or mash bones or fat.

"We are not saying that these people were of a particular ethnic group. At this point, we know they most likely came from Siberia or Eastern Asia, and we know something about what they were eating, which is something we can learn from coprolites. We're talking about human signature," he said.

"If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them," Jenkins said.

The Clovis culture has been dated to between 13,200 and 12,900 calendar years ago and is best known by the tools left behind.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, said the find, along with indications of human presence at other locations, adds to the evidence for a pre-Clovis human presence in North America.

"The genetic evidence from the coprolites from Paisley Caves is also consistent with the current genetic data for the peopling of the Americas — that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas came from Northeast Asia," added Waters, who was not part of the research team.

Anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said this data along with material from Alaska provide increasing "evidence that ancestors of Native Americans used a coastal route during the colonization of the Americas." Malhi was not part of the research team.

Jenkins said that discoveries like those in the Oregon caves "help us to reconstruct the American past."

"Our heritage is really important and it is important to the majority of the American public. If you don't know where you come from, it's hard to have a feeling of community, of participation."

To make sure the Oregon cave material hadn't been contaminated with modern DNA, the researchers tested more than 50 people who worked at the site. The DNA testing indicated that the feces belonged to Native Americans in two groups that can be traced to Siberia and East Asia.

In their paper the researchers dated the coprolites at 12,300 "carbon years" before the present. Prior to 3,000 years ago, carbon years differed from calendar years, resulting in the date of approximately 14,300 calendar years for the coprolites.

The research was funded by the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon; Association of Oregon Archaeologists and the Marie Curie Actions program.