Journal entry:1

I came up with this idea before we started talking about evolution in class. I intended to write the whole thing before that too, but I ran out of time so I am going to write it now. From what I hear there are two divided theories. The theory of evolution and the theory of the big bang. From my understanding it is the religious side that says that no matter what evidence the archeological record comes up with the big bang must be true because the Bible says that God created the heavens in one day and Adam on another etc. Whereas on the other hand the proponents of evolution basically say the Bible must be wrong because evolution definetly occurs.

What I think is the it could be that both are right. The big bang might not necessarily have happened but does that mean that the Bible is wrong? I feel that depending on your interpretation of the Bible, evolution can be allowed. For example in some part of the Bible (not sure exactly where but I have heard it several times) it states that to God, a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day. So that gives us a little lee-way in terms of our exact interpretations of “On the second day...On the third day.....”etc. God said that we are molded in his image. How do we know that the process of “molding” us was not the evolutionary chain that led to man where several thousand years ago, we reached close enough to his image that he was satisfied in calling us humans. Although humans still have changed (avg height for example) since the time Genesis was written, we can still attribute this to his ever present molding to make us more perfect. Therefore I conclude by saying it is possible that the Bible and evolution can co-exist, one does not have to refute the other.

Journal entry:2

The other day on my way back to the parking lot after archeology class, I found some bones lying on the ground. I had to stop and inspect them (as any good archeologist would). Although I cannot, like Don Johansen did in “The Mysterious Origins of Man”, just look at the bones and determine what type of animal they belong to, I have a guess that it was chicken. From looking at the bones it appears that the exhibit the spiral fracture that is characteristic of early man as far back, at least, as Homo Erectus. Since I realize that most humans today (I know of none anyway) do not break open bones to get at the marrow on the inside it leaves me to believe that they must have been left by an Homo Erectus! How exciting a find and right here in our own back-yard at the UofM. Most exciting of all is that the bones were not fossilized and on top of that, were found not buried in the ground but laying on top of the sidewalk! This leads me to only one conclusion there is still some Homo Erectus alive and they are living in good old MD. It is also interesting to note the Homo Erectus evidence found on campus is a chicken bone which means that these ancient peoples are scavenging the modern peoples’ refuse. It might be an easier explanation to say that someone dropped these bones and either an animal ate them (although only humans and bears can produce a spiral fracture) or they were stepped on and the break occurred, since this does not help my hypothesis I cannot believe anything like that. I think that all classes should be suspended until we can do some very accurate and meticulous work to try and locate these Homo Erectus peoples on campus so that we can study them.

Journal entry:3

There is one type of archeological site that is probably never used to it’s full potential. Maybe I will get a chance before the end of the semester to do a little research in this and write another journal entry on it. It is a good place to do archeological research and you don’t even have to dig! Since all of the materials are also moved already from their natural placement, you don’t even have to keep accurate records as to the location of each piece. If you go to your neighbors yard sale, just think of how much you can find out about them. Much like people who actually search through the trash of others (garbologists?), one can look at what other people are getting rid of to see how they lived. You can also tell about the relative importance that certain items might hold to the seller by the price they charge. For example you might see a REALLY beautiful silver picture frame for only like 50 cents or something; this may seem odd at first but upon deeper observations it might come to light that it is his ex-wife’s picture in the frame and she left him. Or one might see a chair in old ratty condition marked at about $100. This might also seem odd but, once again, on doing our research we find an explanation, maybe his wife HATES the chair and is making him get rid of it at the yard sale, so he figures he’ll mark it high and it won’t sell.

If you see someone who is getting rid of a huge collection of 8-track tapes and several white leisure suits you might suppose that he is a child of the disco 70's and is finally waking up to the fact that it is now 1996. You can also see some evidence at yard sales (it’s been a while since I have been to one but I believe this holds true) of the “As Seen on TV” age. If you watch any amount of TV (especially late at night) there are millions of ads for everything from rug cleaners, to rugs(for your head) to cd sets and all sorts of exercise equipment. The exercise equipment is the most interesting, most of the time these things never get used by the purchaser and the end up getting sold at a yard sale to someone else who never uses it either! This shows in our own current archeological record, our junk, several facts about our current generation (meaning most everyone living in this country not necessarily any age group). 1)It shows that we are easily conned by the TV into buying things we don’t need, 2) Once duped into buying these items we feel it is our duty to unload them on some other poor unsuspecting schmuck, 3) we are too lazy to exercise.

Journal entry:4

The movie Stargate is a good example of pseudoscience. I saw the movie probably a year and a half ago, but it was pretty good so I remember most of it. It has been said by some “scientists” (in quotes because they are more than likely the only ones that consider themselves scientists) that the ancient Egyptians could not possibly built the pyramids. They probably say this due to the complex and very precise mathematical equations it would have taken to draw the proper plans (and they did a good job, many are still standing today); not to mention the fact that the blocks they used are extremely heavy, probably weighing up to several tons each. Some of these pseudo-scientists contend that it was visitors from outer space that either built or helped to build the pyramids. The movie Stargate is based on this idea. In Stargate some modern archeologists uncover a huge stone circle with many heiroglyphics on it. In the process of interpreting the writings it is discovered that the circle is actually a gateway to someplace on the other side of the galaxy. As the team of military, with one scientist(who miraculously can speak the language of the natives where they end up), go through the gate they find themselves in a world much less advanced than their own with one exception. The one exception is the few people in power who are sitting in an alien ship. This ship is more advanced than our modern machinery. In this movie this alien race supposedly helped build the pyramids but then as the humans of earth got tired of their tyranny the humans dismantled the gate on their end. This movie shows the great lengths that many pseudo-scientists must go to, to prove that their idea is plausible. If we can believe that aliens came to earth built them and then disappeard for the next 3,000 years, and we can believe that their is a way to transverse the universe through teleporters, why can we not believe that the Egyptians were smart enough to build pyramids?

Journal entry:5

Let’s say that tomorrow a giant comet hits the earth and throws up tons of debri, this causes the temperature to cool and within a few years the human race is gone. As some other animal evolves and emerges as the new dominant overrulinng power of the planet they will eventually develop a curiousity about the past. This will cause them to, much like us, have at least some people working in a field similar to archeology. What would archeologists think about our race if they had to look back only into the archeological record after 10,000 some odd years? I can imagine that after 10k years most, if not all, of the wood and paper things we have would be totally decayed away. Although I think things like laser discs and cd-ROMS (plastic does no bio-degrade) etc. might still be in readable condition I doubt the equipment required to access the information would be in any sort of workable condition. Not knowing what exactly they did and how they worked future archeologists might assume that the PC they find in so many of their “sites” , are actually some sort of religious shrine. Would these future master beings consider themselves much more advanced and “civilized” than us? They might not realize that it was a totally natural event that led to our destruction, they might assume we were just to stupid to continue living therefore our race died out or evolved, possibly into them. This is how we look back and explain why there are no more Neanderthals around. We say that they just did not have the mental ability and the physical requirements necessary to stay rulers of the earth. These possible future archeologists could make the same assumptions about us, but we know that in this case it is wrong, how do we know that we aren’t wrong in our assumptions. Also, one more point, I wonder how any people realize that in an example like this the most numerous artifacts they find will be things like Styrofoam packing peanuts (never biodegrade). What will that say about our society (instead of the stone-age, the Styrofoam age?)?

Journal entry :6

In the video “Myths and the Mound builders” the showed how archeology can be used in a very negative sense. They showed how people used the archaeologic record to justify the treatment they were giving to the Indians. The people of the late 1700's and early 1800's believed that the people of European descent were much more advanced than the Indians, and therefore the Europeans had the right to drive all opposition out of the area. One big stumbling block to the theory that the white man was better than the Indian were the mounds built in the central US. Some believed that these mounds showed the very advanced minds of the Native Americans. At that time some people used archeology to back up the claim that Caucasians were better. They used cranial measurements and wild hypotheses such as the idea that an even more ancient tribe (now disappeared) had made the mounds but they are gone and these Indians are dumber. Looking back on our past we realize that we had some really rocky times in this country doing whatever it would take to rationalize our actions. What if a race of aliens was to come to earth and use our archeological record against us and end up enslaving us all, or worse yet wiping us out? They might look at the fact that we have so many countries and so many languages spread over the planet and say that if we were civilized we would have one common language, therefore it is ok to systematically wipe us all out. They might say that all of the technology we have right now actually came from yet a third race of aliens that visited the earth several times and gave us all sorts of hints, and since we didn’t actually build the society all by ourselves it is not a problem if they come and tear it down since they are smarter and “more civilized”. The more I think about some future events mirroring those of the past, but with us in the defensive not the offensive side the more I resent the treatment of people like the Native Americans by our ancestors. What if someone treated (or treats) us that way?

Journal entry:7

On TV the other night I was flipping through the channels when I saw a show about Egyptian mummies. In this show they were doing an autopsy of an Egyptian mummy. They were cutting open the chest cavity and looking at what had been placed there by the people that actually took place in the mummification process. They seemed to view everything that did not seem “normal” to the scientists of today as something of religious value. Why is it that every time we do not understand something about our past we have to put it into a religious perspective. Much like people who interpret literature, arguably a form of archeology, some people always seem to think everything have to has some secret meaning. Especially in literature, even when reading just a work of fiction we are always told in English class “This is what the author is trying to say”. Why does the author have to be saying anything, how do we know he wasn’t just writing a story? If you didn’t write it how can you be so sure that it has that deep meaning. Since we were not actually there in the past what makes us so sure that everything we deem “religious” didn’t happen for no other reason than mere chance or coincidence.

Journal entry:8

The other day I saw a friend of mine wearing a very interesting t-shirt. The shirt had a picture of some sort of ape on it holding his chin like “The Thinker” with an expression of deep thought. The caption on the top of the shirt read “To Be or not to Be”. This is very interesting interpretation of evolution. This helps to illustrate the ethnocentrism of the human race. A lot of people when looking back over the archeological record tend to take the assumption that humans are the natural end of evolution and that all along mother nature was working to create us. In the Misia Landau essay she spoke of this in terms of the way archeologists have done their writing. They started a lot of the writing telling the tale of what led to us. This shirt helps to poke fun at this notion by joking that the ape made a conscious decision to evolve into a higher being. Or maybe the ape made a conscious decision NOT to be and we just happened to be the by-product, scary thought.

Journal Entry:9

Why is it that human beings seem so fascinated by their dead. Starting as far back as ancient Babylonian and ancient Egyptian times the rich dead were often cared for better than some of the living. The only time period from class that I can remember not hearing about burial rituals was when we were talking about descendants on the evolutionary scale, such as homo habilis. Where did this fascination with the dead come from. In many societies even if the dead were not buried with things they were usually buried or entombed. Nowadays we generally bury our dead 6 feet below ground so as to prevent a health hazard, but did these people of 3, 4 or 5 thousand years ago know of the health risks? I doubt it, what was their reasoning? Perhaps getting the dead out of sight would make it easier to forget that you also are mortal and may die as well. That may help to explain the process of burying the dead, but what of the many rituals some rituals we still do today. The big one is embalming. The ancient Egyptians were so good at embalming that some people they prepared for burial are still distinguishable today. Why do we embalm our dead. Why do we need to preserve the body if the person is already dead. Part of the reason we do it is, I suppose, because we want to view the deceased (again, WHY?); But did the ancient Egyptians have wakes as well, and if not why the elaborate embalming procedures?

Journal entry:10

One of the characteristics of a state level society is organized religion. We didn’t get into a lot of detail on the different religions of Th world, but it seems as if all the major cultures we have studied had some form of religion. Where exactly do religions come from. Many times religion is used to explain whatever it is that we do not understand. For example ancient Greeks used to believe in a multitude of gods who controlled everything from doorways to volcanos. It would seem that anything they did not understand would get a god to control it. But then, where did they come up with the ideas of gods being there in the first place, why not just ghosts. Did they already have some gods when they started trying to explain everything with gods. A new twist on the “Which came first the chicken or the egg riddle”, which came first the gods or the gods as solutions.

Journal entry:11

Archeology may actually be a more reliable source for information on the past than some past records. Although most archeologists are going to put some spin on what they find, due to the fact that living now and looking past makes it hard not to, historians may actually be worse at it. After Frederick Douglass wrote his Slave Narrative, another writer said of him something to the effect of “Now that the lion is writing it’s own history perhaps it won’t be so misrepresented. What he was saying was that when one group writes all the history (the winners in any war for example always write the history) it is invariably misrepresting something. A good example of how this is true is found in ancient Egypt. There was one pharaoh (I think it was Tutankhamen, could be wrong though) who decided to change from worshiping many gods to just one god. When the next pharaoh took over it was restored to many gods and all history of the previous pharaoh was erased. If not for archeologists finding the pharaohs tomb we might know nothing of that pharaoh to this day. This is why archeology can probably be trusted more than history because archeology does not have to bias itself to serve the winners. Well, archeology does have one bias, the fact that we do have to justify some long held beliefs might make some archeologists overlook some information or make bad interpretations.

Journal entry: 12

I’m sure that at some point in most of our lives we have played the telephone game. You know the one where one person starts by saying something and they pass it on to the next person and so on until after going through a lot of people it gets back to the one who started it as something totally different. If most of the native American history is all word of mouth until the arrival of the Europeans then how do we know after hearing the message now, what the original message was. Matching up oral histories with fact is part of the job of archaeology. Much of the old testament of the bible was written down after a history of being passed down through word of mouth for several generations. Biblical scholars have managed to put approximate dates on many of the events in the bible. Many of the places and things mentioned in the New Testament are places that are still there today or places that archeologists have located. I believe that the “red sea” that Moses parted was actually a sea of reeds or a swamp, or so they have said now. I don’t know how much native American literature/oral tradition has been researched by archeologists, but it would help to find out what is fact and what are tall tales.

Journal entry:13

Everyone seems to think that the homo sapiens sapiens we are today are truly the most evolutionarily advanced than any of our ancestors. Why is it that we think we are? Certainly not due to our physical prowess. Most of our ancestors were physically much stronger than us. Also their young were not quite so easily harmed as our young are. They had no doctors and no hospitals and no emergency rooms and yet their babies were still born and although they probably had a higher infant mortality rate they still had enough survivors to grow in numbers. Well if we are not better off physically than our ancestors were what makes us better than them. I guess that most people would say that it is our brain power, the power that led us to the great technology we have today. We assume that because we have gained greater technological advances than they did than that makes us smarter. How do we know that given enough time these people could not have achieved the same technological level that we have. A lot of our major discoveries were found by chance. Modern homo sapiens sapiens have been around for at least 15k years and most of our major technological breakthroughs have comme in the last 3 or 4 millennia. Could it be that everything is guided by chance and that we were just lucky to have guessed the right combinations of different things to gain the technology that we have.

Journal entry:14

In class last week Ms. Ernstein brought up something that made me think of things I first contemplated back near the beginning of the semester. When we were talking about the discoveries of the burials being looted and she mentioned that when the archeologist fenced the area in many of the looters became angry because they thought the archeologists were no better than the looters. They may have been guided by different things, one by quest for money, and one possibly by a quest for the truth and fame; but they were both doing the same basic things. They were destroying the sacred burial grounds of centuries ago. They were disturbing the dead and removing items from the area. I believe that in the US it is illegal for someone to go into a current graveyard and dig it up, much less steal anything; not only is it illegal but the person caught doing it would be looked down upon by society as a general populace. If we have this much respect for the dead we bury recently, why do we have so little respect for the ancient dead. Does being dead longer somehow make it less wrong to disturb their final resting place. I’m not saying archeology is wrong or that it shouldn’t happen, because I believe understanding our past is necessary, but how do we justify digging up the dead?

Journal entry:15

Although last month the pope decided that evolution is not anti-catholic he was not the only person who needed convincing, there are still millions of people who believe the theory of evolution must be wrong. (I did one other entry on evolution but this one I a little different) Evolution just seems like the natural order for not just life but for all things. Everything on earth seems to evolve over time. Evolution of “things” is what makes processes like seriation possible. For example, take computers, they were once huge machines that would need to fill a whole room the size of our classroom to do the same amount of work we can now do with a simple pocket calculator. Recording music has evolved from records and 8-tracks to tapes and then finally to the compact discs we have now, what is the next step? Everything whether it is made by mother nature or by man in a factory still evolves, from cars to soda cans. Why then is it so hard to believe that some as complex as a human being did not evolve to that level of complexity. If everything else started simple and evolved into something more complicated, why not us.

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