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History 104A, August 24: ORIGINS & CIVILIZATION
I would like to maybe not finish the full video but at least get
to a point where at least some of the new investigations are
indicating what they're looking for as possible explanations for
evolution in contrast, in opposition if you will, to Darwin. And from
there, I would like to go into -- well, I guess the definition of
civilization and some of the beginnings of cities, et cetera. That's
what we're going to pick up on today.
Before I do, well, I did bring in that little book on creation
and evolution -- that's okay -- and touched on -- it was the second
law of thermodynamics that the creationists have been using to argue
against the impossibility of evolution. Also the argument is
presented in the complexity of our organism, how it could be that
these complex organs, including for example all of the various
elements of the eye, could have occurred at random and how life could
have occurred. Calculations are 100 billion to the tenth power by
some people statistically to its occurrence.
Again, is there life in the universe elsewhere? Or did for some
reason we develop through various universes? The multi universe
theories are now being presented as speculation that we are actually
products of many many different universes rather than our own. All of
that is the kind of speculation that you can't really deal with in
science but it's fun. This is why I enjoy teaching western
civilization, world civ.
In any case, I did call up on the heat in the room which is, of
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course, a different issue. And they said they are going to reduce the
temperature in here. Does it to you seem to me that it's gotten
cooler?
A Yeah.
THE PROFESSOR: Apparently they had it set at state law which is
78. And of course it's reading down here. By the time it gets back
there, it was about 86. They've set it to 72. I'm one that likes
freezing. I'll prefer about 64, just to let you know.
Any questions before I start rolling the video tape again? I'll
go through about another 20 minutes of it and then cut it wherever it
is. One other thing. Is there anybody here that is an art major or
art history? Good. I can get rid of that. For some reason they sent
it to me in my box. You can have a free book with a CD rom.
(video tape playing)
Well, I guess you get a little picture of this, especially those
of you who are biologically inclined. And once again, this is 20
years ago. Obviously the knowledge, the investigations have exploded
in those last 20 years. And yet the culture war continues and getting
more severe, the culture war in part being, as I indicated, the drive
to restore theology and religion to American society and eliminate the
mechanistic, humanistic, what is often referred to as secular
humanism, world humanism, where people see themselves as their own God
from our curriculum and school, from our basic world itself,
institutions. And certain things that, of course, what is very feared
by many scientists and others including industrialists who are fearful
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that America, if the culture war continues and begins to continue to
win, as in some areas it has been, that we may lose our place in
developing new biological cures, biological weapons, if you will,
which translates to the 21st century is being seen or better said
being predicted to be where, instead of just studying computers and
machines, that we'll be dealing with dramatic changes in biology and
human existence via biologically. Obviously we're dealing with such
things as cloning. Other parts of the world are going to pick up on
it and perhaps replace the United States. And of course one of the
biggest fears and, if you will, threats that is seen is coming out of
the Far East and especially a country whose science is exploding on
the seen with far more Ph.D.s per capita than even the United States
and that's China. Obviously the immigration into this country from
countries where science has expanded in recent years and mathematics
like India, China, and even Russia are certainly impacting, as you
know, the Bay Area itself, because of the need for this knowledge,
because of the fear among many people in our country to explore or go
into these areas.
That's the social consequences of the future. Now, in part we
need to return to the past. I don't see my computer on here, so let's
turn it on here again. My brother recently returned, about six months
ago, from a trip to a Galapagos Islands, which was interesting, in
that they can only take small ships across to those, where Darwin of
course supposedly developed much of his theory on his trip on the
Beagle in 183l. His theory came out because another guy, Watson, was
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ready to deal with evolution himself in 1839, The Origin of the
Species. And my brother raised some questions to the biologists there
that was showing and talking about Darwinian theory. The interesting
part of the island is that, there's no restrooms on it. People aren't
allowed to eat there. They try to keep it intact. They have to go
back to ships. In any case, what the biologists did admit to is that
they have found absolutely no speciation, macro evolution. They have
found numerous forms of variation which, in a sense, is the micro
evolution. Again, much of this is what you should be getting in the
biology class, I think. And some of you have, I'm sure. For those
that have not, we've just added a little extra to quote/unquote the
beginnings of humanity.
For whatever it's worth, there is of course the other question on
the geological record before humanity. And the question is: How can
we have so many different layers of the Earth? Wasn't this done over
4 or 5 or 6 billion years? We're talking about 5 billion years and
the various changes. And for most intelligent design creationists,
they believe that the change in the layers and the mixup between where
things are in the layers occurred because of the flood. And the flood
created that strange divisions in the rocks and in the mountains which
would explain why there is residuals of sea life in the highest
reaches of the Alps from their perspective. Of course, I must admit
that when my -- I'm usually pretty good and I love learning and
discussing and arguing, being a New Yorker, but when my brother-in-law
when we were in Sedona, Arizona -- how many of you have been to
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Sedona? It's a really beautiful area with these mesas and sort of
golden rock, red dust. As we were driving along, because they live in
Arizona, he said, it's amazing how all this was formed by the flood.
And I have to admit I did flip out a little bit and I said, look, I
don't want to hear it. I didn't want to get into a theological
argument. I'm just talking to wait until we get here. There's the
advantage of technology, but then there's a problem of taking the time
to get to it.
We are of course western world civilization. And of course the
key word we keep hearing is the term civilization. The debate when
civilization began, what civilization is, how we define it certainly
is a factor and in the books themselves. And of course, gee,
PowerPoint people can get some specifically to take notes in. Of
course years ago what we used was that overhead projector, now
PowerPoint has become the modern overhead projector if you will.
The term civilization comes from the Latin civis, meaning citizen
or townsman, and so of course the city skylight that I used in the
background of the specific slide. There are groups that perhaps
didn't exactly live in cities, that at times have been referred to as
civilized. What we have to watch is the derogatory term or usage of
the term civilization. When I first came here, there was a history
book that, at that time, was about 20 years old that had been written
that said that the indigenous people of America could not be
civilized. And of course that was an extremely derogatory statement
by a very very well-known respected historian. And again, is
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civilization the best thing available? What problems arise with it?
What problems arise with the non-primitive pre-civilized peoples? And
so of course we're going to examine some of that as we move into the
development of the mediterranean civilizations, from the western
perspective of Mesopotamia here and Egypt there, the Nile River Valley
and of course the Euphrates/Tigress. We call it the Tigress/Euphrates
coming from your western culture reading left to right.
Your textbook defines it and so do most in a simple way, I
suppose by simply, saying it's a complex society. I'm not sure what
the hell that means candidly, but that's what you'll see in most
textbooks. It's a nice simple place and it gets rid of the
controversy. And it's like a nice glittering generality, complex
society. We need to break it down and honestly, more complex, where
many people live in cities and get their food from agriculture. We're
going to go into how the basis and development of civilization really
does begin with agriculture and how agriculture develops through women
and how women have created our civilization. And that explains all
the problems. No, I'm playing games. I'm being a wise ass.
Broader definition even can refer to any distinct society,
whether complex and city dwelling or simple and tribal. Now again,
that may be a copout, but some people fearful of the pejorative
meaning the negative element of the term -- can you spell pejorative,
I can't -- you can, okay. The negative of it is a voiding with this
definition because basically it's almost saying everybody is
civilized. I think we need to return to more of the complex, where
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many people live in cities, get their food from agriculture. And by
agriculture we can change that a bit too and touch it on the
gathering. And we see the gathering as the growing of agriculture,
but it's also included the domestication not only of plants but of
animals. Since much of the agriculture developed in the south sea
islands for near fishing resorts because of the fertilization caused
by the bones and remains of fish. We also deal with that sense of
hunting, if you will, of the fish, going out into the ocean and
quote/unquote fishing.
What characteristics? Again, we're back to the domestication of
crops, agriculture -- wheat, barley, maze. A major force of
civilization comes about because of this domestication and that is
people can generally settle in permanent settlements, staying in one
area; but even if they move on, there is excessive food to bring about
a division or specialization of labor which translates to, in
pre-civilized society, everybody knew how to do the same thing, you
hunted or you gathered. You were foragers. In civilized society
there is enough food to support specialized occupations, people who
made pottery, people who lead the religion, people who lead the
government, people who did witchcraft, people who made the knives or
the arrowheads. And that became their occupation and perhaps was
passed down from generation to generation. So not everybody needed to
do the same thing. And that separated -- we're going to talk about
perhaps how that came into being -- it separated people into later --
and one of the negative elements of civilization -- classes, castes,
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if you will. A caste is which is permanent. There's no way out. If
you're born into a caste, you stay there. In a class society, there
is at least the possibility of movement from one occupation to one
status to another.
I think a major element of civilizations that not in most of the
book is that I like to add as a characteristic is controlling the
environment. Pre-civilized people live with the environment. They
move with the environment. They were dependent on nature. And to a
large extent that's why animism, the worship of the forces in nature,
prevailed. But in civilization, we work with nature by trying to
change it.
Of course perhaps the biggest change in recent years has been the
growth of the south due to our ability to create air conditioning.
Southern industry, southern life has dramatically changed. I recently
visited the University of Texas at Dallas. They don't even have to go
outside during the hot summers. They have all of these walkways that
are enclosed that are air conditioned so the students go between
buildings in these walkways to avoid the hot, humid Dallas summers.
And I was recently -- four years ago -- in Minneapolis/Saint Paul --
in Saint Paul, I didn't see any people on the streets. I couldn't
imagine why. It's a big city. And then I found out that everybody
moves between the buildings in wintertime in the same kind of
walkways. They're set up with shopping malls and everything else to
keep people out of the cold and snow. That's an amazing adaptation
that today has affected our civilization at a higher level but
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certainly begins with canals and irrigation and various kinds of
farming technology, the plows if you will, the oxen pulling the plows,
the carriages, the wheel, and of course the domestication full of fire
rather than just keeping it going from a lightening strike, the
ability to create the sparks to bring about fire. All of those
elements are in a sense a major element of civilization, not just art.
We sort of talked about social hierarchy, a government or a
bureaucracy controlling the agriculture and the distribution of goods
and services -- why is this repeated? I have to fix that. Something
happened here.
Formal social institutions -- churches, schools, government,
legislator, judicial. And of course the exchange taking place with
other institutions other cities, other communities -- trade. And of
course technology, be it a plow or be it a burin rather than simply a
hand ax. The earliest tools in man's tool kit was this large hand ax,
sharp, that could be used for everything within about almost a million
years. We began to see a flint carving burin that would carve as well
as other tools, such as arrowheads and axes not just the hand ax. And
of course the arts in the desert, it could well be just the paintings
on the rocks, the paintings in the back of the caves. Perhaps we'll
talk a little bit about what they meant through speculation, the
music, any way in a sense of entertainment, but also passing on
knowledge. And as we advance a form of written communication. Of
course the first written communication forms that we can deal with
take place in Mesopotamia known as cuneiform C-U-N-E-I-F-O-R-M, a
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wedge-shaped writing we'll talk more about and of course
hieroglyphics. See, I didn't want a picture form of writing.
I found this picture the other day and I just threw it in here
because what it is, in about 14/15,000 years ago in the plains of
Siberia, the people living there made these huts from mammoth tusks.
These were huts they lived in, built their fires in, covered with the
skins of the mammoth, and from the mammoth tusks themselves. Of
course they did not live in very many communities.
This was actually a picture of the pyramid at Teotiuacan in
southern Mexico. The earlier civilizations were in the Nile Valley,
China, Peiligang culture in the Fertile Valley, fertile Crescent,
which the Indus Valley -- and all of these are in your textbook --
West Africa, where ancient people's grouped together to form the
ancient societies between the 10th and 14th Millenia BC. However,
ongoing excavations reveal that an ancient civilization may also have
originated in Homom, Japan at about the same time or before.
I'll pick up here the next time on the first cities which are
8,000 BCE: Jericho, Palestine; Catal, Huyuk, Turkey; Loulan, China.
We'll see you on Friday.
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