MINKOV Michael (2009): Nations With More Dialectical Selves Exhibit Lower Polarization in Life Quality Judgments and Social Opinions. Cross-Cultural Research, Volume 43, 3, 230-250, 244
[1] In Central Australia, “infanticide is very common, and appears to be practised solely to get rid of the trouble of rearing children” [Eyre, 1845].
[1a] “In
the case of [the death of] a young child the mother carries the bones about
with her in a dilly bag…A few locks of the child's hair were wrapped in a
little piece of cloth. The other contents of the bag, which contained all the
woman's belongings except her digging stick and mat, were (1) a small mass of
her own hair which had been cut off preparatory to being made into string, (2)
two pairs of fire sticks, (3) two kangaroo incisor teeth in wax, (4) two loose
kangaroo incisors, (5) a small lump of red ochre, (6) a small stone, evidently
used for pounding, (7) a bone awl (?), (8) one valve of a fresh-water mussel,
used for cutting and scraping.
Whether the flesh of the child had been eaten or not I could not find out, but
it is very probable that such was the case. I did not know when securing the
bag that there were any bones inside it, and the woman parted with it readily
for half a stick of tobacco—without any hesitancy.” [Spencer, 1914,
248-249]
[2] In spite efforts of the successive Indian governments to curb female infanticide, a census from the state of Haryana (India) showed that there were 834 girls for 1,000 boys in the age group of 0-6 years in 2013 CE (up from 819, a meager 1,8% from ten years ago). In 1,675 villages of the state of Madhya Pradesh, less than six girls were born in the last six years.
[3] However, superfluous but small status-laden items such as shells and obsidian were exchanging hands.
[4] Agriculture was definitively introduced in the Levant around 9,500, but was also “discovered” in New Guinea around 7,000, and in North America, China and the Sahel around 2,500.
[5] Unless otherwise specified, all dates are BCE (before contemporary era).
[6] The term ‘Natufian’ comes from a village of Palestine, Ouadi el-Natouf. The definition of ‘Natufian’ varies. For some, it designates a region strictly delimited between Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. For others, the same term characterizes the cultural homogeneity of the communities that prospered in the Middle East during the period of favorable climatic conditions between the end of the last glaciations and the Younger Dryas. The geographical area they occupied stretched from the Euphrates to the deserts of the Sinai and the Negev, and from the Mediterranean coast to the Jordanian plateau. It is this last more encompassing definition that we use throughout this book. [See under Natufian in References]
[7] The Telefol (Papua New Guinea) attribute the introduction of architecture to a woman: “For the Telefolmin, houses have always been central to the construction of identity. Telefol culture began with house building. Their ancestress, Afek, inaugurated the Telefol world when she built the telefolip.” [Jorgensen, 1990, 151]
[8] The exceptional site of Göbekli Tepe
(Turkey) confirms this masculine attachment to hunting. Dating from the ninth
millennium, its first particularity resides on the fact that it is situated at
a great distance from other inhabited sites. Yet, it has no trace of dwellings
and no domestic residues. It is composed of a set of subterranean structures,
circular for the oldest, rectangular for the most recent, with enormous pillars
engraved with human and animal representations (snakes, foxes, boars, bulls,
lions, birds of prey, each species being ascribed to one pillar). [Perrot,
2003]
First testimony of monumental architecture to this day, the site was
exclusively built for men, something obviously established by the masculine
faces and a prominent penis, but also by the fact that all represented animals
are male, and by the absence of any feminine representation. In line with the
shamanic traditions of the time, this site was a gathering place for hunters, a
space where man and animal were brought together, where hunters and shamans
from the area met, and where each clan, represented by its totem, shared its
experience, its knowledge, its expertise, its beliefs.
[9] “If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral Fitzroy's cruise, we find a similar absence of rank produced by similar causes. “The perfect equality among the individuals composing the tribes must for a long time retard their civilization.... At present even a piece of cloth is torn in shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes richer than another…” [Lang, 1887, I, 114-115] “They have very little idea of private property. If you give a man, say, a stick of tobacco there are certain individuals, such as men who might lawfully be his fathers-in-law, to whom he is obliged by custom to give some; and even if they are not on the spot, he will immediately share it with others. Give a man a shirt in return for work that he has done for you and the chances are that you will find a friend of his, who has done nothing except ask for it, wearing it next day.” [Spencer, 1914, 36]
[11] The rites elaborated by the Asmat (New
Guinea) to integrate an adult in their community show to what point this people
was conscious of its communal identity. In case the village must adopt several
individuals, Asmat women stood in line, their legs wide open to create a
passage. The ones to be adopted crawled through this passage, and were born to
a second life when they reached the end of the line. Such a tribal “adoption”
authorized a widening of the network of alliances while keeping intact the
community’s identity.
In an identical way, the integration of foreign elements to the tribe might be
at the origin of using circumcision as mark of adherence.
[12] To facilitate the reading, we use the subdivision of the Neolithic era introduced by Kathleen Kenyon: the PPNA (= Pre-Pottery Neolithic A), from 9,600 to 8,500; the PPNB, from 8,500 to 6,800; the PPNC, from 6,800 to 6,500
[13] At the site of Khirokitia (Cyprus), circular architecture was still found millennia after it had disappeared in the Near East, whereas other technological developments had been imported from the mainland in the meantime. It seems that by doing so these people aimed at preserving a lifestyle that was better tailored to the limited possibilities of demographic growth of the island.
WILK Richard R. & RATHJE William L. (1982): Household Archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist, 25, 617-639, 618
[14] A few authors have distributed the first inhabitable space according to the domestic nucleus man-woman-child as we know it today. Besides the fact that paternity had not yet been “discovered,” such a social organization was most impractical: pit-houses were too small to provide a habitat for such a family, and the economic structure of these populations was not adapted to sustain such a distribution.
[15] Though the myths of the Telefol (Papua New Guinea) attribute the construction of the first house to a woman [see Part Two, endnote 8], “women are excluded from the building and its vicinity. Surrounded by a fence marking its precincts as taboo, the telefolip is founded on the premise of the separation of the sexes, a separation whose violation is punishable by death.” [Jorgensen, 1990, 153-154]
[16] This detail has its importance since it allows differentiating primary funeral practices from secondary ones. When the skull is separated from the body directly after death, the tissues are not yet decomposed, and the cervical vertebrae remain fixed to the skull. When decapitation occurs a long time after death, the tissues are decomposed and the bones are not fastened to each other anymore.
France-Diplomatie, Tell Aswad (Syrie). Les Carnets d’archéologie, Orient ancien. www.diplomatie.gouv.fr (tr. by the author)
[17] Such a fractured lifestyle inside a same community was still recently practiced by the Orungu (Gabon) or by the Five Nation Indians (Iroquois) in North America, where women lived a sedentary life and men were nomads.
[18] David Schneider has brought to light the fact that animal procreative process has not systematically been applied to humans. He confronted the Yap (Caroline Islands) with the following contradiction: “if you castrate a pig, he cannot get a sow pregnant. Surely that proved that copulation causes pregnancy!” But it was answered to him in a way allowing no reply: “But people are not pigs!” [Schneider & Leach, 1968, 127-128]
[19] Notwithstanding the traditional division of tasks, these observations could have been made by either men or women.
[20] The debate between "creationists" and "evolutionists" that divides the Christian world nowadays gives us an idea, though reduced, of the impact the discovery of men's procreative function must have had on Neolithic populations.
[21] In the Epic of Gilgamesh, he is the husband of the goddess Ereshkigal. We find him also with the Sumerian Inanna, "the Lady mounted on the powerful celestial Auroch"; with Marduk in Mesopotamia, in Canaan (Moloch), and among the Israelites with the Golden Calf; in the Minoan (Knossos palace) and Aegean (Minotaur) cultures; mounted and ridden by the Hittite god of storm, by Zeus in Greece, and as the Egyptian Apis (Ptah and Hathor). In the Indus civilization, he is the primordial god Nandi. At Ebla (Syria) during the second millennium, he carries the mother goddess and symbolizes the fertile power of a young god. Later, in the eighth century CE in Nineveh (Iraq), he guards the entrance of the palace. He is very present among Roman soldiers in the cult of Mithra (tauroctony), and by the Gaul who sacrifice him to cure infertility. He is also found in the stable at the birth of Jesus Christ. Bullfighting is a vestige of this attachment that men have for bulls and for what they represent.
PERROT Jean (2003): Aux origines de la civilisation orientale. Bulletin du Centre de recherche français de Jérusalem, 12
[22] The studies of professors Duistermaat and Akkermans at the site of Tell Sabi Abyad (Syria), occupied between 5,700 and 5,000, have shown an absence of hierarchy and speak of a very modest stage of social differentiation despite the fact that this community introduced seals to identify the owners of stored goods. In fact, the element that characterizes a hierarchical society – monumental architecture, public works, castes, wealthy tombs – are absent from the Neolithic landscape. Even at the site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey), with its rich panoply of objects and representations and its original urban organization, evidence of public buildings, of ceremonial centers, of cemeteries, or of any other sign of social differentiation has not been found.
LUTZ Donald S. (1998): The Iroquois Confederation Constitution: An Analysis. Publius, Vol. 28, No. 2, 99-127, 113
MITHEN Steven (2004): After The Ice. A Global Human History. London, Phoenix, (2003)