Did you see the blockbuster movie AVATAR? In 3D I admit it was entertaining and a technical triumph. Being a spoilsport though, I was disappointed once again at Hollywood for the liberal/reactionary politics of the plot line where the villains were the usual—greedy corporations—and the good guys were the usual—beautiful innocent native peoples.
Before my wife and I went to see it I had just finished a fascinating book that I first heard recommended on public radio, DINNER WITH A CANNIBAL (Santa Monica Press, 2008) by anthropologist Carole A. Travis-Henikoff. She writes from a lifetime of experience with primitive people who still live in regions of the Amazon and New Guinea. She liked them and she respected them (and had dinner with them!). But she did not sugar-coat what life is like in these pre-civilization regions, then or now. It was no Garden of Eden that’s for sure. Not at all like the beautiful Na’vi on Pandora who live in sweet harmony with nature.
Violence was the norm. Cannibalism was common. Like our Homo sapiens ancestors of 50,000 years ago these tribes live today in rough shelters and small villages and they survive by hunting and gathering wild foods. Like their ancestors (our ancestors too) who lived 50,000 years ago, on average about 15% of them (25% of the men) die a violent death at the hands of fellow human beings. If modern humans in the U.S. and Canada had this same rate of violence, you could expect 50 million of us (85 million men) would die from violence—and before the age of thirty. Partly because of this high rate of violence, but also because of high rates of starvation, malnutrition, disease and accidents, the average life expectancy was less than 30 years.
While not necessarily universal, cannibalism is very common today among these stone-age tribes as it was common 50,000 years ago. Carole Travis-Henikoff describes how one tribe in the Amazon today would raid another nearby village, kidnap the women and children and kill all the men. After the raid they would have a feast where they would eat the bodies of their victims. And they would do all of this without the least remorse or guilt. Analysis of bones from pre-historic camp sites show that ancient pre-literate tribes had similar parties.
One believable explanation for the violence and for the lack of remorse then and now could be a hypothesis of Julian Jaynes, late psychologist at Princeton, who wrote a remarkable and controversial book, THE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND (Princeton Univ. Press, 1976). In this book he defended his theory that humans were not conscious until about three to four thousand years ago, roughly the time when people learned to read and write. They did of course have brains that sensed, perceived, spoke language and solved problems like all animals do, but they did not practice introspection, did not have metaphorical language ability nor did they have what we call a conscience. Instead, when they had to make an important decision they heard voices in their head (like modern schizophrenics) that told them what to do, releasing them from any responsibility for subsequent actions.
Like Achilles in the Iliad or Abraham in the Old Testament, people in pre-literate civilizations, claims Jaynes, had bicameral minds. They literally heard “voices” in the left hemisphere of their brain that were actually generated in the right hemisphere of their own brain. These voices carried a lot of authority. They interpreted them as coming from the gods and made sure they did what the gods told them to do. If that amounted to killing an enemy in Achilles case or killing his own beloved son in Abraham’s case, they proceeded to carry out the act with no guilt or remorse.
I realize all this may be a bit hard to swallow. I recommend the books though—both of them. They are both more convincing than you probably imagine reading this short summary. Jaynes died in 1997 before he could write a long-awaited sequel where he promised to bring his “voices” theory up-to-date with modern discoveries in neurology and with new insights from him into modern religion and social group psychology. There is a scholarly group who are studying his insights and testing his hypotheses today. Their web site is: www.julianjaynes.org. Look it up. I guarantee it is a lot more scientifically sound than Avatar.
Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President
P.S. In the meantime check out our web site www.hawkhill.com for our huge 2010 sale. 90% discount on all VHS tapes, 70% discount on all DVD programs. That includes new sets like DEMOCRACY IN WORLD HISTORY, a set of 6 DVDs that has a listed school price of $458, but is available in our 2010 sale for just $137.40. That is less than $25 apiece for DVD programs that will last many years and help you teach civic literacy to hundreds if not thousands of students.
P.P.S. To put in a personal plug this time, if you want to buy books anytime soon I highly recommend my son’s new used bookstore in Baltimore, THE BOOK ESCAPE. You can learn more about them on his web site: www.thebookescape.com