Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age
Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age
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石器时代失落的文明
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发表时间：
2012
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通讯作者：
Laina Farhat–Holzman
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作者：
Laina Farhat–Holzman
理查德·鲁格利，《石器时代失落的文明》。 Arrow Books Ltd，1999。 刚刚读完这本书，我在早报上发现了一篇关于在埃塞俄比亚沙漠中发现的惊人发现的文章——几块河马骨头，表明这些骨头是被人类工具打碎的——由直立人，我们的远古祖先发现。当然，人类学界对发现者的解释展开了激烈的争论。 《石器时代失落的文明》是由这位有着杰出学术成就的英国文化人类学家十年前撰写的。他凭借《文化的炼金术：社会中的麻醉品》（大英博物馆出版社，1993）一书获得大英博物馆普罗米修斯奖。他还写了《最狂野的梦想：毒品相关文学选集》（Little Brown，1999）和《石器时代的秘密》（Century，2000），这本书已成为电视剧（我相信是历史频道）。但这本书《失落的文明》一定会在他的保守派同事中引起更大的愤怒，但对于我们作为该学科的局外人来说，了解专家之间的争议性想法是有启发性的。拉德格利指出了这一点拉德格利（Rudgley，1863 年，伦敦）认为，“尽管史前史占据了我们这个星球上 95% 以上的历史，但剩下的 5% 至少占了人类故事的 95%。”例如，理查德·伯顿（Richard Burton）的行为可能并不比臭名昭著的不尊重的殖民主义者更好，他利用人类学来耸人听闻地讨论在正常英国社会中不可能的性问题（他的英国妻子在他死后烧毁了他的论文），其他人还参与了盗墓犯罪，出售身体部位，甚至用人皮制作了一把木槌（在纳粹统治下）。拉德格利攻击了 5000 年前从尘埃中诞生的整个历史概念，认为现代人从那时起就已经进化并发明了令人惊叹的制度，他质疑所有这些创新使我们所有人的生活变得更好的观点，“在这个版本的人类中，普通石器时代的个人可能比农奴（甚至现代民主国家的普通公民）享有更大的自由。”在这个故事中，我们登上了更高的高度，只是为了祝贺自己已经走了多远。”他审视了任何社会成功的最基本标志——其成员的健康。人类学家发现，我们的狩猎/采集祖先比他们的农业继承者的健康状况要好得多。纵观历史，农业并没有为广大农民带来进步——尽管它确实有助于人口爆炸，顶层精英的健康状况也更好。这是一个需要进步的领域。许多历史学家仍然认为古埃及是某种奇迹，它产生于原始的黑暗。他们中更意识形态的人认为，一定有一些“外部”影响（太空外星人理论），因为这些人不可能发明它，但新的人类学家（如拉德格利）认为埃及的伟大文化源于令人印象深刻的本土史前文化，包括精致的坟墓、宗教主题和宗教主题。文明的起源——从埃及象形文字和美索不达米亚文字开始（它们似乎彼此独立）……
Richard Rudgley, Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age. Arrow Books Ltd, 1999. Having just finished reading this book, I found in the morning newspaper an article about an amazing find in the Ethiopian desert - several hippo bones with indications that the bones had been smashed by a human tool - by homo erectus, our first ancient ancestors. Of course, the anthropological community is up in arms with fierce debate over the interpretation of the discoverers. Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age was written a decade ago by this British cultural anthropologist with a distinguished trail of scholarship. He won the British Museum Prometheus Award for his book The Alchemy of Culture: Intoxicants in Society (British Museum Press, 1993). He also wrote Wildest Dreams: An Anthology of Drug Related Literature (Little Brown, 1999) and Secrets of the Stone Age (Century, 2000, which has become a TV series (History Channel, I believe). But this book, Lost Civilisations, must be creating even more furor among his more conservative colleagues, but for us as outsiders to the discipline, it is enlightening to learn how contentious ideas can be among specialists. Rudgley makes the point that "despite the fact that prehistory makes up more than 95 percent of our time on this planet, history, the remaining 5 percent makes up at least 95 percent of most accounts of the human story." He believes that the prehistory of humankind is no mere prelude to history; rather it is history itself. Anthropologists themselves have had a bad record in this regard, according to Rudgley. The famous early anthropologists (1863 London) had some unsavory skeletons in their closets - and may not have behaved any better than notoriously disrespectful colonialists. Richard Burton, for example, used anthropology to sensationally discuss sexual issues not possible in proper British society (and his proper British wife burned his papers when he died). Others were involved in criminal grave robbing, selling body parts, and one even fashioned a gavel in the form of an African head. How different is this from the making of lampshades from human skin (under the Nazis), he asks? Rudgley attacks the whole notion of history blooming 5,000 years ago out of a cloud of dust, without antecedents. He also takes on the notion that modern man has evolved and invented astonishing institutions from that point forward. And he questions the notion that all of these innovations made life better for us all. "That the average Stone Age individual may have enjoyed greater freedom than the serf (or even the average citizen of a modern democratic state) is simply ignored in this version of the human story, in which we ascend to ever greater heights and only look back in order to congratulate ourselves on how far we have come." He examines the most basic sign of any society's success - the health of its members. Anthropologists have found that our hunter/gatherer ancestors had far better health than their agricultural successors. Agriculture was not an improvement for the mass of peasants throughout history - although it certainly helped to make populations explode and those elites at the top flourished with better health. This is one area in which progress was a mixed blessing. Many historians still regard ancient Egypt as some sort of miracle, arising out of primeval darkness. The more ideological among them believe that there had to be some "outside" influence (the space alien theories) because these people couldn't possibly have invented it. But newer anthropologists (such as Rudgley) see that Egypt's great culture emerged out of impressive indigenous prehistoric cultures - including elaborate tombs, religious motifs, and religious themes. Writing has always been considered the hallmark of civilization - beginning with the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Mesopotamian writing (which seem to be independent of each other). …