were of no importance until they abandoned the hunting-gathering life for the agricultural life, beginning about ten thousand years ago.
Daniel . Why was it important to sweep the first three million years of the human story under the rug in this way? Important to the people of our culture, of course.
Elaine . I'll have to think about that... I guess I have to say that they honestly saw nothing of value in them.
Daniel . Did anyone look?
Elaine . No one that I'm aware of, but that might not prove anything.
Daniel . You're aware of Darwin and his importance to the history of human thought.
Elaine . Of course.
Daniel . It was imperative that someone make sense of the startling discoveries of the young science of paleobiology. If it hadn't been Darwin, it would have been Alfred Russel Wallace. The existence of these findings demanded a reasonable explanation, and this explanation would rattle a lot of cages. It wasn't going to go unnoticed.
Elaine . True... but I'm not quite sure what point you're making.
Daniel . Paleobiology ultimately made it clear that 99 percent of the human story was played out before the Agricultural Revolution, but no one you can name tried to make sense of it.
Elaine . No.
Daniel . Let's make a conjecture: There was no felt need for anyone to make sense of it.
Elaine . I'd say that was right.
Daniel . But why? Why were the people of our culture content to sweep the first three million years of the human story under the rug and leave them there?
Elaine . Okay, I see where you're going now.
Daniel . But what's the answer? I said a few minutes ago that we were at last poised to give our Martian anthropologist the answer to his first, overriding question. Now we're there: Why did the people of our culture — the vanguard and beneficiaries of the Agricultural Revolution — sweep the first three million years of the human story under the rug and leave them there?
Elaine [ after some thought ]. Those three million years of human history threatened us.
Daniel . In what way? Now you've got to start working as an anthropologist. The people of our culture don't want to think about the fact that, for the first three million years of human life, people lived as hunter-gatherers rather than as agriculturalists and civilization builders. What's behind this reluctance?
Elaine . It's a threat to our self-image.
Daniel . Go on.
Elaine . The story we tell ourselves is that being fully human means planting crops and building civilization. This makes us the only true humans. In order to maintain our status as the only true humans, we don't want to look at the humanity of our hunting-gathering ancestors. We want to deny their humanity. They weren't in any real sense humans at all. They were just Stone Age brutes. So we don't have to think about them.
Daniel . To accord them humanity is to deny that we — and we alone — are humanity, which is an important element of our cultural mythology.
Elaine . Yes, that's it.
Daniel . To be human is to live the way we live. This is the one right way for people to live, and everyone in the world must be made to live the way we live. It was our holy duty to destroy all the aboriginal cultures we found in the New World, in Australia, in Africa, and so on.
Elaine . That's right.
Daniel [ after a pause ]. Obviously we haven't been breaking new ground here, but that wasn't my purpose. I wanted to give you some insight into my development as a Martian anthropologist, into the path I followed to assemble the answers found in Ishmael and my other books. I began with a rather trivial observation, that a nuclear holocaust would throw us much farther back than the Stone Age, and from there went from point to point to discover that, according to our cultural mythology, there is only one right way for people to live — our way — and that everyone in the world must be made to live this way. Globalization isn't a recent policy; it's been in place among us for thousands of
Daniel . Why was it important to sweep the first three million years of the human story under the rug in this way? Important to the people of our culture, of course.
Elaine . I'll have to think about that... I guess I have to say that they honestly saw nothing of value in them.
Daniel . Did anyone look?
Elaine . No one that I'm aware of, but that might not prove anything.
Daniel . You're aware of Darwin and his importance to the history of human thought.
Elaine . Of course.
Daniel . It was imperative that someone make sense of the startling discoveries of the young science of paleobiology. If it hadn't been Darwin, it would have been Alfred Russel Wallace. The existence of these findings demanded a reasonable explanation, and this explanation would rattle a lot of cages. It wasn't going to go unnoticed.
Elaine . True... but I'm not quite sure what point you're making.
Daniel . Paleobiology ultimately made it clear that 99 percent of the human story was played out before the Agricultural Revolution, but no one you can name tried to make sense of it.
Elaine . No.
Daniel . Let's make a conjecture: There was no felt need for anyone to make sense of it.
Elaine . I'd say that was right.
Daniel . But why? Why were the people of our culture content to sweep the first three million years of the human story under the rug and leave them there?
Elaine . Okay, I see where you're going now.
Daniel . But what's the answer? I said a few minutes ago that we were at last poised to give our Martian anthropologist the answer to his first, overriding question. Now we're there: Why did the people of our culture — the vanguard and beneficiaries of the Agricultural Revolution — sweep the first three million years of the human story under the rug and leave them there?
Elaine [ after some thought ]. Those three million years of human history threatened us.
Daniel . In what way? Now you've got to start working as an anthropologist. The people of our culture don't want to think about the fact that, for the first three million years of human life, people lived as hunter-gatherers rather than as agriculturalists and civilization builders. What's behind this reluctance?
Elaine . It's a threat to our self-image.
Daniel . Go on.
Elaine . The story we tell ourselves is that being fully human means planting crops and building civilization. This makes us the only true humans. In order to maintain our status as the only true humans, we don't want to look at the humanity of our hunting-gathering ancestors. We want to deny their humanity. They weren't in any real sense humans at all. They were just Stone Age brutes. So we don't have to think about them.
Daniel . To accord them humanity is to deny that we — and we alone — are humanity, which is an important element of our cultural mythology.
Elaine . Yes, that's it.
Daniel . To be human is to live the way we live. This is the one right way for people to live, and everyone in the world must be made to live the way we live. It was our holy duty to destroy all the aboriginal cultures we found in the New World, in Australia, in Africa, and so on.
Elaine . That's right.
Daniel [ after a pause ]. Obviously we haven't been breaking new ground here, but that wasn't my purpose. I wanted to give you some insight into my development as a Martian anthropologist, into the path I followed to assemble the answers found in Ishmael and my other books. I began with a rather trivial observation, that a nuclear holocaust would throw us much farther back than the Stone Age, and from there went from point to point to discover that, according to our cultural mythology, there is only one right way for people to live — our way — and that everyone in the world must be made to live this way. Globalization isn't a recent policy; it's been in place among us for thousands of
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