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- [Narrator] We are the paradoxical ape,
bipedal, naked, large brain.
Lone the master of fire, tools, and language,
but still trying to understand ourselves.
Aware that death is inevitable,
yet filled with optimism.
We grow up slowly.
We hand down knowledge.
We empathize and deceive.
We shape the future from our
shared understanding of the past.
CARTA brings together experts
from diverse disciplines to exchange
insights on who we are and how we got here.
An exploration made possible
by the generosity of humans like you.
(pleasant music)
- Okay, so we're going to move into
a new space in time right now
we're going to move into the night.
Some 3,500 years ago,
humans engineered control of fire.
It's actually quite complicated.
There was a huge caloric gain from food
because cooked food makes many more calories available.
Protection from predators, but what's
most interesting about it is humans
extended the day by four or five hours
to become the shortest sleepers of all primates.
And the time that it gained was economically unproductive.
No more calories were going in
nothing was happening economically.
And yet, the physical changes in circadian rhythms
were enormous to extend the day.
And there was some very major impacts
on health from reduction in melatonin
and other things, so there were costs.
So the question is why?
Why was this selected for?
Why didn't we just go to sleep?
So what I'm going to suggest here
is that firelight opened a new time in space
for the imagination and for the arts.
There's the wonderful quote from a German writer,
"Nobody sees anything in the night;
"everybody sees something in the night."
So this is the night is often
the time of the imagination.
If I would define the imagination for this talk,
as the ability to form mental images
of something not present to the senses
and never wholly perceived in reality.
So what transpires by day and night?
Why do firelight hours matter?
Well this is not so easy to find out,
but I became very interested among this
among the Ju/'hoansi bushmen of Botswana and Namibia.
These are a group of people
who live by hunting and gathering.
They utilize about 100 plant species,
30 animal species, and in the hard times of year
they even have to gather water.
The only water they get is
from melon or from roots.
And they live in very small camps
of 25 to 40 people with egalitarian structure,
age hierarchy, and recognized camp leaders.
So the interaction, scale of interaction
every day life is very very small.
And yet, they have these incredibly
sophisticated social institutions.
And the question is,
when you live on a postage stamp
how do you see the big picture?
So that was my question to see
what happens in the day and the night?
Here are some of the cultural institutions that they have.
Complex kinship systems defining both
biological and imaginary or fictive kin.
These systems are so complicated
that I after 30 years of working there
I'm still trying to figure them out.
Rules for widespread food sharing.
They have arranged marriage and elaborate marriage rites.
Sophisticated systems of land tenure.
Trance healing and an unbelievable
communication with the spirit world.
And then, networks of hxaro exchange,
widespread access to the resources of others
people move around, we'll see this.
So what happens at day and night?
That was my question.
And with data in 1974 I collected
information on day and night conversations
with groups of five or more adults
longer than 15 to 20 minutes.
And then, 2011 and 2013,
I collected the full stories
and had them transcribed and translated
by a team of Ju/'hoansi who are now
working with laptops and sending me
the most amazing emails.
All of the gossip comes through by email now.
(audience laughing)
So the day talk which is really interesting
is the topics of conversation
are largely practical, economic issues, and planning
and an enormous amount of complaint and criticism
as people get on to each other's case, gossip.
And people say, well gossip maintains social norms.
But in fact I found 30 to 40%
of the gossip was just total bull.
(audience laughing)
It was constructed for social strategies.
And so you can see that, that was the day.
And then there's the switch to the night.
All day long as an anthropologist
people are on to my case to give me
things to give them things to help with things.
At the night that's off limits,
everything mellows off and I don't get a single demand.
Isak Dinesen, or Karen Blixen, wrote,
"At times I believe that my feet have been
"set upon a road which I shall go on following,
"and that slowly the center of gravity
"of my being will shift over
"from the world of the day,
"from the domain of organizing
"and regulating universal powers,
"into the world of the imagination,
"with the coming of the dusk,
"with the lighting of the first star
"and the first candle."
And that's the transition you feel.
So I'd looked at nights of 36 nights
in four camps, eight nights were singing,
music, singing, gathering together,
six nights were trance healing dances,
and most nights were conversation and story telling.
And that's where I recorded the conversations.
And the results were quite astounding.
All you really need to do is look at the orange here.
Oh actually, the print is pretty big,
but you can see in the day
there are few stories, economic complaint,
at night people get off each other's cases
and they mostly sit around
and tell stories and come together.
And so the moods mellow when the sun set,
and I can tell you it's very harsh in the day,
because it's a sharing economy
and people are always mad that
he gave that to her and not to me.
And people gather around single fires
to talk and to story.
They talk about their own experiences
or those of others in a very
entrancing, compelling rhythmic language.
The listeners are stunned with suspense,
rolling with laughter, close to tears,
and emotions are synchronized
because everybody is relating to the same story.
And the people they talk about
are often people who are 200 kilometers away.
And they bring that person right to the heart
so delicious are the details of the story.
And but the storytelling what I'm
going to suggest here is that
it gives the big picture of society.
Good storytellers transmit visions
of social institutions that are imaginary
like kinship system, exchange systems.
And they're not present to the senses,
they're never wholly perceived in reality.
But the people, the few people
like this old lady who can put stories together
to imagine the big picture of society
and tell about it they become very influential.
These are the organizers and the mediators
who have this skill.
And this is example of hxaro exchange.
This is an exchange of gifts where people
choose partners up to 200 kilometers away.
That longest line there is 200 kilometers.
And this is a social security system.
So they keep exchanging gifts
and the underlying relationship is when
you're in trouble I'll help you,
you can come live with me,
and when I'm in trouble you can come live with me.
So that is the exchange,
the average person has about 15 to 16
of these partners and the Ju/'hoansi
spend about two to three months a year
living with these partners.
This old lady is wearing all her gifts
to advertise herself because
she's trying to marry off her grandson.
And she's showing how well connected she is.
And then, there are stories that give
the big picture of regional gatherings,
hxaro exchange, and kin relations,
and the one story I collected
it was from the 1940s of six bands
coming together at a particularly
good time of year to harvest morama beans.
And this story goes on for pages
and the relations between the bands are described.
And the complex kinship relations are described.
Everybody named would tell how they're
related to so and so, and so and so, and so and so.
And this gives you an idea of the area
from which people came for this gathering.
The whole thing would be about
oh 200 or 300 kilometers, north south.
And this is sort of an excerpt
from the story, different people were there,
some were there from the
(speaks foreign language) Eiseb Valley
and some Nharo from the further south.
And some from the (speaks foreign language)
where there is a forest with
lots of combretum trees.
The northern people were there also,
they were called (speaks foreign language) also came.
The owners of (speaks foreign language) also came.
So they, and then they tell how
everyone is related.
And this is a story put together
from many that she had heard
because she was a little girl when this happened.
And then they described what happened at the gathering.
This goes on for pages.
"She got the other skin apron and gave it
"to my late grandmother (speaks foreign language).
"She took out another skin apron
"and gave it to her aunt,
"the late (speaks foreign language).
"And then she gave out more gifts.
"And then it was a beginning of gift giving.
"He (speaks foreign language) tried to pull the beaded
"headband on his head but it didn't fit.
"So he took it off his head and gave it
"to my granny (speaks foreign language)
"and gave other things to her."
And this goes on, and on, and on.
And you don't only have stories,
but for the other form of arts
you have gifts so that these partnerships
of mutual obligation are marked by gift exchange,
beautifully made, artistically made gifts.
And these gifts represent relationships,
but they also carry stories
of who gave them to whom.
They go through long chains of giving.
So they create these huge networks,
so each gift would have a history in stories.
And then another example would be in marriage.
You don't see many marriage.
When you live in a small band of 25 people,
you may see a few in your lifetime.
And they're infrequent, but the procedures
are elaborate, they're arranged.
And usually the girl is married
around 13 and rejects the man
and makes a big fuss.
And these stories are hilarious
of old ladies telling about how
they rejected their husband and ran away
and destroyed the wedding gifts.
And this prepares young people for marriage
knowing that the first years
are going to be kind of rough.
(audience laughing)
And that they'll get used to them.
And then parents also learn
of all the case studies of marriage
told the stories and they know how to manage them.
Okay, the other thing which is people
the Ju/'hoansi do trance healing
in which the women sit and clap
all night and sing.
And the men, the trance healers,
travel to the spirit world where they
negotiate with the spirit asking the spirits not,
asking them not to take people away,
to leave them on Earth that they love them.
Giving everyone preventive medicine.
And in these stories the trance healers
at night will tell about how far they traveled.
I mean I was once telling people
how about we're sending men to the moon
and there's an old guy who looked at me and said,
"Been there."
(audience laughing)
This is, you could imagine the trancers
then in telling the stories
connect people with a shared cosmology,
or shared sense of the spirit world,
shared sense of what causes misfortune.
So sort of to wrap up,
then day, night, and the imagination.
So the day you have economics,
technology, nitty-gritty of social relations.
The night the stories are about
imagined roles, rules, communities
that are not tangible or physically
coherent in time and space.
So they're imagining society
in their social institutions.
They also imagine as change comes
they can also imagine they can innovate
and imagine changes as well.
And then, stories stimulate imaginations
to construct the big picture
of social institutions and relations.
And very very importantly,
because we have theory of mind,
because we can read what other people are thinking,
they really make people imagine
the thoughts and the feelings of others.
That you can really understand that people
feel differently about things,
and it brings a lot of understanding
into it and people put themselves
in other people's shoes in the stories
because they're so emotionally laden it's incredible.
So essentially what I found in this study
is that the evening hours provide
a space for the arts and for the imagination.
And the arts would include also
music, dance, and stories.
And does this happen beyond the Kalahari?
We moved up to the Arctic now.
Yes, these kinds of stories are told
in all hunter-gatherer societies at night.
If you look through the human relation area files,
there are 38 mentions of sanctioning gossip,
none of them is at night, they're all in the day.
For 60 hunter-gatherer societies,
information on stories, songs,
healing, and ceremonies is in the files.
And of course, as we all know,
we too hunt and gather stories through
theater, film, recording, literature
to feed our imaginations.
I mean, we really are as addicted as anybody.
So to end then, I just want to ask this question.
I often think about that what is
in our society the impact of checking
the phone, flipping off the light switch,
with no time for the imagination to explore,
to ponder, and to position events
and relationships of the day
in the past, present, and future?
And so, and these are thanks to my coworkers.
(audience applauding)
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