I take offense at the word caveman. Ok, I don't really. But for the sake of this
video if you could pretend that I do that would be great. The reason I take
offense, in theory, is because we always use the term so derogatively. It's a way
to show a lack of intelligence. If we consider someone dumb, uncultured, violent,
uncivilized, they might as well be cavemen. But were they dumb? How do we
judge the intelligence of the past? Should we be rethinking how we use the
word caveman? Probably not, but you asked for a puff piece, so let's get into it.
If the Flintstones taught me anything, it's that birds can be used as a record
player. That's a fact, I saw it on TV. But beyond that, I find the concept of the
Flintstones interesting, because they use the trope of the caveman in both a
stereotypical sitcom way, but also counter to the stereotype that it
implies. They think of cavemen as intelligent, capable tool producers. The
reversal is part of the joke. They also say that they live with dinosaurs and I'm
starting to think that they might not be an actual documentary.
What they were
likely aiming for was a way to show the modern man through a commonly understood
lens. In sitcoms about a family, you can virtually always guarantee the father is
going to be a little slow, a little violent, or a little uncivilized.
Homer Simpson, Ralph Kramden, Peter Griffin, Phil Dunfy, Al Bundy, you get the
point. It's an incredibly common trope. And Hanna-Barbera knew that by making
their characters stone age, they could achieve that feeling without so much as
a word. Nobody needs to be told Fred and Barney are a little slow. Because they're
cavemen.
Here in Southern Armenia, there are caves everywhere. They're basically
impossible to avoid. Drive down a random stretch of road for an hour and you'll
likely come across a hundred or more. And they're not untouched. Many of these were
at one point homes. Some of the caves here have evidence of habitation from
almost a million years ago. Protohumans searching for shelter, water, fire, and
potentially even religion within these walls.
But just because they were used by
protohumans doesn't mean they were only useful to protohumans. If you walk the
hills here, you'll quickly realize that many of the caves in this area are still
in use. In fact, people only stopped living in them in the 1950's. In some
caves, you can even still see shelves carved into the walls. Yet, despite no
longer being lived in, they haven't stopped being used. Here, caves serve as a
place to corral animals. To store crops. To build churches. Take a walk behind the
ancient town of Goris, and you're greeted by a number of angry cows
defending their cavernous homes. Cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, here, they're cave creatures.
Which makes sense. They're protected from the weather and predators,
both animal and human. Whether you're trying to defend your flock, or protect
your people from an invading tribe, holding up in a cave makes sense. All you
have to do is defend the entrance.
On top of that, it's
climate controlled. Whether it's the dead of winter, or the height of summer, a cave
keeps a relative balance of temperature. Which is one of the reasons why over 40
million Chinese people have built homes extending out of the mouths of caves.
They call them Yaodong, and they're virtually as modern as any of the homes
of their neighbours. They have electricity and many of the trappings of
contemporary Chinese life. If you did a survey, I'd bet you find that most of
these Chinese cavemen own a TV. Living there saves energy, it keeps you safe, and
most of the construction is already done for you. Much of the modern
sustainability movement in architecture mimics the idea of cave living, for all
the same reasons we chose to inhabit them in the past. Somewhat ironically,
living in caves in the modern era implies one is not the stereotypical
caveman. I think it's ingenious, personally.
So just like TV fathers, I'd
argue that the concept of the caveman could do with a bit of updating. While
certainly their original inhabitants would have been our intellectual lessers,
at some point, they weren't. And yet, we still lived in them. Sometimes, we kept
our cows there.
So to get to whatever roundabout point I'm trying to make, I
think it's interesting to explore the idea of how we view the intelligence of
the past. Because while we're all generally aware of the concept of
cultural relativism, I'd argue that this crosses over into the idea of historic
relativism. We imagine that having access to better technology makes us smarter
people. As if the advancement of humanity equates to the advancement of the
individual human. As if the form of house we live in describes our ability to
think. Watch a teenager mock their grandparents for struggling to make a
Skype call, or a Victorian author describe a native people, and it's pretty
clear that we consider technological prowess in the same vein as intelligence.
Modernity is treated as intelligence. We even mistake access to education as
intelligence.
But that's all just ego. Technology is not intelligence. Education
is only a refinement of the tool. Humans are likely no smarter today than we were
thousands of years ago. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, even. The people
who painted their hunt on the walls of the Lascaux cave were artistic geniuses.
The Armenian cavemen who produced modern style wine over 8000 years ago in
Areni 1 were no doubt capable thinkers. These
were not dumb people, and I'm sure most of you would agree with that. They simply
didn't have access to modern education and technology. Yet, they were
unquestionably cavemen. I'd argue that when we look at the advancements of the
past, it's easy for us to see the genius. But when we look at their mistakes, it's
just as easy for us to see cavemen. We believe that we're no longer the
backwards, ignorant savages of antiquity. But...eh... aren't we though? I'd argue that we're
the backwards, ignorant savages of the present. We're no more or less intelligent
than they were. Nothing truly has changed in our minds since that time. We're
simply more educated, with better technology, and undoubtedly just like
them, blissfully unaware of how future generations will mock us for our
failures.
So in light of all that I'd like to dedicate this episode to the TV
fathers of the future, failing comically to call their children on some
newfangled technology. Like George Jetson. Ahhhhh. This is Rare Earth.
Making friends