[Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Wed Jan 14 20:24:05 PST 2015
Peg, does my remark that writing was invented "for administrative
purposes" stand up?
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
Peg Griffin wrote:
> About writing origins, Henry: There's some accessible and reliable info
> through that U of Chicago Oriental Institute museum web-site I mentioned.
> You can download the catalog for free - over 200 pages of good essays and
> illustrations.
> http://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/oimp3
> 2.pdf
> The first chapter has a good discussion about writing and other early
> graphic representations from art and administrative functions. It has a
> reasonable bibliography. Subsequent specialized chapters also carry good
> documentation. It's certainly a good start if you want to follow this up.
>
> Peg Griffin, Ph. D.
> Washington, DC 20003
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 7:18 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>
> Yes, thank you, Helen
> I have a couple of questions:
> 1)The movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams focuses on cave drawings of Southern
> France that date back 32,000 years. Writing may date back only about 5
> thousand years, but I understand that writing systems begin with
> pictographs, like in the caves of southern France. Is that relevant to this
> thread?
> 2) Does oral history count as history?
> Henry
>
>
>
>
>
> I have a question
>
>> On Jan 14, 2015, at 2:30 PM, Peg Griffin <Peg.Griffin@att.net> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, Helena! It is lovely. A while ago I had skimmed it but
>> misplaced ways to get to it for deep reading and use of it.
>> Besides just liking this sort of thing, I've had some luck getting
>> teacher ed students to see contemporary cultural and language
>> diversity a little differently when they get a chance to see history
>> they might have missed out on in their prior education.
>> Peg
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Helena Worthen
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:06 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Cc: 'Mikhail Munipov'
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>>
>> And there's this:
>>
>> https://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201102/roads.of.arabia.htm
>>
>> This is a gorgeous exhibit, if it comes near you. For the text about
>> writing
>> 2000-1500 BCE, scroll about half way down. The exhibit has stones, set
>> side by side, with different ancient scripts.
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>>
>> On Jan 13, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Peg Griffin wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Here's a little side track: There's a web trace of a 2010
>>> well-curated
>>>
>> museum exhibit on writing from the U of Chicago Oriental Institute.
>>
>>> http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/writing/
>>>
>>> And here are a few little outtakes:
>>> "four instances and places in human history when writing was
>>>
>> invented from scratch - in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica -
>> without previous exposure to or knowledge of writing. It appears
>> likely that all other writing systems evolved from the four systems we
>> have in our exhibition."
>>
>>> "the earliest cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia (today's
>>>
>> Iraq), dating to about 3200 BC,"
>>
>>> " early Egyptian writing that includes tags and labels from
>>>
>> the tombs of the first kings (about 3320 BC) as well as hieroglyphic
>> writing and other scripts from the Nile Valley."
>>
>>> " Chinese writing, which emerged about 1200 BC, will be
>>>
>> shown on oracle bones"
>>
>>> " Mayan hieroglyphs from the 7th century AD will show how
>>>
>> early Mesoamericans wrote."
>>
>>> " Long believed to have been invented in Phoenicia in about
>>>
>> 1000 BC, the earliest alphabetic texts are now those found in the Sinai.
>> This earliest alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs as early
>> as
>> 1800 BC, well over five hundred years earlier than had been known."
>>
>>> There are some lovely little animations about the development of
>>> cuneiform
>>>
>> and one animation about a hieroglyph changing and eventually
>> appropriated for a Greek letter.
>>
>>> I love this little site and fear the day I try to open it and find U
>>> of Chicago has abandoned it. Peg
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu] On
>>> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 9:24 PM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Cc: Mikhail Munipov
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>>>
>>> Actually, I think that "the more that human beings become removed
>>> from
>>>
>> animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their
>> own history consciously" is near as dammit what you are looking for.
>>
>>> Engels of course lacked good information. Even in his day Vygotsky
>>> had
>>>
>> poor information. In "Ape, Primitive Man and Child", "primitive" is
>> taken to mean "non-literate", as it was for Luria in his Central Asian
>> expedition, and a great deal of emphasis is put on the origins and
>> development of *writing*. But writing only appears in Egypt c. 2,000
>> BCE I think, in any case, in evolutionary time scales 5 minutes ago.
>> The development of writing is nothing to do with evolution of the species.
>>
>>> Vygotsky defines primitive man as follows:
>>>
>>> "This term is commonly used, admittedly as a conventional label, to
>>> designate certain peoples of the uncivilized world, situated at the
>>> lower levels of cultural development. It is not entirely right to
>>> call these peoples primitive, as a greater or lesser degree of
>>> civilization can unquestionably be observed in all of them. All of
>>> them have already emerged from the prehistoric phase of human
>>> existence. Some of them have very ancient traditions. Some of them
>>> have been influenced by remote and powerful cultures, while the
>>> cultural development of others has become degraded.
>>> "/Primitive man, in the true sense of the term, does not exist
>>> anywhere at the present time, /and the human type, as represented
>>> among these primeval peoples, can only be called "relatively
>>> primitive." Primitiveness in this sense is a lower level, and the
>>> starting point for the historical development of human behaviour.
>>> Material for the psychology of primitive man is provided by data
>>> concerning prehistoric man, the peoples situated at the lower levels
>>> of cultural development and the comparative psychology of peoples of
>>> different cultures."(Preface, 1930, Italics in the original)
>>>
>>> And from the start, this chapter is framed as "cultural development"
>>> as
>>>
>> distinct from "evolutionary development." Chapter 1 on primates
>> focuses on the limited use of tools possible for apes, with the
>> implication that the cultural development around the emergence of
>> labour, i.e., the production of tools, was part of evolutionary
>> development, prior and leading up to the formation of homo sapiens
>> sapiens. There is no chapter covering the period between 2 million
>> years ago and say `00,000 years ago, where cultural and biological
>>
> formation are interacting.
>
>>> According to Engels and others including Dewey, speech emerges
>>>
>> simultaneously with tools. Dewey makes the point that a tool is not a
>> tool until its use is institutionalised, linking social, symbolic and
>> tool-using activity together.
>>
>>> Andy
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> --
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>
>>>
>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>
>>>> So perhaps its just my bad memory, Andy. the issues remain central.
>>>> THANKS for the appropriate links!
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> There can only be two sources of this idea: Engels' "Part Played
>>>> by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (1876)
>>>>
>>>>
>> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/ind
>> ex.htm
>>
>>>> and the Introduction to "Dialectics of Nature" (1883)
>>>> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm
>>>>
>>>> In the latter work, after explaining how freeing the hands by
>>>> adopting an erect gait, led to the use of tools, meaning labour,
>>>> and this led to the expansion of the brain, language and sundry
>>>> other changes, and thus eventualy the emergence of human beings as
>>>> a species. Then he says:
>>>>
>>>> "With men we enter /history/."
>>>>
>>>> In the earlier document, he says: "Labour begins with the making
>>>> of tools" which Engels claims happened before the formation of
>>>> modern homo sapiens, contributing to that formation rather than
>>>> being a product of the formation of modern humans, and he narrates
>>>> a story which continues from this point up to socialist revolution
>>>> as if it were one continuous story, blurring over the distinction
>>>> between evolution of the species and historical development of
>>>> culture.
>>>> The nerest we come to your quote is: "the more that human beings
>>>> become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the
>>>> more they make their own history consciously." The "narrower
>>>> sense" I presume means biological differentiation. So this could
>>>> count for what you are looking for, Mike.
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>>
>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear Colleagues--
>>>>
>>>> I seem to recall reading an idea, that I recall being
>>>> attributed to Engels,
>>>> that (rooughly) "more and more the laws of evolution are being
>>>> replaced by
>>>> the laws of history."
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone enlighten me either as to the source of this
>>>> "quotation" or as
>>>> to the source of my own confusion in this regard?
>>>>
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an
>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
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