Chapter II: Interdisciplinarity in Human Pre-History

It was Billy-Bob Thornton in his role as Lorne Malvo in the series Fargo who once confronted people with the stupefying riddle of why are humans able to see more shades of green than any other color? The reply later in the series from another character was that we can see more shades of green because it helped early humans distinguish predators from foliage. Essentially, we can observe the different shades of green, to quickly react to blacks or golds from big jungle cats, or from other warring clans of hominids. This was definitely effective for building psychological tension within a television show, but is it scientifically accurate? In terms of predation, research by Knill and Allen found that polymorphism is a protective measure using a randomized controlled test. Humans acknowledge they see prey with green pixilated backgrounds and react accordingly when the green pixelation is filled with different colors such as a blacks or golds¹. In a more widespread understanding, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and their tour of the electromagnetic spectrum outline that green is in the middle and is the largest of visible waves². What is the potential of this information? Well for one it could be that over time our biology has fixated our eyes to see more shades of green, and with that biological understanding, we have learned to survive through mimicry to avoid predators and advance our species through a form of interdisciplinary knowledge.

On the topic of enhancing species, we try to trace the ourselves through our pre-history. During the Middle Paleolithic Era, we saw the migration of the Y chromosome in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) movement through sub-Saharan Africa, and was identified as the earliest of homo sapiens³, along with the L Haplogroup mtDNA forming in East Africa which is believed to be the basis for modern-human DNA over 200,000 years ago⁴. At the same time in pre-human history, understanding about the femoral neck shafts of the Qafzeh-Skhul tribe of early humans reflect a culturally and technologically complex set of human traits, and leading towards elaborate social hierarchy structures with divisions of labor and society⁵. From the conceptualization of mtDNA migration, the study of bones showing human action and societal structures reflecting societal learning; the idea that structural and societal learning have been taken place over thousands of years reflecting the connections of learning by surviving in the wild through evading predators, creating societies, and creating social structures within the hierarchies. Along with learning about progress, humans also learned about oppression through the social structures leading to unrest and war.

The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of society and the creation of a working society can be traced back to the early humans in the form of technical and social hierarchies. Groups would form individual leaders through a growth mindset of learning terrain, developing a sense of communication, and harness power to overcome predators or other humans. In addition, the concept of overcoming challenges to society is reflected through many archaeological digs which show acceleration of global warming during the Holocene Era, technological advancements at the structures of Göbekli Tepe (modern: Turkey), and evidence of agriculture in Mesopotamia (modern: Iraq) scaffold our knowledge of sociological hierarchies and proliferate through concepts of recorded history.

A King is Recorded

What is the evidence that we have of a social hierarchy during human pre-history? What are some interdisciplinary conclusions we can draw from the stories? One of the first recorded pieces of evidence is The Epic of Gilgamesh from the Sumerian clay tablets, that dated back to 2100 BC. The story is the journey of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his quest to find the answers of life and immortality⁶. The Gods create an image of a man (Enkidu) in the likeness of Gilgamesh who befriends the king and they journey together to find immortality. It is only after Enkidu dies by the will of the Gods, that Gilgamesh travels to find answers of his own mortality through a wise man named Utnapishtim who tells tales before the flood, and teaches Gilgamesh about mortality. Leading to one of the central themes of the story that mortality is the characteristic of man, and that death is evident for us all:

Gilgamesh to Utnapishtim: “What shall I do, O Utnapishtim, where shall I go? Already the thief in the night has hold of my limbs, death inhabits my room; wherever my foot rests, there I find death.”⁷

This section with Utnapishtim is one of the most significant sections in the story accounting the lessons that are learned about life, death, and the mortal man. As Utnapishtim tells stories about the deluge, this presents a stark reminder about the power of the gods in this epic. Regardless of belief in either god, nature, or energy, the owners of life are given to the higher power such as creating life and keeping life for itself. The other side is death which is given to the mortal human to endure. This opens the eyes of Gilgamesh as he begins to understand his mortality and the meaning of his life. Utnapishtim states:

“There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand for ever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers endure? It is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory. From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death. What is there between the master and the servant when both have fulfilled their doom? When the Anunnaki, the judges, come together, and Mammetun the mother of destinies, together they decree the fates of men. Life and death they allot but the day of death they do not disclose”⁸

Utnapishtim suggests there is no continuance of life, much like the dragonfly, one human is only here for a moment then gone. It is a stark reality that we all obtain throughout life that death is inevitable, and that we will all meet death one day or another. The interesting aspect of that quote is that the dragonfly sheds the larvae, symbolizing the dragonfly leaves behind something to die in the light of the sun. Many scholars have debated what this means; pragmatically larvae are the young, symbolizing humans ability to procreate the next generation, conceptually it is the idea of humanity is left behind to continue this dance of life and death as a way to beat the gods at their own game. Somewhere in the middle of a pragmatic and conceptual understanding is the passing on of knowledge from one generation to another, such as life and death is passed down, so too is the knowledge of life and death.

After the return to the city of Uruk, a newfound Gilgamesh climbs the wall to see his kingdom of Uruk to which he describes:

“One third of the whole is city, one third is garden, and one third is field, with the precinct of the goddess Ishtar. These parts and the precinct are all Uruk”⁹

It is Andrew George, expert Assyriologist from the University College of London, who explains this quote and the meaning of the quote. George fractionates the city to a conceptual understanding and the meaning of life:

1. 1/3 of the city are dwellings: Home life
2. 1/3 is garden: Food
3. 1/3 is field: Industry and manufacturing
4. Precinct for the goddess: Knowledge and spirituality¹⁰

At the core, George’s analysis is the secret to leading a good lifestyle and the necessities any society needs to survive: shelter, food, work/meaning, knowledge, and a belief in something. Relatedly it is Gilgamesh that sees himself as the dragonfly and his city representing society, as the larvae that is to continue through the generations.

The evidence of a social standing and hierarchy through history is evident in the epic, reflecting the leader, the King of Uruk Gilgamesh and his journey to find mortality only to find the knowledge of death. The understanding that society and the collection of life is larger than one singular person and that continuance is needed for survival of the species. As the apparent wise king, he was able to share this knowledge over time, much like how history is written by the leaders of our past; kings, queens, government leaders, and influential members of society. As you will see throughout the historical context of understanding interdisciplinarity, that certain individuals or groups become the bearer of knowledge and tasked with the responsibility of continuing and enhancing the knowledge for further understanding.

What is the interdisciplinary lesson of this story that dates back over 4000 years ago? First, it is the concept that Gilgamesh is confronted with a complex situation that consumes his life and his meaning. It is only when he experiences the death of friend Enkidu and his learning from Utnapishtim that he reforms his conceptualization of eternal life. The creator of these clay tablets understood that Gilgamesh was a flawed character with a problem and needed to obtain knowledge. One that couldn’t be taught by any one person in Uruk, but through experiencing death and experiencing stories and examples from an elder. The interdisciplinarity of the journey and the story reflect the new knowledge that Gilgamesh has on life and the meaning of life, furthermore what it means to enlarge future knowledge.

The transitioning of knowledge through time is the lesson to be learned from this story. Much like the different sections of the city represents home, food, work, and knowledge. That too is the most important interdisciplinary lesson. The interdisciplinary lesson of life is to balance and act upon home and family life, to stay well fed and healthy, to work towards a meaning and help society grow, and to stay informed through a guiding ethic. If one of those aspects comes out of balance, it could cause adverse effects of a life structure. Ultimately the smartest, most relevant aspect of this story is that the intermingling of all these building blocks of life are needed for stability, the social hierarchy can remain stable when all of these concepts are in place.

Mycenaean Greece

Years later we find the growth of society in different areas of the world including the Mycenaean culture in Greece. The Mycenaeans were largely responsible for expansion of language through their creation of Linear B, which Latacz suggests the traditional Greek language has been around since 2000 BC¹¹. With this language came culture similar to the Sumerians and to a larger extent the Egyptians before them, twentieth century BC saw the growth of the culture through heightened forms of political, social, and economic factors, Latacz cites:

“The upsurge: in the second millennium BC, the immigrants developed a homogeneous form of society with a high economic and cultural level over the greater part of their area of settlement. We term this the ‘centralized palace culture’.”¹²

The society that was created developed a keen sense of culture through the making of ceremonial masks and new forms of writing, innovation through the architecture and use of precious metals, and the infrastructure through the creation of new political models and economic trade. Throughout this section, I ask what did the Mycenaeans do to carry the baton of interdisciplinarity from the Sumerians, and what future impact were present?

One of the most significant and well-known records during the Mycenaean civilization was Homers epic poem The Illiad. Although historically romanticized, the war through the abduction of the beautiful Helen by Paris, Prince of Troy, sparking Agamemnon and his legion including Odysseus and the great hero Achilles to siege a war on Troy presents a dramatic retelling of the actual events¹³. However, scholarship suggests that the war and unrest would have happened through political decision making over trade routes with the Hittites and the Akkadian Empire, with Troy serving as an important rest stop due to their geography on a vital trade route¹⁴. The politics of the Mycenaean era were interesting as it involved the decision making of many different states. The Mycenaeans understood the economies of trade and exchange through what is called Mycenaean Palatial Elites, or rulers of different territories occupying Mycenaean Greece¹⁵. The palatial states of Athens, Iolocos, Menelaion, Mycenae, Orchomenos, Pylos, and Thebes all provided a centralized political structure¹⁶, acting similarly to the state or provincial system in common political processes.

This understanding shows somewhat of a knowledge growth consisting of central rights and expanding to provincial and state’s rights, especially with trade and commerce. Parkinson et al. suggests that trading between the palatial territories were common in the Mycenaean system through different strengths in resources such as art trading for boulders, or clay pots being traded for clothing¹⁷. The knowledge growth from a centralized trading system to a localized trading system allows for a sense of autonomy and decision-making to form. This can be reflected as the advancement of a democratic system forming from different Mycenaean states to make economic decisions on goods.

Inside the different palatial provinces had different communities that engaged in economic processes. Microeconomic practices were shown to be vital to the work of a cultural society. Finley describes the economic processes in six categories:

1. Lists of personnel: Services such as corn-grinding and food rationing.
2. Livestock and agriculture produce: Focus on farming sheep, goats and pigs with few cows and horses.
3. Land and land ownership: Although the tablets are unclear in terms of land ownership, but evidence suggests ‘deeds’ for estates and fractioned lease purchases are presented.
4. Proportional tribute and ritual offerings: Rationed foods such as wheat and items such as gold bowls to be offered as ritual to Zeus, or one gold bowl and one woman offering to the goddess Hera.
5. Textiles, vessels, and furniture: the trade between palatial states of cloth wool and built furniture such as chairs.
6. Metals and military equipment: the use of gold and iron for weaponry and armor.¹⁸

The integration of a broad and substantive economic system reflects the growth mindset of societies, theoretically leading to the advancement of society through these intermingled economic measures. The early Mycenaean civilization understood the microeconomic measure of producing products such as food and clothing to use in trade with the other palatial states in a macroeconomic system.

The introduction of an economic system allows the growth of an economy which advances the cultural capital of a society. Much like Gilgamesh in the epic, the meaning of life as a home, food, work in society, and religion was produced on a mass level within the Mycenaean civilization. Finley states:

“By a palace economy I understand a pattern of organization-economic, social, political-essentially different from any which appears in the traditional western typologies. The presence of some similarities, such as slaves, for instance, or conditional tenures of land, is obvious, but their location within the total context is another matter.”¹⁹

With the strong economic factors for creating products from natural sources, this creates the need for arts and culture. With trade and commerce happening between the states, this creates the precedent to accept art and other culture as a form of currency to use in trade with food, land, or textiles.

The connection to the pragmatic understanding of trade goods and economy being paired together with the romanticism and drama of stories such as The Illiad and The Odyssey, is an early process of presenting fictional aspects through emotion out of the rigid non-fictional events that took place. Of course the Trojan War in The Illiad sounds thematically relatable compared to a Hollywood script; however, the pragmatic understanding that the war was more due to trade and control of resources lasts as a firm consensus as we have seen this action play out over many dynasties over history. Art on products told stories, such as tangible products were produced like bowls, jars, and drinking glasses with pictures depicting stories of warriors and gods, pictorially telling a tale of their accolades which was well referenced in Homers Iliad²⁰. When looking at the art depicting warriors and gods acting as, what I would call ‘Early Mycenaean Marketing’, depicting popular warriors and gods through their battle accolades and power. This produces a popularity around them and their story to last and be told throughout the land to the people.

One of the most interesting aspects of art and culture is the food that was presented in the Mycenaean period. Lis suggests that the different sized pots reflect the different types of foods that were eaten during this era. A large amount of meat was consumed such as cow, pig, sheep, and goat combined with exotic spices²¹. Lis concludes the quantity of food and how it was shared throughout the states presented a social solidarity; however, the research suggests that the host (perhaps the king and his family) were the ones who ate the most and further down the social chain the less food to be received²². The large amount of food consumed and the divergent way they created different foods would suggest that the Mycenaeans were a healthy culture relying heavily on protein-based foods. Although it seems like a large society would be able to access food, it was clear that a hierarchical-class system where food distribution favored the palatial kings and flowed down to common members in the states.

With writing, of course was reflected in the Greek form of epic poetry found in Homers The Illiad and The Odyssey. These poems focus primarily on the Trojan War and the kings, heroes, and gods that occupy the thematic elements of the poems. The mixture of ‘apparent’ truth in a ten years war, along with the emotional and ethical lessons, the stories offer a sense of thematic and rhetorical story-telling which would not be formally introduced in writing until years later in the age of antiquity. In many ways Homeric poems and the stories, which have been replicated throughout human history, offer the first glimpse into understanding our place in the world building off themes in the past (such as The Epic of Gilgamesh), the passing of knowledge and story reflect the nature of advancing knowledge and growth throughout the generations.

Interdisciplinarity during the Mycenaean Greek civilization is reflected through many different factors: the growth of a political structure leading to economic trade and commerce, and the advancement of evidentiary writing and art to enhance and further a culture. What this combination presents is a level of learning not only about the Mycenaean culture, but where the Mycenaeans fit within the context of the world and their place in the world. The growth of trade and commerce of course led to prosperity in the palatial state, at the same time led to war with Troy to command trade routes through the Aegean and Black sea. The movement of products and services and the enhancement of arts and culture, builds upon the past societies which scaffolds the learning of the past to advance the future.

From the early ancestral movement of the human haplogroups, to the Holocene era of early civilizations, the Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mycenaean Greeks, not only do we see a growth in physical evolution, we see a growth in characteristics of people over this era of human pre-history. We see the ability that early civilizations have utilized knowledge from many different realms and built that knowledge to create new forms of thinking. From early ancestors to understand mimicry to avoid predation, to Gilgamesh understanding mortality of man and ultimately himself, to the Greeks understanding the benefit of trade and commerce with internal states and external leaders to enhance material wealth. Although there are advancements displayed with enhanced learning, so to the terrible evidence of monarchical tyranny, societal rule and fatal wars producing bloodshed outlined the maliciousness of the human species when we learn of new advancements and new opportunities for growth.

Many themes are presented in the chapter that relate to interdisciplinarity that are quite pragmatic as opposed to the theoretical that is commonly studied in ancient history. First theme would be the ability for humans to make knowledgeable connections of their surroundings being an inherent part of their DNA. We in a modern society observe our world and construct opportunities and dangers that advance or hinder our improvement. The fear we produce over time as a remnant of the flight or fight response reflecting our knowledge and understanding of our world through thousands of years of DNA coding. ‘Should I walk down this dark alley?’ ‘Do I see something in the distance that is uncommon or unaware to my knowledge?’ ‘Of that thing that is uncommon, do I proceed to learn more about it, eventually making myself comfortable with this situation?’ We are constantly analyzing our society and questioning our integration in society.

Second, on that last note, societies evolve. With knowledge comes growth, as sort of ‘the grass is greener on the other side’. Rummaging through the forest waiting for a lion to eat me was troubling, therefore, we build cities to protect from predation and other invaders. We need to sustain in the city and use the tools at our disposal (sun, water, and solid elements) to create food and a roof to stop rain from hitting us. We use this food and trade it for arts and writing from other states to enhance our knowledge, in turn we produce better food. The growth of society is almost as natural as the growth of mtDNA, and that growth is inevitable when new ways of doing things are introduced in society.

Third, pragmatic societies produce learning. Mistakes are bound to happen in your current life no matter what age you are, and the same applied for the people during human pre-history. Economic, social and political mistakes were common such as wars, trade deals, and disruption of the social fabric led to empires rising and falling throughout human history, but the fact that empires rise and fall relates to the dragon-fly in the sun. Only the individual people have that brief moment in the sun, it is the larvae and the idea of human growth that lives on through eternity.

The deeper understanding of life comes after the Mycenaean period into the age of Greek antiquity, where some of the greatest minds ever known were written about and the grounding of a Western ethic was founded. During this time, the rise and fall of different societies, and at times social degradation was being reviewed by these minds and attempting to create moral and ethical conclusions for a better life. The different realms of knowledge to this time represent a growth in society. Next we look at how the different forms of knowledge connect, and create a meaning in learning, life and society.