How Wilma Flintstone invented agriculture

I have always had a horror of what I call "we-think". I tried to impress on my kids that it was crucial that they learn to think for themselves. This involves developing discernment and critical thinking, but to do so, you have to stand up to a tide of resistance: our culture now thinks that to be critical is "bad". It's "negative", and that's especially bad. Always.

In fact, lots of things are bad, and none worse than trying to control our reality. We constantly hear truisms like, "The only thing we can change is our attitude." (Which is the hardest thing to change: in fact it is practically impossible, for we are all deeply programmed by the culture we grew up in, and very few of us even know it). This is to drive away the panicked powerlessness that would probably subsume us if we really gave in to the truth.

Dogma and isms rule our lives, and hardly anyone is aware of it or even wants to be. Instead they regurgitate undigested mini-bites of unexamined philosophy to reassure each other that they're doing OK, that they're following all the (invisible) rules. If you follow these rules to the letter, you're "in". If you object or, worse, point out to others that you think they are in error, that they are merely following the herd without questioning its screwed-up non-values, generally speaking you are lambasted or even shunned. That is why, I think, people are such conformists.

We evolved to follow the herd (literally, herds of prey animals) in small tightly-knit bands, and woe betide anyone who was cast out of the band. They died slowly and horribly, or were simply eaten. Someone was always in charge, probably the largest and scariest male (no matter what feminists say about Amazon goddess-figures who ruled everything in deepest antiquity, like in that Star Trek episode).

Have we changed much? From what I know of evolution from all those anthropology courses I took, men's stone tools (which last forever and are still around) were always considered the hallmark of evolution and proof that "man" developed "technology" hundreds of thousands of years ago. But ancient human societies are described as hunter-gatherer. The meat source was highly prized but sporadic, and the rest of the time everyone subsisted and survived on nuts, berries, roots, etc. that the women gathered every day in leather pouches that quickly rotted away, leaving no trace of their contribution to human survival. (Women still carry them, no?)

Incredibly, for many decades anthropologists didn't even seem to see this contribution, assuming the nuts and berries just rolled into the caves all by themselves. After all, didn't their meals appear on the table (first from Mom, then from Wifey) in the same way? Obviously no work was involved.

Without those nifty little purses, you'd be looking at an empty screen because there wouldn't BE a screen because there wouldn't BE a human race, and thus there wouldn't be a you. None of it ever would've happened because Ugg and his gang of pinheaded proto-hominids didn't bring the musk-ox home in time and everybody would have starved to death.

But it didn't happen that way: the supply of nuts and seeds and berries always held, mainly because the women were on their hands and knees for ten hours a day scrounging them up even under the most dreadful conditions.  A baby in one pouch, the trail mix in the other. Eventually this led to women realizing that they could bury these nuts and seeds and have the plants grow wherever they wanted. Surprise of the day: Women invented agriculture! Not Fred Flintstone, but Wilma. But you will never hear about this in the anthropology books, cuz they're too busy postulating that it was just Ugg hankering after some radicchio to go with his braised shoulder of ox.

You mean you haven't heard this theory before? That's cuzzada-fact that you were too busy following the herd.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

What? HWAET!

Oh Lor', here comes anodder one-o-dem lessons she loyks to gie' us which is mos'ly opinion. If you've been following this long choo-choo train of thought which started with Dennis Potter's landmark TV series The Singing Detective, I've been exploring English dialects, and now find myself at the mother lode: Beowulf, which scholars tell us (and they're lying) is the first great poetic work of the English language.

English language, you say? Just look at the cauldron of oatmeal you see below (way, way below: I somehow had a lot to say today). It's so garbled and Germanic, I only included a tiny snippet. The first "word", hwaet, which really should be followed by an exclamation mark (if such things existed then), was once demonstrated to me by an English professor. He walked into the classroom, stood at the front of the babble, and said, in a resonant English-teacher voice and with the greatest of authority:

"HWAET!"
The room stopped dead.

He pronounced it more like waat. Like two boards, long pieces of wood slapping together. It worked. This little syllable is remarkable, because it can mean so many different things:

"Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named (Beowulf)".

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale. . . "

"Ahhhhhhh, shaa-daaaaaaaaap!"

It means pay attention, listen. It means, as an informal speaker might say, "So." Or "Anyway." "Right." "As I was saying. . . " "Listen up." "OK then. . ." (except much more dramatic: how many of these Old English bro's really understood literature?).

I won't even try to get into Beowulf, it's too long and impenetrable even translated into "normal" English. I took a Chaucer course years ago and it was fascinating, mainly because the prof was fluent in Middle English and recited Canterbury Tales in a gusty, careening voice that somehow made it understandable. For all that, I guiltily bought a line-by-line translation, Middle English on left, "normal" on right, in order to pass the course.

As you can tell, I'm more fascinated than proficient in the study of language. Sometimes just the thought of it, the very thought of it, gives me the shivers. I've also made a semi-formal study of anthropology at university level, and one of the subjects that comes up repeatedly is the development of language. More so than tool-making or even planting crops, it marks the threshhold we crossed into becoming fully human.

Here's what I larr'nd. There were many hominid strains (humanoid, in anthro jargon), many of which died out under plague or warfare. There were so few people (or near-people) in the band, it wouldn't take much. Evolutionary dead ends. But how many of them developed language, and what did it sound like?

Why does every human culture invent language, and how does that come about?

What was the first word? The first sentence? What did early hominid/humanoids feel compelled to name? Did they name themselves first?

Early anthropology texts assumed language developed to aid men in communication during the hunt. No mention was ever made of the inconsequential task of bearing and raising children, not to mention gathering food for meat shortages (hunter-gatherers, remember?). And the meat shortages could go on for months, even longer. Would humanity even be here without all those nuts and berries?

And you know what it's like when a bunch of women get together, my God! The jabbering never stops.

Maybe language developed to break up fights between the men. Come on, you guys! Can't we all just get along? And Leonard, get away from Penny once and for all.

Somehow or other, and this is the part that eeries me out, some upright-standing apes, not much more evolved than gorillas or chimps except for their opposable thumbs, began to grunt and yell in a meaningful way. Maybe it started out with a call, a "hey! Look over there, Hairy-butt, an antelope." (Or was it hwaet?).

Maybe it was "no, I don't have stretch marks, but my boobs are getting huge," or "Get off me, Hairy, I have my period."

Or, "Hey, Gronkette, let's go out and save humanity by gathering a few nuts."

So slowly, or maybe not so slowly because I believe evolution happened in bursts (a theory known as "punctuated equilibrium"), language evolved, and it was probably different in each little pocket of humanity that was bumping along the rocky road of evolution. I don't believe anyone was thinking in terms of tablets or apps or whatever-the-fuck they are (I'm hopelessly behind here), just surviving day by day, trying to get their basic needs met.

It was a long, long way from grunts and gossip to hwaet, and it's been a longer way, it seems, to the murdered grammar and twisted syntax I've sometimes analyzed on this blog. The language is being shredded, devalued, and slowly but surely, school kids are less and less aware of the cultural deeps they come from. Who will teach them references to the Bible (too archaic) or Chaucer (too weird), or even J. Alfred Prufrock or Howl? It's all going away. In its place will be the lols, WTFs, tweets and twats, and other mindless verbal monstrosities that drove me away from Facebook, probably forever.

Oh OK then, I'll shut up, and here is a snippet from this Beowulf, if for no other reason than to show you how many different ways a few lines of literature can be interpreted. NOW do you see where human misunderstandings come from?

Beowulf, the great Anglo-Saxon epic poem by an unknown author, was composed some time between the 8th and the 11th centuries. The text exists in only one manuscript which dates from about the year 1000. The poem was largely unknown until the first printed versions of the poem were published at the end of the eighteenth century. Soon, short English translations of various parts of the poem began to appear, and within a few decades, in 1833, the first full-length English translation was published.

Since Beowulf is written in Old English, the earliest known form of the English language, one might assume that it would be easy to translate, at least easier than works printed in languages more substantially different from modern English. Yet looking at the many translations of Beowulf that are available in bookstores and libraries, it's immediately apparent that they have important differences in language, form, and style. This immediately raises the questions: Why are these translations so different? And how can I decide which, if any, is the "best" to read?

To begin answering these questions, let's look at the opening lines of the poem. The boxes below contain the original Old English version and my own literal (word-for-word) translation.

ORIGINAL Hwæt. We Gardena in gear-dagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

LITERAL What. We of the Spear-Danes in old days of the people-kings, power heard, how the princes brave deeds did.

Next, in the following boxes, look at how four modern translators have rendered these lines.

R. M. LIUZZA Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes, how those noble lords did lofty deeds.	BURTON RAFFEL Hear me! We've heard of Danish heroes, Ancient kings and the glory they cut For themselves, swinging mighty swords!
SEAMUS HEANEY So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of these princes' heroic campaigns.	MICHAEL ALEXANDER Attend! We have heard of the thriving of the throne of Denmark, how the folk-kings flourished in former days, how those royal athelings earned that glory.

You'll note that the differences begin with the translated versions of the opening word of the poem, Hwaet. This word, literally translated into modern English, means What, but its Old English meaning is somewhat different. In Old English, when stories were told orally by a storyteller, the word Hwaet was used to get the audience's attention at the beginning of the story in the way that a phrase like Listen to this! might be used today. Translators know that just using the word What wouldn't make much sense to modern readers, so the four translators above have chosen words which they hope will convey a similar meaning.

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225