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Etched with strange pictograms, lines and wedge-shaped markings, they
lay buried in the dusty desert earth of Iraq for thousands of years.
The clay tablets left by the ancient Sumerians around 5,000 years ago
provide what are thought to be the earliest written record of a long
dead people.
Although it took decades for archaeologists to
decipher the mysterious language preserved on the slabs, they have
provided glimpses of what life was like at the dawn of civilisation.
Similar
tablets and carved stones have been unearthed at the sites of other
mighty cultures that have long since vanished – from the hieroglyphics
of the Ancient Egyptians to the inscriptions of the Maya of Mesoamerica.
The stories and details they contain have stood the test of time,
surviving through the millennia to be unearthed and deciphered by modern
historians. But there are fears that future archaeologists may not
benefit from the same sort of immutable record when they come to search
for evidence of our own civilisation. We live in a digital world where
information is stored as lists of tiny electronic ones and zeros that
can be edited or even wiped clean by a few accidental strokes on a
keyboard. “Unfortunately we live in an age that will leave hardly any
written traces,” explained Martin Kunze.
Kunze’s solution is the Memory of Mankind
project, a collaboration between academics, universities, newspapers
and libraries to create a modern version of those first ancient Sumerian
tablets discovered in the desert.
Their plan is to gather together the
accumulated knowledge of our time and store it underground in the
caverns carved out in one of the oldest salt mines in the world, in the
mountains of Austria’s picturesque Salzkammergut. “The main point of
what we are doing is to store information in a way that it is readable
in the future. It is a backup of our knowledge, our history and our
stories,” says Kunze.
Creating a stone “time capsule” may seem archaic in the age where
most of our knowledge now floats around the internet cloud, but a slide
back into the technological dark ages is not beyond comprehension. The
advent of the internet has seen people have more information at their
fingertips than at any previous point in human history. Yet the huge
repositories of knowledge we have built up are perilously vulnerable.
Ever
more information is being stored digitally on remote computer servers
and hard disks. How many of us have hard copies of the photographs we
took on our last holiday, for example.
The situation gets more
serious when we consider scientific papers that are now solely published
online. Entire catalogues of video footage from news broadcasters,
television and film are stored digitally. Official documents and
government papers reside in digital libraries.
Yet a conference of
space weather scientists, together with officials from Nasa and the US
Government, earlier this year warned of the fragile nature of all this
digital information. Charged particles thrown out by the sun in a
powerful solar storm could trigger electromagnetic surges that could render our electronic devices useless and wipe data stored in memory drives.
The last major coronal mass ejection to hit the Earth, known as the Carrington event,
was in 1859 and is thought to have been the biggest in 500 years. It
blew telegraph systems all over the world and pylons threw sparks. In
the age of the internet, such an event would be catastrophic.
But
there are other threats too – malicious hackers or even careless
officials could tamper with these digital records or delete them
altogether. And what if we simply lose the ability to read this
information? Technology is changing so fast that media formats are
quickly rendered obsolete. Minidiscs, VHS and the humble floppy disk
have become outdated within decades.
Few computers even come with DVD drives now, while giving the current
generation of teenagers a floppy disk would leave them flummoxed. If
information is stored on one of these formats and the technology needed
to access it disappears completely, then it could be lost forever.
Hence the desire to keep a hard copy of our most important documents.
Unfortunately, even the more traditional forms of storing information
are also unlikely to keep information safe for more than a few
centuries. While we have some paper manuscripts that have survived for
hundreds of years – and in the case of papyrus scrolls, for thousands –
unless they are stored in the right conditions, most disintegrate to
dust after a couple of hundred years. Newspaper can decompose within six
weeks if it gets wet.
“It is very likely that in the long term
the only traces of our present activities will be global warming,
nuclear waste and Red Bull cans,” says Kunze. “The amount of data is
inflating rapidly, so the real challenge becomes selecting what we want
to keep for our grandchildren and those that come after them.”
Which
is why Kunze and his colleagues are instead looking further back in
time for inspiration, to those Sumerian stone tablets. The Memory of
Mankind team hopes to create an indelible record of our way of life by
imprinting official documents, details about our culture, scientific
papers, biographies, popular novels, news stories and even images onto
square ceramic plates measuring eight inches (20cm) across.
This
hinges on a special process that Kunze describes as “ceramic microfilm”,
which he says is the most durable data storage system in the world. The
flat ceramic plates are covered with a dark coating and a high energy
laser is then used to write into them.
Each of these tablets can
hold up to five million characters – about the same as a
four-hundred-page book. They are acid- and alkali-resistant and can
withstand temperatures of 1300C. A second type of tablet can carry
colour pictures and diagrams along with 50,000 characters before being
sealed with a transparent glaze.
The plates are then stacked inside ceramic boxes and tucked into the dark caverns of a salt mine in Hallstatt,
Austria. As a resting place for what could be described as the ultimate
time capsule, it is impressive. In the right light the walls still
glisten with the remnants of salt, which extracts moisture and
desiccates the air.
The salt itself has a Plasticine-like property that helps to seal
fractures and cracks, keeping the tomb watertight. Buried beneath
millions of tonnes of rock, the records will be able to survive for
millennia and perhaps even entire ice ages, Kunze believes.
In
some distant future after our own civilisation has vanished, they could
prove invaluable to any who find them. They could help resurrect
forgotten knowledge for cultures less advanced than our own, or provide a
wealth of historical information for more advanced civilisations to
ensure our own achievements, and our mistakes, can be learned from. But it could also have value in the shorter term too.
“We
are trying to create something that will not only be a collection of
information for a distant future, but it will also be a gift for our
grandchildren,” says Kunze. “Memory of Mankind can serve as a backup of
knowledge in case of an event like war, a pandemic or a meteorite that
throws us back centuries within two or three generations. A society can
lose skills and knowledge very quickly – in the 6th Century, Europe
largely lost the ability to read and write within three generations.”
Already the Memory of Mankind archive contains an eclectic glimpse of
our society. Among the information etched into the ceramic plates are
books summarising the history of individual countries around the world.
Towns and villages have also opted to include their own local histories.
A thousand of the world’s most important books – chosen by combining
published lists using an algorithm developed by the University of Vienna
– will be cut into the coating on the ceramic plates.
Museums are
including images of precious objects in their collections along with
descriptions of what we have learned about them. The Krumau Madonna – a
sculpture dating to the late 14th Century currently sitting in the
Museum of Art History in Vienna – is already there, along with paintings
by the Baroque artists Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.
There
are plates featuring pictures of fossils – dinosaurs, prehistoric fish
and extinct ammonites – alongside a description of what we know about
them. Even our current understanding of our own origins are included,
with pictures of one of the earliest examples of sculpture ever found –
the Venus of Willendorf.
Much of the material included on the tablets is in German, but there are tablets in English, French and other languages.
A
handful of celebrities have also found themselves immortalised in the
salt-lined vaults. Baywatch star and singer David Hasselhoff has a
particularly lengthy entry as does German singer Nena who had a hit with
99 Red Balloons in the 1980s. Nestled among them is a plate detailing
the story of Edward Snowden and his leak of classified material from the
US National Security Agency.
The University of Vienna has been
placing prize winning PhD dissertations and scientific papers onto the
tablets. Included in the archive are plates describing genetic
modification and bioengineering patents, explaining what today’s
scientists have achieved and how they managed it.
And alongside
research, everyday objects like washing machines, smartphones and
televisions are also being documented as a record of what life is like
today.
The plates also serve as a warning for future generations –
with sites of nuclear waste dumps pinpointed so future generations
might know to avoid them or to clean them up if they have the
technology. Newspapers have been asked to send their daily editorials to
provide a repository of opinions as well as facts.
In many ways,
the real problem is what not to include. “We probably have about 0.1% of
the antique literature yet in the modern world publishing is as easy as
posting something on the internet or sending a tweet,” explains Kunze.
“Publications about science, space flight and medicine – the things we
really spend money on – drown in the mass of data we produce. The Large
Hadron Collider produces something like 30 Petabytes of data a year, but
this is equal to just 0.003% of annual internet traffic. “A random
fragment of 0.1% of our present day data will result in a very distorted
view of our time.”
To tackle this, Kunze and his colleagues are organising a conference
in November next year to bring scientists, historians, archaeologists,
linguists and philosophers together to create a blueprint for selecting
content for the project. The team also hope to immortalise glimpses of
mundane, everyday life as members of the public are encouraged to create
tablets of their own. “We are saving cooking recipes and stories of
love and personal events,” adds Kunze. “On one plate, a little girl has
included three photographs of her confirmation and written a short bit
of text about it. They give a glimpse of everyday life that will be very
valuable.”
Preserved tweets Memory of
Mankind is not the only project to face the daunting task of preserving
humanity’s accumulated knowledge. Librarians around the world are also
looking at the knotty problem of how to save the information from the
modern age.
The University of California Los Angeles, for
instance, is archiving tweets related to major events and preserving
them in their own archives. “We are collecting tweets from Cairo on the
day of the January 25th revolution for example,” explained Todd
Grappone, associate university librarian. “We are then translating them
into multiple languages and saving them in file formats that are likely
to be robust for the future. We are only doing it digitally at the
moment as we have something like 1,000 cellphone videos from that event
alone, but the value of that is enormous.”
Another project, called the Human Document Project,
is aiming to record information on wafers of tungsten/silicon nitride.
Initially they have been etching them with dozens of tiny QR codes – a
type of two-dimensional barcode – which can be read using smartphones,
but they say the final disks will hold information written in a form
that can be read using a microscope.
Leon Abelmann, a researcher at Twente University in Enschede, the
Netherlands, is one of the driving forces behind the project. He says
that they are hoping to produce something that will be able to survive
for one million years and are now starting to collaborate with the
Memory of Mankind. “We would be really happy if we found information
left for us by an intelligence that has already been extinct for a
million years,” he said. “So we think future intelligent beings will be
too. The mere fact that we need to take a helicopter view of ourselves
will hopefully make us realise that the differences between us are
trivial.”
Buried under a mountain, it may seem unlikely that any
future generations would be able to find these tablets. For this reason,
Memory of Mankind will has engraved some small tokens with a map
pinpointing the archives’ location, which they will then bury at
strategic places around the world. Other tokens are being entrusted to
50 holders who will pass them onto the next generation.
To ensure
those who do find it can actually read what is in there, the Memory of
Mankind team has been creating their own Rosetta Stone – thousands of
images labelled with their names and meanings.
All of which gives a
hint at the ambition of what they are trying to do. The individuals who
unearth this gold-mine of knowledge could be very different from our
own. In a few thousand years civilisation may have advanced beyond our
reckoning or descended back to the dark ages. Perhaps it will not even
be humans who end up uncovering our memories. “We could be looking at
some other form of intelligent life,” adds Kunze.
We will never
know what those future archaeologists will make of our civilisation when
they wipe the dust away from the tablets in thousands of years’ time,
but we can hope that like the ancient Sumarians, we will not be
forgotten.
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a philosophical
movement that took place primarily in Europe and, later, in North
America, during the late 17thand early 18thcentury.
Its participants thought they were illuminating human intellect and
culture after the "dark" Middle Ages. Characteristics of the
Enlightenment include the rise of concepts such as reason, liberty and
the scientific method. Enlightenment philosophy was skeptical of
religion — especially the powerful Catholic Church — monarchies and
hereditary aristocracy. Enlightenment philosophy was influential in
ushering in the French and American revolutions and constitutions.
Historians disagree on precisely when the Enlightenment began, though
most agree that the Enlightenment's origins are tied to the Scientific
Revolution in the 1600s, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Enlightenment culminated in the French Revolution (1789-1799) and was followed by the Romantic period.
Major figures of the Enlightenment include Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas
Hobbes, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant,
Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson.
The Scientific Revolution
"The origins of the philosophical ideas that would lead to the
Enlightenment began during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648)," said Susan Abernethy,
a Colorado-based historian and writer. "This was a long and bloody
conflict fought mostly over religion and caused a great deal of social
disruption. Men started to question and criticize the concepts of
nationalism and warfare."
The Age of Exploration, in which Columbus "discovered" the New World,
"exposed men to other philosophies and cultures," said Abernethy. "And
finally, after centuries of exploitation and abuse by monarchies and the
church, regular citizens of Europe were exasperated and began to write
and speak up."
"In addition, the ideas of the Renaissance
led men to examine the tangible world more closely, which led to
greater scientific study," Abernethy said. This movement is known as the
Scientific Revolution.
The Scientific Revolution began with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus' heliocentric (sun-centered) universe theory in 1543. The many discoveries of the Scientific Revolution include Johann Kepler's three laws of planetary motion, Galileo Galilei's theories of motion and inertia and Tycho Brahe's new view of the stars and how they work, according to the history department at Indiana University Northwest. The Scientific Revolution ended with Isaac Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation and understanding of a mechanical universe in the late 1600s.
With each new scientific discovery, the accepted Judeo-Christian
understanding of the universe changed. Gradually, thinkers embraced the
Copernican-Newtonian paradigm. This paradigm holds that while the God
created the universe, science defined it, and it is through science that
humans can understand it, according to Indiana University Northwest.
Intellectuals began to see the universe as possibly infinite and full of
motion. This paradigm set the stage for Enlightenment philosophy and
the embrace of mankind's rational thoughts.
Philosophical concepts
"During the Enlightenment, there was more emphasis on
scientific methods, secularization of learning, religious tolerance,
universal education, individual liberty, reason, progress and the
separation of church and state," said Abernethy. Some key Enlightenment
concepts are: Reason: Enlightenment philosophers believed that
rational thought could lead to human improvement and was the most
legitimate mode of thinking. They saw the ability to reason as the most
significant and valuable human capacity, according to PBS.
Reason could help humans break free from ignorance and irrationality,
and learning to think reasonably could teach humans to act reasonably,
as well. Enlightenment philosophers saw reason as having an equalizing
effect on humanity, because everyone's thoughts and behavior would be
guided by reason.
Enlightenment intellectuals thought that all human endeavors should aim
to increase knowledge and reason, rather than elicit emotional
responses. They advocated for universal education and secularized
learning, said Abernethy.
Skepticism:Rather than being content with blind faith,
Enlightenment thinkers wanted proof that something was true. They
tested popular notions with scientifically controlled experiments and
personal experience, though skepticism of one's own senses was another
factor in Enlightenment thought, and caused complicated philosophical
conundrums, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Enlightenment intellectuals were skeptical of the divine right of kings
and monarchies in general, scientific claims about the natural world,
the nature of reality and religious doctrine. "Theologians sought to
reform their faith during the Enlightenment while maintaining a true
faith in God," said Abernethy. The deist movement became popular during
the Enlightenment. Deism holds that God exists but does not intervene on
Earth. The universe proceeds according to natural, scientifically based
laws. Several of America's Founding Fathers were deists, including
Thomas Jefferson.
Religious tolerance:Though skeptical of religious
institutions, many Enlightenment thinkers believed that people should be
free to worship as they wished. "The intellectuals of the Enlightenment
vigorously sought to restrict the political power of organized religion
in an effort to curtail the outbreak of intolerant religious wars,"
said Abernethy.
Liberty:The Enlightenment tolerance of religion is
related to the movement's emphasis on personal liberty. This concept
holds that God and/or nature gave all humans basic rights and humans
should be free to act without oppressive restriction. "These
philosophers emphasized that government had no authority over an
individual's conscience," Abernethy explained. "Individuals had rights,
all men were equal and legitimate political power is based on the
consent of the people and is obligated to be representative of the
people's will."
Progress:The centuries before the Enlightenment were
characterized by rapid changes, from the discoveries of the Scientific
Revolution to the exploration of the world and the advancement in art
technique during the Renaissance. Largely because of this, Enlightenment
thinkers believed that the human condition was improving over time.
Philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith, both Scotsmen, tied
Enlightenment ideals to politics, economic policies and more, according
to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Empiricism vs. rationalism:Empiricism is associated
with British Enlightenment philosophers, including John Locke, George
Berkeley and Hume. Empiricists argued that all human knowledge comes
through the senses and sensory experiences. Rationalists, who lived
primarily in continental Europe, argued that senses were untrustworthy
and knowledge came from the mind, through conceiving of or intuiting
ideas, according to Loyola University New Orleans.
Toward the end of the period, philosophers began to consider exactly
what they meant by the term "enlightenment." German philosopher Immanuel
Kant offered this definition in his essay "What Is Enlightenment?":
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage [many
interpret nonage as "immaturity"]. Nonage is the inability to use one's
own understanding without another's guidance … Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
Major figures
Abernethy discussed the following men who made significant contributions to the Enlightenment:
John Comenius (1592-1670) was a Czech intellectual who
espoused universal education and practical instruction. He was
instrumental in introducing pictorial textbooks written in the
vernacular of the student rather than Latin. He advocated for lifelong
learning and the development of logical thinking as opposed to
memorization by rote. He wanted education to be given to women and
impoverished children.
The Dutchman Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was a prodigious
intellectual who laid the foundation for international law based on the
concept of natural law. He was one of the pioneers in putting forth the
idea of a society of states governed not by force and warfare but by
laws and mutual agreement to enforce those laws. He also espoused the
idea of religious tolerance.
Englishmen who were influential in the Enlightenment include Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke
(1632-1704). Hobbes championed absolutism for the sovereign but he
believed in the right of the individual and the equality of all men. He
stated that political communities should be based on a "social contract"
meaning individuals consent either explicitly or tacitly to surrender
some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler (or to
the decision of the majority) in exchange for the protection of their
remaining rights. Locke promoted the opposite type of government, which
was a representative government.
The French Philosophes (philosophers) took the Enlightenment to new heights. Charles-Louis de Secondat, better known as the Baron de Montesquieu
(1689-1755), developed the work of John Locke and espoused the concept
of the separation of power by creating divisions in government.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), better known asVoltaire,
was a prolific writer who used satire and criticism to incite social
and political change. He wrote attacks on the Catholic Church and
exposed injustices. He promoted the concepts of freedom of religion,
freedom of expression and the separation of church and state. His
writings were popular and reached many readers.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778)
wrote the book "The Social Contract," in which he championed for a form
of government based on small, direct democracy, which openly signifies
the will of the population.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was not as interested in
inciting revolution but wanted to collect and disseminate Enlightenment
knowledge. He embarked on a mammoth project to create the
"Encyclopaedia, or a Systemic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and
Crafts." Many writers contributed to the 35-volume work, which as edited
by Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The "Encyclopaedia" would
incorporate all of the world's knowledge and spread it to other
countries all over the world.
David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher who gained fame as an essayist, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
He was a highly influential empiricist who argued that humans were a
bundle of sensations with no true selves (this is called the Bundle
Theory) and that ethics were based on emotion rather than moral
principles.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher
central to the Enlightenment. He synthesized rationalism and empiricism
through his theories about human autonomy and set the stage for later
philosophical movements, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Adam Smith (1723-1790), a close friend of Hume, was a
Scottish philosopher and economist most famous for his theory of the
"invisible hand of the market," according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His book "The Wealth of Nations" laid the foundation for free market economics.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)was an English mathematician
and physicist who laid the foundation for classical mechanics and
calculus. Newton developed the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which led to improvements in understanding the Copernican heliocentric universe, according to the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826),an American Founding
Father, was heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy and spent
several years in France. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, which
stressed Enlightenment ideas such as liberty, fundamental human rights
and equality (though not for slaves), according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
Enlightenment approach to science
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution "saw a vast expansion
in our knowledge about the world, and in the accuracy of this
knowledge," said UK-based historian and writer Robert Wilde. "Part of
this was down to the development of what we would consider modern
scientific method," Though others had posited variations on the scientific method, Newton laid the groundwork for method we know today, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Thanks to increased literacy and the falling cost of books, the means
of spreading results of science experiments improved, as did the
willingness of thinkers and scientists to discuss them and adopt them,
Wilde told Live Science. "I do want to mention the proto-scientists such
as Gregory of Tours and other who came before: people had never stopped
trying to understand the world, it was just that the successful
development of modern science occurred now," he said.
How the Enlightenment changed the world
"It cannot be stressed enough how instrumental the Enlightenment ideas
were in changing history and society around the globe," said Abernethy.
We still hold many Enlightenment ideals dear. Some of the scientific
theories have evolved, but many remain as their Enlightenment authors
wrote them. The concepts of liberty, reason and equality influenced
early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft [mother of Mary Shelley, author of
"Frankenstein"], American abolitionist Frederick Douglass and other
seminal leaders.
"The ideas of religious tolerance and the separation of church and
state did indeed lead to a reduction in wars due to religious
differences," said Abernethy. As the power of the church waned,
societies like the Freemasons and the Illuminati gained traction.
Literary salons and coffeehouses emerged as new places to socialize and
discuss ideas. Education for children became more widespread, and more
universities were founded. Literacy rates increased dramatically, and
public libraries and museums were introduced.
"The concepts of the Enlightenment led to many revolutions, which had a
tremendous effect on changing history and society," said Abernethy. "In
1688, English Protestants were instrumental in overthrowing the
Catholic monarch James II and installing the Protestant monarchs William
and Mary. Afterwards, the English Parliament ratified a new Bill of
Rights granting more personal freedoms for Englishmen."
The most famous Enlightenment-influenced revolutions were the French and American.
The American Revolution
"The Founding Fathers adopted many of the ideas of the Enlightenment
philosophers in writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights," said
Abernethy. They gave less power to the government and more power to the
people. She added that they also established universal education in
America.
[Related: What Is Democracy? and What Is Freedom?]
The French Revolution
The French Revolution took the English coup a step further and
eliminated monarchy altogether. King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie
Antoinette, were beheaded and a Republican form of government was
established.
"There's a debate about whether the Enlightenment affected society, or
whether a society changing through different means affected the
Enlightenment," said Wilde. "Either way, the ideas of Enlightenment …
influenced a French middle class to want a voice in government. In 1789,
[this desire] produced a Third Estate, which broke away from royal
rule, and triggered the French Revolution."
Though Enlightenment philosophy emphasized seemingly positive ideals
like liberty and tolerance, Wilde noted that it could be taken to
extremes. "It's important to stress that the Enlightenment thinkers
weren't exactly sticking to the ideals of others … and the extremes of
Enlightenment thought, such as a rejection of the church, have been
blamed for the terror in the revolution." The brutality of the
revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars demonstrate the limits of
attempting to remake society along purely rational lines. By Jessica Szalay
(The painting above, by John Trumbull, depicts the moment on June 28, 1776,
when the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was presented to
the Second Continental Congress. The document incorporated many
Enlightenment ideas.)
1) Praise,
flattery, exaggerated manners and fine, high-sounding words were no
part of Lakota politeness. Excessive manners were put down as insincere,
and the constant talker was considered rude and thoughtless.
Conversation was never begun at once, or in a hurried manner.
2) Children
were taught that true politeness was to be defined in actions rather
than in words. They were never allowed to pass between the fire and the
older person or a visitor, to speak while others were speaking, or to
make fun of a crippled or disfigured person. If a child thoughtlessly
tried to do so, a parent, in a quiet voice, immediately set him right.
3) Silence
was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence
before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regardful
of the rule that ‘thought comes before speech.’…and in the midst of
sorrow, sickness, death or misfortune of any kind, and in the presence
of the notable and great, silence was the mark of respect… strict
observance of this tenet of good behavior was the reason, no doubt, for
his being given the false characterization by the white man of being a
stoic. He has been judged to be dumb, stupid, indifferent, and
unfeeling.
4)
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills,
the winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’. Only to the white
man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was it ‘infested’ with
‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was
bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great
Mystery.
5) Kinship
with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active
principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly
feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of
the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true
brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
6) This
concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota
an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of
living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all
things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.
7) It
was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to
remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth… the
old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and
away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground
is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see
more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to
other lives about him.
8)
Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in
form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and
its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and
animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth.
We learned to do what only the student of nature learns, and that was to
feel beauty. We never railed at the storms, the furious winds, and the
biting frosts and snows. To do so intensified human futility, so
whatever came we adjusted ourselves, by more effort and energy if
necessary, but without complaint.
9) …the
old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man’s heart, away from nature,
becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things
soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children
close to nature’s softening influence.
10) Civilization has been thrust upon me… and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.
