T. Peter Park
Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:26:29 -0700
Dear all,
In his June 2005 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY article "Hominids, Hairy Hominoids,
and the Science of Humanity," discussing the Flores Island "hobbits,"
University of Alberta anthropologist Gregory Forth raises an important
point.
In his section on "Spirits, hominoids, and hobbits." Forth points out
that Flores Island native traditions of the "ebu gogo," thought by some
writers to indicate a relict _Homo floresiensis_ population surviving
into recent times, include fantastic and mythical traits found among
legendary and mythical creatures the world over. These include pendulous
female breasts so long that they can be thrown over the shoulders--a
trait he claims is shared by the "wildman" of mediaeval European art and
literature, the Himalayan "yeti," the North American "sasquatch" or
"bigfoot," and the Chinese wildman--and a reputed proclivity to swallow
things whole, including rice mortars, puppy dogs, and piglets. It is
thus "clear" to Forth that the "ebu gogo" of Flores folklore "resembles
characters that are generally considered to belong to myth and fantasy."
However, he immediately adds, "social anthropologists have always been
too much inclined to dismiss folk categories like _ebu gogo_ simply as
products of the imagination, or 'spiritual beings.'" Indeed, he
confesses, he himself had been guilty of that, in his own earlier
treatment of the "ebu gogo" in a book on "spirit classification" among
the Nage tribesfolk of Flores (Gregory Forth, _Beneath the Volcano:
Religion, Cosmology, and Spririt Classification Among the Nage of
Eastern Indonesia_[Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998])
This "inclination to regard the seemingly fantastic images of
non-Westerners as 'spiritual,'"Forth finds, "largely reflects the
Durkheimian legacy." In it, "spiritual things are to be explained as
symbolic refractions of social categories and relationships rather than
as entities grounded in empirical realities external to society." Forth
refers here to the eminent French sociologist and anthropologist Émile
Durkheim (1858-1917), who profoundly influenced 20th century sociology
and cultural anthropology. In _Les Formes élémentaires de la vie
religieuse_ (1912; _The Elementary Forms of Religious Life_. 1915),
dealing with the Australian Aboriginal totemic system, Durkheim
interpreted religious and mythical beliefs, including gods, spirits,
demons, and "monsters," as symbolic projections onto the non-human
cosmos of the structure and relationships of a given society. As a
religious non-believer and scientific positvist, Durkheim took it for
granted that "of course" gods, spiririts, ghosts, angels, demons,
fairies, gnomes, elves, dragons, and monsters don't "really" exist "out
there" or could possibly be based on anything else than symbolic
projections of human social relationships and categories. As Forth puts
it, it never occurred to Durkheim or most of his followers to consider
if "spiritual things" or "the seemingly fantastic images of
non-Westerners" might perhaps sometimes be "entities grounded in
empirical realities external to society." Presumably, Durkheim himself
had about zero interest in what we would now call "cryptozoology"! :-)
While Forth "certainly" sees "problems in in interpreting _ebu gogo_ as
directly reflecting local memories of _Homo floresiensis_," he feels
that "whatever the derivation of the Nage representation," the "_ebu
gogo_ really do seem different from the various categories of spirits
that [the] Nage describe with equal credulity." The Nage themselves
"distinguish _ebu gogo_ from 'spirits' (a general category contextually
designated as _nitu_)," and they "do so explicitly with reference to the
hairy creature's lack of extraordinary powers--for example, the ability
to disappear, change shape, transform into animals and so on." To
"ignore this local distinction" made by the Nage themselves, and "simply
assume that _ebu gogo_ are spirits after all," would be to "follow a
long-standing anthropological practice" that is "consistent with
another, equally controvertible view," that "members of small-scale,
non-Western societies are incapable of distinguishing empirical
categories, the objects of ordinary intuition, from fantastic images
dictated by religious tradition." In other words, he implies, most
anthropologists tacitly assume that non-Westerners are too dumb,
backward, irrational, or credulous to distinguish fantasy and reality.
"Yet it may not be members of small-scale societies," he suggests, "so
much as anthropologists who have been guilty of this lack of
discrimination." So-called "spiritual beings," Forth believes, are
"often grounded in empirical things, including experience of natural
species." However, this "does not mean that people recognizing
zoologically derived spirits" like possibly the _ebu gogo_ "cannot
distinguish between ordinary animals and their spiritual transformation."
Thus. speculations about _ebu gogo_ as a folkloric representation of
_Homo floresiensis_ "refocus anthropological attention on an enduring
analytical category" of anthropologists. On the one hand, "spiritual
being" has "often been employed uncritically (including as a catch-all
for anything that does not accord with the current state of Western
scientific knowledge)"--including perhaps "native" reports of the
subject-matters of still-controversial "maverick" or "borderline"
sciences like parapsychology, cryptozoology, and ufology. On the other
hand, Forth would "not argue that the catefory lacks validity." On the
contrary, he thinks it is "more useful than has sometimes been
supposed," designating "a class that is an identifiable psychological
property of societies worldwide"--in other words, most human groups _DO_
have beliefs and myths about "spiritual beings" that might be
explainable in Durkheimian terms as symbolic projections of social
categories. At the same time, however, Forth feels, "how folk
categories like _ebu gogo_ and scientific categories like _Homo
floresiensis_ might be connected is a complex question to which
anthropologists have paid insufficient attention."
Best regards,
T. Peter
T. Peter Park wrote:
>
> ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 21 NO 3, JUNE 2005, pp. 13-17
>
>
> Hominids, hairy hominoids and the science of humanity
>
> by GREGORY FORTH
>
>
> Gregory Forth is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
> University of Alberta. Since 1984 he has conducted ethnographic
> research on the Indonesian island of Flores, and on the basis of this
> and previous work on the neighbouring island of Sumba, has published
> several books and numerous articles. Recent titles include Dualism and
> hierarchy (Oxford University Press, 2001) and Nage birds (Routledge,
> 2004). Gregory Forth is currently also McCalla Research Professor at
> the University of Alberta and is preparing a book project dealing with
> representations of 'wildmen' in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. His
> email is [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
>
> Anthropology - or at least one kind of anthropology - has been in the
> headlines for the last several months. In late October,
> palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists working on the eastern
> Indonesian island of Flores announced the remarkable discovery of a
> new species of the genus Homo, a new kind of human dubbed Homo
> floresiensis. Found at Liang Bua, a site in the western Flores
> district of Manggarai, the type specimen is a 30-year-old female who
> died some 18,000 years ago, while remains of other individuals are as
> recent as 13,000 years ago.1 As both dates are well within the period
> in which Homo sapiens has been established in the Indonesian islands,
> it is extremely likely that 'Flores man' lived in close proximity to
> (and in all probability interacted with) modern humans. This fact
> alone is quite amazing, for it indicates that,
> within geologically very recent times, two distinct species of humans
> were contemporary in at least one part of the world - thus furthering
> the view that human evolution is by no means unilinear, and that
> having two or more species of the genus alive at the same time may be
> the norm.2
>
> <SNIP> <SNIP> <SNIP>
>
> Referring to what he was told by Florinese villagers, Roberts is
> quoted as stating that the 'only inconsistency with the archaeological
> evidence [concerning Homo floresiensis]' is the idea that ebu gogo did
> not use stone tools (Gee 2004). Be that as it may, the most prominent
> feature of numerous Nage accounts I have recorded is the notion that
> female ebu gogo possessed pendulous breasts, so long that they could
> throw them over their shoulders.7 The dimensions of female breasts is,
> unfortunately, one of many things that cannot be gauged from
> palaeontological evidence. (Another is whether a specimen was covered
> in hair.) At the same time, the breasts are among several features
> that the Nage representation shares with legendary creatures the world
> over, including the wildman of European mediaeval art and literature
> (Bernheimer 1952) and such hominoidal crypto-species as the Himalaan
> 'yeti', the 'sasquatch' or 'bigfoot' of northwestern North America
> (Napier 1972), and the wildman of China (Zhou 1982).
>
> Spirits, hominoids and hobbits
>
> However much ebu gogo might recall Homo floresiensis (or vice versa),
> it is therefore clear that the first figure equally resembles
> characters that are generally considered to belong to myth and
> fantasy. (Another fantastic attribute of ebu gogo is their reputed
> proclivity to swallow things whole, including rice mortars, puppy dogs
> and piglets.) But if some scientific commentators have perhaps been
> too quick to link the skeletal remains at Liang Bua with the Nage
> stories, social anthropologists have always been too much inclined to
> dismiss folk categories like ebu gogo simply as products of the
> imagination, or as 'spiritual beings'. Indeed, I myself may be so
> accused, insofar as my earlier treatment of ebu gogo is included in a
> book on 'spirit classification' (Forth 1998). This inclination to
> regard the seemingly fantastic images of non-Westerners as 'spiritual'
> largely reflects the Durkheimian legacy, whereby spiritual things are
> to be explained as symbolic refractions of social categories and
> relationships rather than as entities grounded in empirical realities
> external to society. Certainly there are problems in interpreting ebu
> gogo as directly reflecting local memories of Homo floresiensis. Yet
> whatever the derivation of the Nage representation, ebu gogo really do
> seem different from the various categories of spirits that Nage
> describe with equal credulity - and to that extent, I believe the
> possibility advertised by Roberts should be taken seriously. As noted,
> Nage themselves distinguish ebu gogo from 'spirits' (a general
> category contextually designated as nitu), and they do so explicitly
> with reference to the hairy creature's lack of extraordinary powers -
> for example, the ability to disappear, change shape, transform into
> animals and so on.
>
> To ignore this local distinction, and simply assume that ebu gogo are
> only spirits after all, would be to follow a long-standing
> anthropological practice that is consistent with another, equally
> controvertible view, namely, that members of small-scale, non-Western
> societies are incapable of distinguishing empirical categories, the
> objects of ordinary intuition, from fantastic images dictated by
> religious tradition. Yet it may not be members of small-scale
> societies so much as anthropologists who have been guilty of this lack
> of discrimination. 'Spiritual beings' are, indeed, often grounded in
> empirical things, including experience of natural species. But this
> does not mean that people recognizing zoologically derived spirits
> cannot distinguish between ordinary animals and their spiritual
> transformations.
>
> In a sense, then, recent musings about ebu gogo as a latter-day
> representation of Homo floresiensis refocus anthropological attention
> on an enduring analytical category. Although 'spiritual being' has
> often been employed uncritically (including as a catch-all for
> anything that does not accord with the current state of Western
> scientific knowledge), I do not argue that the category lacks
> validity. On the contrary, I think it is more useful than has
> sometimes been supposed, designating a class that is an identifiable
> psychological property of societies worldwide.8 At the same time, how
> folk categories like ebu gogo and scientific categories like Homo
> floresiensis might be connected is a complex question to which
> anthropologists have paid insufficient attention. Even if ebu gogo
> were empirical beings surviving until about 200 years ago as the Nage
> aver, this does not necessarily mean that these were descendants of
> the sub-fossil. They might, for example, have been a former,
> phenotypically distinct population of Homo sapiens, or a grossly
> exaggerated representation of a no longer identifiable indigenous
> group that preceded Nage in their present territories. And even if
> there were a connection with Homo floresiensis, the apparently
> fantastic features (e.g. the pendulous breasts) would still make the
> local representation something different from the actual hominid. On
> the other hand, if it could be shown that categories like ebu gogo
> substantially reflect creatures that became extinct very much longer
> ago, then this would obviously have implications for the notion of
> cultural or 'folk' memory, in relation to the study of legend and myth
> in general.
>
<SNIP> <SNIP>
<SNIP>
>
> 7. In fact, another inconsistency would appear to be the pot belly,
> since this is
> symptomatic of plant-eating, whereas the archaeological interpretation
> suggests Homo
> floresiensis was substantially engaged in hunting. Also, while Roberts
> says ebu gogo
> were 'about a metre tall', most Nage describe the creatures as between
> one and 1.25 metres,
> and some claim their height did not differ significantly from that of
> modern Florinese
> (who are, however, considerably shorter than most Europeans).
> 8. 'Spirit' or 'spiritual being' can be defined as a polythetic class,
> the most common criteria of which include a fundamentally human
> psyche, an ability to assume human or animal form,
> the ability to change shape, and the power to become invisible or
> separate from any
> corporeal form or limitation.
>
> <SNIP> <SNIP>
> <SNIP>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythfolk/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/