Human Nature?
Human beings create myths and religious narratives to legitimize their existence, often at the price of other human beings. It's an old story and an ongoing one. Migration in the past as now is necessary due to current somewhat deplorable and unsatisfactory conditions for which we seek something better. It is only a matter of time before we demand what we want to be ours and ours alone, and history has shown us that we take it, by force if necessary. And this is not just a thing of the past.
Human beings create myths and religious narratives to legitimize their existence, often at the price of other human beings. It's an old story and an ongoing one. Migration in the past as now is necessary due to current somewhat deplorable and unsatisfactory conditions for which we seek something better. It is only a matter of time before we demand what we want to be ours and ours alone, and history has shown us that we take it, by force if necessary. And this is not just a thing of the past.
Since time immemorial human groups have interacted with one another. Geography and climate plays an important role in the decision any group of humans will make as to whether they will settle down in a land, much as we choose where we would like to live in our retirement years. Various factors will be taken into account in making a decision to move into a new region. Once we make up our minds, we move into our new surroundings and eventually, these surroundings become our new abode, our very identity. The culture of the people we find in this new abode will affect us, for sure, as we will have an effect on these people who were here before us. We will find new friends and sometimes, make a few new enemies. Nothing is worse than having a lousy neighbor. In our own time though, when we move into a new neighborhood, we have the ability to ignore that neighbor and live our lives as we wish. But they will affect us as we will effect them.
All through human history immigration of peoples from one region into another has seen some rather similar patterns and manifested similar consequences and results. One group moves into a region by following herds of wild animals which are game for hunting, and sooner or later come upon a people who are inhabiting that region and were already there. While the newcomers may hunt and take a few animals, they may even work out a coexistence that can be beneficial to both they and the host tribe. But hungry stomachs speak louder than gestures of coexistence, and soon more people from the migrant group flock to the game rich area, and more game needs to be taken for the many more numbers of immigrants who seek a new and better life. Soon, inevitably a quarrel breaks out and then a tribal war which will see the destruction of one of the groups of people. Usually, a settled people do not have the need to procreate as vagrants do. They have caves or huts to live in, and have learned to store berries and in some instances wild grains. They are happy where they are and proud of the life they built for themselves, and look down somewhat on the migrants who were only a few yesterday but now have multiplied ten fold in numbers, but when they see their lifestyle threatened they become less hospitable, and they resist. The migrants are more numerous and have been hardened by living in the elements and expect little form everyday existence. In effect, they have nothing to lose if they are killed in the long run trying to settle down in their newly found region rich with game. So, they fight hard and kill off the settled people, and make the land their own.
The now victorious newcomers intermarry with the few surviving captives and create a new culture. The stories that will be told about the exploits of how the land was settled by this once migrant tribe will be compiled and recorded by the victors as they wish it to be remembered. What has been destroyed will be, for the most part, lost in the newly compiled narrative. Sitting around the central fire at night the tribal bards, soothsayers and shamans reconfirm for the young the right of those present to rule the land along with support from the tribal gods, demons and magical spirits as well as the powers of nature. The old reality vanishes. What was fact becomes vague legend or a story, as even some tales become forbidden to recite.
This has been the way of mankind since at least we came down from the trees and walked on two legs. In fact it may be the nature of our very existence itself. Animals are territorial and fight each other for that territory. We are no different. We communicate our history just as dogs, wolves, baboons and bears define territorial domains by leaving their scent on a tree stump or a rock. This is me, this is our pack, this is what we are and you need to know this as you enter our turf. In this way, the younger animals know the history of their group, who did what and when. A record is kept, and none dare question that record. So it is with humans who have developed sophisticated language and the ability to artfully pass on that important information of the tribal nation. Mankind will later create religion to sanctify the conquests, the subjugation and even slaughter of what any given tribe found before they came upon a settled people living in any given land, who would unwillingly become their victims.
The Cro Magnons fell upon the Neanderthals. At first they coexisted, then trouble broke out and soon, an all out war saw the eventual demise of the neanderthal people the Cro Magnons found in the lands they came to. Hundreds, even thousands of unrecorded immigrations of peoples have occurred over the millennia as one group of humans moved into another, displaced or slaughtered the people they found there, intermarried with the survivors and created a new culture with a new narrative that would be protected by the shamans, the soothsayers and the bards. Another rule of history: out of the negativity of the conflict comes something usually a bit better than what was here before. New possibilities become possible. Thus, the story of one human migration upon a settled people coupled with eventual conflict begets a new culture and new ideas and possibilities that didn't exist before. No one people create something of future benefit all by themselves. Ideas are sparked and inspired from elsewhere, from conflicts and human suffering which bring forth solutions.
The Aryans fell upon the Dravidians, the Hebrews upon the various Canaanite people they found in their 'Promised Land' such as the Amalikites and the Philistines, who fell upon the people living in their land before them. The Aztecs, like the ancient Hebrews, would tell the story of their wanderings in the deserts of Mexico for many years, looking for the spot promised them by the Sun god to be their homeland. They were to find an eagle clutching a snake in it's talons, sitting upon a cactus. When they found this sign they were to make that land their own, a promised land if you will. They conquered the region of the valley of Mexico and set out to subdue the tribes and nations around them. Eager for a settled life themselves after enduring the discipline of hard living and a migratory nomadic existence, they conquered and defeated the tribes around them. Then they preserved their history as they wanted to preserve it, and this history was sanctioned and enshrined in the annals of their religion, the cult of the Sun god. It is certain that the history and tales of the conquered people were adopted and altered to suit the victors, or in many cases almost forgotten completely. Centuries would pass before another migrant, conquering people, the Spaniards of Europe, came and repeated the whole process. Europeans from the British Isles would do the same in North America. What is left of the native culture is but a fragment of what was. The newcomers would tell their children that nothing was there of consequence in the continent of the New World before the arrival of their white and civilized Christian ancestors, when in fact there were large agricultural communities which held to a spirituality that could not ever pollute the land or wipe out whole species of animals or primeval forests. It was this native, nature worshipping spirituality which greeted the newcomers with food and hospitality, only to be answered with not thanks but genocide, war, conquest and the denigration of their culture and religion. What was lost is truly a pity, but is a part of the process, unfortunate as it may seem, of the migration of peoples across time and space, repeated in every and generation. A result of such invasions is mass exodus, the flight of refugees and survivors seeking protection, these putting a strain on other settled societies. This exodus manifests it's own set of problems, hardships and human reactions, sometimes repeating the initial migration in a ripple effect across the continent. This happened in Africa as well. The Ashanti founded an empire and conquered other lands and peoples, taking slaves and causing other nations to migrate. The European and Arab invasions caused various ethnicities to move, and they infringed on other's lands. The cycle can still be seen quite clearly and violently in modern Africa as ethnic groups vie for fertile land and water in nations created and drawn up on the desks of politicians and statesmen living in London, Paris or Brussels.
We have already used the example of the Aryans and the Dravidians. The historian Will Durant made the observation that one can see ongoing patterns in history. The north he said, produces warriors and statesmen, while the south produces the poets and the saints. He also noted the constant clash of nomadic peoples and those who lived in urban centers. The Old Testament tells of the 'walled city of Jericho' and the frustration of Joshua's army in their inability to breach these walls, but their deity shakes and rattles these walls and they crumble into dust. Very often in history, the founders of would-be great empires began with nomadic peoples, such as the Ottomans who were originally a wandering tribe of horsemen seeking grazing land for their livestock. The Normans were descended from Viking raiders and wanderers who settled in northern France, adopted Christianity and transformed themselves into a new entity in medieval history. But Durant's point about the north and south producing variants in personality is a true regarding the study and analysis of history; the Dorians fell upon the Minoans, the Latins upon the Etruscans and other Italic peoples. The mighty Roman empire they founded crushed Carthage then went on to conquer and dominate the Mediterranean then in turn conquered by the Germans. The Persians of Cyrus fell upon the Semites, the Mongols upon the Chinese, the Slavs in the era of late antiquity pushed south into the Balkans, replacing ancient Illyro/Thracian languages with Slavic speech while the English...dominated the world. The conquerors get sucked up into the gene pool of the conquered, mix and blend with it and create a novel culture and civilization. In every conquest there is a victor and a vanquished. The former tells the tale of that conquest while the latter, beaten and forced to succumb to the will of the conqueror, does what it can to keep its cultural memory alive. Many stories and doctrines held as legitimate earlier were either corrupted or forcibly silenced. It is the task of the historian and the students of mythology and religion to uncover what may have existed before, searching for those stories which were lost because they clashed with the political and cultural entity that ruled over any formerly thriving nation.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Nag Hamadi texts in Egypt reveal long lost secrets of various Jewish and Christian sects of the ancient world. Gnostics were persecuted by the Romans and by the later centralized Christian church. What became standard 'Gospel' and dogma for the church was quite different from what was found in these ancient scriptures. In Qumran there is evidence that the scrolls were hidden by the Essenes, one of the many groups who lived and practiced in the region, indicating that they were secret accounts that had to be hidden from the mainstream. These scrolls remained hidden for nearly 2,000 years, uncovered in a day when research need not fear the retribution of greedy kings and emperors needing to defend their own legitimized mythology.
These examples explain why it is important to see the various religious texts and historical data through a discerning lens. Some, for example, see Islam today as a troubled and distinct religion, having no relation to Judaism or Christianity. Yet historical evidence found in the study of some of the chapters in the Quran tells us about stories that were lost in Jewish or Christian tradition. These stories survived in the deserts of Arabia to be complied later by the eventual migrating victors, the Arabs, into a book known as the Quran which they themselves claimed to be of divine origin. Some of the more fervent Christian critics of Islam mistakenly point out time and again that the stories in the Quran that are of Christian or Biblical origin were stories which Mohammed twisted and turned for his own benefit, thus the reason why they differ from those stories in the Bible. This is certainly a possibility. However, if we remember the golden rule of the study of human history, the old stories and narrations become the property of the new conquerors. The Christian tales in the Quran are stories that were partially saved by peoples and persecuted groups who migrated south into Arabia to flee and hide from persecution. They differ from the accepted, standard Christian or Jewish tales because they were told by persons belonging to religions who indeed did hold to alternate views. Groups such as the Arrian Christians and the Elcasites who denied or questioned the crucifixion believed Jesus would 'become' God rather than be born as the incarnation of God; the complete opposite of the accepted Nicean view of Christianity...thrived in the remote corners of Arabia where the power of the church and government of Rome could not harm them. Their teachings were preserved in the verses of the Quran, which accepts Jesus as being born miraculously to a virgin and is indeed recognized as the logos ie: word of God, yet denies his divinity or his crucifixion. In essence, Muslims hold the Arrian and the Elcasite belief rather than the traditionally held mainstream view which was propagated by Paul of Tarsus. The influence of the Arrians is clear here. Mohammed, or whoever compiled the Quran, expressed a commonly held view popular in the Arabia of the 7th century, a view that supported and encouraged a united coalition of Arabian tribes which went on to build an empire. What was truth and accepted to one group of Christians certainly was not truth for another at the time. The Arrians are gone now,yet we can discover their teachings hidden in the verses of a book which was the accepted holy scripture for a major world religion. What was left of the previous ancient Meccan Arabian paganism and what was left behind after the conversion of the masses to Islam is also a topic for discussion, research and study, certainly necessary in our own turbulent era.
Was it a bull, or was this an innocent Abel, slain by a ruthless Cain?
Recorded for posterity by the tribal artist commissioned by the tribal chief
To record for eternity a possible mishap, a hunting accident...
Or, was it murder?
Set there grimly, upon a cave wall in France, or in the Sahara, etched eons ago
To become the accepted tale, the verse of truth
For a tribe, a nation, a people...
We shall never know
Great civilizations rise and fall
An ongoing process...the return of Winter, the coming of Spring
Amid the ruins of a destroyed city
Ravaged women and children taken as slaves by the conqueror
Their tears and weeping flood the bloodied streets filled with the bodies of their menfolk
Slain in heaps upon the ground, after defending bravely what was rightfully theirs
A memory of what was, what they once had
Is all that is left of their past
Their stories will be passed on, but corrupted...incognito
To become a new tale, a verse in a new holy scripture or history lesson
Under the whip and the lash, widowed mothers and orphaned children with new fathers
Will preserve of the past what they can
And hide it, save it for another day
So that curious generations seeking the truth
Will put themselves in the place of those who went before us
And attempt to live their lives as they lived them
Free from prejudice, sans opinionated bigotry
So that we too will know how to do it
When we are conquered, our culture destroyed
The dead lay in heaps as our women and children weep
And we are taken as slaves by those multitudes who fall upon us...
Altering our stories or hiding them, changing our visions to meet their own
If history is a constant, then expect it to happen
Some time, some day in the future...or perhaps tomorrow
In fact it is happening now as we ponder this possibility
For we are but human, adept at causing the greatest suffering
to what we know of as our world.
Wall painting of a deceased hunter, Lascaux Caves, approximately 17,000 years old
The Sabine Women by Jaques Louis Davide, 1799
The Conquest of Tenochtitlan by Alonzo Chappel Po, 1870
