Bilal Toprak
We seem to try to make human history, which has a long history, more understandable by dividing it into periods. However, it can be said that periodization of history brings along many problems as well as some conveniences. So, do these distinctions that discipline the past really mean the same thing in all regions of the world in the same period of time?
We seem to try to make human history, which has a long history, more understandable by dividing it into periods.
However, it can be said that periodization of history brings along many problems as well as some conveniences. Do these distinctions that discipline the past really mean the same thingin all regions of the world in the same period of time? Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this is the Middle Ages. From its name to its basic characteristics and the world of meaning it expresses, the Middle Ages harbors question marks in many areas. However, it is obvious that all these names and meaning packages have a side that reveals the Western imagination’s view of history and humanity.
Staying true to the title of this article, let us leave the other periods aside and reach the age, which is the longest period of humanity. Most of us will remember the time strips that covered the walls of our classrooms in primary school. Starting with the dark/unknown period, the linear strip quickly passes through the stone age, cave dwelling and the discovery of agriculture, and then moves on to the Sumerians. It is possible to see this hasty attitude in works on world history and religions. Behind this attitude, it may be thought that the information about the period we do not have written records is incomplete, and that a distance is created with the people living in the distant past because we only get information based on archaeological data. However, when we get to the root of the matter, it is understood that the situation is not that simple and that there are some ideological concerns that shape our view of our distant past.
When it comes to world history, it can be said that the biggest distinction is between historyand prehistory. This is not only a matter of having written sources. To divide the history in which human beings have been active into two is also to exclude from history the phase in which we do not yet have written records. In a way, this means reducing marginalized societies and many fields related to them such as thought, art, law and religion to the simple.
The periodization classifications made within the framework of this paradigm date back to the curator of the Danish National Museum, C. J. Thomsen (1788-1865). Thomsen, with purely pragmatist concerns, classified the archaeological material in the museum storage on the basis of raw material and prepared a booklet explaining this. In the following years, this trilogy, which Thomsen used to classify and exhibit archaeological material, gained a new dimension. Thus, the early period of humanity began to be dealt with through the Stone, Bronze and IronAges based on raw materials. Edward Tylor (1832-1917), one of the desk anthropologists of the Queen Victorian era, developed Thomsen’s triadic classification in his work titledPrimitive Culture and evaluated human history through savage, barbarian and civilized stages. According to this taxonomy, people lived as hunter-gatherers during the savage period. Livingin very small communities, people were constantly on the move and met their food needs with the fruits and plants they found in nature and the animals they hunted. In the Barbarian period, which began with the discovery of agriculture, people started to stockpile food and domesticate animals, thus settlements such as villages and towns emerged. In the last stage, the civilized period, writing was discovered and thus information about religion, law and trade began to be recorded.
The next important representative of reading world history through the triadic classification is the Marxist archaeologist Gordon Childe (1892-1957). Childe approaches human history through a Marxist terminology and, in a way, constructs the past by centering on the modern period and the Western experience. According to him, the first important development that humans realized was the Neolithic revolution. As expected, this was the discovery of agriculture and led to the emergence of private property. The second was the Urban revolution, which resulted from the development of villages in the alluvium of the Nile, Euphrates and Indus rivers. The last stage was the Industrial Revolution in Europe, withwhich humanity reached a new threshold.
The Stone Age, which was declared the longest phase of human history in the afore mentioned trilogies, was divided into new periods in time. While making new nomenclatures, issues such as thought, art and religion were left out and stone, pottery and metals were preferred as names. Reflecting a materialist and pragmatist perspective, this attitude was constructed, in Chris Gosden’s words, “in the 19th century, by prehistoric, basically white, middle-class men who believed in their own identity and superiority”. This is not only a perception of human societies that lived in one period of history, but also an attitude that reflects their view of societies other than their own.
In the 19th century, Westerners discovered the remains of early humanity through archaeology on the one hand, and small communities that had not come into contact with civilizations through colonial activities on the other. The Western imagination, which saw itself as a chosen and superior nation, sought to equalize all societies that had not come into contact with modernity. In fact, in this century, almost all fields of social sciences were designed to serve the purpose of colonization and control. Thus, a society living in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago was reduced to the same level as a society living in Polynesia or South America in the 1800s AD. After all, neither of these societies had any relationship with Europe at the peak of civilization. This was in line with the paradigm that reflected the Eurocentric understanding and positioned the rest of the world according to the relationship established with it.
One of the important points that draws attention in all these classifications is the fact that humanity is in an effort to develop continuously on a linear basis. Again, according to this narrative, humanity has managed to survive in spite of nature and even God when it comes to the root of the matter. For this reason, Childe, in his book The Self-Creating Man, states that“it is the human being who makes the human being human” and thus rejects external interventions such as revelation and prophecy. Because according to the understanding of the period in question, these situations are part of the culture produced by human beings as a result of social evolution, and of course they are superstitious and empty beliefs. TheAmerican anthropologist Henry Morgan said of the beliefs of people he coded as primitive that “all primitive religions seem to be bright but hollow and irrational”.
This attitude towards people considered primitive was not limited to their beliefs. Their lives as a whole were presented as a history of deprivation. Their minds were not fully developed, their perception of the world remained concrete and their lives were shaped by pragmatist concerns. Because they lived in constant fear of starvation, of being attacked by a wild animal, or of being harmed by mysterious forces whose nature they did not know.
From this perspective, the life of “primitive man” is a history of deprivation and survival. This narrative also has a feature that prepares the ground for the capitalist worldview. Accordingly, Homo Sapiens, that is, the human being who survived by standing out fro mother beings thanks to his knowledge and intelligence, has, in a sense, managed to survive to the present day by eliminating other weaker species and has become the master of the world. In other words, in this journey from animal to transhumanism, man has been able to prevail thanks to his intelligence and power.
But are characterizations such as primitive or savage really true for pre-written societies? Is the life of pre-Sumerian societies based on deprivation and inadequacy? For instance, what makes us more advanced (!) and developed (!) than the people living in the Göbekli Tepe era? Is there the possibility of another story outside of all these narratives? Let’s look for answers to questions like these in our next article.