All posts by Heather Pringle

Why We Should Worry about Neanderthal Clones

February 8, 2010

Should we clone Neanderthals? That’s the provocative question that science writer and editor Zach Zorich poses in the forthcoming issue of Archaeology, hitting the news stand on February 15th. I received an advance copy late last week and read Zorich’s article this weekend. I’ve been thinking about this question ever since, and already I have arrived at my own answer. No. No. NO.

First of all, I should point out that this is not a pie-in-the-sky question. Zorich interviewed an impressive A-list of researchers–including geneticists who are sequencing the Neanderthal genome and leading paleoanthropologists who study ancient hominins–and some clearly believe that a cloned Neanderthal awaits us somewhere down the line.

So it’s not too early to begin thinking and debating about the ethics of cloning one of our hominin kin. While some researchers champion the idea out of pure scientific curiosity and the desire to learn more about an extinct hominin, I think it’s a terrible idea. I simply don’t trust my fellow Homo sapiens sapiens to treat another hominin with kindness and respect. Our track record with other primates, for example, is appalling–using chimpanzees for circus shows and laboratory experimentation, hunting gorillas for meat, and killing orangutan mothers in order to sell their babies as pets.

And here’s something else that worries me about a Neanderthal clone. In the 1920s, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered the researcher who perfected the technique of artificial insemination, Ilya Ivanov, to create a “living war machine. ” Ivanov’s brief, as American writer Charles Siebert reports in his remarkable book, The Wachula Woods Accord, was to artificially inseminate chimpanzees with human sperm to create a new hybrid.

Stalin dreamed of a large, invincible Red Army and a vast slave workforce to carry out his Five Year Plans. He thought a chimp-human hybrid would serve admirably. According to Russian newspapers, Stalin told Ivanov “I want a new invincible human being insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat.”

Ivanov failed miserably to produce such chimp-human hybrid, though he certainly tried. In 1930s, the biologist fell from political grace and was exiled to Kazakhstan in one of the many purges of the time.

All this strikes me as an important cautionary tale. What if one of the world’s dictators got it into his head to clone Neanderthals as slave laborers or a new kind of soldier, one physically stronger than modern humans? It sounds far fetched, I know. But I don’t think we can blithely ignore the lessons of history.

Sex and Rubbers in the City

February 7, 2010

In case you missed it, the New York Times ran an intriguing review this week of a new museum exhibition, “Rubbers: The Life, History and Struggle of the Condom.” Currently running at the city’s Museum of Sex, the exhibit highlights both the history and modern-day politics of the French letter.

Fueling the New Chinese Mania For Antiques

February 5, 2010

I can’t believe how badly the New York Times missed the point this morning in its article on the newly red-hot antiquities trade in China. Journalist Dan Levin reports on the growing mania among middle class buyers in Beijing for Chinese antiquities, extolling their newfound passion for ” Ming Dynasty porcelain vases, 19th century hardwood furniture and even early 20th century calligraphy ink pots.” Such antiquities, Levin explains, “have become popular status symbols for an emerging middle class eager to display its new wealth and cultural knowledge.”

Too bad Levin didn’t ask a few hard questions about exactly where all these Chinese antiquities are coming from. If he had, he might have come away with a very different impression. While researching a new story for Archaeology magazine, I recently discussed with Victor Mair, a Sinologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and one of the world’s leading experts on the archaeology of Xinjiang province, this very issue.

I had noticed in Mair’s articles that many of the most important Bronze Age and Iron Age sites in Xinjiang–sites that have yielded European-looking mummies and western grave goods and that are now revolutionizing our understanding of Central Asian history–had been badly looted. In fact, looting in Xinjiang has become so serious that Chinese archaeologists are constantly forced to excavate entire cemeteries just to salvage and protect some of the finds.

I asked Mair what on earth was going on. The Xinjiang sites, after all, are in the midst of a huge and very barren desert–one of the bleakest and most remote places on earth. Mair explained to me that Chinese looters have become very sophisticated. They journey into the desert equipped with GPS and specifically target the ancient cemeteries there. The devastation is enormous, Mair explained, with mummified human body parts strewn everywhere. “They just take the bodies, the heads, the coffins and throw them out on the ground,” he said. “They are looking for gold or they are looking for something that is obviously a nice artwork.”

Most looters then sell their finds to middle men in Hong Kong, individuals who don’t ask any questions. “You can go down to the antiquities market street there,” said Mair, “and you can find unbelievable things, precious materials or precious objects from all over China being sold there. So Hong Kong is like a door for selling.”

To me, this is the real story behind the newfound enthusiasm for antiquities in China. And there is a terrible irony here. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong ordered the destruction of “old culture,” officially condoning the looting of old cemeteries and destroying antiquities. Now the pendulum has swung wildly in the other direction, as the Chinese middle class celebrates its ancient culture. But the change in attitude has only led to further destruction of the archaeological record.

Museum Curios or Objects of Spiritual Healing?

February 4, 2010

Two days ago, I suggested that the Vancouver Museum seriously consider repatriating a petroglyph-covered boulder in its collections to the tribal group in whose territory it was found. The art on the boulder appears to be deteriorating badly in the museum courtyard as moss and water erode the stone, obliterating figures that were clear as a bell in the 1930s. I argued that repatriation would be a good solution to this problem, for I believe that tribal group in question would have a much greater interest in taking care of the art.

But there’s also a moral argument to be made here. I don’t think that national, provincial or city museums are the right places for objects of great spiritual importance to aboriginal peoples, objects that still have a tremendous meaning today. These items, in my opinion, really need to go back to the tribal group from which they came. Imagine the outcry, for example, if an Egyptian museum held part of the manger of Christ in its collections and would not return it to the Vatican on request?

My views on this matter were strongly shaped by an experience I had while I was working for what is now the Royal Museum of Alberta back in the 1970s. At the time, the museum held a collection of sacred medicine bundles once owned by healers and spiritual leaders in the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Niitsitapi.

The museum bought the bundles back in a time when residential schools and other modern ills had badly eroded the traditional culture of the Niitsitapi. But in the 1970s, a few people in these tribes were actively reviving traditional spiritual practices. They wanted their bundles back, because these sacred objects were absolutely essential to age-old spiritual practices. The museum, however, stubbornly refused to part with them.

Finally, however, four members of the Kainai Nation (part of the Niitsitapi) arrived at the museum one spring day and asked if they could take the Longtime Medicine Pipe Bundle outdoors for prayer, as was tradition. As a young research assistant, I watched them carry the bundle out past the security cameras and guards. Outside, they walked in a procession around the museum, with the museum director and a few other staff members following.

As they passed the parking lot, the Kainai delegation broke into a run toward a waiting pickup truck. They swiftly clambered in with the bundle and drove away. As I later learned, one member of the delegation had dreamt a few weeks earlier that he could spirit away the bundle from the museum: today the Kainai talk about how this man cast a charm over the curators.

Many of the Kainai have now returned to their traditional spiritual practices, and I have heard that the bundle is a very cherished part of those practices. Clearly, the museum should have restored the bundle to the Kainai when they asked for it.

I have often heard aboriginal people talk about the sacredness of the rock art. Isn’t it time that museums think about giving it back to the people who rightfully own it?

P.S. In You interested in healing and ayahuasca retreats at www.spiritplantjourneys.com.

Somebody Stop Mel Gibson, Please

February 3, 2010

Oh, no. Not again! Yahoo News is reporting that Mel Gibson is planning yet another of his nightmarish historical blockbusters. The man who brought us Braveheart andApocalypto is planning to unleash his filmmaker talents yet again on another unsuspecting ancient culture with a reputation for extreme violence–the Vikings. “I’m going to give it to you real, man,” Gibson reportedly told a Yahoo News writer. “I want a Viking to scare you.”

Actually what scares me is Gibson. The man is a menace. He loves decking out his projects with all the trappings of historical accuracy, while merrily jettisoning any real fidelity to history and truth. Take Apocalypto, his ghoulish, blood-spattered epic on the Maya. His cast all spoke Yucatec Maya like natives. His Maya nobles and priests wore exquisite costumes and headdresses. And he even threw in a real honest to goodness environmental crisis that plagued the Classic Maya–the deforestation of Maya lands to provide timber for fueling lime kilns. (All the lime went into plaster for the buildings.)

But was Apocalypto true in any way to what we know about the Maya? Not by a longshot. It depicted the Maya almost en masse as ghoulish blood-thirsty club-wielding savages — what Mayan archaeologist David Friedel once wryly described as “orcs in loinclothes.” It depicted little if anything of the beauty and richness of Maya art, science, and religion, pretty much rendering an entire culture into a historical horror show.

Sure it’s entertainment, and it wouldn’t matter so much except for two things. One is that his films are huge box-office hits, seen by millions of people, particularly impressionable teenagers. And secondly his version of past looks and sounds so historically authentic that many people are conned into believing that they are witnessing something truthful.

And there’s one other aspect that disturbs me. Gibson is already talking about how he will apply his techniques of verisimilitude to the Vikings. “I think it’s going to be in English, an English that would have been spoken back then and Old Norse,” he told the reporter. “I want to see somebody who I’ve never seen before speaking low, guttural German who scares the living **** out of you.” Some critics applauded Gibson for filming in foreign languages in The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, but if Gibson was quoted correctly, I’d say that he sees the act of speaking in such a language as something that will increase both the fright factor and brutality of scenes. What kind of a message is that to send to kids? How about xenophobic.

I know one film that I won’t be rushing out the door to see.

Should We Be Repatriating Rock Art?

February 2, 2010

My cup of Starbucks Breakfast Blend wasn’t the only thing steaming this morning as I read today’s post over at Northwest Coast Archaeology. It seems that the folks at the Vancouver Museum, whose job it is to carefully and lovingly preserve its collections for future generations, are allowing a rare treasure from British Columbia’s Fraser River to crumble and flake into oblivion. The treasure in question is a massive 5-6 ton boulder once blanketed with petroglyphs. According to the museum, the art-inscribed boulder once lay in the bed of the Fraser River, and may have marked an ancient salmon harvesting site.

The petroglyphs are in a dire, near-death state. In sharp contrast to their striking appearance in a 1930s photograph, you can barely make them out now. Partially covered with destructive moss, the animal figures and other inscriptions are literally disappearing before our eyes–vanishing, one might add, as surely as the once bountiful runs of Fraser River salmon are. I can’t believe that a museum is allowing this to happen.

But it’s all part and parcel of a much, much larger problem. Most people, I’m sorry to say, just don’t value or respect, much less understand, ancient rock art. They feel no compunction about prying loose a painted or inscribed boulder from the spot where it was created hundreds or even thousands of years earlier and hauling it off to a museum, archaeological park or even a private garden. They think rock art is simply about the art itself–the often mysterious figures painted or inscribed on stone.

But rock art is all about place. It was created in a specific spot that had great meaning to the ancient artist–a spot, for example, that looked out on a sacred mountain, a place where fish were abundant or easy to catch, or a trail head for a mountain pass or trade route. For me, there is nothing more wonderful and exhilarating than coming across a panel of rock art while I am out hiking with friends. I love, of course, to study the inscriptions and photograph them, and think about what they might mean. But even more than that, I like to reflect and puzzle over the place itself. Why did the artists choose that mountain cliff or this boulder on the beach? Why there? What made it an important place? What was the artist honoring?

By contrast, nothing makes me sadder than to see a slab of rock art sitting in a museum foyer or archaeological park. It looks like an orphan to me, cut off and isolated from everything that once gave it meaning. It honors no place any longer, its meaning has been lost, its beauty and wonder sadly diminished.

I wonder if it isn’t time to start repatriating rock art in museum collections. Giving it back to First Nations who may still have stories about where it once stood or belonged. Certainly the First Nations would value it more and take better care of it than that Fraser River boulder at the Vancouver Museum.

Today’s photo shows Buffalo Eddy 2 Petroglyphs at Nez Perce National Historic Park. Photo courtesy of Nez Perce National Historic Park.

Jihadist and Young Archaeologist

February 1, 2010

Did Mohamed Atta, the man who flew American Airlines Flight 11 into a World Trade Center tower, pay for his flying lessons by selling looted antiquities? It now looks like a distinct possibility. According to The Art Newspaper, a senior Italian official has stated publicly on several occasions that Germany’s secret service, BND, possesses testimony documenting Atta’s attempt to sell looted Afghan artifacts to a German archaeologist in 1999.

Atta, as you may recall, was born into a wealthy Egyptian family and graduated from the University of Cairo in 1990 with a degree in architecture. After a short stint as an architectural planner in Cairo, the young Egyptian moved in 1992 to Germany, where he enrolled at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. There Atta studied under Dittmar Machule, an expert on Middle Eastern architecture who was conducting an archaeological excavation at a Bronze-Age site in northern Syria.

So interested did Atta become in archaeology that Machule invited him to visit the Syrian dig in 1994. The German professor later recalled what happened in an interview with ABC television. Atta, said Machule, “slept in the tent as we all slept and he was very interested in the excavation. I explained to him what we are doing, the methods of archaeology, the research and I remember that he wanted to help.”

Five years later, in 1999, says Guiseppi Proietti, secretary general of Italy’s Ministry of Culture, Atta approached a University of Goettingen archaeologist with a business proposition. He offered to sell the unnamed archaeologist Afghan artifacts, explaining that he needed the money to pay for flying lessons he wanted to take in the United States. The archaeologist declined the offer.

How might Atta have obtained these artifacts? As investigators have now established, Atta became increasingly radicalized during his studies in Germany and disappeared for lengthy periods of time. During the university’s winter break in 1997, for example, he vanished for three months, and applied on his return for a new passport, claiming he had lost his–a common strategy that jihadists employed to conceal their travel to a terrorist camp.

With his newfound knowledge of archaeology, Atta may have spent his spare time in Afghanistan looting remote sites and collecting antiquities. And it certainly seems possible that he sold the plunder privately or through auction houses in order to finance the flying lessons that ended in such terrible tragedy.

This is an appalling scenario–European collectors financing one of the worst terrorist attacks in recent memory. I sure would like to know more about this.

Grave Doubts on the Shroud of Turin

January 29, 2010

What exactly is the famous Shroud of Turin? Archaeologist Shimon Gibson, a senior research fellow at the W.P. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, recently conducted a major study on a radiocarbon-dated 1st century B.C. burial shroud he and his colleagues excavated in a Jerusalem tomb. This funerary cloth was made very differently from the Shroud of Turin, casting yet more cold water on the authenticity of the famous relic. For more on this, see my blog post today at Archaeology magazine.

The Sweet Side of Mummification

January 29, 2010

I started this week railing against a British television producer who is hunting for a terminally ill person to mummify in a new uber-sensational reality-based television show. All week this story has left a really bad taste in my mouth. To wash it away, I found a superb short video on mummification that was shot by the J. Paul Getty Museum. The curators based on the video on the techniques used by an Egyptian mortician some 2000 years ago to mummify a young man named Heracletes. Short, sweet and to the point. And no cashing in on the misery of a terminally ill patient. Bingo.