This posting is now revised and incorporated in a published book as of Aug. 2015 (link above)
Active tectonics -- a cultural stimulant in antiquity
Eric R. Force (eforce@email.arizona.edu)
Is it possible to imagine a world
in which the development of each human culture is tied to its plate-tectonic
position? In which tectonism
functions as a cultural stimulant producing complexity and innovation? What if we humans were only fully alive
culturally where the earth keeps us that way with constant activity? If innovations diffuse largely from cultures located along
the tectonic boundaries into more static environments in plate interiors away
from tectonic plate boundaries?
And if the cultures themselves are unaware of any such factor?
It’s quite a stretch viewed from
the world we live in, so this thought experiment might seem fanciful and
fruitless. For anyone reminded of
the latest destructive tectonic event, it’s counter-intuitive if not bizarre. But a remarkable number of lines of
evidence seem to converge on just the hypothesis offered above for a previous
time interval of our cultural development, of about 4000 years duration, that
we refer to as antiquity.
How could we have missed this? Perhaps because ancient history had no
way to record the clues in a way that fit into plate-tectonic theory (1);
because in the modern world such clues are obscured behind many layers of other
concerns; and because they were already obscured long before any of the
precursors of modern tectonic theories were born. But it’s time to focus our new knowledge on our past with an
open mind.
There is a good practical reason to
do that. If tectonism was a cultural stimulant in antiquity, it probably still
is, though less visible in our more complex world. And indeed, once the structure of tectonic influence is
traced through the ancient world, that structure can be recognized in our own.
In this book I propose to take the
reader through those converging lines of evidence that tie tectonism to
cultural development in the ancient world. Many factors are required for complex cultures to thrive, of
course, and the literatures that cover those—climate, soil, water, etc.--seem
adequate. They have been apparent
all along. Here I will treat them
as mere prerequisites in a framework of more global dimension.
I once thought that some
combination of the obvious factors actually produced the apparent tectonic
relation, so I started circling that relation looking for the “real”
connection. When the evidence
consistently pointed to tectonism itself, I started thinking of tectonism as a minor
factor, a mere thread in the fabric of relations between natural and cultural
phenomena. Now I think the
evidence is too strong for such a modest claim. A minor factor would not produce a spatial relation (fig. 1)
so obvious that its random probability is one in several billions. A minor factor would not explain how
independent cultural experiments and geologic variations show similar but not identical results. A minor factor would not explain the rich texture of
response to tectonism in ancient religions, philosophies, and literature. Nor
would a minor factor explain the lack of the innovation and resilience of
ancient cultures in tectonically quiescent cratons of plate interiors, or the evidence that cultural complexity preferentially propagates
from site to site along tectonic boundaries. Without disparaging the already-obvious
factors, I think we instead are looking at an essential component of our cultural
makeup.
In
some ways my thesis is predictable.
The influence of plate tectonics on human evolution and distribution is
not in dispute, supported by evidence from both geologic (Molnar 1990, King and
Bailey 2006) and anthropologic (Malin and Christensen 2007, Bailey and others
2011) authors, and a transition from evolutionary to cultural aspects can be
traced (Sherratt 1996, Force and McFadgen, 2012). In this book, however, I’m tracing it farther into the
cultural realm.
The ancient cultures that had both
robust literatures and the most active tectonic environments did describe
tectonism in whatever terms they had for it. It is these cultures whose influence is most strongly felt
in our modern world. Other ancient
complex cultures have recorded tectonism via their archaeological records. Balancing the recorded destruction
resulting from tectonism with the obvious vigor of these cultures, active
tectonic environments look like an exercise program these cultures bought into
by virtue of their location, an expensive one in terms of pain and cost, but
producing a sort of cultural athleticism.
Acknowledgements—Following chapters will acknowledge
information and suggestions pertinent to their subjects. Here I would like to acknowledge those
who have encouraged the entire work being presented. It’s been cooking for ten years now; in some sort of chronologic
order these include Jane Brandon Force, George Davis, Victoria Brandon, the
late John Dohrenwend, Claudio Vita-Finzi, Henry Spall, Blake Edgar, Gary
Huckleberry, Iain Stewart, the late E-An Zen and Norman Herz, Ed Wright, Wayne
Howell, Bruce McFadgen, Germaine Shames, Ghasem Khosravi, Bob Tilling, Alastair Gill, Dingzhao,
Mohammad Ramesht, and Jelle deBoer.
Note
1. To give a sense of how far they had to go, the ancient
literature does not seem to describe strata or bedding in sedimentary rocks.
Figure 1
Map locations (after Force 2008) of original sites of
thirteen prominent ancient complex cultures of the eastern hemisphere relative
to plate boundaries. Numbered
cultures (and sites) are 1 Roman (Rome), 2 Etruscan (Tarquinia&Veii), 3
Greek (Corinth) and Mycenaean (Mycenae), 4 Minoan (Knossos-Phaestos), 5 and 6
SW Asian (Tyre and Jerusalem), 7 Assyrian (Ninevah), 8 Mesopotamian (Ur-Uruk),
9 Persian (Susa), 10 Indus (Mohenjodaro), 11 Aryan India (Hastinapura), 12
Egyptian (Memphis) and 13 Chinese (Zhengzhou). As shown here and discussed in chapter 6, the average
distance from these sites to an active tectonic boundary is less than 100
km.
References
Bailey, G. N., 2011, Reynolds, S.
C., and King, G. C. P., 2011, Landscapes of human evolution: models and methods of tectonic
geomorphology and the reconstruction of hominin landscapes: Journal of Human Evolution v. 60, p.
257-280.
Force, E. R., 2008, Tectonic
environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere: Geoarchaeology v. 23, p. 644-653.
Force, E. R., and McFadgen, 2012,
Influences of active tectonism on human development: a review and Neolithic
example, in Climates, landscapes, and civilizations, L. Giosan and others, eds.: American Geophysical Union,
Geophysical Monograph 198, p. 195-202
King, G. C. P. and Bailey, G. N.,
2006, Tectonics and human evolution:
Antiquity v. 80, p. 265-286.
Maslin, M., and Christensen,
2007, Tectonics, orbital forcing, global climate change, and human evolution in
Africa: Journal of Human Evolution
v. 53, p. 443-464.
Molnar, R., 1990, The rise of
mountain ranges and the evolution of humans: Irish Journal of Earth Sciences v. 10, p. 199-207
Sherratt, A., 1996, Plate
tectonics and imaginary prehistories: structure and contingency in agricultural
origins, in The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Eurasia,
D. R. Harris, ed.: University College London Press, p. 130-141
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