Theory

Before anything else, a disclaimer. This article is profoundly unscientific—it is about something I noticed in how the media has portrayed the Neanderthal over the years, so I decided to dig it up. It expresses an entirely subjective interpretation of the media according to what I think is going on, a criticism if you will. It is basically cherry picking, so reader discretion is advised.

Images used were ripped at low resolution under fair use since this blog is non-commercial, if you’d like to file a claim please contact me and I will remove the image.

It is odd to live long enough to see a shift in how a whole species is perceived and understood. Not long ago my biology textbooks had dinosaurs as giant reptiles, whereas these days they show how closely related they are birds. Science progresses quickly, and that is a good thing. For what it’s worth, the work done by scientists isn’t being questioned here, nor is the tremendous talent involved in the reconstruction based on fossil remains. These are tough fields and a lot of work goes into them.

But the Neanderthal story starts with the exact opposite. At first, it was considered a savage and less developed hominid that couldn’t compete and coexist with modern humans, and consequently went extinct. This idea basically said that modern humans were superior and Neanderthals inferior. It is no surprise, then, that in the late 19th century, the scientific articles tended to mirror just that. Consider the following depiction from 1888, and the text of a scientific article from 1890

All writing from this time must be taken with lots of scepticism, since it was common to legitimise genocide using anthropological justifications. In the quoted text, it is quite clear that the author is linking native Australians with the ‘lesser Neanderthal’. Duly noted, the author seems to do the same with other groups, such as the Frisians, so the racism seems to be just an expression of the time of writing. Nevertheless, the Neanderthal here is a lesser human, and the depiction clearly shows a person of color with rough features.

As time went on and the scientific knowledge grew, with discoveries of their complex rituals, art and bigger brains, the perception began to shift. But even in the 20th century, before the discovery of Neanderthal genetic information, the depictions remained. A brute that could not face the superiority of modern man fresh out of Africa armed with culture and technology. Jared Diamond’s theory that germs brought by modern humans being responsible for the extinction of Neanderthals mimics almost perfectly the European colonial spread of disease. Coincidentally, the colonisers are the modern man and the colonised are the Neanderthals. At this time, the idea that modern man and Neanderthal could be related was already brewing, but polemic. If the superior modern human had made Neanderthals go extinct, to admit that Europeans might be in any way related to this lesser kind of man was not a popular idea. It is no surprise, then, that the depictions remained savage and brutish, even against many scientific theories that were developing. For example, consider this write up about that period (1929-1994) from The Field Museum, Chicago

Many generations of adults remember coming to the Museum and being transported back to a time when people were living in caves. The first of two Neanderthal family dioramas was installed in 1929, in the Hall of Historical Geology which was located on the Museum’s 2nd floor. In 1933, the Hall of Prehistoric Man (located on the Museum’s Ground Floor) opened with a series of 8 prehistoric scenes. In the early 1970s, the Neanderthal figures were replaced with new ones made by Museum artist Joseph Krstolich. By 1994, the Hall of the Stone Age of the Old World exhibit had been dismantled because most were considered to be scientifically inaccurate. The Hall had included the Neanderthal Family diorama as well as dioramas depicting Mas d’Azil cave in France (also called Azillian Boar Hunt); Aurignacian Cave Art (Gargas cave, France); Chellean scene in northern France; Neolithic Sun Worship; Solutrean sculptor; Swiss Lake Dwellers; Cap Blanc Rock Shelter and the skeleton of Magdallenian girl.

The big breakthrough was when the first DNA testing revealed that there was Neanderthal genetic material in modern humans. In the early 2000s, evidence started mounting that there was genetic material in modern humans, but it wasn’t mtDNA, i.e., if there was a mix of modern humans and Neanderthals, it had been between a male Neanderthal and a female human. See, for example, the state of this research in the 2000s page of the Neanderthal museum. By now, the depictions were shifting, thanks to a better understanding of the Neanderthal’s environment and biology. Consider this other text, also from the 2000s page of neanderthal-modern.com:

Numerous genetic studies of DNA from living people also appear to support the “Out-of-Africa” theory. These studies reveal that the genetic differences between the far-flung peoples inhabiting the globe today are actually quite small. This indicates a relatively recent common ancestry. The studies also consistently show present-day Africans to be the most genetically divergent, and therefore the most ancient, branch of humanity. This points toward an African origin for modern humans. These studies have recently been enhanced by analyses of ancient DNA from actual Neanderthal remains. The scientists studying this DNA have reported that the Neanderthal DNA differs significantly from our own, which they see as support for the Out-of-Africa theory (see Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe web pages).

But the most dramatic shift happened in the 2010s when the Neanderthal genome was finally sequenced and the evidence was now clear: a vast group of Europeans was not only related to Neanderthals, but other branches of the human tree, such as the African lineages, weren’t. Here was clear, scientific evidence that coloured people and Europeans were biologically different, and that the Europeans had interbred with a hominid with a bigger brain. If your critical radar hasn’t gone off yet, it should be going off right now. Not only do these reconstructions look tremendously European, they also show finer features, lighter hair and blue eyes, a traditional European sign of nobility and pure lineage. Note that there is little evidence pointing either way as to where light eyes come from, but some are beginning to say Neanderthals could be the origin of blue eyes. Perhaps this quote from the New Yorker might make it even more obvious:

Of course, while the shape and proportions of the face are determined as objectively as possible, some characteristics, like the color of the eyes, the skin, and the hair, can only be approached with subjectivity. But even if decided without certainty, the color of the skin, for instance, will be chosen according to the environmental setting.

While it is obvious that the Neanderthal’s environment was very different from our own, most likely much colder, how valid is this depiction and skin colour, versus, say, one based on the look of indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic? Perhaps this is little more that an expression of the never ending human need for a definition of its own identity, as if our biology determined us somehow and we could attribute our qualities or shortcomings to external factors, instead of admitting mistakes as our own. Maybe it isn’t me after all—it’s this darned Neanderthal gene!

Consider the 2012 BBC programme How scientists recreated Neanderthal man, where the hosts confide:

— I still can’t get my head around the fact that this guy is in my ancestry, not that far back. What do you think John?

— Give me a break, you look like twins!

Never mind the fact that this reconstruction shows a fair skinned, light haired rugged looking young man with neatly arranged body hair and an out of bed look. I’m sure I’ve ran into a few of these “Neanderthals” at parties.

And this brings us to today, and what better example of today’s astrology-like fascination with genetic lineage than this episode of Meet the Izzards, Eddie Izzard: ‘I’m 2.8% Neanderthal’. Here we can see a discussion of what percentages each one of them might have of Neanderthal, with Izzard being in the top tier of Neanderthal heritage. What a journey! From under-evolved coloured man in the 19th century all the way up to famous rich blonde white English comedian, all in a bit more than 100 years.

And while the science continues to progress even further, it has already answered the questions we might have about these genetic percentages. From The Guardian:

So why do newspapers report these claims and why do TV and radio programme makers base documentaries on them? After all, there are plenty of experts who are engaged in scientifically cautious research on our genetic history and will point out their absurdity. One reason is that, being simple “just so” stories, they have a popular appeal that cannot be matched by the more rigorous population level testing of migration histories. The bias is always towards the story rather than the science.

Another possible reason is that “ancestry testing” is aimed at individuals, although in reality the statements made are sufficiently general that they could be true for a large number of people. This is reminiscent of the “Forer effect” in psychology – the observation that individuals will tend to believe descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. The same effect has been used to explain the popularity of horoscopes.

(…)

Perhaps it is harmless fun to speculate beyond the facts, armed with exciting new DNA technologies? Not really. It costs unwitting customers of the genetic ancestry industry a substantial amount of hard-earned cash, and it disillusions them about science and scientists when they learn the truth, which is almost always disappointing relative to the story they were told.

In other words, what the Neanderthal representation story tells us is how genetic information is basically replacing the older ideas of lineage and is being instrumentalised again by the ruling ethnicities of the world. The fantasies about a higher evolved human being continue and refuse to go extinct as they should. They are little more than a fantasy, say nothing about who we are, and instead reflect the constant need of Europeans to justify their oppressive role in the world. It seems the poor Neanderthal man has been turned into the modern day genetically backed equivalent of the Aryan race. And we all know what that leads to.

Some links. – More (great) reconstructions – Neanderthals in popular culture – History of the admixture theory

This is a minor announcement of a pretty big thing. My book is finally out on its way to distribution. It is a memoir of my times at escotilha. I’m giving it away for free! Also added an icon to the sidebar.

Instead of writing yet another gigantic essay, this is enough for now, it’s time to share and enjoy the rush of letting go. Have you read it? Let me know your thoughts!

A set of Irish reels with a Portuguese addition.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the free culture movement really says about being an artist.

Let’s begin with the very hot topic of DRM, or Digital Rights Management. There’s a lot of discussion going on about whether DRM has a place on the web. My opinion, apart from technical difficulties, is yes, and here’s why.

I already wrote about intellectual property in the past and my position is that discussing an ‘all or nothing’ strategy for copyright is self defeating if one is to promote a free media culture. Free media doesn’t simply mean downloading Hollywood Blockbusters for free, and preventing DRM from being standardised and available for big studios is basically saying that we are forcing a non-copyright logic on people (or teams of people) that want to exercise their property rights over their own work. To me, this is deeply flawed and violates the very idea of a free culture movement: is a free culture movement a monoculture of licensing and legal frameworks of copyright, or is it an inclusive movement that allows different attitudes towards intellectual property to coexist? Depending on your answer, the outcome will be drastically different. If we force everyone, even those that don’t want to share their work, to record and publish their media without DRM, we are effectively forcing them to forfeit their legal rights to decide how and where their media is played and listened to. Note that I’m not saying anything about whether or not I agree with their position, but I believe it’s a fundamental political attitude to accept that different authors might want different degrees of control over their media. If I publish my media freely and without DRM, it is my personal choice and it can coexist peacefully with other attitudes towards media. And if netlabels, self-publishing, creative commons and other movements already provide entire markets of authors and media that is free to use, then what is the DRM issue really about?

My argument is that the uproar is about piracy, or the ability to copy the media we want from authors that did not consent to it being copied. Discussions of property rights aside (which are legitimate), to me the fundamental point here is that of consent, not property rights. If an artist, or a studio, wants to capitalise and sell their goods aggressively, prosecute piracy and arrest those that download it illegally, that’s a good thing on two fronts:

1. They exercise their rights democratically within a legal framework that protects them;
2. The victimised people (and people that hear about it) are suddenly exposed to the idea of intellectual property and its contradictions.

To me the pathetic thing about copyright discussions is that it has never been about ‘free culture’, because ‘free culture’ is already around us: the work of many people is already freely available in places like archive.org, and none of these has the legal grounds to prosecute anyone based on copyright laws.

The real motivation behind the every day discussion of copyright is that those defending the abolition of copyright actually just want to enjoy the mass media goods for free. That’s right—what this is really about is getting the horrible products of mass media corporations for free. It is not about free culture and an ideological stance on how media should be produced and owned. It is about breaking the notion of authorship and consent disguising it as a ‘free media revolution’.

The ‘free media revolution’ has already happened. We can use Linux on our computers and phones, produce music and write books on it, we can download and share as much as we’d like. And there is nothing preventing the free and open sharing of standard, DRM free formats with anyone. That is the main point. To build a society based on free culture we can’t expect things to work the same way as they did in a mass capitalism media world. Something has to give.

It is my opinion that blockbusters and super stars are incompatible with a free, commoner owned media circuit.

1. The idea that a single item of media would be interesting and desirable to millions violates the very idea of commoner, localised ownership and authorship of culture—it implies an idea of cultural homogenisation, of a cultural elite whose power determines what the masses listen to and enjoy. This is especially obvious when we see the same movie do very well in incredibly different cultural settings. This usually means that the invading media is beginning to change the sensibilities of that culture in order to increase its own desirability (and consequentially the profits of its creators). We already know what this does to cultural definitions of beauty and and physical appearance. Perhaps a good and terrifying example is skin bleaching, since most invading media tends to be Anglo-Saxon. Another example, closer to home, is the stereotypes promoted by the said media: geek/nerd/jock were foreign concepts to me growing up, but as the Americanised media arrived where I grew up, so did these stereotypes that didn’t exist before. With them, a whole new generation of young people grew up under an unnecessary categorisation of one’s own relationship to adolescence. It is my opinion that this is incompatible with a multicultural and diverse society. It is not possible for mass media to be consumed without the consumers themselves changing into a by-product of what that very media is promoting.
2. The idea that culture and art are commodities to be bought and sold, and the control of the art is not for the artist but for the media conglomerate that owns it and sells it. This is a deeply capitalist definition of how media is to be produced, distributed and consumed, but it is not the only way to produce and share media. Media, art, culture, are a normal activity of groups of people, and the framework used to author, distribute and share that media isn’t restricted to the mega-corporation logic. It can equally be simply something with do with our circle of friends, with no need for lawsuits and contracts.
3. The idea that it is legitimate or even desirable to have huge concentrations of wealth in a few, highly successful, artists and producers, when most other artists struggle to pay their bills. This merely mirrors the other capitalist structures that exist and that tend to favour capital aggregation. Music and art is no different. If ‘free media culture’ says anything, it’s that media is not a proprietary good to be patented and restricted, but it is also just something we all do every day. Should a ‘free media culture’ encourage capital aggregation as well? Doesn’t that defeat the very principles it stands for, and isn’t that simply impossible given the distribution and replication of the media itself cannot be restricted?

It is my opinion, therefore, that we cannot create a society based on free media values and at the same time try to replicate the capitalist structures that have been part of the media world for the past century. If strong copyleft (e.g. GPL) or even weak copyleft (e.g., CC) become the standard way of licensing cultural goods, then there is no possible way to build a profit structure that would provide the same economic benefits that a capitalist one does. A superstar worth millions cannot coexist with the idea that what they do is owned by everyone and can be traded for free. Something has to give—the very idea of super star, of celebrity, of a human being worth thousands of times more in dollars that an average artist.

Does this mean the end of trends or of performances? Hardly. It simply means localisation of trends and cultural capital—the money simply stops flowing from communities to the deep pockets of multinational conglomerates, and flows directly to the commoner neighbours that share the media. A local gig, with local bands and local music is healthy for the local economy, but it will never generate such stupefying profits as a mega star does—and that’s OK, that exactly what a horizontal society looks like.

The balance between mega media and open media has to be a democratically developed one and cannot come from forcing either party to adopt the other’s licensing paradigm. If you believe in an open media culture, start by consuming media produced by people that share that outlook on media. To me, it is a profound contradiction to stand for a free media culture and download mass media illegally. Instead, we should consume free media produced with that very same intent and ideological background. If we really want to consume mass media, then we should take a deep breath and shell out the cash—otherwise we’ll be breaching the artists’ (or producers’) definition of what they consider fair compensation for their work, and with it, breaking the very idea of consent in a democracy.

It is a good thing that copyright exists and that piracy has consequences, because it is a vehicle for the emancipation of media owners and media producers about the fundamental differences of free media and corporate media. It is OK to arrest and fine people that bootleg blockbusters—they are merely perpetuating the popularity of products that express the contradiction of the very ideals of a free culture.

Social justice isn’t getting a block buster for free. Social justice is allowing every free media producer to be heard equally, and to allow those that don’t have the means to access free media, to do so.

I, for one, hope to live in a place where locally owned, locally produced, locally distributed free media becomes the norm, media that doesn’t push market-driven ideas about what I should eat, drink, wear, how I should perceive myself or the people around me. The real enemy of free culture is mass media. Let them charge for their rotten media, and let us produce our own, free from objectification and commodification. That, there, is the death of the super star.

First, a tune and an apology for the silence on this page. For the past year I have been writing a book — the book that was promised years ago. It is now in the editing phase and will be out in the coming months. Since my writing efforts were focused there, I ended up not writing much here at all.

One of my recent lifestyle changes was to start attending Irish music sessions. A music session is basically a rehearsal in a pub or venue: a bunch of traditional musicians get together and practise tunes they know. While this is the main historical background story of these happenings, in practice, sessions are more fun than gigs because there is no official audience and no official performers. There is also mostly no original repertoire: it is all from the vast troves of public domain music available. And when a tune isn’t public domain? Well, you steal it.

Back in the days when recorded music was for a small select group of elite musicians, folk musicians had no other option but to learn by ear and follow an oral tradition of transmission. Bagpipers in Portugal were no exception, in that if they liked a bagpiper’s style or tune, they’d hear it and copy it and start playing it themselves. Piracy isn’t new — it’s as old as our capacity to communicate and to understand.

These pipers had a fundamental community purpose: they were the DJs and entertainers of their time. They played for dance halls for the sole purpose of making dances and festivities more enjoyable. The music itself always served the practical purpose of feeding the party, instead of any other particular high aesthetic (with exceptions, maybe, for airs and religious themes).

Whenever a particular tune was a hit among crowds, that meant more money for the pipers. It is no surprise, then, that most pipers took issue on teaching how to play pipes — if they couldn’t control the tunes themselves, they had to control the medium to prevent competition from other pipers.

Times have changed for folk musicians, but not too much. One of the things that has changed is the fact that the quantity of folk music that has been written down and documented and published as public domain is tremendous — more than any single musician could ever remember and play in a lifetime. This has an interesting side effect in the folk music scenes: authorship is a curiosity about a tune, not the main point. The main point, instead, becomes the interpretation and performance aspects of the tunes themselves: the interpreter effectively brings the public domain material to life. Learning and mastering the art itself becomes the main focus of the artists, and the tunes vehicles to express their creativity.

Traditional artists that record their own tunes quite often let their friends play them at sessions — authorship respected, playing with fellow musicians dissolves the economic interests that might have mediated their interactions with others.

This, to me, is one of the incredibly powerful ideas that comes from the folk scenes: music isn’t theirs to begin with, but that is accepted as part of a tradition, even when the tunes themselves are less than 50 years old and would therefore fall under copyright laws. In folk music, ownership of a tune is meaningless. It either is a hit for dancers and fellow session musicians, or it isn’t, and the way that success is measured includes how many other musicians like your tunes and decided to cover them (or better put, copy them and modify them).

While the way traditional music is studied and passed on has this interesting characteristic in regards to intellectual property, it also has another interesting idea in what a performance really is.

Here in Sydney the art scenes are ripe with “Look at me” type events where everyone has a shot at the stage, yet doesn’t watch what others do there. Be it an exhibition where the exhibitor doesn’t see anyone else’s work, or the gig where the band leaves early and doesn’t watch others play, the idea of stage and performance is fundamentally different to the one represented by sessions and dance halls.

In a session, musicians are rehearsing and having fun together, collectively exploring and practising tunes they don’t own and most likely didn’t write. There is usually no stage, and the venue is usually a pub where most people are interested in the big screens with matches than the music. The music in these places isn’t a commodity — it’s a collective experience. While a gig represents a ritualistic relationship between the musician and the audience, a session breaks that down and turns music it into an every day thing we do with our friends and acquaintances.

Like jam sessions, DJs mixing for a live audience, jazz dance halls, it is in the commoner’s world that music is alive — prevented from being merchandise simply because it is a vehicle for a communal experience. And while the congregation spaces where this happens might shift over time, the idea remains that we prefer art to be free to interpret and modify, since that serves the public enjoyment of that very same art. If property is an idea of alienation, then folk music is a perfect example of the opposite: how creativity persists and is enhanced by the absence of property, and how it creates bridges between people and communities that thrive.

That is why I abandoned most other music scenes and moved to folk music — it is where I find this rich balance of creativity, community spirit and a surprising lack of self-commodification persists and thrives. And in such an alienating world, it is a great source of fresh (moving) air.

There is something to be said about economic crimes and their perpetrators — they are virtually ignored in how serious they can be. In a worldwide ever-spreading austerity it is important to keep in mind what causes what, and how a seemingly innocent economic policy can have real world devastating effects. Though there are many such effects, I’d like to address xenophobia in particular, with its allied concept multiculturalism.

The signs are growing and clearer than ever. Golden Dawn party in Greece, riots in Sweden and violence in England. France’s seemingly ethnically driven riots a few years ago were almost like a warning. Meanwhile, news propagate the religious and ethnic logic instead of the actual economic causes. A clash of civilisations, of peoples, of religions or even of inborn intellectual capacities. Poorer countries and cultures are written off as lazy and incapable by nature. An interesting article in a tabloid read “White vs. Islamic culture”, as if religion and ethnicity were even comparable. Cui bono? Who exactly benefits from this ideology? What exactly is it saying?

While it may be clear in the literature that austerity and inequality lead to the root causes of riots and xenophobia, and that hegemonic states lead to violence between their own citizens, these are largely hard to understand because they require a depth of understanding of social processes not generally available to the public. So we buy into the “multiculturalism failed” and “islam as a bad influence on society”, when what we should be reading is “economic policies cause riots” and “economists responsible for crimes against humanity”. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

When living at SPCC I ran into a symptomatic situation involving xenophobia and poverty. One of our residents, let’s call him X, was a first generation Portuguese citizen with Muslim and African parents. Needless to say his family struggled but gave him a hard working ethics, which he followed sporadically. X was a street punk and enjoyed his drugs and alcohol, so he’d get odd construction jobs while living with us. During that same time, we also had to illegal migrant residents. Since for the most part we lived in a state of surplus, all residents got along fairly well. But when food wasn’t enough or some would put in more work than others, the arguments would start.

Note that since in certain surplus moments things were okay (meaning, food, energy, drinks, leisure weren’t an issue), and in moments of scarcity they weren’t, and since the people were the same, it was this “micro-economic” state of our community that was determining the changes in interactions and behaviour. Frequently I’d do a shop run for food just to prevent arguments. X was generally a positive and happy member of our community. The interesting thing was when our “micro-economy” would go in the red (not enough food, not enough working hands). X would turn to the migrants and say “Go get a job! Go back to your country! Fucking (ethnicity) not wanting to work!” X’s poor understanding of politics and economics meant he had no real way of rationalising his frustrations. The frustrations themselves were justified: there he was, a working class 1st generation citizen working his ass off for some beer, and there they were, the illegal migrants at our squat not wanting to contribute and living off our community for free. This is a political issue within the community, but since they also had an external characteristic (their ethnicity), that characteristic became part of the rationalisation and with it made X into a xenophobe. X, the black muslim descendant in a white catholic portugal was being xenophobic towards migrants. This, to me, was a profound contradiction but spelled out nothing more than that xenophobia, racism or even islamophobia are simply symptoms of socio-economic forces that create these tensions.

SPCC was a clear example of multiculturalism. We had hundreds of nationalities over, frequently 5 or more cultures interacting with each other and no conflicts in general, unless there was an economic issue with the community. X’s xenophobia is like the waves of xenophobia and islamophobia that we can expect only to get worse in the coming years. They express legitimate frustrations of working class people that have no other way of articulating their problems than the simplified we/them black/white catholic/muslim false dichotomies.

The media, whose job it is to inform and provide meaningful rationalisations to the public, does so according to an agenda that benefits the ruling class (generally white and judeo-christian), and therefore provides bogus rationalisations instead. “Multiculturalism failed” is going to be the catchphrase for the coming social turmoil of a disenfranchised generation. Meanwhile, the policies and policy makers that are responsible for it failing can walk away freely, since this logic protects them and instead blames the very people that are victimised by these policies. If it’s multiculturalism that failed, then it isn’t austerity and bad economic policies that failed, and economic crime can continue unpunished. If Islam and Christianity are incompatible, then it isn’t the bad integration policies and cultural education in schools. If black people are dumber than white people, then it isn’t that white people have enslaved and oppressed these minorities into submission. Clearly these phrases are terrifying, but they are the logic behind these news. Sadly, I fear that we will see more of this as inequality and austerity extend further and further.

In the light of this, I stick to what I know. Power determines behaviour and social unrest is a symptom of the incompetence and corruption of those in power. Whenever anyone in power attributes social problems to external factors, beware.

Perhaps on topic, perhaps not, but a classic nonetheless.