Bias and Misunderstanding Our Past

Bias and Misunderstanding Our Past

I am a history buff. My hubby is an amateur historian (ancient languages are his thing, from hieroglyphics to Anglo-Saxon poetry) and while I tend to enjoy history programs and books I have a couple of big problems a lot of it.

They couldn't have done that.

The assumption that technology is linear, or that people from the past grunted and poked each other with sticks is insulting for so many reasons.There is also the idea that indigenous technology is "simple" or "primitive". Whether the indigenous people are people living in Ireland, Africa or the Americas there is a Romanic/Greek bias as a hangover from the Victorian gentlemen who "invented" archaeology; as well as the male Greek and Roman scholars many of whom often negatively colour our view of  people far long than the evidence to the opposite of their view comes to light. Speaking of which...

Evidence in Boxes Shut Away.

The sheer scale of Goddess statues and "rude" and "crude" artifacts that are hidden in academic boxes deemed "unworthy" of study is disturbing, disgusting and speaks volumes about the sexism still very much present in the academic circles that curate and restrict access, or fail to even examine or uncatalogued this priceless pieces of our history. Speaking of which...

The Huge Amount of Stolen Artifacts 

These treasure very often taken from "exotic" and "foreign" lands, even simply to "better museums". A museum becomes "better" when they can make revenue from local exciting finds of course.

A good example of this was the Staffordshire Horde. This amazing treasure was found in Staffordshire. It gives an exciting window into a culture we still struggle to understand because they left so little, the Anglo-Saxons. Yet only some of it remains in the local Museum, that paid a hefty price to try and keep it there. Most of it is in Birmingham now.

So who does it "belong" to?

Let's not even get started on the Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts stashed around this country (or being sold with little to no money going to the poor countries that their history was robbed from). I wonder if Greece made all the countries that now have their artifacts pay them for the privilege if it would be "in debt"? 

But they don't have the facilities to preserve them properly, some cry.

Well they would if people had to pay to see the artifacts, or back date a percentage of the revenue they gained from them.

Princesses and Warriors.

Up until recently the grave goods you were buried with were the pigeon hole your were placed in. Sword. Male. High status young woman, Princess. 

The fact that site of importance are routinely ascribe a function by the gender of the bodies found is wrong. Wrong, wrong and more wrong. It uses the facts to makes assumptions and then uses the assumptions to "create facts". Life is not neat little boxes. People are not neat little boxes and they never have been. 

My best example of this glaringly sexist ideology was the recent excavation of Stone Henge.  The guy running it claimed that it could only be a religious site if a single gender was found there. (This is not of course how people in the past thought, this is quite a modern idea.) They found bones of many different people of all ages. They deemed it a Royal Tomb. This is based on our own Western ideas of royalty, status and importance, and has not factual base in the distant past. Do bear in mind that West Minster Abbey (also a royal tomb) is also a place of worship, and also has the bones of people like Charles Dickens and Joseph Addison as well as Hugh and Mary Adams (who paid for the privilege). This dichotomy of this or that, that is far from true now, is just as likely to be false in the past as it is now. The sword=male is now conceded to be wrong but the mindset persists. If a woman has a sword it must have been her father's or her husbands, or an honour given by a male leader! What utter rubbish. It makes the so many assumptions and uses them as fact. 

Likewise the princess idea again makes her fall into the category of daughter of someone important, wife or girlfriend. It reinforces the Patriarchal rubbish that "it's always been this way". Which it hasn't. If she is important it might have more to do with a skill she has, a gift or even "disability" (often seen as marks from Divine forces) than who her father, lover or husband was.

Likewise if important men in MesoAmerica remove their penises and let the blood flow, it might have a lot more to to with wombs and menses and much less to do with penises. 

I believe I have had many past lives, most of which I have been female (just seems the way of it). People are people. There never was an ideal past. Nor was there a time when people were stupid or uncomplicated. People have always been weird, ruled by situation and imagination. When we look back and assume these people knew less than us it simply isn't true. Could you track a deer or animal for 4 days with no food? Could you build a home, a boat, know every plant and shrub? Build your own tools, make your own rope and medicine?

The past is another country or so they say and far too many people who study it, write about it and teach it have pretty prejudice things about it.