快猫短视频

Timothy Taylor is an archaeologist at Bradford University and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. As a member ofthe Centre for International Forensic Assistance he has investigated potential ritual dimensions in two child homicide cases in Britain. Author of the bestselling The Prehistory of Sex, he has just published The Buried Soul, in which he explores how humans invented death. With Eros and Thanatos under his belt, he now plans to turn his attention to material things 鈥� from the first stone tool to our modern consumer society.

When you were six, you had a tantrum over Sunday lunch at your grandfather鈥檚 house. He later died of heart failure and you were blamed. How has that shaped your thinking about death?

All archaeologists are interested in the dead, but that particular piece of scapegoating led me to be very interested in the topic of our response to death. Death was often the focus of scapegoating rituals. By attributing a death to evil residing in an animal or person, then sacrificing them, the social fabric could be repaired. I was concerned that archaeology 鈥� where we are excavating material that was originally loaded with emotion 鈥� was writing the emotion out.

In the early days you were very detached. It was only after you sat up one night and cut yourself all over with a penknife that you began to connect with the prehistoric dead. How did that experience change you?

It sounds a bit mystical but it was actually straightforward. Cutting and scarification have been a key part of mourning rituals in many parts of the world, back at least as far as the Iron Age Scythians. I鈥檓 not sure I understood what my private rite was about at the time. Then I found myself excavating this early medieval Avar woman鈥檚 grave in Hungary, and for the first time some of the vibrancy of the original ritual 鈥� the thing that had once channelled the unspeakable feelings of the bereaved 鈥� began to get through to me.

You say your job is 鈥渋nferring behaviour from mute remains鈥�. Can you be objective?

You can only try to be more objective. The problem with archaeology is that you can鈥檛 go back and see the behaviour, so there is the difficult philosophical business of testablity. Some things are now well established: our chronologies and our understanding of past subsistence patterns, for example. But I have been aware since my earliest student days that when it comes to more visceral forms of behaviour we might be fitting our own template of what is plausible human behaviour onto the past, and that that might be much stronger than what comes to us from the past. So there is still scope for a radical reformulation of how we see the past 鈥� and that鈥檚 what I have attempted in this book.

You choose to make absolute value judgements about behaviour. Why not assess cultures by their own standards?

Obviously a degree of relativism is essential, but the trend in anthropology has gone too far. I think there are absolute limits to acceptable behaviour. There are certain things that are proper forms of conduct, such as caring for small children rather than torturing them to death. Where we have evidence for atrocity we either try to deny it or produce a culturally sensitive apology. If we take such a radical relativist line, then we鈥檙e not only doing a disservice to people who have been victimised by various cultures and societies, we鈥檙e also failing to understand the human condition and how oppressive social structures can come into being.

You seem to go out of your way to shock your readers with descriptions of modern ritualistic child sacrifices and multiple rapes at a Viking funeral. Why?

I accept that my book is shocking. I am concerned with the truth. Should we hide that? I feel we owe it to the victims to remember them. One of the reasons for doing archaeology is that what has gone by should not be forgotten. The prehistoric past was much less rosy than we would like to think. There鈥檚 a lot of evidence for extreme and systematic violence in prehistory.

And, of course, if humans are capable of these horrific acts, then your ideas about cannibalism look more acceptable鈥�

That鈥檚 a good example of the issue of objectivity in archaeology and the fact that we tend to interpret the past in terms of what we consider plausible. So it鈥檚 hardly surprising that when we begin to get what many archaeologists see as a widespread signature of cannibalism across different continents in different time frames, another group of archaeologists start to say, 鈥淲ell hang on, there must be other explanations 鈥� because humans don鈥檛 do this.鈥�

But you argue that early hominids ate their loved ones. Why would they do that?

Unless you are prepared to cremate someone, which is very costly, a human body is going to be ingested one way or another: picked apart by vultures or eaten by worms if buried. Cannibalism has now been observed in over 70 species of wild mammal, including chimpanzees. We have found cut-marked hominid bones from 2 million years ago. It would have been a big luxury for our ancestors to leave 50 or 60 kilograms of meat lying around when trying to survive in a tough environment.

How might cannibalism have become standard practice?

You鈥檝e got to see hominid groups as involved in complex patterns of rivalry throughout the evolutionary period. If there is aggressive cannibalism going on, then what鈥檚 your response to that with your own dead? Do you want them to end up inside your enemies or do you want to keep your people to yourself?

Are cannibalised remains the earliest evidence for belief in a soul?

That鈥檚 a difficult one. If we鈥檙e talking about some vital force that transfers itself, then cannibalism provides a very powerful paradigm for thinking about that. Because if you鈥檙e hungry and you eat a good meal you feel revitalised and it鈥檚 easy to put a spiritual spin on that. Pragmatism and religion were intertwined.

Most people consider the earliest burials dating from perhaps 120,000 years ago as evidence of compassion and spirituality. Yet you disagree鈥�

Yes. I鈥檓 challenging archaeologists to go out and look again at isolated burials in the Middle Palaeolithic. I think they are likely to represent people who were excluded from society, which is why they remained as more or less whole skeletons in the backs of caves. By the Upper Palaeolithic this develops into what I call 鈥渢heatre of transgression鈥� burials. I鈥檝e suggested that the people getting buried are classic scapegoats 鈥� those with physical disabilities or who have transgressed social rules.

So what was the motivation behind these first burials?

We have to ask ourselves why formal burials begin to appear when they do. There was certainly competition over scarce resources 鈥� possibly between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans 鈥� and there would have been a premium on social cohesion. It wouldn鈥檛 be unusual in that context to have ceremonies that isolate individuals by throwing them out in death or scapegoating them, because it鈥檚 a common way to re-establish solidarity within small groups.

How would the 鈥渢heatre of transgression鈥� have changed people鈥檚 view of death?

One of the standard checklist things that is trotted out about our becoming human is knowledge of our own inevitable mortality 鈥� as if that is something that happens, without question, past a certain stage of brain development. I really don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 true. It was quite possible for people living in the Palaeolithic period to never have had to face the realisation that in the end everybody dies. But once you get these burials 鈥� which are permanent installations in the heart of the community 鈥� some people come to be viewed as permanently dead. You can鈥檛 forget them. They haven鈥檛 been dissipated by wind and rain. This has an unexpected kickback in that it begins to memorialise death. The soul is no longer just some spirit that transfers itself back into the community but an identity that lives on forever after the body has gone.

How did we make the move from burial as ostracism to burial as standard practice?

The first farmers in Neolithic times subverted it into a positive rite because they saw it has an immense power. Once we get farming 鈥� that concept of land ownership 鈥� then we begin to get big cemeteries. They are territorial statements backed up by the dead who have been planted like seed in the earth. They are reborn into the society of ancestors, but they also remain physically present in this world. All of this leads to a different attitude to living 鈥� seeing time as a line rather than a loop, with genealogies that you can trace back through the grave markers.

That鈥檚 the origin of the 鈥渨orld of ancestors鈥�?

Absolutely. And we have simply assumed by default that all burials must relate to a world of ancestors. The more I think about that now, the more I think it鈥檚 preposterous to presume that that idea was there right at the start of burial.

From the creation of 鈥渢he world of ancestors鈥� onwards, funerary practices take many forms. Yet they all have what you call a 鈥渟hared logic鈥�. Why?

Already in the 鈥渢heatre of transgression鈥� we have the separation between biological death and social death 鈥� the physical event and the thing that is marked ritually. In between is a natural transition period where the bodies are being prepared. Once you have an elaboration of funerary rites into something like the 鈥渨orld of ancestors burials鈥�, you get more and more of a distinct three-part structure as people are seen to leave this world, make a dangerous journey, and enter the next world. What emerged was a near-universal sequence comprising rites of separation, transitional rites, and rites of incorporation.

One of the primary aims of funerary rituals was to stop the soul of the deceased reanimating the body. Why does this no longer concern us in the Western world?

That鈥檚 a good question, but I鈥檓 not sure I know the answer. I think one of the reasons is fashion, the 鈥渟pirit of modernism鈥�. And stories that people told in smaller-scale societies are no longer plausible. You can鈥檛 logically imagine a world of ancestors when you know a hundred billion of us have lived and died in just the past 10,000 years.

We have become ever more disconnected from death. Is this 鈥渧isceral insulation鈥� a bad thing?

Visceral insulation is culturally adaptive. It frees me from needing to kill animals on a weekly basis to survive. But it can easily go too far the other way, if we become too detached and think of nature, and by extension ourselves, as not really flesh and blood. We can end up unprepared to take responsibility for death at any level.

You seem to believe that understanding our own mortality makes us live better lives鈥�

Acknowledging that there is an end to our personal history is a powerful prompt. It makes us realise that lots of other things have ends: friendships, conversations, our actions. If you live forever, there is no sanction on your behaviour. You don鈥檛 have to consider the urgency of trying to behave in an ethical way.

Do you often think about your own death?

Now and again. I鈥檓 not scared of death. I don鈥檛 think one should be. In a day-to-day sense I wish to avoid it because I have ambitions and things that I want to complete. But dying does seem to be something you should take control of. I have a horror of dying in hospital, with people around me I don鈥檛 know.

What can we do to become re-engaged with death?

It wouldn鈥檛 be a bad idea to accept that it happens, rather than throwing all this money and resources into trying to find the ultimate cure for ageing so we can live for a couple of centuries. I find this idea of attempting to overcome old age and death medically rather grotesque and scary. I can鈥檛 think of anything more socially disruptive. And besides, there are a lot of cultures where people are still not living full lives, which makes our Western obsession with trying to have ever more life look sick.

Do you believe in an afterlife?

I don鈥檛 really know what that means, and I鈥檓 not sure anyone ever will. I see it as a real mystery, but that鈥檚 not because I鈥檓 mystical or want to be anti-scientific. I鈥檓 a true sceptic about life after death.