Culture vs Nature
Culture is departure from nature. It has been the way throughout
man's history. Man, Homo sapiens would have lived with nature till he
became Homo symbolicus and then Homo eastheticus.
Every step man took in the name of progress and advancement of his
culture was a step further away from nature, yet man has not been able
to define his own culture. Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckohn had
compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture". (Culture: A Critical
Review of Concepts and Definitions. quoted in Wikipedia).
When man enjoyed fresh fruits and leaves from the plant life around
him he was living with nature. He departed from nature when he began to
roast, burn and later boil his food. When man enjoyed the beauty of his
surroundings he was with nature. When he began to alter his surroundings
as his easthetic senses "developed" he began to interfere with nature.
When he enjoyed the music of nature he belonged to nature. With his
departure from nature, when he no longer could enjoy the music of
nature, he had to create his own music. It was the same with art, though
at first he is supposed to have used it as Homo symbolicus.
"Writing, art, music, dance, and other forms of symbol creations and
manipulations reveal the very human process of giving meaning to the
experience of life." wrote Cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg in
his 'Psychology of Writing'.
Ellen Dissanayake, considers that "Art is a normal and necessary
behavior of human beings", introducing Homo eastheticus, in her book of
the same title. At the IFRAO Congress 2010, she had described a behavior
of art more precisely as "making the ordinary extraordinary." The
ordinary body (skin, hair), natural surroundings (e.g., cave walls, rock
outcroppings, boulders, logs, pieces of stone), and common artifacts
(e.g., tools, utensils, house walls, canoes) are made special by
cultural shaping and elaboration that make these more than ordinary. She
had introduced the term "artification," for this activity.
We could also interpret artification as interference with nature to
make unnatural surroundings.
When we talk of our own culture, now we have fresh evidence of our
"pre-historic" period, about human settlements dating back nearly 4000
years, 1750 B.C. to be exact. It has been confirmed by C14 dating that
the ancient canoe burial site at Haldummula is 3850 years old. The
"elite' house discovered at Ranchamadama has a date of 1359 B.C. This
has been revealed in Professor Raj Somadeva's "Archaeology of the Uda
Walave Basin", released in June 2011.
At Udaranchamadama, near Udawalawe, Somadeva and his team discovered
the remains of a foundation of a house with a porch, inner chamber and a
backyard with a kitchen. Among the artefacts found here were clay beads
and even a kohl stick. He has brought forward the idea that our
ancestors could have been the first to use iron implements.
These settlements around the Walave basin could also be the period
when the Ravana dynasty ruled Lanka. We cannot rule out Ravana as a
mythical figure. Those who deny his existence are confused with the
Ravana in the Ramayana and they do not wish to see Ravana the great
physician.
How do we measure cultural advancement? The presence of beads and
kohl sticks show that the people used to dress themselves up, tended to
wear ornaments. Who wore them, the children, the community leaders or
elders, the women only or both men and women? This leads to another
question, when did the human female begin to adorn herself to attract
the male of the species? When did she deviate from the other animals?
Among most species, it is the male that has to attract the female. he
has to work so had at it, his body and appearance is all designed to
attract the female.
If the Udaranchamadama residents had inherited the characteristics of
Homo eastheticus, then there should have been other art forms among
them, paintings, music, sculpture. Somadeva found a terracotta figurine
(in his own words, "probably a manifestation of a stylized bull").
There could have been other figurines. Religious or artistic is a
matter we cannot be certain of, but there may not have been a
significant difference between easthetic and religious objects. There
should also have been paintings, since ancient man in our country too
had made drawings on cave walls, which we can still find at places like
'Tharulengala in Hulannuge. They could not have been of any religious
significance, but an easthetic expression of their surroundings,
according to Somadeva.
What did the families who lived at Udaranchamadama do in the
evenings, did they narrate stories, first their own experiences or what
they had heard from their parents and grandparents, and then stories
that some of them may have made up. Since it is possible that they had
some form of religious worship, there would have been chants and
prayers, which would have made them develop music, both to accompany the
chanting and also as a separate offering.
Perhaps Somadeva and his team would be able to tell us more about our
ancestor, who had lived here over the past 40,000 years, when he
explores the remains of a pre-historic settlement at Haldummulla next
month, and through his study of our pre-historic cave paintings. He
would be able to tell us more about Homo eastheticus and Homo symbolicus,
or he may even be able to present to us a more complex human ancestor.
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