miércoles, 24 de julio de 2013

Arqueología del futuro antiguo

"Usted está como el vino"

me escribes
oh joven mujer
y recuerdo
cómo envejecía
de mis maestras europeas
de mis maestras asiáticas
y de mis maestras africanas.
Me escancié en escenarios bellos
frescos al atardecer
en oasis de desiertos lejanos
en montañas 
a la orilla de mares
Fui bebido por mujeres audaces
por sabias conocedoras
por jóvenes amigas
todas ellas amantes de la vida intensa
y de charlar horas sobre el mundo antiguo
sobre las esperanzas de lo nuevo
que se anuncia ya
en cada rostro joven
y decidido a no repetir
nuestros errores
Y de pais en pais
de continente en continente
y de piel en piel
visitando viejas ciudades
remotos lugares
llegué a esta raya mineral
del continente americano
donde escancio y libo 
muy poco a poco 
todo lo que la vida
viajada y gozada a fondo
me enseñó
durante mi largo exilio

Igor Parra

viernes, 12 de julio de 2013

At last but not the least

            Abrupt Civilization Change

I. Parra

What does “Abrupt Civilization Change” mean?
On one hand we could define it as significant technological change.  On the other hand we could explain it as temporal, where there are many very rapid, short intervals of change, during which modified social structures, economic dynamics, disruption of trade markets, and other movements occur.
How rapid must a change be to become an “Abrupt” Change?  It all depends upon the scale of observation.  From my point of view, that is, in an average Western life, “abrupt” could range from between 2 or 4 years up to 20 or 40 years.  Something big could be happening within a couple of statistical human generations spanning 25 years each.
During my 37 years living in Europe and my first 15 years growing up in South America - a lot of important things happened to me that could be considered Abrupt Changes, perhaps not on a “civilization” scale, but I suspect that many of these smaller events are part of much bigger changes.
Let me draw your attention to some of the major events that punctuated my and all of the lives of people living in this time.
The consolidation and the fall of the Soviet system; the independence of India, the rise of Chinese power as independent from Russian communists; the independence of dozens of African European colonies; massive changes in communications and transport; more and faster long distance “unwired” communications for voice, data and image; an increase in numbers of planes in the sky travelling at greater speeds; more high speed trains and in larger numbers; more destructive war systems and many more people inhabiting the planet – all consuming energy at a vast rate.
The list is actually much longer than this very synthetic flash abstract.  
It is evident that during the last 50 years we have witnessed extremely rapid civilization change.  In the last hundred years the magnitude of consequences as a result of new technology has already accelerated massively from those of just 200 years ago.
Besides, in Archaeology the technological level of armies is seldom used to get insight into the corresponding technological level of the society sustaining that technology.  This is a common practice since the first professional archaeologist start some 120 years ago to explore old Asian cultures, such as Troy, Mesopotamia, Hittites, and the most well known of all old African cultures, that of Egypt.  Thus let us compare for a moment the modern armies with those of 100 years ago.  This comparison shall show radical differences, not only in fire power but also in logistics, drilling systems, communications and cultural level of soldiers.  The latter is not a minor point: in the mid 1800ths half of the European population was unable to read a newspaper.  When compared to modern armies a technological revolution is needed to explain not only the quality of changes but the quantity too.  This is an important matter when dealing with Abrupt Civilization changes: quantities matter a lot, that is quantities of people attained by such or such other qualitative change, quantities of objects, quantities of information and quantities of new technologies achieved and spread out in short time intervals.
All of this corresponds to an abridged synthesis of Abrupt Changes operating as positive exponential curves. How to start surfing on those changes promoting, preceding and causing Abrupt falls of complete civilizations, which are observed in relatively short intervals of time?

jueves, 4 de julio de 2013

Abrupt Civilization Change (III)

mientras acopiamos información y observaciones de primera mano sobre los acontecimientos en el próximo oriente, sobre todo Egipto, Israel, Siria, Libano e Irán, sigo reproduciendo estos textos sobre Cambios Abruptos de Civilización que aún me parecen pertinentes en el momento actual

remember that thou are dust”...but dust with a memory

Igor Parra

Abrupt Civilization Change does result in overt material destruction for many people, in many cases. When cities become deserted or destroyed by men and/or by climate hazards these hardships might cause many people to emigrate, to leave their family homes in an attempt to keep ahead of starvation and the looting and burning of their houses. In short, what the Bible tells us about the destruction that comes behind Apocalypses is what many of us, in the western Judeo-Christian tradition, experience and associate as similar to the damage that Abrupt Civilization Change brings.
As we have pointed out before: there are many historic examples of so-called Abrupt Change which are neither rapid nor catastrophic, but rather smooth evolutionary changes in social structures that  sometimes relate to climatic changes.  We can assume that real Abrupt Change happens when particular circumstances such as social upheavel combined with climate change, produces sudden, complete destruction of some civilizations.
It is not very long since the methodological condition raised by us allows us to regard Abrupt as a rapid temporal change.  However, there are dramatic Abrupt Civilization Changes well documented by Archaeology and found throughout History which show the disappearance of material remains of a Civilization collapsing over a prolonged interval of time.  Therefore although sometimes we do observe sudden total destruction, there will be those who remember how things were before the Abrupt Civilization Change occurred and do not cut it off from the memory of men.  Moreover, there are periods and places where such total destruction over a relatively short period of time for a Civilization, is followed by resettlement of the destroyed places.
In 2005 I had the opportunity to visit such a place in Syria: the city of Ebla.  It was a very impressive Civilization, a four thousand year old library, with some 20 000 cuneiform tablets, was uncovered from oblivion and silence, on the site of the old city. 
The city was totally destroyed, by the family of the King Sargon of Akad, around 4250 years ago, but life continued in the form of urban settlements that followed upon the same place, during several thousand of years after the first destruction, or Abrupt Civilization Change that dissolved the Eblaite Civilization. That change provoked by Sargon´s family in Ebla had all the conditions required by us today, to list it as an Abrupt Civilization Change: it was very abrupt, because in less than a year complete destruction of the city and of the political and social system was implemented manu military; that is by huge military force.  Archaeologists and Palaeoclimatologists are still looking for evidence to link this brutal attack against Ebla with some abrupt climatic change that might have been happening in Mesopotamia at this time.  I think they will find some evidence to prove that climate had a big part to play in the dissolution of the Eblaite Civilization.  
Later we are going to deal with these mechanisms, but right here this example is instrumental to show us that, on the one hand, life does not end after  Abrupt Civilization Change, and, on the other hand, that, in some cases, Abrupt Climate Change seems to be related to some Civilization Change, not only because of the physical consequences of the Climate Change but, most interestingly, because of the reaction of some Civilizations against other Civilizations during such critical Abrupt short intervals of time.