Cluster analysis opens up a world-wide historical perspective on animal symbolism in divine attributes, divination sets, and in the naming of clans, constellations, zodiacs, and lunar mansions
by Wim van Binsbergen
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From an African bestiary to universal
science? Cluster analysis opens up a world-wide historical perspective on animal symbolism in divine attributes, divination sets, and in the naming of clans, constellations, zodiacs, and lunar mansions by Wim van Binsbergen |
©
2002 Wim van Binsbergen[1]
The
philosopher of science Sandra Harding attributes modern
science’s claim to universality not in the first place to its
internal epistemology, but to the specific social condition that
modern science is available, represented, mediated, anywhere on
the globe, at specific centres of exchange such as universities,
schools, the media etc. The present paper makes the point that,
among systems of knowledge, modern science does not have the
monopoly of this social condition. Many other systems of
knowledge, far from being merely local, have extensive continuity
over vast expanses of both space and time, and hence may be
suspected of taking on, in the consciousness of the people
sharing such knowledge, a validity comparable to modern
science’s. The global distribution of the mythological theme of
‘hero fights monster’ is one initial example. The argument
then concentrates on animal symbolism as providing an even more
impressive example. From eleven widely differing cultural
contexts in Asia, Africa and Europe and from a time span of
several millennia, eleven series of animal (combined with
non-animal) symbolism are processed: world-wide representations
of animal demons; nomes and major gods from ancient Egypt;
figurines in the Central African (Chokwe) divining basket; the
names of clans among the Central African Nkoya people and the
Southern African Tswana people; the classic Chinese zodiac and
lunar mansions; Babylonian astronomy; the modern international
names of the constellations; and the animal associations of the
major Greek gods. It turns out to be possible to subsume these
very disparate series in one large matrix. After a methodological
discussion, the contents of this matrix are subjected to
extensive cluster analysis. Given the notorious variability and
manipulability of cluster analysis results, we need to proceed
cautiously. However, the patterns that emerge turn out to be
remarkably stable and consistent, regardless of whether the
analysis is limited to animal symbols or is allowed to include
non-animal symbols; and regardless of whether actual occurrences
in the data set per series and per symbolic category data are
taken into account, or instead the data are dichotomised in terms
of mere occurrence, or non-occurrence, per series and per
category; dichotomisation allows us to use a stronger, parametric
distance statistic based on the Pearson correlation, but this
again yields largely the same results. Three clusters articulate
themselves persistently in the data set: an African / Chinese
cluster; an ancient Egyptian / classical Greek cluster; and an
ancient Mesopotamian cluster, to which modern constellation names
are historically indebted, and to which both globally distributed
animal demons, and Nkoya clan names, attach themselves. In an
attempt to explain this pattern, the hypothesis is formulated of
an Upper Palaeolithic cultural substratum encompassing, among
other traits including an early nomenclature of (some)
constellations, an elaborate system of animal symbolism. In the
African (Tswana, Chokwe) and Chinese material in our data set,
this Upper Palaeolithic substratum is still more or less intact.
Alternatively, under conditions of state formation, the emergence
of organised religion, and literacy, the substratum underwent
specific transformations in ancient Egypt (from where a decisive
influence was exerted on Greek religion and mythology) and, in a
radically different direction, in ancient Mesopotamia. While
animal symbolism remained a part of both transformative clusters,
animals lost their earlier central roles as vehicles of meaning
and of thought (as in the Upper Palaeolithic), and gave way to
anthropomorphic symbols or to symbols derived from other natural
phenomena than animals, especially meteorological and celestial
phenomena. Scientific classifications ultimately arose in the
context of these transformations in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt,
notably through early astronomy and divination systems, much
later to be reworked in Hellenic and Hellenistic times, and in
modern times to be partly dismissed as pseudo-sciences. Not only
does this analysis support the view that extensive continuities
in space and time, as a social basis for the attribution of
universality, is a feature of other systems of knowledge besides
modern science; it also shows how modern science and its spatial
and temporal extension is historically indebted to these other
systems of knowledge. In addition to this main line of argument,
the paper touches on a number of additional points: the Black
Athena thesis on ancient Egyptian / Greek continuity, supported
by the cluster analysis; Frobenius’ concept of the South
Erythraean cultural area, as a likely explanation of the Nkoya
material’s associating with the Mesopotamian cluster, thus
highlighting South Asian and Indonesian influences in Central
African kingship and mythology; the manifestation of the
postulated Upper Palaeolithic system of animal symbolism in the
famous rock art of that period; the persisting manifestation of
that system in such familiar themes of art history as the
‘animal style’, the ‘flying gallop’, animal tales, and
certain shamanistic themes having to do with animal death and
rebirth; the hypothesis that the postulated widespread Upper
Palaeolithic system of animal symbolism may have facilitated the
amazingly wide spread of astrology as an astral system of animal
symbolism; the demonisation or diabolisation, of that system when
under conditions of state formation and literacy a different
religious regime emerges; and finally such historically
documented interactions between the clusters as evade the
tree-like representation of relationships in cluster analysis:
Mesopotamian/ Egyptian, Mesopotamian/ Greek, Mesopotamian/
Chinese, African/ Egyptian, and Egyptian/ African.
Of course, more satisfactory cluster
analyses, and a more sophisticated and subtle interpretation of
their results, could be made if far more series from a wider
range of provenances were included — particularly from other
African and Asian societies, from the Americas, Australia and
Oceania, ancient Europe, and from other spheres of life than
religion, mythology, social nomenclature, and astral science.
However, the preparation and analysis of our eleven series has
already taken months of work. In the near future the data set
will of course be greatly expanded in space and in time.
Meanwhile, for a first indication of the kind of potential of
this material and of this kind of analysis, the present exercise
is quite sufficient. It confirms Levi-Strauss’ that animals
have been bien a penser, ‘good for thinking’, in the
most literal sense: as props for forms of untamed thought from
which, ultimately, along an itinerary whose outline we are
beginning to discern, contemporary scientific knowledge was to
come forth.
These ideas are set out in the following web-book (click on the links below in oder to proceed):
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Universality and the extension of knowledge systems in space and time
2. A near-universal theme in systems of mythological knowledge: ‘Hero fights monster’
3. The data set
- Series 1: Animal demons worldwide
- Series 2: Egyptian nomes
- Series 3: Egyptian gods
- Series 4: The Chokwe basket oracle
- Series 5: Nkoya clans
- Series 6: Tswana clans:
- Series 7: The Chinese zodiac
- Series 8: Chinese lunar mansions
- Series 9: Ancient Babylonia’s oldest star catalogue
- Series 10: Contemporary international scientific nomeclature of the constellation
- Series 11: Ancient Greek gods
4. Methodology
5. Cluster analysis
6. Interpretation: From an African bestiary to universal science?
7. Summary and conclusion
LIST OF DIAGRAMS (as included in either of the two Parts)
Diagram 9. Interpretation of the results of cluster analysis on world-wide patterns of animal symbolism
Diagram 10. The zodiac as depicted in the tomb of Seti I (c. 1300 BCE)
LIST OF TABLES (as included in either of the two Parts)
Table 1. A near-universal theme of
systems of mythological knowledge: ‘hero fights
monster’
[1] I
am indebted to the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and to the
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
and Humanities, Wassenaar, for greatly facilitating the research
on which the present paper is based; and to Henk Visser and the
Netherlands Association for the Philosophy of Science, for
creating the context in which I was brought to write the present
paper, as a by-product of my work on the more specifically
philosophy-of-science argument: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2001,
‘Noordatlantische wetenschap als etno-wetenschap: Een
intercultureel-filosofische reflectie op Sandra Harding’, paper
read at the seminar on ‘Kennis en Cultuur’ (Knowledge and
culture), Annual Meeting, Netherlands Association for the
Philosophy of Science, Utrecht, 23 November, 2001; English
version in preparation; soon available at:
http://come.to/van_binsbergen.
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