Main text Part I
by Wim van Binsbergen
|
From an African bestiary to universal
science? Main text Part I by Wim van Binsbergen |
homepage | Animal symbolism overview page | Part II
© 2002 Wim van
Binsbergen[1]
On
23 November, 2001, I was invited by the Netherlands Society for
the Philosophy of Science to deliver an address on ‘Knowledge
and culture’. My discussion focussed on Sandra Harding’s work
over the past decade in the philosophy of science.[2] While critical of the so-called ‘strong’[3]
variant of relativism in the philosophy of science, she exhibits
a weaker relativism; this makes her explore the social,
political, economic and historical reasons which may have led to
modern (i.e. Western, North Atlantic, or cosmopolitan science) to
endow itself (rightly or wrongly) with the three crucial
characteristics of rationality, universality and objectivity. Yet
Harding clearly hopes that these external forces will not
be all, and that there will turn out to be something in the internal
nature and the special epistemology of modern science that would
justify its claim to these three characteristics, regardless of
the historical political package that has lend extra credibility
to such a claim.
One of Harding’s arguments is that
modern science appears universal, not only because
1.
it effectively applies wherever we can ascertain such
applicability by means of sensory perception, but also because
2.
it is represented everywhere: there are no clear social, ethnic,
linguistic or national limits to its actual application, its
sphere of effectiveness in fact appears to extend endlessly; in
fact, everywhere in the contemporary world there are recognisable
centres of exchange for that science (in the form of
universities, research institutes, schools,. book shops, museums,
Internet sites, television documentaries, experts, etc.), both
among professional scientists and between science and the wider
society.
Without contesting the validity of
Harding’s insight on this point, my familiarity, as an
ethnographer, historian, and intercultural philosopher, with a
number of other systems of knowledge than modern science makes
her insight appear in a different light. In fact, many of these
non-scientific systems of knowledge have a geographic extension
of applicability that is far from local, showing an amazing
continuity or convergence at a continental and even
intercontinental scale. The point deserves to be developed in
detail and with proper empirical backing, because if it can be
shown to be true, it would help us take a relative view of the
distinction between modern science and other systems of
knowledge, and help us appreciate their nature, spread, and
persistence over long stretches of time and space.
That a world-wide continuity in systems of
knowledge is not only found in contemporary cosmopolitan science
but is a long-established fact of cultural history, may be
argued, in the first place, on the basis of the extremely wide
spread of major mythological patterns like that of ‘hero fights
monster’ (cf. Table 1), which we will summarise in the next
section.
Bodies
of mythological knowledge are among mankind’s oldest attested
and (with important exceptions, see below) best studied systems
of knowledge. The recognition of the similarity of mythological
patterns as found in distinct linguistic and cultural tradition
was already a fact in Antiquity, when it inspired the practice of
the interpretatio graeca::[4] the
projection of Greek mythological proper names and concepts onto
the mythologies and ritual practices of the Egyptians, Scythian,
Celts, etc. at the periphery of the Greek world — a practice
well-known from the works of Herodotus and Plato. World-wide, the
available mythological material is of an incredible wealth. To
make, for the mere purpose of setting the introductory framework,
the point of far-reaching continuity and convergence here, I
prefer to select only one mytheme (i.e. the smallest meaningful
unit of mythological narrative), that of ‘hero fights
monster’, and to study it by reference to just one, highly
reliable and authoritative, source: the account of Fontenrose’s
explorations into the charter myth of the famous Delphic oracle
in Ancient Greece. The mytheme involves two archetypal
characters, the hero and the adversary, to which often a third is
added: the usually passive heroine.
The table demonstrates the truly amazing,
nearly universal distribution of this mytheme across world
cultures.
Table compiled on the basis of scattered information
contained in: Fontenrose, J., 1980, Python: A study of Delphic
myth and its origins, Berkeley etc.: University of California
Press, reprint of the 1959 edition
Explaining such a near-universal
distribution is another matter, and in this connection a number
of hypotheses will be developed towards the end of the present
paper. As far as our mytheme is concerned, the global
distribution does not necessarily confirm a hypothesis (however
obvious that would be) in terms of diffusion from a particular
well-defined and limited geographical origin. Cross-cultural
studies have always cherished the hypothesis of a constant,
universal structure of the human mind and the human body, as a
rival explanation for cross-cultural convergence of specific
cultural and social-organisational traits, which might otherwise
have to be explained in terms of diffusion from a specific
origin. For the global distribution of our mytheme this means
that it is quite possible that its central struggle merely
reflects an internal struggle which occurs, time and time again,
in the mind of every human being whenever and wherever, so that
the expression of that struggle in myth would be a case of ever
repeated parallel invention inspired by the universal
characteristics and tendencies of the human mind — and not the
gradual diffusion, from a specific origin in time and space, of a
mytheme that was only invented once for all and, instead of being
locally produced from scratch all the time by human minds, was
transmitted by means of explicit cultural communication from one
culture and period to the next, undergoing major changes in the
process, but still retaining its basic mythematic structure. In
his concluding pages, Fontenrose himself tends to an explanation
in terms of the struggle that is part of the universal human
experience: for him the mytheme sums up every human being’s
life’s story in the face of inevitable death — the hero is
simply Everyman. Personally I feel that here he was unduly
yielding to the anti-diffusionist and pro-localising tendencies
of cultural analysis in the middle of the twentieth century: the
Everyman interpretation is disappointingly unspecific and blunt,
in view of the many world-wide parallels, not just in the overall
mythematic application but especially in the details of its
elaboration and application — reference to some kind of
historical process to explain these parallels by reference to the
emergence and interactions of specific cultural formations would
seem to be needed at least in addition to the all too predictable
Everyman hypothesis.
It is however important to keep in mind
that Table 1 merely shows a pattern of distribution in time and
space, of one mytheme that has been defined in purely typological
terms. The typological similarity between the mythemes found in
the various cultures listed in Table 1, does not in itself allow
us to take a further step and already take the typological
similarity as evidence for a generic, historic relationship —
as if we can already take for granted that ‘hero fights
monster’ is in fact one and the same story told all over the
world in only superficially differing ways. Methodologically, the
step from distribution to historical explanation is a very major
one, and it does not advance our insight if we would pretend that
it is not.
One might even go further and question the
assumption that Table 1 in its many cells lists in fact the
recurrent occurrence of one and the same phenomenon here
summarised by the concept of the mytheme. One could argue that as
a result of the richness of narrative free variation in all the
many different myth to which Table 1 refers, all the mythical
characters listed are truly incomparable. This would make their
reduction to the simple formula of ‘hero fight monster’ to an
absurdity violating the literary contents and its value.
My response to such a challenge would be
that the structuralist analysis of myth[5] has
brought us to postulate that underneath the myths’ narrative
surface structures (which certainly also need to be analysed in
their own right) relatively simple schemes lurk, which are
recurrent in space and time, and whose identification allows us
to appreciate the structural unity underlying the surface
diversity. This is not an appeal to any universal identity of the
human experience or human mind, not to an idiosyncratic,
intuitive method of literary hermeneutics, but to an body of
theoretical viewpoints and analytical procedures (first
formulated by Claude Levi-Strauss against the background of the
linguistic and psychological structuralism emerging in the first
half of the twentieth century) that allow contemporary academic
analysts of myths, working within the continually developing
intersubjective canons of their sub-discipline, to detect
mythical infrastructures, to analyse individual surface myths as
transformations of such an infrastructure, and by this procedure
define, in considerable detail, the systematic correspondence and
differences between surface myths, as found the same and
different cultures and historical periods.
Table 1 is only meant as an initial
example of the kind of evidence we have for claims concerning the
wider distribution in time and space of ancient, non-scientific
systems of knowledge. We will not attempt here to subject the
material presented there to further analysis. Meanwhile the table
illustrates another thing: the paucity of African references in
the context of this kind of analysis. Inevitably, ancient Greek
material is over-represented in Fontenrose’s data base (he is
primarily a classicist), and what little African references his
book contains derives from ancient Greek sources. For the purpose
of illustrating the world-wide distribution of the ‘hero fights
monster’ mytheme this is immaterial. However, the problem is
much wider: as compared to the wealth of academic knowledge
production on kinship, social and political organisation, ritual,
work on African myths is relatively rare, and whenever it exists
it is usually in such an obscure and specifically African format
and context that it is not available for intercontinental
cross-cultural comparative studies by scholars who are not
themselves Africanists.[6]
The anthropological study of myth has
traditionally been coupled to that of a topic that captivated
nineteenth and early twentieth century researchers but that has
since sunk into virtual oblivion: totemism, by which is
meant a system of social and natural classification in terms of
which sets of people are named and otherwise associated with
classes of phenomena in the natural world, especially with animal
and plant species. Levi-Strauss revived this field in the middle
of the twentieth century,[7] offering the
structuralist framework needed to understand that the crux of
totemism is not so much (as in the older works on the topic by
Frazer, Van Gennep, Freud, etc.)[8] the
individual association between one social group S and one natural
class C, but the development of a productive relationship:
S1 : S2 : ...Si = C1 : C2 : ...Ci
In
other words, totemism turned out to be an idiom to speak about
the social world in terms of the natural world — the animal and
vegetal world, and the relationships claimed to exist between the
latter, providing the models of thought in terms of which
everyday and ritual relations between groups could be articulated
and manipulated.
Totemism, in which animal species feature
overwhelmingly, thus appears as a particular form of a mode of
thought that in the past has been called ‘irrational’,
‘pre-logical’, ‘peripheral’, ‘primitive’, and which
Levi-Strauss’s work (especially in La pensee sauvage,
1964)[9] made
us appreciate as obsessed with logic, rational, standard and
common in all human societies past and present including everyday
life and untutored thought and expression in the contemporary
North Atlantic society — even though in the latter the
influence of the institutionally and politically dominant forms
of scientific thought filters through in the untamed everyday and
ritual expressions, masking their wildness and creating
embarrassment. In the light of the ubiquitous and ineradicable
presence of ‘untamed thinking’ (for which Levi-Strauss coined
the felicitous term ‘the science of the concrete’),
contemporary scientific thought constitutes not the norm of human
thought, but the exceptional case: one in which the conditions
for the production of, and the assignment of truth to, verbal
statements of a propositional form lies not only in their
well-formedness and their referring to the natural world, but in
the application of very elaborate, strict, intersubjective
procedures stipulating the conditions under which such truth is
assigned in an epistemologically valid and accountable manner.
We have now set the framework for the
appreciation of animal symbolism as a very widespread form of
untamed thinking, and indicated both its closeness and its
distinction vis-a-vis contemporary scientific thought. Let us now
return to Harding’s claim that it is the world-wide mediation
of scientific knowledge which persuades us to attribute to such
knowledge universality even regardless of whether science would
be entitled to claim such universality on the basis of internal
epistemological considerations. We have seen that there are
mythemes (like the one of ‘hero fights monster’) that could
claim practically world-wide mediation and representation. Let us
now explore if the same applies to patterns of animal symbolism
in non-scientific contexts world-wide.
In order to
explore the extension in time and space, and the convergence, of
various non-scientific systems of knowledge specifically those
revolving on animal symbolism , in Table 2 I have brought
together merely eleven series of animal symbolism, derived from
widely differing locations (cf. Diagram 1) and periods. The
series in this preliminary analysis have mainly been selected on
the basis of their availability given the established context of
my ongoing research in such fields as African and ancient
history, Egyptology, African ethnography, and comparative
religion and mythology (as part of a comprehensive historical and
comparative analysis of African divination systems; of the
applicability of the Black Athena thesis to sub-Saharan African;
and of agency in precolonial African history).
The eleven series, while all hinging on
the specific use of animal symbolism (often in combination with
other conspicuous features of the natural world: celestial
bodies, meteorological phenomena, the vegetal and mineral
kingdoms, colours, and products of human creation) are highly
diverse.
The first series
is that of animal demons, whose distribution in space and time
largely coincides with that of the ‘hero fight monster’
mytheme as studied in Table 1, was identified as a by-product of
Fontenrose’s exhaustive cross-cultural study of this mytheme:
across the world’s mythologies, he was struck by the recurrence
of a series of animal demons belonging to specific species.[10] Strictly speaking, it
would be inappropriate to call this series’ distribution
‘world-wide’, since it is mainly attested for those parts of
the world (largely coinciding with ancient literate
civilisations) whose mythologies have been abundantly recorded
and studied. Research currently initiated at the African Studies
Centre, Leiden, seeks to bring to bear the African mythological
material upon such world-wide comparisons.
The second series
lists the names and symbolic associations of the 42 districts
(‘nomes’, an ancient Greek rendering of the ancient Egyptian
term sp3t) into which the Nile valley and delta were
traditionally divided.[11] As is
demonstrated by archaeological records notably the famous
cosmetic palettes, the nomes’ nomenclature and symbolism go
back to prehistoric times (which in Egypt ended with the
establishment of the First Dynasty and the invention of writing,
c. 3100 BCE), and its confusing complexity may be partly due to
erosion in historic times when the underlying symbolic categories
of pre-state local organisation were no longer properly
understood.
The third series
lists the attributes, animal and otherwise, of the major ancient
Egyptian gods of the historical period.[12]
The fourth series
lists the figurines as found in the basket oracle of the
contemporary Chokwe people, dwelling in Angola, Zaire, and
Zambia.[13] The
oracle consists of a basket that contains dozens of man-made
figurines carved out of wood, in addition to parts of animals,
plants, and the mineral kingdom. During an oracular consultation,
some of these items are caused to drop out of the basket, and the
oracular response consists in an interpretation of the symbolic
features of these items. The basket oracle, which is far from
unique to the Chokwe people, is only one of a large family of
African divination systems whose interpretation systems work
along similar lines although the symbolic configurations to be
interpreted are often generated in very different methods, by
different random generators than a basket full of figurines.
Important members of this family of African divinatory systems
could be demonstrated[14] to be
localising transformations of the Arabian divinatory system of Ailm
al-raml, which was invented in Abbasid Mesopotamia by the end of
the first millennium CE, on the basis of influences from Chinese
Taoism (specifically I Ching), from astrology as formalised in
Hellenistic and Imperial times on the basis of much older
Mesopotamian and Egyptian divinatory astronomy, and possibly also
independent influences from North and West African divination
systems.
The fifth series
lists the nomenclature of clans (named human groups associated
with a natural species or other natural phenomenon) among the
contemporary Nkoya people of western central Zambia.[15] It was my sudden
impression of a surprising parallelism between Nkoya clan
nomenclature and Fontenrose’s world-wide list of animal demons
which triggered the present analysis in the first place.
The sixth series
lists the very elaborate clan nomenclature among the Tswana
people, a large ethnic and linguistic cluster in Botswana and
South Africa.[16]
The seventh
series lists the nomenclature of constellations in the Chinese
zodiac, which however contrary to most other zodiacs in the Old
World represents not an annual cycle calibrating the Sun’s
apparent progress along the ecliptic, but a twelve-yearly cycle.[17]
Our eighth series
lists the rich nomenclature of Chinese lunar mansions. Throughout
the Old World, ancient astronomies calibrate the Moon’s
apparent progress along the ecliptic, on a (near-)monthly basis,
by reference to a lunar zodiac, more commonly designated a series
of lunar mansions or lunar houses, specifying for each day of the
lunar month in which region of the sky (marked by a particular
star or asterism) the Moon is to be found. The study of lunar
mansions has formed a major topic in comparative historic
astronomy ever since the early 19th century, when Colebrook,
Biot, Weber and Burgess initiated the protracted scholarly
discussion on the dependence or independent of the various Asian
systems of lunar mansions vis-a-vis each other and vis-a-vis the
ancient southwest Asian and Graeco-Roman astronomical and
astrological tradition.[18] In the
debate, the contradictions of European scholarship in the period
of European colonial expansion came to the fore: on the one hand
the scholarly perception of irreducible otherness of the Asian
systems, and their fragmentation in terms of unconnected local
systems, was in line with the underlying assumptions of European
colonial domination, and its legitimation strategies; on the
other hand, the contemplation of the sophistication of the Asian
systems, and of their unmistakable similarity with the western
astronomical and astrological tradition, conveyed a sense of
respect and of Euro-Asian kinship (cf. the discovery of the
Indo-European linguistic family a few decades earlier) in
principle incompatible with colonial contempt. And the parallels
were even stronger than scholar could realise at the time. Each
of the 28 Chinese lunar mansions has both an animal association,
and an association with a non-animal object. It is remarkable
that also Hellenistic astrology (as documented in the Greek
Magical Papyri there were to be discovered as from the end of the
nineteenth century) designated the lunar mansions largely by
animal names, of which there are 28 employed; the last seven of
these also have non-animal names which would also eminently fit
into our categories in Table 2: ‘Chimaera’, ‘Virgin’,
‘Lamp’, ‘Lightning’, ‘Wreath’, ‘Herald’s
Stave’, ‘Boy’ and ‘Key’.[19] The ancient Greek system is in nomenclature
rather similar to an Assyrian one from the seventh century BCE,
with no more than 17 zoomorphic ‘lunar constellations’, that
are in fact incipient mansions.[20] Time and again the idea crops up that the
lunar mansions were profoundly associated with the invention of
the alphabet — the number of letters and of mansions being
virtually identical.[21] The
idea is certainly attactive: by the time of the invention of the
alphabet in the early second millennium BCE, the acrophonic
principle of indicating a single phoneme by a symbol denoting a
natural object whose name beings with that sound had already been
available in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing for over a millennium,[22] and most of the
earliest alphabetic signs unmistakable hark back to that source,
but what was still needed was a fixed and culturally firmly
supported framework of classification in the context of which one
was led to rely on just over a score of different signs, instead
of the hundreds that are needed for syllable writing, or the
thousands for full hieroglyphic, cuneiform and Chinese writing.
For many centuries, lunar mansions were in wide, daily use for
calendrical purposes, and one may very well imagine how —
against the background of the well attested constant influence of
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing in Phoenicia / Syro-Palestine[23] — an initial system
of merely designating these mansions by conventional signs ended
up as an alphabet for the rendering of other words than the names
of mansions, and finally for the rendering of all words.
A famous list of
ancient Babylonia’s 36 major stars records a very early phase
in the standardisation of celestial description through asterisms
and constellations, dating from before the fixing of the twelve
zodiakal signs. Its symbolism, animal and otherwise, is listed as
series (9).[24]
The only series
to derive from current cosmopolitan scientific practice is our
series (10), which lists the current international nomenclature
of the constellations.[25] It is
the only one of our series which can claim universal, i.e.
world-wide distribution.
Finally, series
(11) lists the symbolic associations, animal and otherwise, of
the major ancient Greek gods.[26]
Diagram
1. Locations of eleven knowledge systems containing animal
symbolism as included in the present analysis
(Click on the thumbnail to enlarge)
Legend:
Without the
slightest doubt, the present data set is extremely limited and
one-sided in composition. One would like to see much more
material included from Europe, South and Central Asia, Australia,
Oceania, and the Americas, reflecting the animal symbolism of
gods, asterisms, and such social groups as clans, but also
extending to other fields of formalised culture. However, what
little could be presented here, is already the fruit of months of
strenuous collating and analysis, and could not readily be
expanded without a further major research effort.
Meanwhile the most exciting research
finding is already immediately clear from Table 2. For it turns
out that systems of animal symbolism deriving from widely
differing spatial and temporal contexts of cultural history may
be conveniently collected in one large matrix, which brings out
correspondences and formal continuities (not to speak of generic
continuities) to a much greater extent than one would expect to
be the case if all these local or regional systems of animal
symbolism would have been invented totally independently from one
another.
Collecting all these series into one
comprehensive matrix requires a number of methodological choices.
In the first place, each series much be
well-documented, but finite. One could spend the rest of one’s
life investigating the ramifications of animal symbolism in Greek
mythology, for instance, but for the kind of analysis encountered
here, it is better to rely mainly — as I did — on one,
comprehensive and authoritative source, and leave further details
for a later phase in the analysis.
Another problem concerns aggregation. If
one were to define a different category for each animal species
and for each other kind of objects found in any of the series
involved in our comparative analysis, the number of categories in
the overall data set would be astronomical, defeating further
analysis. Although the list of categories in Table 2 might look
fairly exhaustive as a representation of the natural world,[27] the highly selective
nature of natural species’ admittance to each of the local
symbolic series can only be appreciated against an enumeration of
the many taxonomic series (as distinguished by modern
cosmopolitan biology) that objectively exist in each local
natural environment.
While the species distinguished by
today’s cosmopolitan biological science are more or less
clear-cut and offer easy solutions for operationalisation (in
other words, would make it easy to identify exemplars of the
species in reality), we cannot assume that that kind of
classification obtains or is meaningful in all the cultures
featuring in our analysis. It may be advisable to subsume bats
under birds, and marine mammals under fishes, because that it
what many of the world’s cultures do. Antelopes are not
universally distributed, and their northern complement would be
the stag or deer, which may therefore be classified in the same
category. The aggregate classification we end up with is a mere
compromise. It will vary in the degree of specificity it observes
with regard to certain types of animals. E.g. in Egyptian and
Greek symbolism birds of prey are precisely distinguished and
symbolically juxtaposed, so it would not do to lump vulture,
eagle, hawk and falcon in one category, but in other cultures the
taxonomic distinctions between these birds of prey may be less
precise, or less precisely rendered in ethnographic or
mythographic descriptions. Another reason for aggregation is that
some kinds of animals (notably mammals and birds) are far more
subjects of animal symbolism than others (gastropods, insects and
other arthropods); thus in some cases a category used in Table 2
would amount to a taxonomic under-species in scientific biology,
in other cases to an entire phylum. If we agree that animal
classification is some form of inchoate science, it does not do
to impose on any specific local systems the specific
categorisation of another type of science notably that of
cosmopolitan biology, but neither is it possible, in a
comparative exercise, to do full justice to all the underlying
local classifications. We would also tend to aggregate categories
in the case that a specific category would be represented among
only one or two series in our sample, unduly isolating it from
all the other series. E.g., among the eleven series in our data
set, the centipede is only specified in the series of the ancient
Egyptian nomes, and in the series of the ancient Egyptian gods;
it was found preferable to subsume the centipede under insects,
although insects and centipedes constitute distinct sub-phyla
within the phylum of Arthropods, to which nearly one million
animal species belong, or about 75% of all animal species.[28]
An initially unforeseen feature of local
systems of animal symbolism is the following: symbolism derived
from the animal kingdom is often combined with symbolism based on
the faunal and mineral kingdom, and on other aspects of the
visible world, such as celestial and in general meteorological
phenomena, abstract concepts, colours, etc. A major cluster of
non-animal symbolism derives from man-made objects, which I have
subsumed under one large heading ‘technology’. In some series
the technological items are very numerous, even exceeding the
faunal references in number. Since our emphasis is on animal
symbolism here, I did not differentiate between the various
‘technological’ items.
The ensuing classification underlying (as
the list of categories making up the extreme left-hand column)
our comprehensive matrix in Table 2 is a mere compromise, and any
results based on its analysis will have to be considered in a
relative light: different classifications would be at least
equally justified, and may have yielded different results. In
order to allow a re-analysis in terms of slightly or entirely
different categories and patterns of aggregation, I have always
listed the original local category whenever I have listed a case
under an aggregate category; e.g. when ‘goat’ as attribute of
a specific god is listed under ‘ovines’— a category to
which also sheep belong — , the name of that god appears in the
box ‘ovines’ followed by ‘(goat)’ between parentheses.
Cluster analysis is the standard technique
to bring out and underpin mathematically such clustering as one
might intuitively perceive in the data listed in the above table.
For this purpose, one assigns a numerical value to each cell, and
ascertains whether, in the light of any of the usual mathematical
linkage methods (average, centroid, complete, median, single or
Ward’s),[29]
certain series have more in common than others.
I assign to each cell the number of actual occurrences as listed
in the data set; doubtful cases are counted for 0.5; species
which feature symbolically elsewhere in the local society but not
in the specific context as analysed (basket oracle, clans, etc.),
will be treated as absent (0), since the same symbolic
occurrences outside the specified context may also occur in all
the other localities as analysed, without perspiring in the
documentation. If an item matches more than one species or
concept, it is listed twice and counted twice.
Since the data for at least one of our
eleven series, that on animal demons per definition cannot
include other aspects of the natural or man-made world than
animals, one might decide to either
(a)
limit the analysis to those rows that actually concern animals,
leaving humans, technologies, trees and plants, etc. out of the
cluster analysis; or
(b)
extend the cluster analysis to all species and objects including
non-animal ones.
Alternatively, considering the extremely
selective way in which the series were constructed out of an
enormous available literature, one may well doubt whether the
number of recorded occurrences of a particular trait in each of
the cells of Table 2 is a reliable and valid representation of
the relative weight of this trait in the actual material, if it
could be known and taken into account in its entirety. Therefore
there is something to be said for a dichotomisation of the data,
basing the analysis on the simple fact of whether a cell in the
column is empty (= 0) or non-empty ( = 1), without taking into
account the actual number of occurrences recorded per non-empty
cell; such dichotomisation moreover has the advantage that a
stronger, parametric distance metric may be used in cluster
analysis: the Pearson correlation coefficient.
This yields four analytical approaches:
•
animals and non-animal items, number of actual occurrences
(Analysis 1all categories, actual
occurrences)
•
animals and non-animal items, dichotomised (Analysis 1all
categories, dichotomised)
•
animals only, number of actual occurrences (Analysis 2animals
only, actual occurrences)
•
animals only, dichotomised (Analysis 2animals only,
dichotomised)
Since the data in
Table 2 are based on a very limited selection of the available
literature, we can make no assumptions as to the underlying
probability distribution, and therefore prefer a non-parametric
distance metric: normalised percent disagreement; as variance
method we prefer Ward’s, which in comparative assessments has
often turned out to be both subtle and reliable.
Using all series
and all categories as in Table 2, and taking the number of
actually listed incidences per cell as the cell score to be
entered into cluster analysis, the following cluster analysis is
produced as Analysis (1):
Diagram
2. Cluster Analysis 1all categories, actual occurrences.
Distance
metric is normalised percent disagreement; Ward minimum variance
method
legend:
This cluster
structure has a few features which recommend it as convincing and
illuminating up to a point. The two Egyptian series (nomes and
major gods), which are relatively close in space and time as
compared to the other series in our data set, do cluster
together; they also cluster together with the Greek mythological
series, which recent research has emphasised to have much in
common with the Egyptian material.[30] Series (2), (3) and (11) thus constitute
cluster (A), which is opposed to cluster (B) which comprises all
the other African and Asian series. Cluster (B) falls apart in
two sub-clusters (C) and (D), both of which invite systematic
interpretation. Sub-cluster (C) displays a certain spatial and
temporal consistency in that it comprises two African societies
with elaborate animal symbolism in their clan nomenclature and
divination system respectively; however, one is surprised to see
the Chinese system of lunar mansions to cluster with Tswana and
Chokwe, while Nkoya (the third African society in our data set)
and the Chinese zodiac appear as clustering in sub-cluster (D) of
the same branch (B). Systems of lunar mansions are found in all
Asian major civilisations, to begin with ancient Mesopotamia;[31] we may therefore
postulate that the Chinese version of lunar mansions has a
considerable antiquity.[32] We
have no direct way of ascertaining the antiquity of African clan
systems and divination systems, and therefore cannot gauge the
time distance between the African and the Chinese material in
cluster branch B; but whatever the time dimension, undeniably
this material encompasses huge distances in space. That yet the
African and the Chinese material clusters together, and in close
association with the Babylonian material, suggests an unsuspected
formal, and perhaps even generic, kinship to exist between these
series. That a genuine, historical relationship is involved here
is suggested by the fact that cluster (D) encompasses both the 36
Babylonian stars, and the modern constellations.
The considerable convergence in the
delineation and even the naming of some major constellations
across societies throughout the Old and the New World suggests a
Palaeolithic origin, whose details are extremely difficult to
reconstruct. Nonetheless, already in the early twentieth century
the possibilities of an astronomical interpretation of Upper
Palaeolithic signs, cupmarks, rock art was attempted, with more
sophistication than recognition, in the work of the French
prehistorian Baudouin.[33] In
more recent decades, Marshack’s work on the possible
interpretation of scratch patterns as found on Upper Palaeolithic
mobile artefacts has revived this concern.[34] Meanwhile the professional astronomer Ovenden
has suggested an astronomical method to solve the problem of the
origin of the constellations, based on the following question:
should we not simply ask at which place in the Ancient Near East
and the eastern Mediterranean basin were the earliest attested
constellations visible and during which period?[35] Background of this approach is that
precession of the equinoxes causes many stars except the
circumpolar ones to be alternatingly visible and invisible during
certain periods of the c. 26.000 years out of which a full
precession cycle consists; nedless to say, only visible
constellations can be named and made into an astronomical system,
and this brought Ovenden to situate the emergence of the
constellations in the Early Bronze Age and the eastern
Mediterranean basin — well in line with converging scholarly
views about the increase of maritime contacts in that period,
which (if they had to include open-sea crossings, e.g. from Crete
directly to Egypt; which is far from certain for that period) had
to involve sailing by night, and therefore navigation on the
stars (contrary to the established Phoenician practice of
day-light hopping from factory to factory across ditances of
25-30 km).
But Ovenden’s approach, though
illuminating, does not take into account the virtually world-wide
recognition of certain asterisms (the Pleiades, the Great Bear,
Orion’s Belt), which if it is to be attributed to diffusion
rather than to parallel cultural invention, would seem to imply a
time scale for the earliest definition of these near-universal
asterisms far more extensive than the few millennia which
Ovenden’s approach would grant us. For certain constellations
meanwhile the specific cultural origin (and in those cases far
more recent than the Palaeolithic) has been authoritatively
reconstructed by astronomically informed specialist in Ancient
Near Eastern studies.[36] This
does not mean that all constellations dat back to historical
times: rather, a picture emerges according to which only a few
constellations, heavy with animal symbolism, were discerned in
the sky, leaving large stretches of the sky unnamed and
unstructured, until the drive at scientific consistency and
systematics, in the context of increasingly complex and
state-based systems of knowledge, prediction, and control,
finally caused the entire sky to be mapped and named, through
still largely in tems of animal symbolism.
The first attestations of constellations
in written and archaeological evidence derive from ancient
Mesopotamia. There is a well-established intellectual continuity[37] between Babylonian
astronomy (including the first attested constellations),
subsequently Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Indian and Arabic
astronomy, and modern scientific astronomy; of the latter the
nomenclature of the constellations still forms a modest part.
Moreover, there is detailed evidence to suggest that Chinese
astronomy owes a considerable debt to Babylonian astronomy.[38] Also the more or less
world-wide (cf. Diagram 1) series of animal demons situates
itself in this sub-cluster; Fontenrose’s formulation of this
series of animal demons was based on a close inspection of the
world’s recorded mythologies in the light of the ‘hero fights
monster’ mytheme. Therefore sub-cluster (D) includes series
between which genuine historical relationships exist, despite
their mutual remoteness in both space and time. This suggests
that also the appearance of the African material in culture (D)
and (C) is not an artefact of blind statistical procedure, but
equally reveals some genuine historical relationship, which we
shall explore below.
For the methodological considerations
given in section (4), we might be persuaded to base our cluster
analysis not on the actual occurrences per cell, but on
dichotomised data instead. For the entire data set of both animal
and non-animal symbolism, this yields the following cluster
Analysis 1dichotomised:
Diagram
3. Cluster Analysis 1all categories, dichotomised
Distance
metric is normalised percent disagreement; Ward minimum variance
method
legend:
see Diagram 2.
Under
dichotomisation, the clusters (A), (C) and (D) as identified in
Analysis 1all categories, actual occurrences remain practically
unaltered, although their linkage with one another is affected:
(A) and (C) now cluster more closely together, instead of (C) and
(D) as in the original Analysis (1).
Since we are working with dichotomised
data, we are allowed to use the Pearson correlation coefficient
as our distance metric. This yields the following Analysis (1)dichotomised,
Pearson:
Diagram
4. Cluster Analysis 1all categories, dichotomised, Pearson
Distance
metric is 1-Pearson correlation coefficient; Ward minimum
variance method
legend:
see Diagram 2.
Use
of the Pearson correlation coefficient does not substantially
affect the cluster analysis: the clusters remain intact but their
interlinkage again shifts (now it is (A) and (C) which cluster
more closely together than (D)); moreover the two Chinese series
now cluster together within cluster C, which is somewhat more
convincing by analogy with the two Egyptian series).
If, in the light of the methodological
considerations in section 4, the analysis is limited to animals
only, a clustering pattern emerges as Analysis 2animals only,
actual occurrences in section (3):
Diagram
5. Cluster Analysis 2animals only, actual occurrences
Distance
metric is normalised percent disagreement; Ward minimum variance
method
legend:
see Diagram 2.
Analysis
(2) yields results very similar to those we considered above
under Analysis (1). In Analysis (2), the basic clusters (A), (C)
and (D) re-appear, with only two modifications: the two Chinese
series now cluster together (as was to be expected, by analogy
with the two Egyptian series); and whereas in the first analysis
(C) and (D) clustered together to form (B), now (C) and (A)
cluster together instead of (D).
Also for Analysis (2)animals only, we may
proceed to a dichotomised approach.
Diagram
6. Cluster Analysis 2animals only, dichotomised
Distance
metric is normalised percent disagreement; Ward minimum variance
method
legend:
see Diagram 2.
While
the basic clustering pattern of the three clusters (A), (C) and
(D) is maintained under dichotomisation, remarkable shifts occur:
the modern constellations series leaves the proximity of the
Babylonian series and instead joins cluster (A) (not without
historical basis, for also Egyptian astronomy contributed to the
definition of contemporary constellation, while many of their
names refer to episodes in Greek mythology); and the Chokwe
divination basket series (originally in (C)) comes to straddle
the boundary between (A) and (C).
Again, the Pearson correlation is
admissible as the distance metric for dichotomised data, yielding
the following cluster Analysis (2)dichotomised, Pearson:
Diagram
7. Cluster Analysis 2animals only, dichotomised, Pearson
Distance
metric is 1-Pearson correlation coefficient; Ward minimum
variance method
legend:
see Diagram 2.
With use of the
Pearson correlation coefficient appears the by now well-known
cluster structure (A), (C) and (D) re-appears, albeit somewhat
blurred in that the Greek mythology series dissociates itself
from (A) and joins (D). Perhaps this is an artefact of the
Pearson approach, where the Greek series as by far the most
elaborately documented one may behave somewhat oddly. But I
prefer to see here a systematic reason: Fontenrose’s
delineation of the ‘animal demons’ series was largely based
on his analysis of Greek mythological patterns, subsequently
enriched with an extensive cross-cultural comparison involving
the mythologies of Rome, Egypt, Canaan, Syria, Anatolia,
Mesopotamia, India, China, Japan, and the Americas. The
Babylonian central mytheme of the famous Enuma Elish cuneiform
series[39]
(‘Marduk fights Tiamat’) in part inspired both the ‘animal
demons’ series and the Babylonian series of major stars and
asterisms, with their symbolic associations. As stated above, the
compilation of Table 2, and the present analysis in general, was
instigated, in the first place, by my intuitive observation of
the apparently close parallels between the species after which
Nkoya clans are named, and Fontenrose’s ‘animal demons’
series; this observation is borne out by all the above cluster
analyses, including Analysis (2)dichotomised, Pearson.
Considering the high degree of aggregation
in the non-animal categories (especially in ‘humans and
gods’, ‘arthropods’, ‘sky etc.’, ‘technology’, and
‘trees and plants’), as compared to the far greater degree of
precision in the delineation of our animal categories, it is
Analysis (2) which should guide us when seeking to formulate
conclusions about patterns of animal symbolism in our data set.
But once again, the difference between Analysis (1) and (2) is
slight.
Cluster analysis is a blind statistical
procedure. It is often contentious,[40]
since, depending on the choice of distance metrics very different
results may be produced that are highly manipulable and full of
mere procedural artefacts, even if we use a method that was found
to be relatively reliable, such as Ward’s. Our analysis however
shows signs of considerable consistency, both formally (the same
triple cluster structure (A), (B) and (C) appearing time and
again, no matter how we vary the composition of the data set
(with or without non-animal elements, and using either actual
number of incidence or dichotomised data), and empirically (the
Egyptian pair of series, the Chinese pair of series, and two of
the three African societies, clustering each consistently
together). Therefore is would be foolish to dismiss the outcomes
of our cluster analysis as mere accidental or as a mere artefact
of cluster analysis. Instead we have to look for a convincing
explanation of what we may take to be a genuine, empirically well
etablished pattern.
[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 .
[2] Harding,
S., 1991, Whose science? Whose knowledge? : Thinking from
women’s lives, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press;
Harding, S., 1992, ‘After the neutrality ideal: science,
politics and ‘‘strong objectivity’’ ‘, Social
Research, 59: 567-587; Harding, S., 1993, ed., The
‘racial’ economy of science: Toward a democratic future,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Harding, S., 1994, ‘Is
science multicultural? Challenges, opportunities,
uncertainties’, Configurations, 2, 2, reprinted in:
Goldberg, D.T., 1994, ed. , Multiculturalism: A Reader,
London: Blackwell; Harding, S., 1997, ‘Is modern science an
ethnoscience? Rethinking epistemological assumptions’, in: Eze,
E.C., ed., Postcolonial African philosophy: A critical reader,
Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 45-70. My argument below is largely based
on the latter article but against the background of Harding’s
other publication as cited.
[3]
Philosophers and historians of ideas often differentiate between
‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of a particular theoretical
position, such as relativism, empiricism, falsificationalism,
materialism etc. The stronger version consistently takes the
theory to its ultimate consequences, often at variance with
conventional wisdom; the weaker position is less extreme and
consistent, and humours conventional wisdom to some extent. Cf.
Bloor, D., 1993, ‘Strong programme’, in: Dancy, J., &
Sosa, E., eds., A companion to epistemology, Oxford/
Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell’s, first published 1992, where the
strong variant of social constructivism is described as holding
the view that also true knowledge is nevertheless socially
determined; incidentally, such a position also underlies
Harding’s as discussed here: she is looking for (a) social
determinants of science’s claims to objectivity, rationality
and universality, but does so without (b) excluding the
possibility that there could also be internal epistamological
grounds for such a claim. Goldman, A.I., 1988, ‘Strong and weak
justification’, Philosophical Perspectives, 2: 51-71,
who describes strong and weak versions of subjectivism; and
Harding, S., ‘After the neutrality ideal‘, o.c., where
varieties of objectivity as a scientific ideal are explored.
[4] Cf.
Griffiths, J.G., 1980, ‘Interpretatio graeca’, in: Helck, W.,
& Otto, E., eds., Lexikon der Agyptologie, Wiesbaden,
Harrassowitz, vol. III, cols. 167-172.
[5] Cf.
Levi-Strauss, C., 1960, ‘Four Winnebago myths: A structural
sketch.’ In: Diamond, S., ed., Culture and history, New
York: Columbia University Press, pp. 351-362; Levi-Strauss, C.,
1968, ‘The story of Asdiwal’, in: Leach, E.R., ed., The
structural study of myth and totemism, London, 2nd impr., pp.
1-47, first published 1967; Levi-Strauss, C., 1969-78, Introduction
to a science of mythology, 4 vols., trans. by J. Weightman
& D. Weightman, Harmondsworth: Penguin / Chicago: Chicago
University Press, original French edition: Mythologiques I:
Le cru et le cuit, 1964; II: Du miel aux cendres,
1966; III: Origines des manieres de table, 1968; IV: L’homme
nu, 1971, all at Paris: Plon; Levi-Strauss, C., 1971,
‘Rapports de symetrie entre rites et mythes de peuples
voisins’, in: Beidelman, T.O., ed., The translation of
culture, London: Tavistock, pp. 161-177; Levi-Strauss, C.,
1973, ‘La structure des mythes’, in: Levi-Strauss, C., Anthropologie
structurale I, Paris: Plon, 1973, pp. 227-255; Levi-Strauss,
C., 1979, Myth and meaning, London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul; Leach, E.R., 1967, ed., The structural study of myth and
totemism, London: Tavistock; Leach, E., & Aycock, D.A., 1983,
Structuralist interpretations of biblical myth, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press; van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1985, ‘The
historical interpretation of myth in the context of popular
Islam’ in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., & Schoffeleers, J.M.,
eds., Theoretical explorations in African religion,
London/ Boston: Kegan Paul, pp. 189-224; also at http://come.to/african_religion .
[6] Within
the research group on Agency in Africa of the African Studies
Centre, Leiden, established 2002, I am now initiating research
intended to cover this relative blind-spot. The present paper
could be counted as the first product of that research. The
intercontinental continuity of myths including African myths also
plays an important role in my forthcoming bookGlobal Bee
Flight, o.c.
[7] Levi-Strauss,
C., 1962, Le totemisme aujourd’hui, Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.
[8]
Ankermann, B., 1915, ‘Verbreitung und Formen des Totemismus in
Afrika’, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie; Armstrong, W.E.,
1961, ‘Totemism’, in: Ashmore, H.S., ed., Encyclopaedia
Brittanica: A new survey of universal knowledge, Chicago /
London / Toronto: Encyclopaedia Brittanica, XXII: 317-320 (in
fact an antiquated account reflecting scholarly views in the
early twentieth century); Durkheim, E., 1912, Les formes
elementaires de la vie religieuse: Le systeme totemique en
Australie, Paris: Felix Alcan.; Frazer, J.C., 1887, Totemism,
Edinburgh: Adams & Charles; Freud, S., 1918, Totem and
taboo, New York: Random House, English translation of German
edition, Totem und Tabu, first published 1913; Hartland,
E.S., 1915, ‘Totemism’, in: Hastings, J., with Selbie, J.A.,
& Gray, L.H., eds., Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics,
Edinburgh: Clark / New York: Scribner, XII: 393-407; Lubbock, J.,
1870, The origin of civilization and the primitive condition
of man: Mental and social condition of savages, London:
Longmans, Green; Mclennan, J.F., 1865, Primitive Marriage,
Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black.; van Gennep, A., 1904, Tabou
et totemisme a Madagascar: Etude descriptive et theorique,
Paris: Leroux. For a recent re-consideration of the issue of
totemism, cf. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J.L., 1992,
‘Totemism and ethnicity’, in: Comaroff, J., & Comaroff,
J.L., eds., Ethnography and the historical imagination,
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
[9] Levi-Strauss,
C., 1962, La pensee sauvage, Paris: Plon; Engl.
translation The savage mind, 1973, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press/ London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, first
published 1966.
[10]
Fontenrose, J., 1980, Python: A study of Delphic myth and its
origins, Berkeley etc.: University of California Press;
paperback edition, reprint of the 1959 first edition.
The footnotes to the filled cells in this column specify page,
and motif (numerical code preceded by letter) where this type of
animal demon is discussed in Fontenrose’s book Python, o.c.
[11]
Bernal has persuaded us to recognise in the ancient Greek toponym
of Sparta; Bernal, M., in press, ‘Review of ‘‘Word games:
The linguistic evidence in Black Athena’, Jay H. Jasanoff &
Alan Nussbaum’, typescript in my possession, now published in: Black
Athena Writes Back, Durham: Duke University Press.
[12]
Also based on Vergote, J., 1974, De Egyptenaren en hun
godsdienst, Bussum: De Haan, second impr., first ed. 1971;
Gardiner, A.H., 1994, Egyptian grammar: Being an introduction
to the study of hieroglyphs, rev. 3rd ed., Oxford: Griffith
Institute/ Ashmolean Museum, this edition first published 1957,
first edition published 1927; Bonnet, H., 1971, Reallexikon
der agyptischen Religionsgeschichte, Berlin: de Gruyter,
first published 1952.
[13]
Rodrigues de Areia, M.L., 1985, Les symboles divinatoires:
Analyse socio-culturelle d’une technique de divination des
Cokwe de l’Angola ( ngombo ya cisuka), Coimbra:
Universidade de Coimbra.
[14]
Skinner, S., 1986, The oracle of geomancy: Divination by earth,
Bridport (Dorset)/ San Leandro (Cal.): Prism, first published
1977; Trautmann, R., 1939-1940, ‘La divination a la Cote des
Esclaves et a [ check: a la ] Madagascar: Le Vodou Fa — le
Sikidy’, Memoires de l’Institut Francais d’Afrique Noire,
1, Paris: Larose; Maupoil, B., 1943, La geomancie a
l’ancienne Cote des Esclaves, Paris: Institut de
l’Ethnologie; Maupoil, B., 1943, ‘Contribution a l’origine
musulmane de la geomancie dans le Bas-Dahomey’, Journal de
la Societe des Africanistes, 13. ; van Binsbergen, W.M.J.,
1995, ‘Four-tablet divination as trans-regional medical
technology in Southern Africa’, Journal of Religion in
Africa, 25, 2: 114-14, also at http://come.to/african_religion ; van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1996, ‘Transregional and
historical connections of four-tablet divination in Southern
Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 26, 1: 2-29,
also at http://come.to/african_religion
; van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1996, ‘The astrological origin of
Islamic geomancy’, paper read at ‘The SSIPS [ Society for the
Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science ] / SAGP [ Society of
Ancient Greek Philosophy ] 15th Annual Conference: ‘‘Global
and Multicultural Dimensions of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
and Social Thought: Africana, Christian, Greek, Islamic, Jewish,
Indigenous and Asian Traditions, Binghamton University’’,
Department of Philosophy/ Center for Medieval and Renaissance
studies (CEMERS).
[15]
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1992, Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and
history in central western Zambia, London/ Boston: Kegan Paul
International; and author’s fieldnotes. An extensive discussion
on Nkoya clans is forthcoming in my Global Bee Flight, o.c.
[16]
Schapera, I., 1952, The ethnic composition of Tswana tribes,
London: London School of Economics and Political Science,
Monographs on Social Anthropology no. 11. In addition to those
listed, Schapera mentions two totems whose meaning he cannot
explain: mokowe and mphareng; these words, or the
roots from which they might be derived, are not listed in the
standard Tswana dictionary either: Matumo, Z.I., 1993, Setswana
English Setswana dictionary, Macmillan/ Boleswa/ Botswana
Book Centre, revised version of the 1875 edition of Tom Brown’s
Setswana dictionary. I suggest mokowe relates to the
colour white.
[17]
Walters, D., 1989, Chinese astrologie: Het interpreteren van
de openbaringen van de boodschappers des hemels, Katwijk aan
Zee: Servire, p. 77; Dutch translation of D. Walters, 1987, Chinese
astrology, Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press.
[18]
Cf. Colebrooke, H.T, 1807, ‘On the Indian and Arabian divisions
of the zodiac’, AR, 9: 323-376; printed in: Colebrooke, H.T.,
1837, Miscellaneous essays, vol. 2, pp. 321-373; Biot,
J.B., 1840, ‘Sur les nacshatras des Hindous: Et les mansions
lunaires des Arabes’, Journal des savants, 1840:
264-279; Weber, A., 1850-1853, ‘Ueber den Taittitiya-Veda,
astronomische Data aus beiden Yajus und eine Stelle des
Taittiriya-Brahmana uber die Mondhauser’, Indische Studien,
1: 68-100, 2: 390-392; Weber, A., 1865, ‘Zur Frage uber die
Nakshatra’, Indische Studien, 9: 424-459. Burgess, E.,
1866, ‘On the origin of the lunar division of the zodiac’,
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 8: 309-334. For the
Chinese lunar mansions (sieou) listed here, cf. Walters, o.c.
Other sources on the sieou include: Schlegel, G., 1875, Uranographie
chinoise, 3 vols, Leiden: Brill; Whitney, W.D., 1874, ‘On
the lunar zodiac of India, Arabia and China’, Oriental and
Linguistic Studies, 2nd series, article 13: 340-421; Boll,
C., 1912, ‘Der ostasiatische Tierzyklus im Hellenismus: Vortrag
gehalten am 9 April 1912 auf dem XVI. Internationalen
Orientalisten-Kongress zu Athen’, T’oung Pao, 13:
699-718; Hentze, C., 1933, Mythes et symboles lunaires (Chine
ancienne, civilisations anciennes de l’Asie, peuple limitrophes
du Pacifique), Antwerpen: De Sikkel; Petri, W., 1966,
‘Uighur and Tibetan lists of the Indian lunar mansions’, Indian
Journal of the History of Science, 1: 83-90; Mostaert, A.,
‘Introduction’, in: Cleaves, F.W., ed., 1969, Manual of
Mongolian astrology: With a critical introduction by The Rev. A.
Mostaert CICM, Schilde, Belgium, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard
University Press, pp.1-65; Oldenburg, H., 1909, ‘Naksatra and
Sieou’, Nachrichten von der Koniglichen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, 1909, pp. 544-572, reprinted in:
Oldenburg, H., 1967, Kleine Schriften, ed. Janert, K.L.,
Wiesbaden: Glasenapp-Stiftung, vol. 2, pp. 1352-1380.
[19]
Cf. Gundel, W., 1936, Dekane und Dekansternbilder: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte der Sternbilder der Kulturvolker: Mit einer
Untersuchung uber die Agyptischen Sternbilder und Gottheiter der
Dekane von S. Schott, Studien der Bibliothek Wartburg, Bd 19,
reprint 1969, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, p.
223. Inclusion, in Table 2, of these Greek Magical Papyri and
early Babylonian series in Table 2 should be considered in the
course of further analysis along the lines developed in the
present paper.
[20]
Cf. Parpola, S., 1983, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the
Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, Part II, Commentary and
appendices, Alter Orient und Altes Testament;
Veroffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orient und
des Alten Testaments, Band 5/2, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag/ Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, appendix B, ‘Lunar
constellations’, pp. 385-38.
[21]
Cf. Hommel, F., 1891, ‘Uber den Ursprung und das Alter der
arabischen Sternnamen und insbesordere der Mondstationen’, Zeitschrift
des deutsches morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 45: 592-619. Stucken,
E., 1913, Der Ursprung des Alphabets und die Mondstationen,
Leipzig — which despite the wild suggestion contained in its
title is a very thorough and authoritative study; Kelley, D.B.,
1992, ‘The twenty-eight lunar mansions of China: Part 2: A
Possible Relationship with Semitic Alphabets’, Reports of
Liberal Arts, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, No.
6, 1992; Burckhardt, T., 1974, Cle spirituelle de
l’astrologie musulmane d’apres Mohyiddin ibn Arabi,
Milano: Arche, Bibliotheque de l’Unicorne.
[22]
Gardiner, A.H., 1942, ‘Writing and Literature’, in Glanville,
S.R.A., ed., The legacy of Egypt, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
pp. 53-78; Cerny, J., 1971, ‘Language and writing’, in:
Harris, J.R., ed., The legacy of Egypt, 2nd ed., Oxford:
Clarendon, pp. 197-219.
[23]
Dussaud, R., 1946-1948, ‘L’origine de l’alphabet et son
evolution premiere d’apres les decouvertes de Byblos’, Syria,
25: 36-52; Redford, D.B, 1992, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in
ancient times, Princeton: Princeton University Press; and
extensive references cited there.
[24]
Walker, C.B.F., & Hunger, H., 1977, ‘Zwolfmaldrei’, Mitteilungen
der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft (Berlin), 109: 27-34; cf.
van der Waerden, B.L., 1949, ‘Babylonian astronomy: II. The
thirty-six stars’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 8:
6-26. The relatively early texts to which these scholarly
articles refer, by no means offer a full account of the complete
series of constellations as recognised in ancient Mesopotamia;
cf. Weidner, E.F., 1924, ‘Ein babylonisches Kompendium der
Himmelskunde’, American Journal of Semitic Languages and
Literatures, 40: 186-206; Hunger, H., & Pingree, D.,
1989, MUL.APIN: An astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform,
Horn (Austria): Verlag Ferd. Berger & S. Gesellschaft;
Pingree, D., & Walker, C., 1988, ‘A Babylonian star
catalogue: BM 78161’, in: Leichty, E., Ellis, M deJ., &
Gerardi, P., eds., A scientific humanist: Studies in memory of
Abraham Sachs, Philadelphia: Occasional Publications of the
Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, 9, pp. 313-322. For the general
background to science in the Ancient Near East, cf. Neugebauer,
O., 1969, The exact sciences in Antiquity, New York:
Dover, 2nd edition, first published 1957, Providence (R.I.):
Brown University Press. For the magical, especially divinatory
use of astronomy in the ancient Babylonian context, cf. Reiner,
E., 1995, Astral magic in Babylonia, Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, 85, 4 , Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society; van Binsbergen, W.M.J., & Wiggermann,
F.A.M., 2000, ‘Magic in history: A theoretical perspective, and
its application to Ancient Mesopotamia’, in: Abusch, T., &
van der Toorn, K., eds., Magic in the Ancient Near East,
Groningen: Styx, pp. 3-34, also at: http://come.to/ancient_thought .
[25]
Moore, P., 1984, The new atlas of the universe, London:
Beazley, p. 203.
[26]
The number of sources available for Greek mythology and its
animal associations is overwhelming. In order to keep the size of
this series within manageable limits, I have greatly limited
myself, drawing the data mainly from Robert Graves’ extensive
and authoritative collection: Graves, R., 1964, The Greek
myths, 2 vols., Harmondworth: Penguin, first published 1955.
This book is very elaborate on the epithets of major gods, and
translates every proper name, although the etymologies given are
often admittedly doubtful. Additional data were drawn mainly
from: The New Larousse Encyclopedia of mythology,
introduction R. Graves, London/ New York/ Sidney/ Toronto:
Hamlyn, 11th edition, especially the contribution there by
Guirand: Guirand, F., 1975, ‘Greek mythology’, in: New
Larousse Encyclopedia of mythology, o.c., pp. 85-198;
Long, C.H., 1993, ‘Mythology’, in: The New Grolier
Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release 6, 1993; and Criss, P.J.,
n.d. [ 2000 ] , ‘Animals as represented in mythology and
folklore, http://www.cybercomm.net/``grandpa/animals.html .
[27]
For a fairly exhaustive enumeration of current African mammal
species, cf. Haltenorth, T., & Diller, H., 1988, A field
guide to the mammals of Africa, London: Collins, this edition
first published 1980, Engl. translation of Saugetiere Afrikas
und Madagaskars, Munchen: BLV, 1977, with extensive
references. It is remarkable that only a limited selection of the
hundreds of species listed there found their way into the systems
of animal symbolism as treated in the present argument. The same
applies, a fortiori, to the birds and other phyla of the animal
kingdom, whose extremely rich ramifications may be gleaned from
any standard encyclopeadia.
[28]
Cloudsley-Thompson, J.L., 1993, ‘arthropod’, in: Grolier
Encyclopedia, o.c.; Ewing, H.E., 1961,
‘Anthropoda’, in: Encyclopaedia Brittanica, o.c.,
II: 456-459.
[29]
For a discussion of some of these methods and their merits, cf.
Anderberg, M.R., 1973, Cluster analysis for applications,
New York: Academic Press; Everitt, B., 1974, Cluster analysis,
London etc: Heinemann, pp. 69ff.
[30]
Bernal, M., 1987, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic roots of
classical civilization, Vol. I, The fabrication of Ancient Greece
1787-1987, London: Free Association Books/ New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press; Bernal, M., 1991, Black Athena: The
Afro-asiatic roots of classical civilization, II, The
archaeological and documentary evidence, London: Free
Association Books; New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press;
Davison, J.M., 1987, ‘Egyptian influence on the Greek Legend of
Io’, paper given to the Society for Biblical Literature;
Berard, J., 1952, ‘Les Hyksos et la legende d’Io: Recherches
sur la periode pre-mycenienne’, Syria, 29: 1-43;
Lambropoulou, A., 1988, ‘Erechtheus, Boutes, Itys and Xouthos:
Notes on Egyptian presence in early Athens’, The Ancient
World, 18: 77-86. I earlier objected in print to the idea of
close continuities between Egyptian and Greek myths (van
Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ‘Alternative models of
intercontinental interaction towards the earliest Cretan
script’, in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., ed., Black Athena: Ten
Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical
Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch
Archaeological and Historical Society, vols. 28-29, 1996-97,
pp. 131-148; also at: http://come.to/black_athena ) but have meanwhile accepted this idea wholeheartedly
(cf. my forthcoming Global bee flight, o.c.; and
the greatly expanded and revised reprint of Black Athena Ten
Years After, under the title: Black Athena Alive,
Hamburg/ Munster: LIT and New York: Transaction Press, in press.
[31]
Cf. Gundel, Dekane, o.c.; Parpola, Letters from
Assyrian scholars, o.c.
[32]
However, this assumption may have to be revised in the light of
suggestions of Western nineteenth-century CE borrowings into East
Asian astrology; Cf. Gundel, Dekane, o.c., p. 216;
I come back to this in a footnote below.
[33]
Baudouin, M., 1916, ‘La prehistoire des etoiles au
Paleolithique: Les Pleiades a l’epoque aurignacienne et le
culte stello-solaire typique au solutreen’, Bulletin et
Memoires de la Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris, ser. 6, 7:
274-317; Baudouin, M., 1926, La prehistoire par les etoiles:
Un chronometre prehistorique, Paris: Maloine.
[34]
Marshack, A., 1972, The roots of civilization: The cognitive
beginnings of man’s first art, symbol and notation, London:
Weidenfeld & Nicholson/New York: McGraw-Hill. A
reconstruction of the earliest astral science will be attempted
in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., in preparation, Cupmarks, stellar
maps, and mankala board-games: An archaeoastronomical and
Africanist excursion into Palaeolithic world-views (for a
preview, see: http://come.to/ancient_thought
.
[35]
Cf. Ovenden, M.W., 1966, ‘The origins of the constellations’,
The Philosophical Journal [ Transactions of the Royal
Philosophical Society of Glasgow ] , 3: 1-18.
[36]
Cf. Porada, E., 1987, ‘On the origins of ‘‘Aquarius’’
‘, in: Rochberg-Halton, F., ed., Language, literature and
history: Philological and historical studies presented to Erica
Reiner, New Haven (Conn.): American Oriental Society, pp.
279-291; Hartner, W., 1965, ‘The earliest history of the
constellations in the Near East and the motif of the lion-bull
combat’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 24: 1-16; van
der Waerden, B.L., 1952-53, ‘History of the zodiac’, Archiv
fur Orientforschung, 16: 216-230; Lewy, H., 1965, ‘I?tar-„ad and
the Bow Star’, in: Guterbock, H.G., & Jacobsen, T., eds., Studies
in honour of Benno Landsberger on his seventy-fifth birthday,
April 21, 1965, Chicago: University of Chicago Press for
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, pp. 273-282;
Miller, R.A, 1988, ‘Pleiades perceived: MUL.MUL to Subaru’, Journal
of the American Oriental Society, 108: 1-25; Borger, R.,
1972-1975, ‘Himmelsstier’, in: Edzard, D.O., ed., Reallexikon
der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archaologie, Berlin/
New York: de Gruyter, 4. Band, p. 413-414; and (non vidi)
Gleadow, R., 1968, The origin of the zodiac, London. A
wealth of information on ancient Mesopotamiam astronomy also to
be found in: Parpola, S., 1983, Letters from Assyrian Scholars,
o.c.
[37]
Boll, F.J., 1903, Sphaera, Leipzig: Teubner; Bezold, C.,
& Boll, F.J., 1911, Reflexe astrologischer Keilinschriften
bei griechischen Schiftstellern, Heidelberg, Akademie der
Wissenschaften Philosophisch-historische Klasse, no. 7: 1-54;
Barton, T., 1994, Ancient astrology, London: Routledge;
Tester, S.J., 1989, A history of western astrology, New
York: Ballantine, reprint of the 1987 first edition; Pingree, D.,
1973, ‘Astrology’, in: Wiener, P.P., ed., Dictionary of
the history of ideas: Studies of selected pivotal ideas, I,
New York: Scribner, pp. 118-126; Baigent, M., 1994, From the
omens of Babylon: Astrology and Ancient Mesopotamia,
Harmondsworth: Arkana/ Penguin Books; Berthelot, R., 1938, La
pensee de l’Asie et l’astrobiologie, Paris: Payot;
Nilsson, M.P., 1943, The rise of astrology in the Hellenistic
age, Meddelande fran Lunds Astronomiska Observatorium, Ser.
ii, nr. iii, Historical notes and papers, no. 18. In recent
decades, the fundamental continuity underlying astronomy and
astrology in major civilisation of Antiquity, the Ancient Near
East, South Asia, the Arab world, and pre-modern Europe, has been
studied with greatly impressive scholarship by David Pingree:
Kennedy, E.S, & D. Pingree, 1971, The astrological history
of M?sh?®all?h, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press;
Pingree, D., 1959, ‘A Greek linear planetary text in India’, Journal
of the American Oriental Society, 79: 282-284. Pingree, D.,
1963-64, ‘Indian influence on early Sassanian and Arabic
astronomy’, Journal of Oriental Research (Madras), 33:
1-8; Pingree, D., 1971, ‘On the Greek origin of the Indian
planetary model employing a double epicycle’, Journal of the
History of Astronomy, 2: 80-85; Pingree, D., 1973, ‘Greek
influence on Islamic astronomy’, Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 93, 1: 32-43. Pingree, D., 1973, ‘The
Mesopotamian origin of early Indian mathematical astronomy’, Journal
of the American Oriental Society, 93: 32-43. Pingree, D.,
1978, The Yavanajataka of Sphujidhvaja, Harvard Oriental
Series 48, 2 vols, Cambridge (Mass.)/ London: Harvard University
Press (which contains, among much else of great value, a complete
cross-cultural history of astrology); Pingree, D., 1979, ‘Ilm
al-hay’a’, in: Lewis, B., Menage, V.L., Pellat, C., Schacht,
J., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, Leiden:
Brill, pp. III, 1135-1138; Pingree, D., 1989, ‘MUL.APIN and
Vedic astronomy’, in: Behrens, H., Loding, D., & Roth,
M.T., eds., DUMU-E2-DUB-BA-A: Studies in honor of Ake W.
Sjoberg, Philadelphia: S.N. Kramer Fund, pp. 439-445.
[38]
Bezold, C., 1919, ‘Sze Ma Ts’ien und die babylonische
Astrologie’, Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, 8: 42-49;
Ungnad, A., 1932-, ‘China und Babylonien’, in: Ebeling, E.,
& Meissner, B., eds., 1932-, Reallexikon der Assyriologie,
Berlin: de Gruyter, II, 91-93. On the other hand, Kugler advanced
an astronomical detail (reference to the longest day lasting 14
hours 24 minutes, as in Honan, China, 35° N, but not as in
Babylon at 32° 30’ N) which might suggest an influence from
East Asia upon ancient Babylonia; cf. Kugler, F.X., 1900, Die
Babylonische Mondrechnung, Fribourg/ Brisgau, pp. 79f.
[39]
Pritchard, A.B., ed. 1969, Ancient Near Eastern texts relating
to the Old Testament, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
first published 1950.
[40]
Cf. the controversy over the cluster analysis of the world-wide
variation in mitochondrial DNA. It was on the basis of this
cluster analysis that the ‘African Eve’ hypothesis was first
formulated; Cann, R.L., Stoneking, M., & WilsonA.C., 1987.
‘Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution’, Nature, 325:
31-36; Templeton, A.R., 1997, ‘Testing the out-of-Africa
replacement hypothesis with mitochondrial DNA data’, in: Clark,
G.A., & Willermet, C., eds., Conceptual issues in modern
human origins research, Amsterdam: Aldine de Gruyter, pp.
329-360; Shreeve, The Neandertal enigma?, o.c.;
Laine, A., 2000, ‘Eve africaine ? De l’origine des races au
racisme de l’origine’, in: Fauvelle-Aymar, F.-X., Chretien,
J.-P., & Perrot, C.-H., Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des
Africains entre Egypte et Amerique, Paris: Karthala, pp. 103f
.
homepage | Animal symbolism overview page | Part II
| page last modified: 25-03-02 18:07:20 |  |
 |
|||