Cultural Dynamics

Research Proposal

 

Fact Sheet and Proposal

 

1. Title:

 

Flood myths and the postulated Sunda expansion: The long-range dynamics of culture in transcontinental perspective

 

 

2. Summary:

 

This project looks at cultural dynamics as a long-range process in time and space, highlighting intercontinental and prehistoric connections and transformations. Starting out from flood myths as constitutive of Dutch culture, it seeks to investigate and explain the global distribution of such narratives. Oppenheimer’s Sunda thesis (1998) offers one possible explanation, and field research in Africa and Indonesia is to assess its merits.

 

 

3. Applicant:

      - Prof.dr Wim M.J. van Binsbergen

African Studies Centre (ASC), P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the Netherlands / Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O.Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam, the Netherlands

 

4. Institutional organisation and co-operation:

- African Studies Centre (ASC), P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, the Netherlands / Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O.Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam, the Netherlands

- Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), P.O. Box 3304, Dakar 18524, Senegal.

- Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies (CCRS), Parahyangan Catholic University, Jl. Nias 2, Bandung 40117, Indonesia

 

 

 

5. Project duration:

       - 4 years: starting February 2008.

 

6. Research team:

- Prof.dr Wim M.J. van Binsbergen

African Studies Centre (ASC), P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands, Tel:00-31-71-5273372, Fax: 00-31-71-5273344, E-mail: binsbergen@ascleiden.nl   .

 

   - Prof. dr. Francis Nyamnjoh.

Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Avenue Cheick Anta Diop x, P.O. Box 3304, Dakar 18524, Senegal, Tel: (+ 221) 825 98 22/23, Fax: (+ 221) 824 1289, E-mail: Francis.Nyamnjoh@codesria.sn .

                                   

- Prof.dr Ignatius Bambang Sugiharto

Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies (CCRS) / Department of Philosophy, Parahyangan Catholic University, Jl. Nias 2, Bandung 40117, Indonesia, E-mail: ignatiussugiharto@yahoo.com  

 

 

 

7. Classification:

Of the five perspectives (‘invalshoeken’) within the NWO-WOTRO programme ‘Cultural Dynamics’, the proposed research project concentrates on

  1. canon formation and
  2. popular culture.

 

      

8. Project description                                                 number of words: 1029

 

990 words

 

The unmistakable focus in the ‘Cultural Dynamics’ Programme is the Dutch cultural heritage today. This includes the image and narrative of the Flood (Du. Zondvloed < Mdl. Du. Sintvloed ‘general flood’ – only secondarily associated with ‘sin’). From the oldest historical times (Tacitus’ Germania) to the Great Flood of 1953 CE, the Low Countries have been prone to flooding, which invited great hydraulic and social-organizational achievements. Schama’s description of the 17th-c. Amsterdam orphanage brings out that being Dutch means escaping from drowning. Hence ancient flood stories from Hesiod, Plato and Ovid have always been eagerly appropriated in Dutch belles lettres. But they were far exceeded by the biblical story of Noah. After warning from a God bent on annihilating His sinning creatures, the righteous Noah build his Ark, saved his family and the animal kingdom, and became the ancestor of post-flood humans under a new covenant symbolised by the rainbow. From van Maerlandt (1350) via Vondel’s Noah (1667) to Nijhoffs Awater (1934), this story from Genesis 6-10 has captivated Dutch authors (as it did Dutch painters such as Bosch, Wtewael, van Mander and Appel), and persuaded them to see Holland itself as the Ark, surviving the onslaught of the waters because the piety of its people had secured them God’s privileged treatment.

 

Although thus highly constitutive of national identity, the Dutch share their flood stories with Antiquity and Christendom. Nor does the distribution end there. Spurred on the apparent confirmation of the biblical account, scholarship discovered flood stories everywhere. This includes the Ancient Near East to which Genesis is indebted, but also the Australian and African interior, Alaska, Oceania, without precolonial penetration of the biblical message. A recent inventory lists 395 flood stories from all continents. Less than two dozen hail from sub-Saharan Africa (yet enough to shame Frazer who denied there were any in that continent). About half of this voluminous collection is, surprisingly, from the Americas but still recognisable as cognate to Genesis. However, alternative themes appear such as the earth diver; the animal trickster as flood hero; the naturally grown reed, calabashes etc. (and even mountains) as counterpart of the man-made Ark; whilst it is not human transgression or divine agency which triggers the flood.

 

If flood stories have such a global distribution in ways that can scarcely be attributed to the spread of Christianity (and by what method may we established this!), then they might well serve as ‘index fossils’ that contain essential, if veiled, information inviting us to think– and to begin to discern empirically, on the ground – in terms of some overall dynamics of global cultural history.

 

Scholars have advanced various, largely implausible, theories in order to account for the near-ubiquity of flood stories, from Roheim’s recourse to full-bladder dreams; via Woolley believing to have found the sediment of the original flood in Mesopotamian soil; Heyerdahl staging his own racialist flood myth in an ark of his own design; to Anati’s interpretation of flood myths as reflecting the a global phenomenon, the post-glacial ocean level rise (8,000 BCE). The was recently (1998) taken up by Oppenheimer. He proposes that at the Sunda plateau (now insular South East Asia) such flooding caused a sea-borne population expansion, both eastbound  and westbound. He proposes that Sunda expansion triggered Indus valley and Mesopotamian cultures, and specifically conveyed the mythical themes (creation, paradise, fall of man, flood, covenant and dispersal of nations) that so far   have only been traced  to the Bible and Mesopotamia.  

 

With its idiosyncratic comparative mythology, poor Near Eastern archaeology, and improbable high dating, Oppenheimer’s theory was welcomed only by geneticists  and Oceanic archaeologists. Global diachronic distribution patterns suggest that – except the flood myth – most of the Ancient Near Eastern mythical core lacks a Sunda background. Yet the Sunda thesis has advantages. Like Bernal’s Black Athena thesis (1987) it is an exercise in anti-Eurocentrism. It could explain, not only the mythological material that is absolutely central to the European tradition, but also the occurrence of thalassaemia genetic types both in S.E. Asia and the Mediterranean, the sudden rise of nautical skills in the Mediterranean Early Bronze Age, and Berossus’ Oannes myth. Finally, the Sunda hypothesis casts some light on the unmistakable though understudied genetic, linguistic and cultural (notably in the fields of sea-faring, music, architecture, royal court culture; to which we might add flood myths!) indications of extensive Indonesian influence on sub-Saharan Africa – in the face of the unmistakable fact that the huge island of Madagascar before the African coast was peopled by Indonesians c. 2,000 years ago.

 

This suggest the following interrelated tasks

  1. formulate a comprehensive theory that explains the global distribution of flood myths as well as their  substantial thematic variation  as key narrative expressions (as canons!) in the long-range cultural history of Anatomically Modern Humans
  2. determine whether the Sunda hypothesis has any merit for explaining the distribution of flood myths in South and South West Asia, in Europe, and in sub-Saharan Africa
  3. assess whether the Sunda hypothesis has any remaining potential for sub-Saharan Africa, even if the outcome of (b) would turn out to be dismissively negative for the Sunda hypothesis as an explanation of the distribution of flood myth.

 

Recent publications and work in progress by Witzel, Villems, and van Binsbergen already offer the general outlines of a diachronic theory of global mythology, out of which (a) may plausibly be constructed, so that a plausible answer to (b) can be proposed. For question (c), we intend to involve three PhD candidates:

·        two in Africa in order to investigate (c) in the provisionally most promising chosen regions, notably the Cameroon Grassfields, and in the Mozambique/Angolan corridor with special attention to the Nkoya people (among whom Sunda-reminiscent elements are particularly striking); and

·        one in Indonesia to assess evidence for the Sunda hypothesis from insular S.E. Asia.

These researchers will be supervised by the three project leaders, who are senior academicians from Africa, Indonesia and Europe respectively, working in close collaboration. The day-to-day co-ordination of the project will be in the hands of one post-doc researcher, whose main task however will be to explore the theoretical and methodological requirements for the type long-range, diachronic cultural comparison central to this project.

 

 

 

Literature

 

Amselle, J.-L., 2001, Branchements: Anthropologie de l’universalité des cultures, Paris: Flammarion

Anati, E., 1999, La religion des origines, Paris: Bayard; French tr. of La religione delle origini, n.p.: Edizione delle origini, 1995.

Bernal, M., 1987, Black Athena The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation Vol 1 The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 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.

Berossos, in: F. Jacoby, 1923-1927, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Leiden: Brill, section iiiC, Leiden: Brill.

Dick-Read, Robert, 2005, The Phantom  Voyagers: Evidence of Indonesian Settlement in Africa in
Ancient  Times
, Winchester: Thurlton.

Dundes, Alan, 1988, ed., The Flood Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley and London, 1988.

Frazer, James George., 1918, Folk-lore in the Old Testament, London: Macmillan and Company Ltd.

Heyerdahl, Thor, 1952, American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition. London: Allen and Unwin.

Isaak, Mark., 2005, ‘Flood Stories from Around the World’, at: http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/floods.htm

Jones, A.M., 1964, Africa and Indonesia: The evidence of the xylophone and other musical and cultural factors, Leiden: Brill

Kent, R., 1970, Early kingdoms in Madagascar 1500-1700, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Oppenheimer, S.J., 1998, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, London:  Weidenfeld & Nicholson; second impression 2001

Reeb, Wilhelm., 1938,  ed., Tacitus  P. Cornelius Tacitus Germania, Teubners Schulerausgaben Griechischer Und Lateinischer Schriftsteller, Leipzig: Teubner

Schama, Simon., 1987, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, repr. New York: Vintage Press 1997.

van Binsbergen, W.M.J.,  & Woudhuizen, Fred, in press, Ethnicity in Mediterranean proto-history, Cambridge: British Archaeology Reports

Villems, Richard, 2005, ‘The Earth Diver Myth and Genetics’, paper, Pre-symposium of Research Insitute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and 7th Ethnogenesis South and Central Asia (ESCA) Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable, Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto

Witzel, M., 2001, 'Comparison and reconstruction: Language and mythology', Mother Tongue, 6: 45-62.

Witzel, M., in press, Homo fabulans,: Origins and dispersals of our first mythologies, New York: Oxford University Press.

Woolley, Sir Leonard, 1955 Ur Excavations IV: The Early Periods. London: The British Museum/The University Museum, Philadelphia.

 

9. Project output

 

For this project the following outcome is envisaged: three PhD theses; two volumes of conference papers in which the initial perspectives and the findings of the project will be discussed by an international academic forum; several other academic articles; a scholarly book on flood myths in their global distribution and interrelatedness; a scholarly book on the theory and method of long-range diachronic comparison; a popular book (possibly for children) bringing out the diversity and unity of humankind by reference to flood myths; and at the end a cultural manifestation (to be held in the Netherlands but with participation also from Africa and Indonesia) that will highlight intercontinental connections and the construction of identity through flood myths.  

 

 

 

10. Curriculum vitae principal applicant

Wim M.J. van Binsbergen is currently Professor of the Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy, Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands. His research interests include: religion in Africa; intercultural philosophy; African and Ancient Mediterranean history; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; ethnicity, ancient and modern statehood; globalisation, commodification, virtuality and mediatisation; and the long-range, intercontinental diachronic study of myth, divination, board-games and other formal cultural systems. He has pursued these interests as research leader, university teacher and thesis supervisor; as author of several books and numerous scholarly articles; as editor of numerous edited volumes; and through extensive fieldwork in Tunisia, Zambia, Guinea Bissau, and Botswana, besides historical projects on South Central Africa, the Ancient Near East, the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and worldwide. He held professorial chairs at Manchester, Berlin, Amsterdam (VU), and Durban-Westville, and directed Africanist research at the Leiden ASC throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His authored books include: Religious Change in Zambia (1981); Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and History in western central Zambia (1992); Culturen bestaan niet (1999), and Intercultural Encounters: African and Anthropological Lessons towards a Philosophy of Interculturality (2003). He has been the Editor of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy since 2002.

 

 

11. Relevant publications of the applicants

Nkwi, P.N., & Nyamnjoh, F.B., 1997, eds., Regional balance and national integration in Cameroon: Lessons learned and the uncertain future. Yaounde: African Studies Centre/ International Centre for Applied Social Sciences Research and Training.

Nyamnjoh, F.B., 1999, ‘Cameroon: A country united by ethnic ambition and difference’, African Affairs, 98: 101-118.

Nyamnjoh, F.B. & Rowlands, M., 1998, ‘Elite associations and the politics of belonging in Cameroon’, Africa, 68: 320-337.

Sugiharto, Bambang, 1998, Culture and postmodern philosophy, PhD thesis, Roma University.

Sugiharto, Bambang Ignatius, 2007, ‘Culture, Core, Concern’, paper read at the International Conference on Philosophy of Culture and Practice, Organized by Soochow Philosophy Center and Department of Philosophy, Soochow University, June 2007.

Sugiharto, Bambang Ignatius, in press, Culture and Cosmopolitanism: Proceedings of an International conference held at Bandung, Indonesia, July 2006.

van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2007, 'A new Paradise myth? An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s thesis of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths, including most of the mythological contents of Genesis 1-11’, paper to be read at THE DEEP HISTORY OF STORIES: Annual Conference, International Association for Comparative Mythology, Edinburgh 28-30 August, 2007

van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2006, 'Mythological archaeology: Situating sub-Saharan African cosmogonic myths within a long-range intercontinential comparative perspective', in: Osada, Toshiki, with the assistance of Hase, Noriko, eds., Proceedings of the Pre-symposium of RIHN and 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable, Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), pp. 319-349.

van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ‘Rethinking Africa’s contribution to global cultural history: Lessons from a comparative historical analysis of mankala board-games and geomantic divination’, 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. 221-254.

van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1992, Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and history in central western Zambia, London/Boston: Kegan Paul International

 

12. Research budget

            - 3 PhD projects (sandwich)                                                     Eur       180,000

            - 1 post-doc (0.75 fte for 4 years):                                            Eur       170,000

            - travel, research, boarding and lodging costs                                        120,000

- seminars/ workshops: 4 x 12,000                                                         48,000

Publication costs                                                                                     40,000

Concluding  manifestation                                                                        30,000

                                                                                                            --------

Total:                                                                                                    588,000                                                                                  

Additional funding will be sought from Leiden University; CODESRIA; and the Trust Fund of the Erasmus University Rotterdam