Why are we so sure of ourselves even though we often later discover something that negates our surety? Is the brain determined to ensure permanence for itself while it knows that all, both inside and outside itself, is temporary? Take the term “once and for all” as an example. You’ve heard it in many forms, probably even used it in some form. Great finality in the term and its many variations.
Variations? Sure, even at the highest levels of supposed civilized behavior, like Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time,” his variation of “once and for all” encapsulated in the phrase he used after the Munich Conference. Chamberlain believed he had negotiated a permanent peace with Hitler’s government. Or take Richard Nixon’s version of the WWI catchphrase, “the war to end war,” or “the war to end all war”: Nixon said, “…by making peace for one full generation, we will get this world into the habit of peace….” That once-and-for-all phrase (“the war to end war”) often attributed to Woodrow Wilson, seems to have originated with H. G. Wells; both men believed that war could end war. Wilson called end of World War I “the final triumph of justice.” Idealistic rhetoric like Wilson’s exemplifies the brain’s desire for finality. When Nixon made his statement about making peace, he also said, “In this imperfect world, I am convinced that realistic understanding is on the rise and mindless hatred is on the decline. The strong likelihood exists that there will be no need for a war to end wars….” Putting the idealistic Age of Aquarius aside, we know that the realities of wars and strife continue. One needs only to look around at the time of this posting in the summer of 2020.
I have no doubt that you have your own version of “peace for out time” and “once and for all.” After all, what’s your alternative? Constant strife? Constant insecurity? Constant turmoil? If only people could adopt your ideals…if you could just “force” people to adopt your perspective, things would be different; chaos, as you see it, would subside; order—your order—would settle over the planet. Stop for a moment. What is YOUR version? Is it embedded in your politics? (Have you heard or said, for example, “This is the most important election of our time”? Or, “If we win this one, we will change the country forever”?—hasn’t that been said during every election cycle? Hasn’t something similar been said at the beginning of every revolution?)
So, how do we get to an ideal, to a final final, to that “once and for all”? Well, why not start with small steps? We could eliminate competition of all kinds, for example. “Not feasible,” you say. “What? All competition?” you ask. Smacks of all that idealistic egalitarianism people spread around these days, right?
Is nothing we do or say truly final? What about knowledge? Can’t we agree that science gives us final answers? Or religion? What about history? Can’t we agree on history? Isn’t it “finalized”? Er…maybe not.
Let’s take the smallest of examples, something from the world of archaeology. Surely, those many archaeologists who search, discover, and explain the past are of a common mind on history. Shouldn’t they be? After all, history is, well, history. But, alas, the competition to be the first to see this or that once lost something-or-other from antiquity has diggers scrambling all over the planet to claim a “first.” It is the archaeologist’s dream to discover, as Hiram Bingham did, some previously unknown ancient city like Machu Picchu or as Howard Carter found, some glorious treasure trove like King Tut’s tomb. Discovery can put to rest all those conflicting hypotheses about something historical so the hopeful thinking about finalizing goes.
Finding what no one else has ever found can lead to fame, if not riches. Certainly, there’s always the potential for a book deal and subsequent TedX talks, not to mention some National Geographic documentary, and let’s not forget the possibility of a lucrative chair at some prestigious university or museum that provides funding for further discovery with a bevy of committed research assistants. All these perks provide motivation for finalizing the past.
The drive to be the next Leakey, Bingham, or Carter has engendered arguments among those driven to be first to see, to uncover, and to hypothesize—the first to finally finalize history, once and for all. The competition they generate can run from pleasant disagreements to intellectual wars like the one over how the sweet potato found its way westward across the Pacific from South America or the one over who was first to inhabit North America.
With respect to North America’s first inhabitants, archaeologists have split into different camps. One camp has long favored the antiquity of Clovis as “the first” North American culture, whereas another camp argues for pre-Clovis peoples, such as those who inhabited the Paisley Caves in Oregon, for example, or those who inhabited the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania, both seeming to be precursors of the Clovis people by at least one millennium or several millennia or more. And among those who accept pre-Clovis, arguments about which of those cultures was “first” there are those who claim to know “once and for all.”
But the focus here is not on who is correct about North America’s first settlers. Rather it’s on a recent statement made by one of the archaeologists studying ancient North Americans, a statement that, I believe, indicates where we lie on the spectrum of intellectual development and the desire to finalize our knowledge.
Dr. Lisa-Marie Shillito, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University, recently studied Oregon’s Paisley Caves to determine a date for its earliest inhabitants, which she places at more than 12,000 years ago. She said: "The question of when and how people first settled the Americas has been a subject of intense debate. By using a different approach, we have been able to demonstrate that there were pre-Clovis populations present in the area of the Great Basin and resolve this debate once and for all."* Now, I’m not doubting that there were, in fact, people in North America before the Clovis culture when I quote her; I think she makes a very good argument based on DNA found in coprolites. But wasn’t there already solid evidence for pre-Clovis habitation? What about the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter?
In light of the many archaeological discoveries over the past century or so, any archaeological claims to have settled an argument “once and for all” are usually followed by some new discovery, so twenty-first century archaeologists should be a little more cautious about making proclamations of finality. Some current undergraduate archaeology student might someday stumble across an as yet uncovered Clovis site or another site that pre-dates the Paisley Cave people. That’s what makes me keep thinking about that Meadowcroft Site, the rock shelter in Avella, PA. that archaeologist James Adovasio has researched for decades. Adovasio’s radiocarbon dates put people in the shelter for 16,000 to 19,000 years—in other words, long before the Paisley Cave people.** Even if the radiocarbon dates are a bit off, they are probably still indicative of a habitation older than that of the Paisley Caves. Yet, Dr. Shillito et al. introduce their research this way: “It is largely, but not entirely, accepted by the archaeological community that people first settled the Americas before Clovis [italics mine], which was seen as the earliest technological tradition on the continent for most of the 20th century, dating to 11,500 radiocarbon years before the present (14C yr B.P.). However, many questions still remain over who the earliest settlers were, when they arrived, and what route they took.” Shillito seems to have resolved—at least for her research group—the age and activity of people in western North America. She has uncovered good evidence for her statements, but what if someone stumbles across a hitherto unknown Clovis point that dates to before the Paisley Caves? Not sayin’ it will happen, just sayin’ it might happen, maybe not probable, but certainly not impossible. Heck, I’ve found things beneath couch pillows and in the garage that I never knew I had or had completely forgotten.
That statement provides a point of departure for this: While arguing to finalize that which we debate in our contemporary society, like political, societal, economic, and religious systems, we find it almost impossible to finalize that which is, in fact, final, that is, history. Look, for example, at the summer of 2020’s push to rewrite the history of the USA. We will continue to argue that we have resolved this or that issue once and for all. We should keep in mind that every generation will rediscover history, so we can bet that those who believe they are finalizing some political, societal, or economic legacy, would, if they could revisit Earth in a time machine, discover that the history they knew wasn’t the history that the future knows. What news organizations proclaim as the truth today might be subject to revision within months, years, or decades. Propaganda in the present doesn’t establish a truth once and for all. Someone will potentially come along to uncover a different story, a different “truth,” or at least a different perspective.
The lesson is that if there are any “once-and-for-alls,” they are rare and probably not truly final. AND THAT BRINGS ME TO THIS: Shortly after I concluded this little essay, I stumbled across a story about the Chiquihuite Cave in central Mexico. According to archeologist Ciprian Ardelean of the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, people were living in the cave as long ago as 33,000 years.*** Is this a discovery that puts to rest "once and for all" the previously "once and for all" discoveries? What "once and for all" is next?
*https://phys.org/news/2020-07-archaeologists-date-earliest-occupation-north.html
**Radiocarbon dating gives us some relatively reliable dates, but as objects get older, the radiocarbon dates separate from the actual dates. Thus, you will see a disparity between any radiocarbon dating and the guesstimated date for older objects. So, for example, the Meadowcroft Shelter’s radiocarbon dates might differ by as much as three or four millennia from the actual dates.
***Hood, Marlowe. AFP. 22 July 2020. Humans in America 30,000 years ago, far earlier than thought. Yahoo!News. Online at https://news.yahoo.com/humans-america-30-000-years-ago-far-earlier-160114498.html Accessed July 22, 2020.
Variations? Sure, even at the highest levels of supposed civilized behavior, like Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time,” his variation of “once and for all” encapsulated in the phrase he used after the Munich Conference. Chamberlain believed he had negotiated a permanent peace with Hitler’s government. Or take Richard Nixon’s version of the WWI catchphrase, “the war to end war,” or “the war to end all war”: Nixon said, “…by making peace for one full generation, we will get this world into the habit of peace….” That once-and-for-all phrase (“the war to end war”) often attributed to Woodrow Wilson, seems to have originated with H. G. Wells; both men believed that war could end war. Wilson called end of World War I “the final triumph of justice.” Idealistic rhetoric like Wilson’s exemplifies the brain’s desire for finality. When Nixon made his statement about making peace, he also said, “In this imperfect world, I am convinced that realistic understanding is on the rise and mindless hatred is on the decline. The strong likelihood exists that there will be no need for a war to end wars….” Putting the idealistic Age of Aquarius aside, we know that the realities of wars and strife continue. One needs only to look around at the time of this posting in the summer of 2020.
I have no doubt that you have your own version of “peace for out time” and “once and for all.” After all, what’s your alternative? Constant strife? Constant insecurity? Constant turmoil? If only people could adopt your ideals…if you could just “force” people to adopt your perspective, things would be different; chaos, as you see it, would subside; order—your order—would settle over the planet. Stop for a moment. What is YOUR version? Is it embedded in your politics? (Have you heard or said, for example, “This is the most important election of our time”? Or, “If we win this one, we will change the country forever”?—hasn’t that been said during every election cycle? Hasn’t something similar been said at the beginning of every revolution?)
So, how do we get to an ideal, to a final final, to that “once and for all”? Well, why not start with small steps? We could eliminate competition of all kinds, for example. “Not feasible,” you say. “What? All competition?” you ask. Smacks of all that idealistic egalitarianism people spread around these days, right?
Is nothing we do or say truly final? What about knowledge? Can’t we agree that science gives us final answers? Or religion? What about history? Can’t we agree on history? Isn’t it “finalized”? Er…maybe not.
Let’s take the smallest of examples, something from the world of archaeology. Surely, those many archaeologists who search, discover, and explain the past are of a common mind on history. Shouldn’t they be? After all, history is, well, history. But, alas, the competition to be the first to see this or that once lost something-or-other from antiquity has diggers scrambling all over the planet to claim a “first.” It is the archaeologist’s dream to discover, as Hiram Bingham did, some previously unknown ancient city like Machu Picchu or as Howard Carter found, some glorious treasure trove like King Tut’s tomb. Discovery can put to rest all those conflicting hypotheses about something historical so the hopeful thinking about finalizing goes.
Finding what no one else has ever found can lead to fame, if not riches. Certainly, there’s always the potential for a book deal and subsequent TedX talks, not to mention some National Geographic documentary, and let’s not forget the possibility of a lucrative chair at some prestigious university or museum that provides funding for further discovery with a bevy of committed research assistants. All these perks provide motivation for finalizing the past.
The drive to be the next Leakey, Bingham, or Carter has engendered arguments among those driven to be first to see, to uncover, and to hypothesize—the first to finally finalize history, once and for all. The competition they generate can run from pleasant disagreements to intellectual wars like the one over how the sweet potato found its way westward across the Pacific from South America or the one over who was first to inhabit North America.
With respect to North America’s first inhabitants, archaeologists have split into different camps. One camp has long favored the antiquity of Clovis as “the first” North American culture, whereas another camp argues for pre-Clovis peoples, such as those who inhabited the Paisley Caves in Oregon, for example, or those who inhabited the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania, both seeming to be precursors of the Clovis people by at least one millennium or several millennia or more. And among those who accept pre-Clovis, arguments about which of those cultures was “first” there are those who claim to know “once and for all.”
But the focus here is not on who is correct about North America’s first settlers. Rather it’s on a recent statement made by one of the archaeologists studying ancient North Americans, a statement that, I believe, indicates where we lie on the spectrum of intellectual development and the desire to finalize our knowledge.
Dr. Lisa-Marie Shillito, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University, recently studied Oregon’s Paisley Caves to determine a date for its earliest inhabitants, which she places at more than 12,000 years ago. She said: "The question of when and how people first settled the Americas has been a subject of intense debate. By using a different approach, we have been able to demonstrate that there were pre-Clovis populations present in the area of the Great Basin and resolve this debate once and for all."* Now, I’m not doubting that there were, in fact, people in North America before the Clovis culture when I quote her; I think she makes a very good argument based on DNA found in coprolites. But wasn’t there already solid evidence for pre-Clovis habitation? What about the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter?
In light of the many archaeological discoveries over the past century or so, any archaeological claims to have settled an argument “once and for all” are usually followed by some new discovery, so twenty-first century archaeologists should be a little more cautious about making proclamations of finality. Some current undergraduate archaeology student might someday stumble across an as yet uncovered Clovis site or another site that pre-dates the Paisley Cave people. That’s what makes me keep thinking about that Meadowcroft Site, the rock shelter in Avella, PA. that archaeologist James Adovasio has researched for decades. Adovasio’s radiocarbon dates put people in the shelter for 16,000 to 19,000 years—in other words, long before the Paisley Cave people.** Even if the radiocarbon dates are a bit off, they are probably still indicative of a habitation older than that of the Paisley Caves. Yet, Dr. Shillito et al. introduce their research this way: “It is largely, but not entirely, accepted by the archaeological community that people first settled the Americas before Clovis [italics mine], which was seen as the earliest technological tradition on the continent for most of the 20th century, dating to 11,500 radiocarbon years before the present (14C yr B.P.). However, many questions still remain over who the earliest settlers were, when they arrived, and what route they took.” Shillito seems to have resolved—at least for her research group—the age and activity of people in western North America. She has uncovered good evidence for her statements, but what if someone stumbles across a hitherto unknown Clovis point that dates to before the Paisley Caves? Not sayin’ it will happen, just sayin’ it might happen, maybe not probable, but certainly not impossible. Heck, I’ve found things beneath couch pillows and in the garage that I never knew I had or had completely forgotten.
That statement provides a point of departure for this: While arguing to finalize that which we debate in our contemporary society, like political, societal, economic, and religious systems, we find it almost impossible to finalize that which is, in fact, final, that is, history. Look, for example, at the summer of 2020’s push to rewrite the history of the USA. We will continue to argue that we have resolved this or that issue once and for all. We should keep in mind that every generation will rediscover history, so we can bet that those who believe they are finalizing some political, societal, or economic legacy, would, if they could revisit Earth in a time machine, discover that the history they knew wasn’t the history that the future knows. What news organizations proclaim as the truth today might be subject to revision within months, years, or decades. Propaganda in the present doesn’t establish a truth once and for all. Someone will potentially come along to uncover a different story, a different “truth,” or at least a different perspective.
The lesson is that if there are any “once-and-for-alls,” they are rare and probably not truly final. AND THAT BRINGS ME TO THIS: Shortly after I concluded this little essay, I stumbled across a story about the Chiquihuite Cave in central Mexico. According to archeologist Ciprian Ardelean of the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, people were living in the cave as long ago as 33,000 years.*** Is this a discovery that puts to rest "once and for all" the previously "once and for all" discoveries? What "once and for all" is next?
*https://phys.org/news/2020-07-archaeologists-date-earliest-occupation-north.html
**Radiocarbon dating gives us some relatively reliable dates, but as objects get older, the radiocarbon dates separate from the actual dates. Thus, you will see a disparity between any radiocarbon dating and the guesstimated date for older objects. So, for example, the Meadowcroft Shelter’s radiocarbon dates might differ by as much as three or four millennia from the actual dates.
***Hood, Marlowe. AFP. 22 July 2020. Humans in America 30,000 years ago, far earlier than thought. Yahoo!News. Online at https://news.yahoo.com/humans-america-30-000-years-ago-far-earlier-160114498.html Accessed July 22, 2020.
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