UNCG- MLS 610C Global Arts Unit 2 Texts - Part 1
Comments under this blog entry are my discussion about texts for Unit 2.
(Chicago citation format for bibliographies)
Part 1 of 3
Shreeve, J. "The Greatest Journey." National Geographic,
---. "Reading Secrets of the Blood." National Geographic,
“Kintu and the Daughter of the Sky.” In A World Treasury of Myths,
“How People Came to Be.” In A World Treasury of Myths, Legends, and
“The Divine Mantis, the Ostrich, and the Fire.” In A World Treasury of
“Tulugaukuk, the Father Crow.” In A World Treasury of Myths, Legends,
posted by Y @ 7:48 PM
5 Comments:
Shreeve, J. “The Greatest Journey.” National Geographic, March 2006, 61-69.
p. 62
“’Every drop of human blood contains a history book written in the language of our genes,’ says population geneticist Spencer Wells, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence.”
“In most of the genome, […] minute changes are obscured by the genetic reshuffling that takes place each time a mother and father’s DNA combine to make a child. Luckily a couple of regions preserve the telltale variations. One, called the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), is passed down intact from mother to child. Similarly, most of the Y chromosome, which determines maleness, travels intact from father to son.”
“The accumulated mutations in […] mtDNA and (for males) […] Y chromosome are only two threads in a vast tapestry of people who have contributed to [an individual’s] genome. But by comparing the mtDNA and Y chromosomes of people from various populations, geneticists can get a rough idea of where and when those groups parted ways in the great migrations around the planet.”
[[Y Note: I don’t understand, logically, the following paragraph.]]
“In the mid-1980s the late Allan Wilson and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, used mtDNA to pinpoint humanity’s ancestral home. They compared mtDNA from women around the world and found that women of African descent showed twice as much diversity as their sisters. Since the telltale mutations seem to occur at a steady rate, modern humans must have lived in Africa twice as long as anywhere else.” [[Y Note: I *do* understand the rest of the para.]] “Scientists now calculate that all living humans are related to a single woman who lived roughly 150,000 years ago in Africa, a ‘mitochondrial Eve.’ She was not the only woman alive at the time, but if geneticists are right, all of humanity is linked to Eve through an unbroken chain of mothers.” [[Y Note: I’m reminded of 10-year Cambridge study of Flower, head of Meerkat Manor http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/meerkat/about/about.html ]]
A Mitochondrial Eve also had a “’Y-chromosome Adam’” who is “an analoguous father of us all, also from Africa. Increasingly refined DNA studies have confirmed this opening chapter of our story over and over: All the variously shaped and shaded people of Earth trace their ancestry to African hunter-gatherers.” [[Y Note: Well…they could if they wanted to, right? Further on p. 69, the phrase “some 150,000 years ago” is added to the last sentence quoted above.]]
p. 63
Why did people travel away from Africa? [[Y Note: Shreeve suggests it was because of overcrowding, better food, the usual. Seems very unmysterious to me as in, Why did Europeans spread their population across the American continent?]]
Shreeve, J. “Reading Secrets of the Blood.” National Geographic, March 2006, 70-73.
p. 70
Descendants of the Seaconke-Wampanoag Tribe (17th century King Phillip’s New England War survivors) met in the American Legion Hall in summer of 2005 to give blood to the Genographic Project, which is a National Geographic Society initiative, five-year scope, Explorer-in-Residence Spencer Wells is the idea man and current director; major support from IBM and the Waitt Family Foundation. Shreeve calls it the “most informative projects the Society has ever undertaken. It may also prove to be one of the more controversial.”
p. 71
S-W Tribe were first U.S. group to take part. Researchers hope to figure out migration patterns all over the globe using DNA of indigenous tribes.
p. 72
Charts with text
p. 73
In the early 90s, Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford set up “a similar project, Human Genome Diversity Project with similar goals. Controversy: some tribes don’t want science to mess with their traditional beliefs, some think the testing is “patentable medical information and getting nothing in return. Still others found the project’s intention to create self-propagating cell lines from their blood disturbing, even sacrilegious. Amid the misunderstanding and protest the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) never received the funding it needed.” [[Y Note: and good thing because U.S. does presently grant patents for particular genes.]]
This new (2005+/-) genome project isn’t doing any of the extension possibilities. Anybody can send in [[Y Note: I think I’ve heard that it’s about $100]] a cheek swab, have it DNA tested, for “’deep ancestry’” results. Proceeds go to the research, “and to educational and cultural preservation projects for indigenous groups” (p. 73).
[[Y Note: I think this next bit is the indigenous equivalent of white man’s religious right]]: “Wells has failed to win over some doubters. ‘The project inherently conflicts with indigenous interests,’ says Debra Harry of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism, an advocacy group that has called for a boycott of the National Geographic Society, IBM, and Gateway Computers, the source of funding for the Waitt Foundation. ‘The fundamental question the project is asking is “Where do we come from?” That’s not a question that is of interest to us as indigenous people. We already know where we came from.’”
Wells says people don’t have to participate. At least one S-W says people are excited about finding out. “’Because the project uses our genetics to track our path, it is really us, the Seaconke-Wampanoag Tribe, telling our own story.’”
Theodore Schurr of the project says the DNA could point back to Metacomet’s people or could show “ancestors from another continent.” Sheeve writes that all the samples have to be compared against the bigger results of the world-wide sampling before any specific assessments can be made.
“Kintu and the Daughter of the Sky.” In A World Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Folktales: Stories from Six Continents, edited by Lia Ronnen, 68-71. New York: Abrams, 1999.
This is a story about how Kintu, a human, married Nambi, the daughter of Gulu, god of the Sky and became the first King of Uganda.
In a slight twist from Greek myth or Aesop’s Fables, Kintu is first tested, not for courage, strength, endurance, or wealth, but to first determine if he is in fact human. If he’s not human, Nambi’s brothers object to the marriage. And they have reasons to suspect Kintu is not human. They say of Kintu and his cow, which is his only resource and source for food, “Anyone who lives only on milk is no human being” (p.68).
Gulu suggests his sons take away Kintu’s cow because, “If he can only live on that cow’s milk then he cannot survive without the beast. If he dies, it means he is not human” (68).
The first time I read this paragraph, it didn’t sound right but I kept reading because I was trying to make a deadline. But the premise, take away a milk cow and, “If he dies, it means he is not human,” what kind of logic is that? Seems like if he died that does prove he’s human.
It’s now about ten days or post the two weeks spent on Unit 2 – Africa since I first read Kintu’s myth. I think I understand what this cow and human means. A cow is a pretty fancy thing to own but not all by itself. Humans know this but egotistical fools, who think they can only survive with life’s luxuries, will die if the luxuries are taken away or as Nambi’s brothers point out, “If he dies, it means he is not human,” i.e. they don’t mind their sister marrying a human; they don’t want their sister marrying an egotistical fool.
Another perspective nuance in this myth is that when Kintu’s cow is taken away, he eats leaves and roots or the equivalent of inexpensive, foraged, and lower down the food supply. In Western thinking Kintu’s situation symbolizes a fall from social status, a lack of resourcefulness, i.e. any number of socially embarrassing situations including falling out of favor with the capital letter Gods to whom he must make humble resitution or be damned. I’m thinking of the classic formula for Western tragedy: a highly placed man, the higher the better, crosses fate, makes bad decisions that cause his own fall, i.e. Macbeth or Lear, proving once again that humans are flawed creatures in God's Universe.
But from the traditional African perspective where humans are part of the cosmological world rather than struggling, foreign organism in it, eating leaves and roots without once complaining or lamenting the loss of his cow, thus proving that he is human, makes Kintu all the more admirable and acceptable to the Sky god, who only then presents challenges that test Kintu’s resourcefulness, determination, trusting in nature, and wisdom to know that “Anyone who lives only on milk is no human being.”
I don't think this Ugandan homily is equal in meaning to when Christians say, "Not by bread alone." The similarity, however, makes the notice worth mentioning.
“How People Came to Be.” In A World Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Folktales: Stories from Six Continents, edited by Lia Ronnen, 72-73. New York: Abrams, 1999.
This is a creation myth from Central Africa Bantu culture. It’s straight and to the point. God created the world, the animals, and plants, and then dug two holes in the ground. Out of one, a man emerged; out of the other, a woman came out. “They were the first man and woman to ever exist, and they knew absolutely nothing at all” (p. 72). When they wondered what they were supposed to do, God told them to plant corn, make a hut, and for food, harvest and cook the corn. There was no period of Eden in a garden; the first Bantu humans came into life with a to-do work list already written.
Well, the first humans complained about how hard it was to hoe and plant. When their first crop came in they were hungry but lazy; they ate the corn raw and they talked themselves out of building a hut, sleeping in convenient trees instead.
This all made God mad enough to give a female and male monkey the same directions as he’d given the two humans. The monkeys performed admirably and God removed the monkeys’ tails and reattached them to the humans. “Ever since that time, they monkeys that became human beings have lived in houses, while the real first people still sleep in trees” (p. 73).
Now, I read this Bantu myth in the context of Ellen Dissanayake’s What is Art For? and Edward T. Hall’s The Silent Language and The Hidden Dimension. Both of these authors have come down to us today, recognized as some of the semi-early bio behaviorist (ethologists) and bio-basic interpreters of human social science, psychology, anthropology and a couple of other cross-over disciplines as well.
And I recall the legend of Troy, the biblical Flood, and searches for holy grails. Why would I not give credence to the Bantu’s theory of infracultural evolution? 8-)
* Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language.p. 36
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Post a Comment
<< Home