The Spirit in Human Evolution
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The pirit in HumanS Evolution Martyn Rawson 2 The Spirit in Human Evolution by Martyn Rawson 3 Published by: The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America 38 Main Street Chatham, NY 12037 © 2003, 2012 by AWSNA Publications Title: The Spirit in Evolution Author: Martyn Rawson ISBN # 1-888365-45-5 Printed in the United States of America Editor: David Mitchell Proofreader: Ann Erwin Graphics Assistant: Ben Hess Cover: Martyn Rawson and Hallie Wootan Cover Photo: Martyn Rawson took the photo at Ologorsaile in Kenya at noon. It shows a classic biface handaxe, a core, and a wristwatch to show the scale. Curriculum Series The Publications Committee of AWSNA is pleased to bring forward this pub- lication as part of its Curriculum Series. The thoughts and ideas rep resented herein are solely those of the au thor and do not necessarily rep re sent any im- plied criteria set by AWSNA. It is our intention to stimulate as much writing and thinking as possible about our curriculum, including di verse views. Please contact us with feedback on this publication as well as requests for future work. David S. Mitchell For AWSNA Publications 4 Table of Contents Foreword . 7 Introduction . 11 Chapter 1 Self-Knowledge, Truth and Goodness .............................. 21 Chapter 2 Contextual Thinking versus Reductionist Thinking . 37 Chapter 3 Anthroposophical Anthropology and the Developing Human Being . 67 Chapter 4 First Steps ...................................................... 95 Chapter 5 Lucy, Flatface and Friends ........................................ 119 Chapter 6 Working Man ................................................... 169 Chapter 7 The Ancients: An Overview ...................................... 213 Chapter 8 The Moderns . 239 Chapter 9 Postscript . 309 Glossary of Terms ...................................................... 311 Bibliography .......................................................... 317 5 6 Foreword The Evolution of a Book A childhood visit to the caves at Altamira left a life-long impression. My feelings for the creations of our human ancestors have gradually moved from wonder, through hobby to serious scientific interest, without ever losing that sense of wonder. I still get a feeling of awed excitement when I visit a museum of prehistory and even more so when I get the opportunity to visit prehistoric sites. My family has got used to my poking around the edges of ploughed fields, sifting silt newly washed out among rocks at the entrance to caves, in search of pieces of worked flint. An uncanny sense draws me to likely sites, a ledge overlooking the curve in a river, an overhang of rock on the side of a valley, the proximity of a spring. No doubt much of this is vivid imagination. Nevertheless, on occasion I have found a scattering of worked stone where I expected to. Once while visiting friends in southern Germany I came across a building site excavation and in the pouring rain dug away in a trench until the sides threatened to cave in. I came home, covered from head to foot in mud, with a piece of horn scored with rows of notches and several worked stones. Our friends were horrified. I have collected stone tools for decades. My proudest find was a wonderful Acheulean biface/handaxe and a large fossilized tibia of a hippopotamus, which I came across in a spoil heap just outside the compound of the famous site of Olorgesailie in the Kenyan Rift Valley. In full knowledge that the removal of such artifacts is specifically forbidden, I debated long and hard with myself whether I should take the biface with me and smuggle it out of the country. I satisfied myself with a photograph and left the beauty in the fork of a small acacia tree for the next archaeologist or passing tourist to find. I possess a large collection of tracings and sketches of prehistoric rock art, many of which I have made in situ or in museums. Whenever the Rawson family moves house we take with us large bundles of tracing paper containing an extensive record (running into dozens of meters in length) awaiting a suitable display space! This life-long hobby took on a new dimension when I took a couple of years out of teaching to do the high school training at the Waldorf Teacher Training Seminar in Stuttgart. There I had the great fortune to have as tutor Wolfgang Schad, now professor of human evolution at Herdecke University in Germany. As an indomitable collector Professor Schad has accumulated an impressive collection of stone tools, casts of hominid fossils and casts of many works of Ice Age art, to which I had free access. Professor Schad has moved on but his collection has returned to Stuttgart, and I look forward to renewing my acquaintance with it when I return in the coming year to take up a teaching post at what is now the Freie Hochschule für Waldorf Pädagogik (Independent University for Waldorf Education). The reader will find Professor Schad frequently quoted in this book. 7 Indeed, given my approach, it would be hard not to. No one has done more in this field than he has. I learned much both from the rigor of his intellect and the warmth of his enthusiasm. Over the years he has supported and encouraged this present work and has offered valuable criticism. Over ten years ago I started to compile information on human evolution that might be of use to teachers. I was encouraged by the late Georg Kniebe, who led the Pedägogische Forschungstelle (Educational Research Department) in Stuttgart, a position I will shortly have the great honor to assume. He asked me to draw up a monograph with a bibliography as resource material for High School teachers interested in bringing aspects of human evolution into their lessons. I came as far as making a lengthy presentation to colleagues in Stuttgart, but pressure of work prevented me from producing the planned resource book. That collection expanded, contracted, metamorphosed and finally became something quite different. Since the literature in this field is enormous and more appears all the time, I have been in doubt constantly as to whether there was any point in attempting to summarize it. The second major concept was to produce a critical review of Rudolf Steiner’s work on the question of human evolution. What seemed worth attempting was a comparison of his work with the results of contemporary research. After a number of years of work, I eventually produced a massive manuscript containing extensive quotations from Steiner with suggestions as to how this might be interpreted in the light of modern anthropology. The publishers sent this to several specialist readers, and Nick Thomas, General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in the United Kingdom, worked through the text with a fine-tooth comb. The anthroposophical readers found it too scientific, the scientists found the anthroposophical arguments unconvincing. One reader thought it would make a good Ph.D. thesis but a boring book since it was so closely argued and supported with countless references. Such is the process of evolution; “hopeful monsters” have little chance of survival. An organism either creates a niche for itself or finds one that suits its characteristics. This hopeful monster finally became extinct as the consequence of a fatal computer crash, one of those periodic catastrophes that seem to have such an impact on evolution! At which point I decided that what was needed was a totally new approach. Out went most of the Steiner. In came the intention of making the case for anthropology taking the human spirit seriously. It was not vanity or ambition nor, I believe, folly (though elements of all three can certainly be found if I look hard enough) that led to the writing of this book. It was rather more of a grudging sense of responsibility. I knew it would be hard work. I knew I had other more pressing responsibilities. I knew it might probably end up in a drawer somewhere, as in fact several versions did! I kept hoping that someone better qualified than I would write what I had to say, thus relieving me of this obligation. I would have been disappointed to have failed by simply running out of steam but happy that the point had been made. So far I have yet to come across that other book (though I did get a shock when I saw that Ian Tattersall had published a book called Becoming Human, which had long been my working title). I readily acknowledge that in most respects I am wholly unqualified to tackle this subject, having no academic training in any of the fields associated with human evolution, except, that is, education. My credentials are those of the enthusiastic amateur (a figure not unknown in the history of paleoanthropology). I write this book as a practicing schoolteacher and university lecturer (in child development and education), not as an academic researcher. Teaching cultural history and human evolution to 14- to 18-year-olds in a Steiner Waldorf school 8 and education studies to university students forces one to wrestle daily with some fairly fundamental questions about the nature of human development. Many of the questions that led to this book and some of its insights come straight from the classroom. Along the way many people have helped me in large and small ways. I have mentioned Wolfgang Schad, Georg Kniebe and Nick Thomas. I must add the name of my mother, Wilma Rawson, who read through the manuscript with her usual constructive but critical comments. Her scepticism in all matters of the spirit made some of this book a hard read for her but her comments were all the more useful for that. My thanks also go to the Margaret Wilkinson Science Foundation who, long ago now, provided me with financial assistance for some of the research.