Preserving Social Difference

NATURE|Vol 466|26 August 2010 OPINION

he suggested, by monitoring millions of stars it is debatable how robust these computer get involved with big projects or lose out. with an automated telescope, a battery of models are, what exactly we learn from them Although A Grand and Bold Thing is more computers and an automated software pipeline. and to what extent they are falsifiable. a celebration of Gunn’s extraordinary career A US–Australian team succeeded in detecting The availability of vast databases also affects than a definitive account of the Sloan survey, it the objects by such a technique in 1993. the nature of the research. I fear for the loss succeeds in capturing the arcane world of the The emergence of a new generation of gradu- of individuality in approaches and for niche professional astronomer. To Gunn’s colleague at ate students and postdocs who are “born wired projects that would otherwise open up new Princeton, Jerry Ostriker, it is almost a religious to write code” is credited as essential to inter- areas of exploration. Every new survey sparks undertaking: “People will devote their lives, preting the vast data sets of modern astronomy. a rush of comparisons with existing surveys at their time, their wits for things which have no Astrocoders entertain us with their impressive other wavelengths; this might exponentially practical importance. And there’s something films of stars falling into black holes, galaxies boost the literature but it does not benefit our rather beautiful about that.” ■ in collision and the birth and evolution of the understanding to the same degree. Confirma- Joss Bland-Hawthorn is an ARC Federation Universe. Yet Finkbeiner does not explore tory results abound, and networked citations Fellow and a professor of astrophysics at the the deeper question of how we should move between groups foster a sense of success, irre- Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, from this information overload to physical spective of scientific outcome. As a result, there University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. understanding. With so many free parameters, is huge pressure on individual astronomers to e-mail: [email protected]

Preserving social difference

What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near to focus on single regions. They agree with the mortuary cult of the pharaoh — with its East and the Future of the West the striking insight of French sociologist and mummies, lavishly painted tombs and ‘books by David Wengrow anthropologist Marcel Mauss, who wrote in his of the dead’ — have no obvious equivalent in Oxford University Press: 2010. 217 pp. 1920 essay ‘The Nation’, after the First World Mesopotamia. Writing was invented in the two £14.99, $24.95 War: “Societies live by borrowing from each regions at about the same time — in Mesopo- other, but they define themselves rather by the tamia as cuneiform around 3300 bc, and in refusal of borrowing than by its acceptance.” Egypt as hieroglyphics in about 3200 bc — yet Every major war causes us to reflect on the Mesopotamia and Egypt, despite their geo- the two scripts look entirely different and seem meaning of the word civilization. The mayhem graphical proximity and similar locations in to have arisen independently. over the past decade in what was once Meso- the flood plains of great rivers, provide a fasci- Astonishingly, there is no written evidence potamia (now Iraq) is particularly provocative nating example of Mauss’s observation. For all that ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were because the region is known as the histori- the impressive scale and sophistication of these directly aware of each other during their cal birthplace of civilization. In What Makes two early civilizations, they developed in very first 1,000 years of existence. However, both Civilization?, archaeologist David Wengrow different ways. Egyptian pyramid building and civilizations undoubtedly traded with areas takes a 5,000-year perspective, comparing farther afield well before the third millennium. etty g the first thousand years of the Mesopotamian For example, precious lapis lazuli, which must FP/ a and Egyptian civilizations to draw unsettling have come overland and by sea from its nearest / lessons about recent events. source in mountainous Afghanistan, is found

onians The early glories of civilization developed in Egyptian burials dating back to the fourth

C. in the third millennium bc (3000–2000 bc) millennium bc. in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the Middle East and These differences lend support to the sepa- beside the River Nile: city states such as Uruk ratist argument of Mauss, rather than to the and Ur in Mesopotamia, the pyramids at Giza idea of the growth of civilization as a univer- and the development of sophisticated writ- sal and multicultural phenomenon. Although ing systems in cuneiform and hieroglyphics. What Makes Civilization? does not deny the Isaac Newton wrote in his Chronology of importance of mixtures and borrowings, Ancient Kingdoms Amended (published post- it convincingly concludes that the parallel humously in 1728) that ancient Mesopotamia development of Mesopotamia and Egypt and Egypt provided Europe with the earliest demonstrates “the deep attachment of human glimmers of the Enlightenment — farming, societies to the concepts they live by, and the literacy, astronomy and navigation — as well inequalities they are prepared to endure in as a darker heritage of sacred kingship and the order to preserve those guiding principles”. dynastic cult of the dead. This finding does not bode well for the current Archaeologists have always debated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ■ importance of borrowing and diffusion of Andrew Robinson is a visiting fellow of Wolfson ideas versus that of independent invention and College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge national identity. There is a current fashion for CB3 9BB, UK. He is writing a biography of the exploring the interconnectedness of ancient Early Mesopotamian culture had little overlap with French philologist Jean-François Champollion. civilizations, yet most archaeologists continue that of ancient Egypt, despite their proximity. e-mail: [email protected]