ISSN 2499-1341 EXPRESSION quaterly e-journal of atelier in cooperation with uispp-cisnep. international scientific commission on the intellectual and spiritual expressions of non-literate peoples N°9 September 2015 Papua New Guinea. Remembering the past: ancestral figure in wood. (Photo Archives Anati). EDITORIAL NOTES WHAT HAPPENS WITH the disciplines that appear to offer better economic HUMAN SCIENCES? opportunities: the job is shaping their destiny. At times they find their vocation and are shaping their Day after day several hundred students queue up at destiny by inventing their jobs. the entrance of the library of the Centre Pompidou in What was the trend in the Renaissance period? What Paris, where they intend to spend the day reading and we know is the outcome, the heritage left behind studying. They will write down notes to memorize by students and apprentices who became famous whatever knowledge they need to make their painters, writers, musicians, thinkers, philosophers forthcoming examinations successful. They prepare and theologians. They set up the bases of modern themselves for getting their diploma or PhD, the culture. Probably most of the young people, then rites de passage that allows them to become graduate as today, became artisans, agriculturists or workers members of society. to make a living. Not everybody aimed at being an We talked to them. Some wish to get a degree to find intellectual, but that epoch remains characterized by a better job; some hope to go into teaching; some fear the intellectuals, musicians and painters, philosophers to remain baby-sitters or waiters in restaurants for the and creative architects. Thanks to them their age was rest of their lives. Many of the students interviewed shaped and culture progressed remarkably. They were intended to go into computer sciences or electronic a few individuals; they created art and culture because engineering and a surprising number wished to they found the possibility of doing so in the context of become dentists. Most of those oriented towards their time and their society: by so doing they created human sciences had doubts about the possibility of the image of their time. pursuing a career in the specific field of their choice. Going further back, what heritage was left for posterity Is this the mirror of a trend? Would similar responses by classical times, by the builders of Athens’s Acropolis? be obtained in other public libraries in Rome or Or by the Bronze Age builders of the pyramids in London? Egypt? Or by the builders of the Neolithic temples in Most young people look for a job; they rarely consider Malta? Or by the megalithic builders of Brittany, or inventing a job. They rarely find the job they are the makers of prehistoric art? What reached posterity? looking for. In Europe and elsewhere we are suffering What produced culture? The arts and the monuments a conceptual crisis. If many young people do not know are the output of intellectual, human concepts of what they want to do, there is a problem with the kind those who succeeded in expressing themselves. They of education they have received. If the possibility of produced the common heritage of mankind, the getting a job in human sciences is so limited, there is a source of identity, the roots of culture. problem with the cultural strategies of the institutions. Each age is defined by the conceptual creations that If there are no jobs in human sciences, human sciences have reached us. What would culture be if they were will risk dying. forgotten? Humans must satisfy both, body and soul. We live in an age of transition. The old values are Intellectual awareness is an essential part of living. obsolete; the alternative ones are not yet ripe. We When bread and water are available, a revival of live in a lucky age with immense possibilities for new conceptual thinking awakens the mind. ideas. New ideas produce new ways of expression, new Like many other sites of rock art, the Naquane park public interest and new jobs. in the Camonica valley in Italy is a library on rocks, Trends change from generation to generation. At where about a hundred rock surfaces are covered by times vocations attract the humanities; other times engravings, mostly belonging to a few thousand years engineering or military careers are preferred; at times ago. Today the site is visited by tourists and schools. studying is a means to obtain a job and students follow Its rediscovery and management, reactivated a site that SEPTEMBER 2015 2 after thousands of years is still producing culture. Memory is identity and the knowledge of the past, When the prehistoric engravings were made, one of being a merger of memory, history and myths is the their major functions was like that of the blackboard core of identity. This knowledge granted people the in a school class, or frescoes in a cathedral: using awareness of their identity. Further, it granted the visual images and signs for teaching, reminding ability and the need to produce rock art to immortalize and remembering myths and history. It displays the testimony of their identity on the rock surfaces what young people needed to know to sustain their and to hand over their story to future generations. initiation rites de passage, and what every adult was Contemporary bureaucratic structures are acting supposed to know to be able to transmit to the next according to their intellectual infrastructure. Most of generation. The same role is today reactivated today. the few available jobs in research institutions are used Ancient rock art sanctuaries renew such a service: to compile inventories and descriptive databases, or that of the testimony of history and human creativity, to compile applications to obtain funds to compile education and culture, discovering and remembering inventories. The meaning, the decoding of the content, the past. is neglected. Often, databases are just administrative Like other sites of prehistoric and tribal rock art, tools to count figures as if they were the shekels of a happenings and gatherings may have taken place at stingy landlord. Why were these figures produced and the site, to establish cooperation and identity. Classes to whom were they addressed? What do they mean? of young people likely followed their instructors on the What is their content, what are the messages that they sacred ground of rock art in the process of initiation, conveyed and should still convey? These are tasks for to learn the events narrated by the pictures, to acquire human sciences. Engaging young researchers in such the needed knowledge to become active members of queries would advance research, make the past better adult society. understandable and produce culture. Can we figure out what their expectations were? The databases will often provide the measures and Society was less specialized then than today and most the location of the images but rarely their meaning. people did not wish to become philosophers, writers, Question: “Why are you producing this database?” teachers, astronomers, engineers or medicine doctors. Reply: “It is going to finance me for the next two Some of them may have acquired the abilities of all years.” Question: “What are you going to do with these disciplines together by becoming shamans or your database?” Reply: “It will be added to the gurus. Most of them would have been busy with their university archives.” Question: ”What is going to be daily activities, and would have attended the gatherings its function?” Reply “It is going to be on the internet.” just to be part of the community and to share the Today, researchers are able to read and decode just emotions of reviving what they already knew, myths a small portion of the messages left on the rocks. and history. A few were the makers of rock art, but the Reading the picture-writing is at the embryonic entire population was involved in its educational and phase and an immense work is to be done. The cultural roles it produced. After thousands of years research of today will make the culture of tomorrow. these sites continue to produce education and culture. Inventories can be produced by technicians. Scholars The same may be said for Athens’s Acropolis or for the in the human sciences should be involved in reading, Neolithic temples of Malta. decoding and explaining what was produced ages The makers of prehistoric art were memorizing and back. Also other aspects of our past should be made transmitting traditions, myths, beliefs, rules and habits more understandable. The Egyptian pyramids or the of human relations, and also songs and rituals, from Neolithic temples of Malta or the megalithic structure parents to offspring: like every father would do. The in Carnac are beautiful, astonishing, unique, then technical knowledge was enveloped by humanistic what? Providing a deeper explanation of how and why knowledge and socialization. Society survived both they were built, and what was their meaning, would physically and conceptually by memorizing and give them a new dimension and would produce true transmitting the memory acquired and inherited by interest, knowledge in the public and culture. Going previous generations. further inside the reasoning and the motivation of 3 EXPRESSION N° 9 human actions would allow us to discover something Millions of rock art images have been produced, read more about the behaviour and way of thinking of this and worshipped by non-literate societies all over the unknown human species to which we belong. What planet for millennia. Millions of books have been happens with human sciences? produced and read by millions of readers in the last So far, many aspects of the human cultural heritage, half millennium, since the invention of the printing such as that of prehistoric art, have not reached the press.