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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Stones Forum >> The benefit of knowledge?
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The benefit of knowledge? |
jonm
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|  Posted 15-01-2013 at 15:47
Over here, we've been debating if there could be any immediate benefit to today's society in knowing what drew people to construct Stonehenge. Not so much about what it was used for after construction but instead what initial concern would have been so great that it could drive the eventual construction.
For example, there is a possibility that a monument could have been unifying in an abstract sense: Monuments can unify, particularly where their primary purpose is seen as being essential to the continuance of a society (for example, a Parliament building).
If the monuments were constructed voluntarily for a perceived benefit to the common man, can anyone see an immediate benefit to us which could come from having a reasonable certainty of the concerns which gave rise to the construction?
It's interesting to all of us here, which is a benefit in itself, but I'm wondering if there is anything more to it than that.
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Feanor
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| Posted 15-01-2013 at 16:56
Is the Magna Carta important?
Is Hadrian's Wall?
It would be difficult to quantify a tactile benefit from the two examples other than in a very broad sense.
The Wall is still there, but its purpose is 1600 years out-of-date.
The Magna Carta is widely revered as the foundation and codification of Common- and National law, but there are only 9 vague items remaining in the original ~115 revisions that are remotely germane today.
So we look at the Wall as an important historical monument, but that has no modern relevance.
The same might be said of the Document.
When we look back to the Late Neolithic and the Monuments found there, we see the expression of a political and/or religious system that was long in place. (That fact that these logistically complicated structures were even built is proof of the culture's longevity.)
But since those systems are no longer extant, the Monuments' value are now expressed in several different ways.
"Look what the Ancients have done," not the least among them.
Neil
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jonm
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| Posted 16-01-2013 at 08:10
Hi Neil
Very important things, but it's more the immediacy of any benefit to us now that I've been thinking about:
For example, if a Hadrian's wall existed but we do not yet know about it, would it make any difference whether we found it tomorrow or in 10 years time?
I'm having difficulty seeing if there's any benefit to immediacy and trying to compare this sort of thing to normal industries. For example, if a new car engine came out which could cut consumption by 20% for all the same benefit, there's a huge benefit to society in getting that product now rather than later. Much the same thing can be said about almost anything.
However, unless I've missed something, archaeological type discoveries are different: For example, I guess that some specialist professions might benefit from finding a second Hadrian's Wall. Perhaps local hotels might too (but I don't really know).
But is there any immediate benefit to society?
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 26-01-2013 at 14:17
If an argument is to be made that these things are to be protected for the public good, and taxpayers' money spent on protecting and investigating them then I think this is a reasonable question.
I'm reading Barrett's Fragments from antiquity at the moment, and have just bought Cunliffe's new book, Britain begins, in which at the same moment I saw a stone in the British Museum called ogam, and Cunliffe has a map of ogham. Ogam and ogham don't compute.
Now Cunliffe is making an argument about an incident called Britain. Someone else wants an incident Britain out of Europe. So at the very least, the benefit of knowledge is making up and refuting stories? Your story is better than mine sort of thing, and big stones come into quite a lot of these stories, so the benefit of knowledge in the context of big stones makes a subject. It is different from knowledge of surgery.
Barrett I might come back to after I have read, but this is part of a general discourse on theory and archaeology, on which there is a vast literature and a whole institutional apparatus.
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jonm
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| Posted 27-01-2013 at 08:14
Hi John
It's a difficult subject.
Do you know of any authors who put forward well reasoned arguments for why society should care?
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bat400
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| Posted 27-01-2013 at 19:47
On a simple level:
Dr. Dig of dig - The Archaeology Magazine for Kids says,
Quote:
| Most people feel strongly about the need to protect the past because knowledge of the past helps us to know where we come from. Archaeology helps us learn about the history of farming, language, literature, art, and war. You name it and archaeology helps us understand it. The loss and destruction of ancient sites is a bit like burning pages in the diary of human history. The less we know about our past means the less we know about what it means to be human and how we are all connected, not just now, but long ago, and how we will connect with each other in the future.
Archaeology is also important because it helps us learn about how humans have interacted with the environment over time. The more we know about past human activity, the better we will understand what effect we have had on the environment and how we can help preserve the world and its resources for many thousands of years to come. |
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cropredy
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| Posted 27-01-2013 at 20:32
Quote:
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On 2013-01-27 19:47, bat400 wrote:
On a simple level:
Dr. Dig of dig - The Archaeology Magazine for Kids says,
Quote:
| Most people feel strongly about the need to protect the past because knowledge of the past helps us to know where we come from. Archaeology helps us learn about the history of farming, language, literature, art, and war. You name it and archaeology helps us understand it. The loss and destruction of ancient sites is a bit like burning pages in the diary of human history. The less we know about our past means the less we know about what it means to be human and how we are all connected, not just now, but long ago, and how we will connect with each other in the future.
Archaeology is also important because it helps us learn about how humans have interacted with the environment over time. The more we know about past human activity, the better we will understand what effect we have had on the environment and how we can help preserve the world and its resources for many thousands of years to come. |
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On a simple level.
Not many humans appear to have a clue about where We eminate from, or are bound for????
Digging up dead bodies is hardly KNOWLEDGE, it is simply recording locations in time, then assumptions are added as to their meanings.
The real knowledge is of time.
That knowledge , with respect is not found in revealing periods of time, thus nobody has a silly clue as to why the megalithic structures were built.
cropredy
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Elijah
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| Posted 27-01-2013 at 23:50
Hi Jon
Quote:
| Over here, we've been debating if there could be any immediate benefit to today's society in knowing what drew people to construct Stonehenge. Not so much about what it was used for after construction but instead what initial concern would have been so great that it could drive the eventual construction. |
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What a curious upturned question. Surely it all boils down to the use that ancient people put these edifices to! Understanding this will tell us why ancient people the world over were "driven" to build these now puzzling edifices; only this can tell us if there are any "benefits" to be had?
Can you expand upon your debate, and tell me where "over here" actually is?
John
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jonm
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| Posted 28-01-2013 at 08:53
Quote:
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You name it and archaeology helps us understand it. The loss and destruction of ancient sites is a bit like burning pages in the diary of human history. The less we know about our past means the less we know about what it means to be human and how we are all connected, not just now, but long ago, and how we will connect with each other in the future.
Archaeology is also important because it helps us learn about how humans have interacted with the environment over time. The more we know about past human activity, the better we will understand what effect we have had on the environment and how we can help preserve the world and its resources for many thousands of years to come. |
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Thanks Bat. I had no short term reasons 'in favour' at all until you cited that. So new 'Arguments in favour' list starts with a preface:
Understanding the purpose of the monuments allows more appropriate research to be done on existing sites prior to those sites being potentially lost to development or other causes of destruction. This aids long term aims such as:
1) Increasing an understanding of the past to inform future generations of potential mistakes.
2) Teaching new ways of showing schoolchildren how to look at their world and help with problem solving skills.
3) Discovering 'new' places or monuments of past importance (though I'm not convinced that there is a benefit in this).
4) Furthering a general understanding of the past together with the 'why' of how structured society developed in Britain.
Anything else you would add to the list?
(edited to make sense: I shouldn't have used cut and paste without checking the paragraph structure still works)
[ This message was edited by: jonm on 2013-01-28 09:58 ]
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jonm
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| Posted 28-01-2013 at 08:57
Quote:
| Surely it all boils down to the use that ancient people put these edifices to! Understanding this will tell us why ancient people the world over were "driven" to build these now puzzling edifices; only this can tell us if there are any "benefits" to be had?
Can you expand upon your debate, and tell me where "over here" actually is? |
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Hi John
Over here is the south Coast of England. The upturned Stonehenge discussion is just an odd by-product of another unrelated, but much longer, set of ideas.
I agree that you must know the 'why' in order to know what benefit there will be. However, there must be a potential benefit to knowing the 'why' *early* if the same benefit could be achieved by doing the same research later; same as with any business? I guess there would be additional personal value to anyone who does discover why the monuments were built if they were in that sort of profession.
With the exception of the professionals, knowing the 'why' would be unlikely to produce a need for speed unless there is a potential urgent benefit?
So the debate was hypothetical; About the speed at which things would be done if anyone ever happened to stumble across the reason why.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 28-01-2013 at 17:46
Heavens, what a huge amount of contribution....
over here, as the scene was set, some people stand up and say that they believe in god the father, maker of heaven and earth...
if those people are politicians, or try to force some people into some sorts of relationships, then they have to be told that either they are lying, or they are bonkers.
It was showing that the world wasn't created in six days, even metaphorically, that got us off the 4004BC hook, and allowed us to think in deep time.
The benefit of knowledge is that we can tell counter stories.
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Elijah
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|  Posted 28-01-2013 at 21:00
Hi Jon
Quote:
| I agree that you must know the 'why' in order to know what benefit there will be. However, there must be a potential benefit to knowing the 'why' *early* if the same benefit could be achieved by doing the same research later; same as with any business? I guess there would be additional personal value to anyone who does discover why the monuments were built if they were in that sort of profession. |
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I'm still not clear where your coming from 
John
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sem
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| Posted 28-01-2013 at 23:07
This topic is becoming confusing.
Two blokes with ice-cream cones on their head, topped with a strawberry, are contributing and I keep mixing them up.
Just an example of how different brains perceive things and how the idea of "knowledge" can mean different things to different people.
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jonm
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| Posted 29-01-2013 at 09:26
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| I'm still not clear where your coming from |
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I see what you mean. It's to do with the benefit of immediacy.
Hypothetically, let's say we could say with reasonable certainty what some neolithic monuments were for. Let's say that this was new but related to what everyone thought they were for.
We know that the purpose of those few monuments will be identified, but don't yet know what the knock-on effect on other monuments will be.
Is there any reason why a benefactor (could be the State or could be anyone else) should fund that discovery now, in times of austerity, rather than say in 10 years time?
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jonm
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| Posted 29-01-2013 at 09:32
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| Two blokes with ice-cream cones on their head, topped with a strawberry, are contributing and I keep mixing them up. |
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Tricky isn't it? Shame there's not an easy way to change it. How did you do yours?
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 29-01-2013 at 12:07
The next thread perhaps to the thinking is that not everyone involved in Megalith Portal community will be an archaeologist by full time money making requirement (what some call professional), but the ontology (used for the first time) of archaeology involves the destruction of the thing you are coming to know.
This makes it a different type of knowledge for all that remains is the document and the deposits in museums. In turn though, megaliths are different from other types of archaeological matters, for they are a bit harder to destroy, depending on what you include in the class of object.
I'm maintaining a thread called words and things where I am documenting classes of word thing combinations which seem to me particularly problematic.
The benefit of knowledge then requires that the libraries and museums maintain the documentation and the objects and the connections with the sites. I call that linked data and am making connections of how to maintain. This in turn now implies we know something about how modern search engines work or don't work in comparison with what we would have known in the past about how catalogues and cards worked, the old 5x3. There are now probably two generations who have no knowledge of how classification schemes and catalogues work, but who also probably know little about how search engines optimisation works either. This Portal is a good case of how to investigate these matters, and document them.
Plus, this social networking knowledge means investigating new types of narrative. In Library Thing for example, there is an archaeology thread, in which I am investigating what I'm calling neolithic semantics, and I have opened a facebook page of the same string to keep notes on one aspect of the organisation of knowledge, which is sometimes called semantics, sometimes ontology and sometimes taxonomy.
The benefit of knowledge is determined by its organisation.
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bat400
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| Posted 29-01-2013 at 14:59
Quote:
| On 2013-01-28 08:53, jonm wrote:
So new 'Arguments in favour' list starts with a preface:
Understanding the purpose of the monuments allows more appropriate research to be done on existing sites prior to those sites being potentially lost to development or other causes of destruction. This aids long term aims such as:
1) Increasing an understanding of the past to inform future generations of potential mistakes.
2) Teaching new ways of showing schoolchildren how to look at their world and help with problem solving skills.
3) Discovering 'new' places or monuments of past importance (though I'm not convinced that there is a benefit in this).
4) Furthering a general understanding of the past together with the 'why' of how structured society developed in Britain.
Anything else you would add to the list?
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Actually, I would think that "3)" leads directly to 1) and 4). If you don't know a site was there, you'll never improve or add to the long term goals of 1) and 4). Instead they remain static.
I can think of several other reasons, but they they fall into two catagories -
A. Direct (but less Practical) Reasons Associated with Studying the Past.
i. The "delight" of laymen like ourselves, whose lives are enriched by this type of pursuit of knowledge. (Compare to bird watchers, rock hounds, people who press flowers in scrap books, and sky watchers with their binoculars.) What if we were all spending our time getting drunk, dabling in politics, or some similar antisocial activity?
ii. Job creation that encourages scientific methods, applied electronics, journalism, libraries, and records services, but does not of necessity encourage the manufacture of planned obsolescent comsumer goods. (i.e. Does public funding of archaeology give you similar "bang for buck" of government pump priming of say, a factory making cheap plastic trinkets, fatty snack food, or cosmetics.)
B. Indirect Reasons not Associated with Studying the Past.
i. Preservation of ancient sites, even without any active study of them often has the non-associated benefits of preserving wildlife, "traditional" landscapes, and open recreational space,
ii. Preservation of ancient sites can also discourage urban sprawl, light pollution, and preserve natural water circulation.
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2013-01-29 15:01 ]
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Andy B
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| Posted 29-01-2013 at 15:59
> Tricky isn't it? Shame there's not an easy way to change your image. How did you do yours?
Click on 'Your Own Page' in the left menu, then from there Change Your Info.
Then about half way down there is a selection box for which 'avatar' icon you want. You have to click on the pop up next to it to see what they are. Then Save the new settings.
I am also happy to add larger custom 'avatar' icons for forum contributors but you need to email these to me via the 'Contact Editor' link to be added manually.
Cheers
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Elijah
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| Posted 30-01-2013 at 15:58
Hi Jon
Quote:
| I see what you mean. It's to do with the benefit of immediacy.
Hypothetically, let's say we could say with reasonable certainty what some neolithic monuments were for. Let's say that this was new but related to what everyone thought they were for.
We know that the purpose of those few monuments will be identified, but don't yet know what the knock-on effect on other monuments will be.
Is there any reason why a benefactor (could be the State or could be anyone else) should fund that discovery now, in times of austerity, rather than say in 10 years time? |
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I'm with you now!
Intriguing; what would you do if your wacky Stonehenge "thought experiment" was actually viable; i.e. someone could present evidence of a universal rationale for the building of antiquities megalithic monuments?
John
John
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Andy B
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| Posted 30-01-2013 at 17:01
Someone here has been citing evidence of compassion in ancient times to inform a political debate today
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=5557&forum=1&start=0
You could say that research into what happened in prehistoric times cuts through the chaff of modern life to get to the fundamentals of what it is to be human. That seems to resonate with a lot of people.
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