The Symmetrical House of Form: The Economics of Being and The Struggle for Existence in Prehistory (Part II)

Time present and time past                      

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

– T.S. Eliot

Burnt Norton[1]

Prologue

In prehistory, man eventually arrived at the realization that the hierarchy of values safeguards human survival and well-being. The economics of being is rooted in choice-making, a natural disposition of man as homo faber. As a maker of tools, man learns to act effectively in the world, for human action cannot be blind and capricious if man is to prosper.

Human action is motivated and guided by man’s sense of interiority. That is, man’s existential capacity for self-reflection can lead to self-rule. This form of reflective choice-making is a creative act that, dating back to prehistory, demonstrates that invention, technology, artistic creation, productive societies and institutions originate in human industriousness.

 The Economics of Being

The economics of being recognizes human existence as a form of doing. Human beings cannot dispense with the necessity of having to make choices. This makes man a being that concerns itself with values. As a being that must make practical, life-affirming choices, if for no other reason than survival, man must decide between higher and lower values. Naturally, bad choices can have adverse effects on human well-being; some of our choices can be fatal. Thus, it is important to realize the hierarchical nature of values, as this corresponds to man as a being whose nature enables us to make conscious choices.

Regarding man in prehistory, the economics of being represents a time of pressing vital need, when the scope of values was narrower than it is today. This suggests that making choices that safeguarded the survival of individuals and their small clan was of crucial importance. It appears that the range of early man’s choice-making was efficiently guided toward survival. Given the physical, emotional and psychical demands of their living conditions, choice-making for early man required conscious engagement with their limited field of possibilities. No doubt, this clash with reality created tremendous unavoidable stress for early man. While the scope of their existential preoccupations was probably no different than ours today, their expectations of human reality remained modest.

Yet the fundamental condition of man, as a being who is constantly engaged in doing, is not merely action, but rather the existential awareness of having to act in order to survive and prosper. This requires diligence. Man’s fundamental burden of having-to-do is not doing “this or that,” but rather engaging in doing as directed action. Human existence, despite the chagrin of our spirited protestation, is future-oriented. This condition makes man an axiological being. It is the recognition of choice-making as a fundamental value of human existence that elevates man’s perpetual having-to-do from a burden, and converts it into self-control: freedom.

The economics of being concerns economics as much as it bespeaks of the nature of man. Rudimentary empirical evidence demonstrates this. The economics of being is manifested in diverse aspects of man’s creative vision and energy, from aesthetics to science, mathematics and philosophical reflection. This is one reason why the study of economics ought not to be subsumed by the present-day prejudice of positivism in all its spiritual, cultural and political shortcomings. The latter is mistaken in its naïve and irresponsible assumption that man’s well being is the result of economic activity, and not its cause. Such a narrow perspective, as human history aptly shows, leads to the de-humanizing and de-vitalizing of human nature. The culprit here is over-intellectualizing. The latter is myopia that limits the sphere and impact of man’s existential inquietude as a fundamental guiding principle of human history. Theories that attempt to remove man’s subjective “I” from acting as the core of economic activity end up by unnecessarily mystifying the nature and fullness of economic activity. Let us stretch our imagination beyond the multiple layers of societal, cultural, scientific and historical interpretations of man’s nature, and seek understanding of man in his prehistoric, pre-intellectual state.

The anthropological relevance of man’s nature, how this relates to human existence, informs man’s thought, will and actions. The basic unit of human existence is existential self-awareness. That is, we always encounter the individual mired in ever-present and threatening circumstances. The reality of the external world is a shock to us. In other words, man is always in the presence of danger. This is the case because human existence, by its very demands, confronts man with uncertainty. While living conditions today are drastically different from that of man in prehistory, the actuality of danger to our well-being remains constant. Because we cannot eliminate the reality of temporal strife, we must focus our energy in understanding how we can best tolerate, if not assuage, our existential predicament. This is where choice-making comes in.  However, before we catalogue man as belonging to any clan, race, clique, coterie or any other such manner of social identification, we cannot ignore the reality of human subjectivity. Man’s subjectivity acts like a mirror that we cannot readily, and in good will, glance away from for any extended period of time.

Man’s physical and psychical needs are not satiated other than by providing for the individual for whom such necessities arise. The desire for food and water, warmth, shelter and human companionship, the pain of disease and the presence of looming death are, by their very constitution, realities that can only affect man qua individual. Because man’s capacity for self-awareness can often develop into self-knowledge, man’s physical and psychical needs are a pressing reality of the human condition.

Our ability to reflect on the nature of these recurring needs – having to provide for our well-being, time and again – this alone makes man an existential being par excellence. It is capricious to assume that our essential existential constitution has ever been drastically altered since prehistory. Again, the evidence that history provides us with in this area is ample. We should remain cautious not to let sound reasoning become contaminated by sporting intellectualizing, which downplays vital reality by neglecting historical facts. Positivism has reduced man’s nature, vital enterprises and spirited achievements to the effervescent direction of the current wind.  Positivism, in all its variegated forms, forcibly asserts itself at the expense of thoughtful and vital truth-seeking.

Man favors the present. This seems reasonable. After all, the present is the only truly measurable period of time that pertains to lived human existence. The sting of reality is felt most in the present.  However, the present also requires much imagination in order to comprehend the cultural trends, mores and values that direct its course. Present-time is transparent. For many people, it is difficult to accurately decipher the historical antecedents of the present and the future that it eventually delivers us to. This condition is too often aggravated by man’s short memory.

Ignorance of human history, of man’s past as a vital, lived reality, is detrimental to our ability to forge reasonable future expectations. The latter only comes about as the heroic action of visionaries. This is one of the lasting lessons of history.[2]  Nothing leads man into the darkness of error more than thought that neglects rationally sound historical principles. The history of ideas requires prescience, prudence and intellectual honesty. The absence of these ingredients has worked to stifle man’s creative energy with bogus and destructive notions that make it next to impossible for many people to attain self-understanding and self-rule. Many scholars and writers today treat the past as the plaything of their biases, and in many cases, also as the repository of dead-end ideological fantasies. Positivism does little to embrace man in his historical plenitude.

Regrettably, man’s origin remains shrouded in theory and speculation for science to make definitive deliberations on early man with any degree of certainty. The data and physical evidence unearthed by archeology, and which, as per the scientific aspirations of positivism, would convert history into a science of man, remains sketchy at best. Actually, it is highly questionable whether the creation of a science of man is possible or even desirable. In the absence of a science of man, philosophers of history are left to reconstruct human history by paying close attention to man’s essential qualities. What we do know is that human existence, physical and existential, has always been a struggle for survival and well being. This can be readily verified by studying man’s spiritual, cultural and technological legacy. For instance, Mingqi, the Chinese tradition of burying items with the dead can be traced to the Neolithic age. Mingqi, “bright objects,” as these objects are called, make the voyage of the dead to the afterlife more comfortable and familiar. Neolithic tombs have been uncovered in ancient China that contain jade and bone carvings.3

While survival is an instinctual condition in animals, man’s ability to understand himself in time – in lieu of perpetual danger and imminent death – constitutes a reflective awareness of survival. Unlike animals, however, man internalizes his quest for survival. We cannot undermine the role of intuition in human survival. In turn, this form of practical human reflection, while leaving many traceable imprints in history, is nonetheless all but erased by time, especially in the absence of written accounts. Even without written records, it is reasonable to argue that reflection mitigates the contingencies of human reality. We can be certain of this condition in pre-historic man, because this continues to be the case for us today. The tradition of mingqi is still practiced today in China and other places.

The dawn of Homo sapiens remains a conundrum for us today. Many scientists and others in the social sciences are embarrassed by this simple fact. Part of the problem is that in our attempt to make human history a hard science, scientists tend to collapse questions that pertain to purpose and intelligibility, that is, questions that ask “Why?” into matter-of-fact questions of “How?”

Some Empirical Evidence of the Economics of Being as a Fundamental Form of Man’s Having-To-Do

Archaeologists tell us that the period between 40,000 and 35,000 B.C. saw the rise of modern man as the sole human species on planet Earth. For the purpose of this enquiry, I am not concerned with Java, Peking or Heidelberg man, even though these entities are regarded to be Homo erectus. We are confident that Neanderthals, named after the place of their fossil remains, the Neander Valley in modern-day Germany, made tools and other weapons from flint. These are undoubtedly great achievements, in addition to subsequent inventions such as the wheel and language. These inventions propelled human well-being to unprecedented heights. Of course, this is assuming that we understand the events of man’s origin and formation with plausible accuracy. Having said that, let us accept the aforementioned facts and others that will appear in this enquiry at face value; with a grain of salt, as they say.

Another major discovery, one that has serious implications for personhood and the role that the economics of being plays in human life, is that Neanderthals began to bury their dead around 100,000 years ago. The latter signals religious belief.4  It also marks a clear demarcation between a sensual regard for external reality and the existential concerns of the self, as this empowers man over time and physical reality. This suggests a marked sense of interiority. The latter realization is perhaps early man’s most important milestone on their way to becoming modern man.

It is an undeniable fact of the human condition that before there was written history – what is the archive of a vast array of our human past – there were individual human beings who lived, processed and internalized the impressions that they received from the external world, and who perished. However, the culmination of this ongoing cyclical process – history – ought not to be considered solely the extraneous culmination of a material process, but rather as the exercise of what we today refer to as personhood.

Just like the essences that inform the lives of individuals today, and which are lost to objective reality after death, even written history cannot account for the greater part of human interaction with others and the physical world. It is not necessary to know Paleolithic people in their plenitude in order to harbor a plausible understanding of their psychical make-up. The objective truths, falsity or vainglory encountered in historical events, can all be traced to the exuberance or shortcomings of individuals. Hence, it is our existential inquietude that is responsible for the pathos that finds it worthwhile to concern ourselves with the catalogue of man’s archival past. Human curiosity tries to envision the world of man before recorded history. This disposition remains a fruitful scientific and philosophical enterprise. When viewed with respect to our existential inquietude, the study of history can be conceived as the exercise of vocation on the part of man.

A phenomenological approach to prehistory must bracket man’s history – what is the coming of age of individual accounts of consciousness – before the advent of the written word. This is an instructive and humble way of understanding history that can tell us much about our own time. The philosophy of history is a discipline that is rife with the potential to be considered from a phenomenological perspective. History, in its capacity as having been the present at some point in time, is too transparent and immediate a form of human reality. This makes it difficult to fully comprehend history. This condition places the onus of seeking historical coherence on thoughtful historians of ideas, thinkers who are not coy in recognizing the individual as the fundamental component of history.

It is an inescapable fact of the human condition that man’s existence is framed by a perpetual preoccupation with doing. Human concern with attaining food, shelter and the need to avert danger are all blatant forms of doing. These are all obvious mechanisms for human survival. Another productive way to conceive of the economics of being is to think of human-existence-as-having-to-do. It is not difficult to realize that the economics of being originates in the need of beings that are not merely conscious, but rather, who are also capable of reflective consciousness. Consciousness that is capable of existential self-awareness eventually comes to terms with a rudimentary sense of meaning. This is the case because functionality embraces meaning.

At this point, it should be made clear that it is not necessary to presume that existential inquietude manifested itself to Paleolithic man in the same plenitude that existentialism describes, for instance. Yet even a basic sensibility for the nature of cause and effect brings about meaning in beings that are capable of self-reflection. Paleolithic man did not necessarily reflect out of a sporting attitude, rather out of necessity. For Paleolithic man, understanding possibly developed more out of rote than from a system of rational beliefs. Thought responds to stress; to the exigencies of survival. The invention of tools and the building of permanent structures were the result of early man’s will to survive.

The advanced hunting and gathering culture of upper Paleolithic man demonstrates that man is a problem solver by nature. The demands of external reality, what today we call necessity, are one reason why prehistoric man drastically improved his material condition. When cold and hunger beckoned, man in prehistoric times utilized their inference in order to survive. When imminent danger togged at their tattered garments, and they were no doubt always in danger, these Homo sapiens readied themselves with the tools of their imagination and creative energy. If environmental conditions serve as the impetus for intelligent entities to rise above them and survive, this will come at the beckoning of logical inference.

Another reason that man acts to save himself and his circumstances, as Ortega y Gasset argues, has everything to do with will.5 For instance, Magdalenian man, who lived between the Alps and the Cantabrian mountains of Spain, is considered to be the first artists.6 Of course, the predominant idea of art today has taken on a self-conscious connotation that in reality acts to minimize its importance to daily existence. The pursuit of art is considered today a leisurely form of creative activity. The key word here is leisure. In other words, even today, art remains a form of doing regardless of where this activity may fall in the hierarchy of values. However, as far as prehistoric man is concerned, it is worthwhile to ask why they felt the need to create art in the first place.

Some archaeologists speculate that because the Magdalenians were good hunters, they must have eaten a large amount of meat. This is plausible.7  Yet we are also left with the possibility that their main objective was to attain animal hides to use as clothing or to build small huts. Their main source of food may have come from other plants and animals. For instance, it is believed that some prehistoric tribes hung animal hides at the entrance of caves. This served as a curtain that shielded them from inclement weather. This period saw the practice of building permanent dwelling places, where small families lived together. There is evidence to suggest that they buried their dead underneath the floor of their huts. Like many of the tombs in subsequent cultures, these skeletal remains were found to be clothed and adorned with jewelry. The act of trying to hold on to the dead by placing them close to their living spaces has interesting implications. One reason for this may be that Paleolithic people understood the futility of controlling the passage of time. They could have realized that natural processes, whether relating to their physical environment or their inner selves, demonstrate internal cohesion; what we today call laws or principles.8 In other words, they recognized that time is fleeting and that human reality is in flux; change is a constant.

Consider the tiresome trial and error process that eventually led Paleolithic man to domesticate and breed animals. Undoubtedly, paying close attention to the growth patterns of wild grains and the cultivation of these in sufficient quantities to make cereal required the will and execution of industrious beings. This meant the exercise of patience by people who were willing to stay the course. The clans that were successful in cultivating grains for the production of cereal were rewarded handsomely for their ingenuity. Not only did some diligent individuals safeguard some measure of safety and well being for their clan – what some people today like to refer to as the community – but they also began to trade with other clans that may have discovered additional food sources. Hence, commodities that were essential for survival also served as a source of prosperity.

This is also true of the struggle to secure good water supply and fertile soil. We ought not to forget that prehistoric man’s gradual dominion over the land, which brought them greater well being and security, was due to their inference in extracting understanding from their sensual experience. This process required taking proactive measures and much labor. The ancient Greeks would later refer to this as techne.

We know that the development of agriculture allowed man to settle into permanent dwellings. Aside from being a practical choice, this important historical event also turned out to be a higher value, which rewarded those who embraced it. Permanent dwellings meant that the creation and maintenance of families was now emphasized as a dominant value in the lives of individuals. No doubt that the development of the family has had a highly civilizing effect on man. For one, it has served as an apprenticeship for children to engage human reality on all levels, not least with their existential concerns. Permanent dwellings also meant the securing of a daily routine. Having a place to call home meant having familial roots to project into the future. This also gave man a place to protect and defend from the ravages of weather, wild beasts and other clans. Permanent dwellings allowed man a measure of security, and most importantly, a sense of certainty.

Let us also note that the process of curing, drying and salting meat, fowl and fish requires constant vigilance to safeguard against animals and man. The same can be said for the care of planted fields and grazing animals. The need to secure these food sources required the kind of concern and care for their well-being that eventually paid great dividends. However, this also unhinged the ire and malice of others who did not possess the know-how to achieve such ends or who simply did not want to partake in the necessary labor. It is conceivable to imagine early man being idle during a portion of the day. However, this does not mean that they enjoyed leisure time. The latter is suggestive of a Rousseauian paradisiacal existence that would be inconsistent with the danger and burden of life in prehistory. Illness, injury and the continual awareness of danger forced people to live in small units. It is estimated that 54% of people in the Paleolithic age perished before age 20 and 35% between 21 and 40.9

It is not very difficult to realize that history cannot be separated from human ingenuity, perseverance and enterprise. These timeless qualities have allowed man to survive untold difficulties. There is nothing capricious about these qualities. On the contrary, man has embraced these and other essential qualities because they serve to confront us with the reality that survival and well being depend on our choices.

By the time the Paleolithic age had given way to Neolithic man, the fundamental way of life of modern man had effectively been established. This means that today we can trace modern man back to at least 9,000 B.C.; a span of time of approximately 11,000 years. Consider that circa 9,000 B.C. Jericho had over 2,000 inhabitants. The organizational skills necessary to maintain an ancient city of that size cannot be made light of. At that time ancient man enjoyed a flourishing trade in obsidian and flint. The inhabitants of Jericho figured out how to use natural springs as sources of water. Not surprisingly, Jericho eventually had a wall built around it that was protected by a tower with sentries.

Çatalhöyük is another fine example of ingenuity and industry from this period. Dating from around 7,500 B.C., this large city with an impressive wall consisted mostly of domestic buildings, not public structures. It boosted of a population between 5,000 and 8,000 inhabitants. Çatalhöyük enjoyed a simple irrigation agriculture and cattle-breeding. This was a prosperous city that employed various types of craftsmen: stone polishers, potters, textile, basket weavers and wood workers. Craftsmen are by decree creative people who, at least in prehistoric times, wedded craft and ingenuity in order to survive and prosper. Culturally, the residents of Çatalhöyük paid homage to a fertility goddess whose male counterpart was symbolized by a boar, stag, ram and a bull. Their recognition of the need to procreate their own kind is consistent with their familial bonds and their instinct for survival. These people also buried their dead under their houses. The burial of the dead seems to be intertwined with their respect for death, for some of their fascinating murals depicted vultures with large wings.10

The economics of beings finds it necessary to ask: What is the importance of reflection on life and death with economic and existential well being? Undoubtedly, it makes perfect sense to thoughtful beings that procreation helps to safeguard the family or the local clan from extinction. This was common sense at its most practical level. Given the sacrifices that individuals make to establish families, there can be little doubt that life and death were concerns of prehistoric man. The struggle for existence is instinctual. This is easy to verify in animals.[3] It can be argued that prehistoric man demonstrated a healthy respect for horizontal movement. That is, they took active control of their temporal survival. The latter is the result of a form of common-sense realism that respects the exigencies of sensual reality. Survival requires practicality and efficiency. One can see how William of Occam’s idea of simplicity, best known as Occam’s razor, weighs heavily in matters of life and death. This must have been a lesson that prehistoric man learned fairly quickly.

Much as the residents of Çatalhöyük were concerned with lateral breathing-room, they also embraced a vertical regard for human existence that concerned itself with transcendence. If we are to judge from cave paintings and other art forms from prehistory, man has always entertained existential preoccupations and longings that have served as the fuel of historical progress. It is not difficult to view prehistory as a narrative that is expressed as the need for survival. The securing of lateral mobility, that is, safety and survival beckoned man to respect the demands of daily existence. This is perhaps one reason why very early on in prehistory man entertained ideas about transcendence. Ethnography, then, must concern itself to re-visit the attitudes and ways of life of people who left no apparent written records. The grave danger for us today is to attempt to read history with the blinders of our own standards.

Because ours is a positivistic age, historians and other cultural critics tend to de-emphasize the qualitative and essential characteristics that are responsible for man’s well being, in any age. If I am correct in this assessment, it is only because this assertion is consistent with Auguste Comte’s Three Stages of man.11 The last of these is a positivistic age that eschews all mythological, religious, metaphysical and existential sentiment. In a positivistic age, it is consistent that scholars and intellectuals display profound disdain for prior stages of man’s development. As such, it is difficult to see how we can have a responsible and honest approach to history that is not tainted by our cultural/scientific myopia.

The struggle for daily existence in prehistory carries the sting of necessity at its core. For instance, it is hard to imagine people in prehistory becoming explorers for their own amusement. Instead, it makes more sense to think of exploration as coming about from pressing necessity. Because there were no roads, transporting goods was a very difficult and dangerous undertaking. Yet today we believe that goods in prehistory made their way through many early settlements. This suggests that if travelers were intent on taking goods to distant settlements, they would naturally return home with other goods. This indicates trading, barter, selling and buying of goods. This was difficult and time-consuming work. This activity was also dangerous, for human craftiness would have it that some people stole goods that did not require their labor to produce. As much as invention and trading of goods require industriousness, so too does its antithesis – parasitical opportunism – require craftiness. This is one reason why some archaeologists speculate that perhaps prehistoric man had developed a network of storage places between settlements. Others suggest that goods were hidden or buried to be retrieved at a convenient time. Inventors, craftsmen and entrepreneurs might have had trusted or paid assistants who helped them move their goods.

Trade routes were created that facilitated the movement of goods. This was a natural progression of trade, but more importantly of necessity. Some of these trade routes followed the trajectory of the Danube and Elbe rivers respectively. Prior to the invention of the wheel, trade meant carrying heavy loads on foot. The earliest examples of carts or wagons that made use of wheels only date back to about 3,500 B.C.12  In order to move large quantities of goods beasts of burden were necessary. This necessitated that animals be domesticated. For instance, the Vistula road saw the likes of salt, bronze, amber, furs and leather being traded. The domestication of animals and the creation of agriculture are both epoch-changing developments. The aforementioned addressed fundamental needs and other complex problems of daily existence. Having conquered these, early man now began to take control of his environment in ways he could not have done before.

From the Paleolithic age, around 40,000 B.C to the Mesolithic Age, a transitional period that saw the creation of towns around 10,000 B.C., nature must have seemed impossible to tame. We can make sense of “nature” in several ways: 1) Nature as the sum of processes of the physical world. This is the sense of nature which romantic writers like Coleridge and painters like J.M. W. Turner depict in their work. Early man no doubt experienced nature’s wrath as perhaps few humans ever have. What exacerbated early man’s condition was their lack of understanding how to predict and evade some of nature’s fury. 2) Another conception of nature has to do with the “nature,” or order of things. This understanding of nature uncovers the objective nature (logos) of reality. Early man must have embraced a savage form of realism that tamed man’s expectations regarding their sphere of control. It is the latter which concerns philosophical reflection of man in prehistory. Man’s understanding of the structure of the external world, his own will and the synthesis of these two as confronted by consciousness, is what ought to interest philosophers of history most.

For beings that are capable of self-knowledge, the struggle for survival is very different than for animals. While animals possess an instinctual wiring for survival, man is capable of elevating instinctual urges to the level of conscious awareness. This transformation is a uniquely human existential act. This simply means that man is self-aware of his impending possibilities and, more importantly, that he must act on them. Hence, what we encounter in man is conscious purposeful action. Directed action is the result of at least a minimal degree of reflection. Man’s discovery of fire, for instance, is a fine example of transformation of one’s surroundings into fruitful and practical structures. This is made possible by paying allegiance to the sensual world through simple perception. These perceptions must be turned into broader conceptual understanding, if they are eventually to become constructive thought. For instance, early man reacted to the dangers brought about by natural fires, lighting probably being a major source of forest and savannah fires. At some point in time, man began to harness natural fires for his benefit. Only on close inspection of natural fires did man begin to build fires of his own. In addition, with a minimal understanding of natural processes, man was able to begin to domesticate goats and sheep around 9,000 B. C.; pigs and cattle around 7,000 B.C. While it is estimated that Paleolithic clans consisted of 20 to 50 people, Neolithic groups consisted of about 150 persons. It is estimated that much later, this number was even greater in Jericho.13

The Struggle for Existence Corresponds to Man’s Immediate Experience of Reality

Prehistoric man had little choice but to be on the defensive regarding the brutal demands of human reality. In an age without writing, man depended on common sense, intuition, and especially on will for survival; everyone was like a first-man. Common sense serves as a system of checks and balances in human behavior. Intuition, we can liken to a vital condition of subjectivity that allows us to understand aspects of reality prima facie that we cannot readily explain at face value. No doubt, will propels man to execute necessary tasks that we may not want to take on.

The daily quest for survival no doubt weighed heavily on prehistoric man. Because man possesses an innate capacity to perceive time, we cannot undermine prehistoric man’s frustration and suffering in realizing their inability to control the passage of time. This existential burden, which man internalizes, and which marks all human endeavors, is not shared by animals.

Moreover, time and nature are only obstacles for self-aware beings that have a sense of self, and which finds itself pinned against material reality. Man’s nature is best characterized by self-aware consciousness. At the very core of man’s suffering, not just our capacity for pain, is our ability for self-reflection. In other words, the experience of reality pins man against objective reality. This realization essentially allowed early man to view himself as a finite consciousness. This basic understanding, in itself, constitutes a reflective act. Struggle, resistance and striving are forms of man’s clash with objective reality. Everything that is not “I” makes us aware of our finitude. Time, the fourth dimension, is also part of this obstacle. Only beings that have a sense of self can auto-reflect. This condition was no different for man in prehistory, if we are to judge by their ingenuity and inventions.

We should also keep in mind that, as a being who is engaged in what we today call economics, prehistoric man had to face up to human reality, without relying on intermediaries. Because there did not exist societal super-structures, people in prehistory encountered reality unfiltered by the social-political and societal mechanisms that rule over modern man. This meant that they had to rely on common sense and their instinct for danger. Imminent death was the price they paid for not paying heed to the demands of objective reality. Perhaps the best way to re-create a reasonable account of the mindset, outlook and behavior of prehistoric man is to study their creations.

Our modern regard for economics is but one form of recognition that man is a being that is preoccupied with having-to-do.14  It should not surprise us that totalitarian systems of government must wrestle economic responsibility from its citizens. It seems rather ironic that economics – the human form of engagement with reality that deals with trade, barter, exchange, buying and selling – was from the very beginning a staple of human survival and well being. Looking about him, prehistoric man realized that change was an essential characteristic of his life and surroundings.

Man’s confrontation with the demands of objective reality, in the form of a conundrum or any other manner, says much about our capacity to entertain existential concerns. If prehistoric man found himself lost in a vast and confusing world, it was because the problem of change forced them to make practical choices. How is this different for us today? Visible and demonstrable changes may be perceptible or take place in imperceptible ways, such as the subatomic level. Yet at a perceptible and sensual level substantial change, like decay and death, force man to address natural phenomena. It is not necessary for prehistoric man to have named or even fully understood the changes that they encountered. However, this basic understanding marked the beginning of technique.

From a historical point of view, the discovery of technique in prehistoric times is linked to subsequent material progress. Even when inventions came about as the result of apparent chance, early man still found it necessary to tap into the logos, that is, the inner principles of their newly found resources. For example, some kingdoms in the Southwestern Arabian Peninsula traded in myrrh and frankincense. These people lived in a region that had trees which produced these two commodities of the ancient world. Yet they nevertheless needed to utilize the necessary inference and labor to produce these products. We encounter a similar line of thinking in describing the invention of writing. Because wet clay was better suited to writing on tablets, the Sumerians were able to develop Cuneiform. The ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, developed drawing and symbols which were more conducive to writing in papyrus, a soft form of tree bark.

The economics of being is indicative of man’s ability for auto-reflection. The latter comes about as a demarcation; some thinkers would argue that it is actually a confrontation with physical reality. In either case, prehistoric man quickly came to the realization that they were capable of attaining some measure of independence from nature; they achieved this through their ability for self-reflection. Today, we celebrate this human trait and refer to it as free-will, regardless of the apparent burden that this may become for some people. Man’s fundamental condition is that we must engage in action at a self-aware level. However, we must distinguish between self-awareness and self-consciousness. The former is an existential condition that prehistoric man engaged in, given their capacity to make conscious choices.

It is not necessary to think of economics in the mystifying manner that some economists and the media present it today. Man is an economic being par excellence. Man cannot help but to engage in trade, exchange, buying and selling and other forms of economics-as-having-to-do. These are creative acts. This condition makes man homo economicus; toolmaker and fabricator by disposition.

Modern man owes a great deal to prehistoric man, for even though we think of ourselves as advanced and technological, technology is hardly a creation of modern man. The hierarchy of values enables man to find cohesion in the structure of human reality, which in turn allows for the symmetry of form to instruct man. If we can be certain of just one aspect of prehistoric man, it is that man has possessed some form of technology from the very beginning. This, no doubt, comes about as the result of man also being homo metaphysicus.

References

William Barrett, What is Existentialism? (New York: Random House, 1964).

Geoffrey Bibby, The Testimony of the Spade. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society. (New York: Vintage Books, 1964).

Nicolas Grimal A History of Ancient Egypt. 9Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992).

John H. Hallowell, The World of the Past. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963).

José Ortega y Gasset, An Interpretation of Universal History. (New York: W.W. Norton. & Company, 1975).

Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).

H.W.F Saggs, Civilization Before Greece and Rome. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

Andrew Sherratt. Editor. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology. (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1980).

Notes

1. Eliot. T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950.  (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980), p. 117.

2. The predominant attitude today of equating history with mass movements of people, with collective measures and races, acts to deemphasize the reality of the human person and our quest for survival.  It seems reasonable to first ask the question, what is Man? in order to effectively engage in historical reflection. Yet this alone is not enough, for theories regarding the nature of man cannot expand exponentially to include all our latest whims ad infinitum.  Positivism, in all of its many varieties today, debunks the reality of individual man’s existence, and substitutes it with abstract social/political categories.  In physics, the method of taking inventory of the infinite myriad of particulars that may or may not exist in the universe, also serves to undermine the nature of man, consciousness and concerns that demand to be addressed in terms of ‘Why?’ more so than in terms of ‘How?’  It seems reasonable to suggest that the latter will sooner or later exhaust itself in self-referential categories that do not deliver us any closer to the nature of ultimate reality. It is the former, as a vital concern, which is awe-inspiring, and which remains the foundation of human possibility, while also recognizing the nature of finite, human limitation.

3. Jacquetta Hawkes, The Atlas of Early Man. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 122.

4. The burial of the dead signals a definitive humanistic, not just a symbolic turn, in human existence. Burial of the dead is also an affirmation of man’s metaphysical/existential nature.

5. José Ortega y Gasset, Historical Reason. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984).

6. Jacquetta Hawkes, The Atlas of Early Man, 22.

7. Ibid,.21.

8. The case can be made that advanced technological societies stunt man’s instinctual sense of danger.

9. Chester G.  Starr, A History of the Ancient. (World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

10. Hawkes, 50.

11. Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, Volume IX. (New York: Image Books, 1985).

12. Paul Herrmann, Conquest by Man. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954).

13. Starr, 18.

14. Friedrich Hayek, 1949. Individualism and Economic Order. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).

Also see “The Symmetrical House of Form“; “The Symmetrical House of Form: Happiness and Joy“; “The Symmetrical House of Form: Aesthetics of the Lived-Experience.”

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