Double, Double, Toil, and Trouble: the Ergonomics of African History

The longtime-accepted equation of Xian with the Siamese kingdom of Suhkothai having been discarded now . . .²

Knowledge and speculation would appear to have been confused."³

"Considering the enormous output . . . of theories concerning the Assyrian kings and their chronology—by far the greater art of which has proved untenable in the light of later discoveries and most of which, as we can see now, might well have been avoided by refraining from premature speculation . . .⁴

I

As I was growing up—when the automobile was becoming a standard accoutrement—two large car parks were in the downtown area of the city where I lived. These were not street level but were laid out 15 to 25 feet below the streets, and thousands of cubic yards of dirt had been removed to create these. Since then, much reconstruction ("urban renewal") has occurred in the area, which entailed putting back just about as much dirt as had been removed earlier. Doubtless, each project required an enormous amount of time, labor, and money, yet the end result was a configuration very much like that which had existed before one minute, one bead of sweat, and one dollar had been spent. Some might regard this as simply an accommodation of differing needs for different times, whereas others might wonder how necessary it all had been—why, for instance, was it thought useful to render these car parks subterranean in the first place. Was the dirt needed elsewhere? Or were they make-work public works projects during economic downtimes? In short, what was the point? After all, the car parks were surrounded by imposing concrete walls, ramps were constructed to gain access; even the floors were concrete to neutralize the elements.

In almost every sense it is easier to destroy than to build. In one sense, though, the opposite is the case, and this is true in the world of ideas. Like incumbent officeholders, once built, incumbent ideas are often impervious to overthrow without extraordinary attendant conditions, and they are able to live on well past their use-by dates. In this paper I consider whether this is very much of a good thing.

II

All complicated things are so because they consist of a proliferation of elements that defy facile analysis. And nothing is quite so complicated as the sound study of the past, which, despite providing us with only a tiny fraction of itself, has managed to make that mote all but impenetrable, combining elements that seem alluringly simple with great stretches of problematic evidence and frustrating silence. Progress—or just change—in any field is not unlike the stately procession of a large river, in which various currents contribute to the overall flow, while displaying differing individual characteristics. There are swift currents at shallow points in the river, a slower flow where the depths are greater, eddies where the water has carved out byways over time, and where the water seems—but only seems—to be stagnant. The volume of the flow also changes over time and space, depending on the time of year, the topography, whether damming has occurred, how much sediment has been deposited, etc.

In these circumstances, the study of the past—or at least the conclusions it reaches—is necessarily episodic. About vast stretches we know nothing—can hardly even guess, although we routinely do. For other times and places, we might have a piece or two of evidence on which to construct provisional hypotheses to use in pursuing our work. In a very few cases we might have enough evidence to build a temporarily defensible argument about causes, courses, and consequences. Even with the last, we must come to a point in our work where we must convince ourselves that we have enough to proceed. At that point the task becomes to convince others—supervisors, tenure committees, the guild of historians, the interested public—to the degree we have convinced ourselves.

III

In 1991 a mummified body was discovered in the Ötzaler Alps, apparently the result of an inordinately warm period that had melted enough ice and...