Historical Evidence and Argument

16. Six Hundred Barrels of Plaster of Paris

16 SIX HUNDRED BARRELS OF PLASTER OF PARIS “I see nobody on the road,” said Alice. “I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see nobody! And at that distance too!” “But you will admit, gentleman,” I said, a little desperately, “that my theory holds water, that is, in default of actual information ?” I From time to time we see hypothetical reconstructions of gigantic dinosaurs, with an indication of the osteological basis of the reconstruction. Nearly a century ago Mark Twain addressed the problem when referring to what we knew for certain about a famous literary figure: “[William Shakespeare] is a Brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of paris.”1 The problem persists; more recently a diagram of a “Seismosaurus,” estimated to be about 130 feet long and weighing about 45 tons, was published with the caption “[t]he black vertebrae are those found so far”—just two of these plus another two or three leg bones.2 In time more bones were excavated. and it became possible to work from knowledge of a complete skeleton of a relative, Diplodocus, and, within the limits of skeletal anatomy, to extrapolate this and argue that it was now to be estimated to have weighed 100 tons or more and to have been as long as 170 feet.3 173 David Gillette estimates that about one percent, perhaps less, of dinosaur physical remains have survived. As he put it, calculating even less generously, “. . . using [a] 10 percent figure, from a population of, say, a million individual dinosaurs that died in a given century during the late Jurassic, perhaps only 100,000 skeletons were buried successfully; 10,000 survived decomposition during early stages of burial; 1,000 survived deep burial; 100 survived shallow burial ; and only 10 became exposed. Of those 10, only one survived on the surface long enough to be discovered by a paleontologist. . .”4 Historians must identify with this ruthless winnowing process. A past event has to be witnessed, then the observations recorded, the record preserved for varying periods of time, then found, and finally understood. Of course we cannot know the numbers, any more than Gillette could know his numbers, but the degree of disappearance has been phenomenally high. In this chapter I discuss the implications of this silent majority. II The period before the onset of dynastic rule in China is known as wan-guo, “the ten thousand states.”5 We know something about one to three of these states. If we believe the figure of 10,000, then we know some small part about from .01 to .03 percent of them. If we reduce that by 99 percent, then we are in the slightly less unenviable position of knowing something about as much as 3 percent of the states. Assuming that further archeological work will increase the evidence, perhaps tripling it in time, when all is said and done, and making certain favorable assumptions, we will be informed about a greater part of that 3 percent and just possibly about polities beyond these three states.6 It is not entirely a pleasing prospect for the ambitious.7 A Chinese annal, the Wei zhi from the mid-third century, mentioned 100 countries of the “Wa,” thought to refer to Japan, of which 30 were in contact with the Wei dynasty. We know nothing more about the polities of the Wa than this single report and a few summary notices of tribute-paying Wa rulers. The Wei zhi also mentioned several “countr[ies],” including 21 such polities “beyond” the principal state of Yamatai.8 About these we know nothing either so, however valuable the information in the Wei zhi, it serves as well to remind us how much we do not know. Discovery of the Qumran documents or Dead Sea scrolls was more than a reminder that odd sources can be oddly salvaged from the ravages of time, but they prove cause for pessimism as well. About 1000 such scrolls have been 174 ❖ Chapter 16 found, but one scholar estimates that as many as 200,000 scrolls were created.9 Thus, however precious the documents have proved to be, before treating them as representative we must remember that they might constitute no more than .5 percent of a putative total and that even this modicum represents a totally unanticipated leap in the body of available...