READING THE FIFTH
US archaeologist’s newly translated book explores the next phase of human societal development and how the lessons of the past can help predict the future.
“Ihave seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” The words taken from an inscription on the tomb of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, Tutankhamen, provide the opening line to the original English version of the most recent book by American archaeologist Robert L. Kelly.
The somewhat prophetic, yet at the same time reflective, proclamation sets the tone for
The Fifth Beginning, in which Kelly attempts to show what six million years of human history can tell us about our future.
Now, Chinese readers can also enjoy Kelly’s insightful tome, as it has been translated into Chinese and published through China CITIC Press this month.
In the book, Kelly identifies four pivotal points in human history: the beginning of technology, culture, agriculture, and the concept of the nationstate, as he puts it.
“Archaeology relies on ‘things’ to tell story, (like) broken pieces of pottery, stones or collapsed walls,” he explains in a video clip introducing the book for Chinese readers. “Changes in these things over time tell us about changes to the organization of human societies.
“I think the future archaeologists will see another beginning, the fifth beginning, which began about 500 years ago,” he says.
In his point of view, the fifth beginning is that of global migration and the global movement of goods, which have been brought about by new transportation and computing technologies — so-called “globalization”, which is thus framed in a larger historical context.
Kelly is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, and was the president of the Society for American Archaeology. He has conducted archaeological research throughout the western United States for 45 years.
Returning from another field excavation, he quickly responded to an interview from China Daily via email.
“Looking at all of world prehistory, I could see that technology, culture, agriculture and the state each marked major transitions in how humans organized themselves and related to each other,” he says. “Of course, (they) are still important today.
“We could not survive without technology,” Kelly explains. “Culture is a crucial element of human adaptation, while agriculture is equally important, because a world of almost eight billion people could not live as hunter-gatherers. The state was a way to organize large numbers of people ... in a world of increasing competition for resources.”
However, Kelly believes that cooperation has been encompassing increasingly larger numbers of people, and the next level of cooperation above that of the state is “the world.”
In the book, he argues that the fifth beginning will witness end of war, capitalism and the sacred status of nation-states in favor of “the beginning of a new era of global cooperation”.
Nevertheless, he notes that nationalism is on the rise, war is still prevalent, although its actual frequency and the number of deaths it causes has declined.
“Populism, war and nationalism are expected results of globalism and an increasingly integrated world, where people of different cultures must live together. However, there is also a counterforce to these trends — a growing global culture.”
Still, he admits the transition to so-called “global citizenship” will not be easy.
“Many nations today, including my own country, will fight against it,” he says. “In the end, though, we will have no choice but to cooperate more, and to recognize that the peace and prosperity of any one nation depends on peace and prosperity for all nations.”
As a result, Kelly expects to see an expanded role for the United Nations and the diversion of resources from the military industrial complex to nation-building.
What will the world be like if after capitalism, war, and the concept of nation-states were ended? Kelly does not give a clear prediction.
“I hope that the world will become the harmonious place that Confucius envisioned,” he says.
Additionally, he also believes this transition will leave fruitful legacies for archaeologists in the future.
“They would find evidence of dramatic alterations in the world’s atmosphere, water and land,” Kelly says. “Fly over the United States, or China, and you’ll see landscapes completely altered by agriculture, cities and transportation networks.”
Archaeologists would also see indicators of global trade.
“In particular, they would find that goods manufactured in China are found in every other place in the world,” he continues. “Analyzing the chemistry of human skeletal remains would yield proof that human diets were created not only from local foods but from foods imported from all over the world.”
All of these would give them a timeline of how the world became more tightly interconnected, he concludes.
Kelly visited many cultural heritage sites and research institutes for archaeology during a visit to China in 2013, which he describes as “insightful and productive” and important for writing some chapters in The Fifth
Beginning. The professor says he is especially interested in China’s Paleolithic period. Cooperating with Chinese archaeologists may perhaps be his next project.
“With its long prehistory and history, and its long legacy of written records,” he says. “China can play a key role in the study of the origins of agriculture and the state.”
As far as the country’s role in the fifth beginning, he considers that China is “obviously a rising economic and political power”.
“It perhaps places a greater responsibility on it (China) to change the way the global system operates, and not to use that responsibility only to improve life for the Chinese,” he expects.
“Humans were not in control of previous beginnings, partly because we did not know much about human prehistory until the last century,” he argues.
“We do, however, have the capacity to direct where the world goes in the fifth beginning. Whether we choose to use that capacity is up to us.”
In the foreword of the Chinese edition, he writes: “Cooperation requires trust and trust requires that one party have the courage to take the first step ... I look forward to more such cooperation, and to seeing the US and China play leading roles in humanity’s fifth beginning.”
The English version of The
Fifth Beginning was published in 2016 via University of California Press and sold more than 10,000 copies in the US in its first year. The book has also been recommended by many Chinese scholars.
“As Kelly’s counterpart, I’ve also frequently asked myself: Why I have to take this job?” says Xu Hong, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences after reading The
Fifth Beginning. Xu is famous for his studies of early Chinese civilization.
“My daughter is proud of me as an archaeologist, but she does not have many feelings for my vocation,” Xu says. “She represents the general public’s opinion: Archaeology is about the past. What does it matter to me?
“However, Kelly urges people to answer questions about the future from study of prehistory. The book connects the far away past to modern society.”
However, Chinese readers begin to show a strong interest in prehistory.
For example, after Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, was published in
I hope that the world will become the harmonious place that Confucius envisioned.”
Robert L. Kelly, US archaeologist
Chinese in 2014, it has sold 2.8 million copies, making it a phenomenon on the Chinese book market.
“Adventurous stories and new findings in archaeology are now more favored by general readers, especially as visiting museums and exhibitions is a popular pastime,” Ma Xiaoling, an editor from the publishing house, explains.
Recent years have seen a boom in Chinese museum development and cultural heritage-related TV programs.
China has a long tradition keeping written recordings of history, which means that a large part of Chinese history is well known to the public. Nevertheless, Ma notes that Chinese people today tend to relate more to visual evidence.
“It becomes an indispensable part in education to feel history through cultural relics,” Ma says. “Books on archaeology will be increasingly popular among readers. That will help them show more respect for our past and build a broader horizon for the future.”
Such books, though, have to be easy to read and understand, without too much jargon.
Kelly’s work promotes a “forensic approach,” because details will give readers a sense that “we (archaeologists) are there.”
Perhaps it is just like a line from The Fifth Beginning says: “Few people read sociological journal articles filled with statistics on marital infidelity, but politicians’ peccadilloes makes front page news.”