The Sunday Musician

It's easy to take a cheap shot at something about which you know almost nothing, so I think I will! I did it a couple of weeks ago with baristas, and it was fun, so I'm doing it again.

I'm suspicious of archaeologists and their methods. A while back The History Channel had one of those glossy TV specials about a recent ‘dig', and I thought that if you took away the announcers' sonorous voice, the dreamy look of the 80mm film, and the left-over X-Files music, what would you have left?

A big bunch of assumptions, that's what you'd have left. And let's face it--isn't that what scientists do? An apple hits Newton on the head, he assumes one of his kids threw it, and discovers the hickory switch. Being a scientist is almost as easy as being a barista. Archaeologists spend months, even years digging up someone's foot, or an old cereal bowl, and if you give them long enough they'll tell you that the owner of the bowl dropped it on his foot after finding out his wife voted Democrat in the 1860 presidential elections. I have my own cereal bowl ready for throwing next Tuesday.

How do they come to these conclusions? I think they make a lot of money too, although you wouldn't know it to look at their clothes.

And, okay-have you ever seen a city half-buried under the dirt, on its way to becoming ancient? Neither have I. I've lived in Holland, MI, for 13 years, and it shows no signs of sinking--at least in the archaeological sense.

The TV scientists in this case were speaking in low, dulcet tones about a little lump of wood with a couple of nicks in it, found near a cave along with a pile of stuff dating back 5,000 years. I tried, but could not see what they apparently saw in that petrified stick - a face, with part of the side missing.

Their hypothesis (a word meaning ‘I'll never get another grant if I don't come up with something') was that the six-inch high ‘statue' was some sort of deity, purposely disfigured to represent the god's identification with the trials of mortal life. That it was found 20 feet outside the cave signified that the worshippers did not feel worthy to bring it into their humble home.

I've come up with my own hypothesis (a word meaning "I'm making this up as I go along") to cover the story of the lump of wood-presented here in entertaining story form:

At the doorway of a prehistoric cave:

Older Brother: Can't you think of anything better to do than scrape a face into that stick?

Younger Brother: I'm expressing myself.

Older Brother: No you're not - you're avoiding work. Besides, it doesn't even look like a person. Let me see that. (Grabs the wood out of his brother's hand)

Younger Brother: Give it back!!

Older Brother: No - I'm expressing MYself now. (Throws the stick out of the cave). And I'm putting dad's tools back before we BOTH get in trouble.

Younger Brother: (Running outside to retrieve the stick) You broke it - it's ruined!

Older Brother: Good. Someone's gonna find that thing some day and think a family of idiots lived here. And where were you yesterday, anyway?

Younger Brother: I was drawing great big pictures in the dirt - pictures you can only see from the air.

Older Brother: For what possible purpose? Like...pictures of what?

Younger Brother: Well, I started out drawing some lines that just kinda criss-crossed, but I didn't like them, and then I got the idea to draw a great big spider. Oh - and I drew one of you that's verrrrry flattering.

Older Brother: (Pointing out the door) Go out there RIGHT NOW and sign your name in the dirt by those pictures. Someday somebody's gonna figure out how to fly, and I want them to know it wasn't ME drawing kiddie pictures in the mud.

Younger Brother: Does this mean I can't paint on the walls of the cave any more either?

Now if you're a scientist, don't go gettin' all up on your hind legs about this--it's only an uninformed opinion. And I do have SOME experience drawing conclusions, such as--if it appears on the internet, it must be true, right?