“I’d have to assume it began when people began.”
“Your paleoanthropologists would agree. Human culture began with human life, which is to say with Homo habilis. The people who were Homo habilis passed along to their children all they’d learned, and as each generation contributed its mite, there was an accumulation of this knowledge. And who were the heirs to this accumulation?”
“Homo erectus?”
“That’s right. And the people who were Homo erectus passed along this accumulation generation after generation, each adding its mite to the whole. And who were the heirs to this accumulation?”
“Homo sapiens.”
“Of course. And the heirs of Homo sapiens were the people of Homo sapiens sapiens, who passed along this accumulation generation after generation, each adding its mite to the whole. And who were the heirs to this accumulation?”
“I’d have to say that the various peoples of the Leavers were the heirs.”
“Not the Takers? Why is that?”
“Why is that? I don’t know. I’d say it’s because … Obviously there was a total break with the past at the time of the agricultural revolution. There was no break with the past in the various peoples who were migrating to the Americas at this time. There was no break with the past in the various peoples who inhabited New Zealand or Australia or Polynesia.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. It’s my impression.”
“Yes, but what’s the basis for the impression?”
“I think it’s this. I don’t know what story all these people are enacting, but I can see that they’re all enacting the same one. I can’t spell the story out as yet, but it’s clearly there—in distinction to the story the people of my culture are enacting. Wherever we encounter them, they’re always doing
much the same sort of thing, always living much the same sort of life—just the way that wherever we encounter us, we’re always doing much the same sort of thing, always living much the same sort of life.”
“But what’s the connection between this and the transmittal of that cultural accumulation that mankind made during the first three million years of human life?”
I thought about it for a couple minutes, then said, “This is the connection. The Leavers are still passing that accumulation along in whatever form it came to them. But we’re not, because ten thousand years ago the founders of our culture said, ‘This is all shit. This is not the way people should live,’ and they got rid of it. They obviously did get rid of it, because by the time their descendants step into history there’s no trace of the attitudes and ideas you encounter among Leaver peoples everywhere. And then too …”
“Yes?”
“This is interesting. I’ve never noticed this before…. Leaver peoples are always conscious of having a tradition that goes back to very ancient times. We have no such consciousness. For the most part, we’re a very ‘new’ people. Every generation is somehow new, more thoroughly cut off from the past than the one that came before.”
“What does Mother Culture have to say about this?”
“Ah,” I said, and closed my eyes. “Mother Culture says that this is as it should be. There’s nothing in the past for us. The past is dreck. The past is something to be put behind us, something to be escaped from.”
Ishmael nodded. “So you see: This is how you came to be cultural amnesiacs.”
“How do you mean?”
“Until Darwin and the paleontologists came along to tack three million years of human life onto your history, it was assumed in your culture that the birth of man and the birth of your culture were simultaneous events—were in fact the same event. What I mean is that the people of your culture thought that man was born one of you. It was assumed that farming is as instinctive to man as honey production is to bees.”
“Yes, that’s the way it seems.”
“When the people of your culture encountered the hunter-gatherers of Africa and America, it was thought that these were people who had degenerated from the natural, agricultural state, people who had lost the arts they’d been born with. The Takers had no idea that they were looking at what they themselves had been before they became agriculturalists. As far as the Takers knew, there was no ‘before.’ Creation had occurred just a few thousand years ago, and Man the Agriculturalist had immediately set about the task of building civilization.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Do you see how this came about?”
“How what came about?”
“How it came about that the memory loss of your own pre-revolutionary period was total—so total that you didn’t even know it existed.”
“No, I don’t. I feel like I should, but I don’t.”