April 22, 2023 • 30 mins
Dirk Van Tuerenhout is the Curator of Anthropology for the Houston Museum of Natural Science where they have re-opened the John P. McGovern Hall of The Americas. This ever-evolving exposition explores the history of all America’s people and we discuss how we know that they walked to the Artic over coastline which don’t exist anymore. We also talk about how much of our indigenous history is lost when languages aren’t passed down and how the museum is currently recording people to preserve their ancient cultures. It’s a growing collection of oral history. Go to www.HMNS.org to discover this exceptional museum.
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Welcome to Houston, PA. Houston'spublic affairs show, an iHeart Media broadcast.
Our discamber says that the opinion isexpressed on this show do not necessarily
reflect those held by this radio station, its management staff, for any of
its advertisers. My name is LaurentI am the Texan from France and our
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welcome our friend Dirk van turan Hout, curator of Anthropology for the Houston Museum
of Natural Science and the man inpossession of the coolest profile picture of the
whole museum, maybe even of allof Houston. I encourage you to go
to HMNS dot org HMNS dot organd check out Van turan Hout's profile picture
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where he is photographed with Lucy,the Homanid, who is small compared to
us because Homanids were much smaller.I guess they were precursors to human beings.
But you see in these sorts ofpictures we pose with our dogs,
our cats. Jim Henson did withthe muppets pretty darn cool. But here's
the man with a home in innext to him, and it's just the
most adorable picture. Dirk. Howmany times did you all have to get
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that picture? Did you have totake it how many times for Lucy to
give you the right look see whereyou're going to. Obviously, it was
a replica of Lucy right. Yes, yes, and actually that is still
on display at the museum in ourPaleontology Hall. So for anybody who wants
to recreate that picture themselves, byall means, go see it. It's
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it's an absolutely awesome place. Thewhole museum is one of the best destination
for families. In fact, it'sit is in the country. Count it
as one of the most popular museumsI think in the world. I think
you're you're just bringing in literally thousandsof kids every week to see the shows
there. The City of Houston helpsto fund these programs. The donors help
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to fund these programs. Uh.And yes, Houston Museum of Natural Science
is where they have the giant tRex. There's no other way to describe
at t Rex. They weren't actuallygiant, It's just that their size is
humanly giant. Before we get totalking about the Hall of the Americas,
because that's what we're here, Sowe're gonna talk about American history this our
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continent. I since we mentioned Lucy, the home in it. We should
reintroduce her because she's very famous.And it was over a decade ago,
fifteen years ago that you had anawesome exhibit and the museum was part of
creating and touring this exhibit, whichbecame a sensation. I mean I remember
seeing articles about it when it touredin France. It was just it was
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such a beautiful success. And forthe museum to have its logo and name
on that, y'all must be stillpretty proud of it. Obviously you're still
exposing Lucy. But so she wasa home in it. What is that
and why Lucy? How did shecome about? Well, Lucy was found
in what is now Ethiopia. Ofcourse at the time it wasn't and that
was nineteen seventy four by professor Johanssonwho is in Arizona. I think he
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recently retired. But he was lookingfor evidence of human early human ancestors,
and so at the time our purviewinto the past was going back to about
three million years. Now it goesback to sixty seven million years when it
comes to possible early human ancestors.But he found what eventually was called Lucy.
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It didn't come with a dog tagor anything. But the people who
were looking for the physical remains,the bones, the skeleton of early possible
early humans, earlier human ancestors,knew what they were looking at. That's
a bipedal, an upright walking creaturethat we found today, and so they
were extremely excited. Went back tocamp that evening, they had a few
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beers, I'm sure, in themiddle of the desert right in Ethiopia,
and they popped the cassette in thecassette player at the time, and the
song that came out was the Beatlessong Seeing the Sky with Diamonds. They
looked at each other and said,let's call her Lucy. But other than
that, we don't know if shehad language, which we do use tools
which she might have, we don'tknow. But at the time we had
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Lucy on display as part of thelarger exhibit. The conventional wisdom was no,
not at that time. Yet fastforward fifteen years and now people are
saying, well, we have foundthe stone tools that go back to her
time. So maybe yes, fifteenyears boom, there you go, new
insights, new discoveries. That wouldhave been a time though, where maybe
some of these tribes of women thatwe're using tools before others. In other
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words, we may be able todetermine that some are using tools, but
that's hard to identify that way.I mean, they are pushing the time
limit back to that range. Butas to who use them made them,
unless you find a skeleton with theproverbial handlacks still in their fossilized hand,
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will you be able to identify,you know, without any doubt that this
particular earlier harmony and there was todaywe walk around, we look at each
other, and we're all members ofthe same species Homo sapiens. At the
time Lucy lived, there were manyothers. So you can only imagine what
they might have thought when they wokeup in the morning and saw others walk
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by that didn't quite look like them. And they were different, taller,
more robust, others more fragile likeLucy, And so how did they negotiate
that space? And then they prettycool? They gave her a look because
obviously they found bones, right,they were fossils, well interesting stuff.
We may have heard of nanathals toat a different time period, more recent
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and so oh yes, no wonderthey found about four hundred or more now
individuals not complete, but enough tosay we have found representations of bits and
pieces if you want, skeletal remainsof four hundred individuals known as nanathals.
Now you go back in time,millions of years earlier, and they found
about the same number of individuals knownkind of like Lucy. Well, I
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grew up in a time when wewere already talking about how we are descendant
of the branch of apes. Weall evolved, We sort of came out
of the water and evolved down thesame line and split up into different groups.
And when you see a picture ofLucy, she's really in between.
It's it's I mean, it's earlydays. It's just it's just she's she's
so beautiful you but smart enough tosurvive for millions of years, not three
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millions. But you know, theywere much longer than we have been so
far. So we need to behumble ourselves. Yes, we can go
to the moon and we all walkaround fancy phones, but her species survived
with all the dangers that existed muchlonger than we have been around. So
will we push that proverbial button andblow ourselves up? Yeah? Or will
we eventually get to the point Wewon't know because we still have hundreds of
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thousand of years ago before we catchup with her. I'm optimistic on that.
Okay, good, I think thatI think some people might try to
push the button and other people mightcut their fingers off so they can't.
It usually gets bloody and Barbara atthat point. Right. Anyway, you're
listening to Houston PA, Houston's PublicAffairs Show. My name is Laurent and
my guest is Dirk van turin Out. He is the curator of Anthropology for
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the Houston Museum of Natural Science.Their online at hm NS dot org hm
NS dot org. So, Dirk, you're the curator of the John P.
McGovern Hall of the Americas. Whoshould honor mister John P McGovern,
Explain why it's named after him,and then tell us what is the hall
about. Well, the John P. McGovern Hall is due to the philanthropy
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of this foundation named after a doctorand he or that foundation provided money for
the previous first version, which openedin ninety eight, and both first and
second version now covers the human presencein what we call the Americas now in
other indigenous worlds indigenous among indigenous nationsthat is sometimes referred to not as the
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Americas. But for example, TurtleIsland. People in the Indigenous world then
and now have their own way ofreferring to the world in which they live.
And so when we said the America, soon might say, yeah,
but that's named thereafter somebody who camelater and put a sticker on our world.
And so it's like maybe the aztectgoing to Europe and say, well,
we just call it something else now, and Europeans, I mean,
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like the Romans did, well,yeah, and we all fall back,
you know, versing jet ricks.Yeah, you know, so the same
story applies to the indigenous world.People resisted anyway. So the Hall covers
the same square footage as the onebefore on the third floor of the museum,
and it deals with it covers areasfrom as far north as the Arctic,
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all the way down to South America. And so we're talking about civilizations
that went up to the Arctic.And I told you this before we started
recording that I was fascinated to seethat you have possessions and artifacts that show
that they went up to the Arctics. When I think of the Hall of
the Americas, I think of Centraland South America, because I guess that's
what I've seen of the Hall inthe past. That's what marked me the
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most is those those headdresses, thecustoms, and just the education that the
entire installation provides about those Central andSouthern American cultures. But of course in
North America there were a bunch ofpeople and they walked up to the Arctic.
Actually, there's two things I wouldlike to Let me start first by
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saying that the new Hall has anew focus. The previous Hall tended to
focus more on the past before Europeanshowed up, and that's to some degree
in the years, in the centuriesimmediately after, but very little in terms
of today. And in the newHall, the overall theme is we were
here, correct, we are stillhere, which might come as news to
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some people seriously, and that's agood kind of huh. I didn't know
that realization. So with regard toyour question, they walked up to the
Arctic is not necessarily true. Theyactually might have come, well not might
they came from, but it's notSiberia and came across either by boat or
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when it was cold enough and thelandmask was frozen or the ocean level was
much lower, they walked across notrealizing what they were doing. Others are
finding evidence along what is now thecoastline, but would not have been then
twenty thousand years ago. That wouldhave been farther inland hillsides already. And
so if you go do maybe aboutI don't know, like here in Texas,
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you can go out into the gulfand realize that at that time in
the ice Age, there was maybeanother hundred miles before you hit the beach.
Galveston wasn't Galveston, it was ahill and now it's an island,
you know. And so the samething applies to Alaska, and people have
been finding stone tools and evidence ofhuman presence going back. In some cases
they claim even to thirty thousand yearsago. That's kind of mind blowing.
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But then they went south and soeither probably what we think now is people
came across by boat first hovering orfollowing the coastline going ashore and keep going.
And what was driving them? Youknow, who knows explorations? Well,
we're a nomadic species. It isour instinct, right, and certainly
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the North American Indians who populated NorthAmerica were constantly moving. They moved with
the buffalo they moved with the seasons. They had several different camping. I
don't know if probably not all thecivilizations did that, but they were They
did a lot of walking along withmaking. Today we are witnessing that without
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realizing it. We kind of zaparound on TV and go another rocket going
into space. Well, that's theequivalent of somebody getting into a kayak and
going another ten fifteen miles down theroad. The scale is different, the
environment is different, but we're exploringand we are getting blase about it.
One section that I'm very biased abouton Towards is the section and there is
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a very large movie screen that showsa nine minute video and it's a mix
of photography of nature, and itshows a site, a MIA site,
but when it was still completely inhabited, the houses not in ruins yet.
But it's based on a real sitethat was excavated by a German team and
so they reconfigured everything. The wallsare no longer crumbled, they are complete,
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The roof is there, the wallsare painted. People are sitting on
the porch and they're making food orpottery or they're weaving. And there's one
guy you follow through the city onhis way to the Royal Palace. But
the city is not like Houston.Obviously, it's much smaller, and there's
a lot of forests and agriculture happeningin between, so he's walking through fields
and weaving in and out of thecommunity. It rains like Houston, and
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they have a solution to what doyou do when the streets flood? So
that's interesting, and it goes onand on, and then my favorite part
of that movie, and I feellike I'm there and a lot of people.
There's a bench, they sit downand they take it all. In
the very end. It starts withsunrise, it ends with sunset, and
everybody goes to bed. So itlooks like everything starts during blue and darker
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and darker and darker, and thenall of a sudden, a few of
the you're looking at it from likea helicopter or a drone. You're looking
down onto the site center, andall of a sudden, there are a
couple of lights that start inside someof these houses, and the voice overgoes
there's still people working. It's thepriests, the astronomers, and the only
time of the day they can workis at night. Yeah, and that
gives you another introduction to These guyswere smart, they were doing a lot
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of things, and it's like you'rethere. It's not a hologram, but
I feel like I'm there. Yeah, well the movies that our imagination makes
it three D, right, Yes, So this is something that you can
see at the Museum of Natural Science. And as I mentioned, if you
go to HMNS dot org, whichstands for Houston Museum of Natural Science,
of course you're listening to Houston PA, Houston's Public Affairs show. My name
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is Laurent and my guest is Dirkventurin out here's a cure raid or of
anthropology for the Houston Museum of NaturalScience. Dirk, you mentioned that they
were looking at the skies way backthen. What instruments were they using?
Their eyeballs so they could only well, the Aztec had an X shaped wooden
tool that might have been a measuringdevice. If you're on a platform somewhere
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on top of a pyramid and you'relooking at the sky and so with the
X two yeah, wooden slats youknow you nailed together now becomes the letter
X. If you want, youcan maybe a mark a spot on the
horizon that you keep going back tonight after night, but no telescopes or
anything. It was right phenomenal.They didn't have any kind of lenses at
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the time, or they weren't evenworking glass at all. Right, you'd
have to have a kiln just tomelt the sand for glass anyway, So
it's interesting to consider how all thetechnologies have to be invented before any of
these things. Yes, but theamazing thing with some of the people in
the America's especially central, whether it'snot mess America, which is not central,
it's part of Mexico, North America. But anyway, asked the culture
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of mana culture um, they cameup with descriptions in some of the very
few were manuscripts that were preserved,and so people who have studied these manuscripts
tell us that some of the observationsregarding some of the planets being as Mars
take more than a lifetime to observe. So how do you start and decide
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I'm going to tell my son,you're going to have to continue this because
it's not complete. How would youknow that and yet it happened, Yeah,
how would you know that it wouldcome back? Because they don't that
they they certainly had not figured outthat we were revolving around the sun or
no, not that I know.I don't think so. No, I
mean that took a while, evenin other parts of the world. Copernicus
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right, well yes, but andthen that doesn't mean excommunicate him for saying
it. We're not in Galileo.Oh so I think it's yeah. Sorry,
now, um, so many namesget it right, so much so
much to learn. But the thingis that it doesn't mean that in Europe
they they had the knowledge. Inthe Americas they had similar They invented or
came up with a concept of zeroindependently as well. And so there is
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that it wasn't just Indus or Induvalley they did it too, and Arabic
nublest. But the Maya also hada it's a growing of a shell.
So it's an entity, but it'san empty and empty entity. It's zero,
So an empty shell that's really cool. Actually may are cool people.
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So this is this points to someof some philosophy a bit where we're a
species. Therefore we're essentially I didn'twere very much the same, at least
biologically were Iologically we're the same,and we're we're evolving in different parts of
the planet at different speeds, butgenerally speaking, the evolution is in the
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same direction we Like you mentioned theMayans. The Mayans had figured out zero.
The Arabs figured out zero independently.They weren't communicating, and that's the
Is it just a biological destiny tofigure this out? I guess well,
I mean, it's hard to answerthat question, but it just seems like
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there's so much has written sort ofin our DNA that eventually some things are
inevitable. We're going to figure thisout because of where of how we're made,
and it kind of blows my mind. It is mind blowing. Yes,
yes, I just I'm kind ofarrested by the fact that I hadn't
considered this idea that we made thesame discovery. Like pottery was discovered in
different places. A lot of thetechnology, iron work and all that was
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not necessarily exported to other areas ofthe world. When people started traveling there.
They had already found in some placeshow to forge iron, including India.
America's was starting to happen in SouthAmerica. They had started in Ecuador
and Peru, and then they hadthese balls of floating rafts that went up
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the coast to what is now WestMexico, and they were introduced seeing the
very beginnings of metallurgy into the whichis not Mexico or bells. It'll copper
things and nothing beyond that. Andthere was certainly no steel. So when
that was introduced very violently by theSpanish, game over. Yeah. You
know, I saw an article aboutthe Conquistadores and you know colonialism and how
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they talk about it in modern times, and how the colonials killed millions of
people in South America and Central Americawhen they came. And the article was
a reminder that actually most of thosepeople were killed by disease, and the
diseases were of course brought over onthose boats. But we ascribe a lot
of those deaths to swords and spears, when, in fact, when when
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the Conquistadors actually made their way inland and in all of areas and found
deserted cities, abandoned cities, theyhadn't been abandoned long ago. It's just
that the population had literally been beenwiped out by diseases, that their bodies
were not adapted to fight. Andthat's another mind bending consideration that wherever humans
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have evolved they have evolved to fightand and and and harness the powers of
their own environment. Yeah, andit made them inadequate for other environments.
It's in other words, it wasnot unlike going to the moon where you
can't breathe. There's a lot ofthings that you can't do in outer space
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and in a lot of ways justgoing to other parts of the planet.
When the time a long time ago, and then we can talk about how
these spread pandemics these days, itwill, but let's not do that because
it makes people mad. Well,imagine the horror that was experienced by people
when they might have heard through thegrapevine. There are treat networks, and
people were aware of the fact thattwo day's walking distance from where you live,
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these guys showed up. And thenmaybe within a week or two in
your community, people start getting sick, invisible in ways that you never knew
before. What happened. What happened? What happened. So your world is
turned upside down, and that isstill felt today because a lot of the
people who survive survive because they wereto some degree resistant enough, and most
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of them worn't. So you're right, a lot of them die because of
the introduction of diseases, but theirsurviving communities all the way until today are
hanging on as best they can.Language preservation is an issue, and if
you lose your language, there goesa lot of your insights because your world's
story, your world view, istold in your own language. Your creation
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story is told in your own language, and if that is gone, you
speak the other one that by defaultin a lot of what is now,
it's going to be English or Spanish, some Portuguese and then other languages in
your I mean, there's the Frenchin what is now a French Guiana and
all of that, but that's notgoing to help you necessarily completely color like
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plexity of what used to be orancestors story. We may never figure out
what those writings actually meant to conveyif the language has gone. People like
us who are bilingual know this.Translating is a very difficult and very technical
endeavor, and a lot of timesyou can only fail. It is not
possible to perfectly translate the meaning ofthe systence. You can only get close.
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Sometimes it's only within the ballpark.But we have to imagine that,
especially back then, most language wasin idioms. They used images like the
empty shall representing zero. It seemslike a symbol. Written languages are not
very prevalent in the Americas, butoral traditions are very strong, and so
similar to what the story was withthe Vikings and them coming across with the
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sagas, which were oral until theywere written down. But that gave people
the idea, let's go fine andlook around in Iceland, and let's go
to Greenland. And then oh wait, they also went to what is now
the Atlantic coast of Canada, andthey found evidence. Well, their oral
stories said, and their poems said, we went there, but of course
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they didn't call it Saint John's theLand. But nonetheless that oral tradition was
proven correct. And there are otherexamples in the Old World. And so
there are traditions conveyed in stories inthe indigenous languages of the Americas that also
contain the truth. But people haven'treally been looking too much as far as
I know, to get to thepoint of what they were talking about and
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find this. For example, theAztec talk about where they came. They
did not always live in Central Mexico. They were on the very long multi
generational migration, and they keep talkingin their stories, we moved south,
so by the fault, they camefrom farther north. Where is that farther
north? Is it what is stillMexico today on the border with Texas,
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or even farther inland to the fourOwners, or even beyond, where is
that land they called the land ofthe Herons? Astland? Will always be
left wondering how many cultures we willnever ever hear from again, and how
many of them had interesting important insightsto share with us, like how many
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warnings are we missing? Well,so here's an interesting story nowadays in mostly
Brazil, but surrounding areas I thinkSouth America, whatever part of it that
is covered in rainforest or used tobe so, not that long ago,
maybe the last and fifteen maybe twentyyears, as say, the rainforest in
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Brazil gets chopped down, and weget all these big ranches, right,
and people are flying in in theirlittle planes too, from the bigger cities
back to the ranch, and occasionalpeople, maybe not the pilot, but
the passengers look out of the windowand go, my god, what is
that pastures? But in the pasturesthey are seeing circles, they are seeing
squares, they seeing rectangles and theseare like ditches, and the dirt from
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the ditch has been piled up onthe other side, and so what they
see is grass with evidence of moatsand structures, but they don't know they
look like Roman legion airs fortresses.Of course they're not. And so then
the next step was, well,if we see this in that part of
the forest that has been cut backand it's now a pasture for the cows,
and then eventually you get to thewire and on the other side is
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still rainforest. Would there be similarcircles and rectangles. So he come lighter,
the drones with lasers in the jungleand they're finding stuff and so wait,
it gets better. There's a cityon the Amazon called Manaos. It's
a thousand kilometers up river, andthere are places along that city. It's
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a big city, but eventually itpeters out and you get to rural areas.
Farmers in some parts along the AmazonRiver have been farming along the river
on land that is known as teraprieta black soil, dark soil, and
it's because the dark soil was manmade four hundred actually six hundred years ago
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before the arrival of Europeans. Theywere mulching they were incorporating all kinds of
charcoal and pottery, and they figuredthat a way way back when for that
land to remain fertile until today.And the farmers found it using it and
they don't have to fertilize. Greatfor them. And eventually the scientists are
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like, huh, what's that allabout. They're finally noticed. Okay,
so stories that you say, wedon't know they are being discovered, and
so now we are looking at that. Scientists are looking at and finding more
evidence and then about and they candate it because it's radiocarbon dating charcoal.
And all of a sudden this stoppedbeing made because there are not just fields.
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There are cities attached to that,not big cities, but maybe five
thousand people, and then another one, and before you know it, across
the landscape you'll have these fairly largecommunities with raised causeways to communicate. You
can walk during the rainy season,you can take your boat or on the
river, or you can walk acrossthe swamp that has not come because it's
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raining, and you just walk onthese levies through the other city to the
market or whatever, go visit people. And so that landscape was totally different.
But all of that stops the samereason you mentioned earlier. The Europeans
show up, the diseases show up, and these cities are abandoned, and
guess what happened. Well, thenature takes over, of course instantly,
probably within a generation. Is completelyvisible. Our appreciation of what that once
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looked like has been totally turned upsidedown. Well, we've only scratched the
surface, folks. And if youwant to know more, if if you
like walking away with more questions andanswers in your head, you'll love the
Houston Museum of Natural Science, allof it. I have to mention the
Gems and Minerals collection, one ofthe most beautiful installation arts talking about crystals
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and diamonds and all kinds of naturalformations that are forged and unimaginable temperatures and
pressures at the center of the Earth. And they've exposed them in beautiful light.
And we're not talking about you know, ring sized diamonds here, We're
talking about unimaginably big pieces of rockand crystals. And it's magnificent. And
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that I mentioned the big t rexthey have, it's an actual fossil.
There's a Terrell dactyl the big wingedbeast that is above it. This is
one of the coolest places in town. The Houston Museum and Natural Science and
the John P. McGovern and allof the Americas is reopened, has been
newly renovated, and it is onits way to being renovated again and again
and again as we figure out wheremore of this stuff is. And one
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of the things that would like toadd as we get closer to the end,
but the visitors will be able tosee a Texas sized video screen as
they walk in. It's a welcomescreen and that shows faces and you can
hear voices of people Indigenous who aresaying, I'm still here, I'm still
here, I'm still here. Andwe're continuing to populate that video screen with
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additional videos as we move along.And so within a few weeks we're going
to go up to the Alabama Kosharapeople who live in Livingston, about ninety
miles away from here, the closestIndigenous community in Texas to Houston, and
one can go visit, and sowe are working with them on all kinds
of displays to make our exhibits better. But they have also consented to be
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recorded, so we are going todouble the number of people who are going
to show share their voice and theirmessage as you walk in. Hello,
my name is so, and soI'm from the Alabama Koshara tribe. I'm
still here, and we have peoplefrom Alaska saying this, we have Maya
people saying this. So, butthere's always room for more, and I
don't want to replace one with theother. I want more human tsunami faces
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and voices to make it absolutely clear. Living history people are still among walks
in Houston alone. The number apparentlyis around sixty thousand individuals who are Indigenous
from all over, not from justhere in the Houston area originally, but
from all over who make Houston home. Same thing for the Metroplex Dallas for
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Worth. So there's a lot ofpeople in Texas who are Indigenous who are
not necessarily visible, and we wantto help if we can put it that
way, make them visible for peopleto realize, Oh, I didn't realize
that you can at least give usthe opportunity to know about them, which
is exactly which is all that isneeded. Really, I think human curiosity
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is going to carry over. Sogo to hm NS dot org. H
n NS dot org stands for theHouston Museum of Natural Science for information.
They have ticketed events and timed events, so that means that you can literally
show up at a particular time andyou know that you're not going to be
crowded with a bunch of people.It's a wonderful experience. And folks,
if you have any questions related tomy guests or the organizations I host on
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this show, just send me anemail. Texan from France at gmail dot
com. Texan from France at gmaildot com, and I thank you for
listening and caring about the issues weput on this show. Folks. I'll
see you next week at the sametime. My name is Laurent. This
has been Houston, PA, Houston'spublic affairs show, Houston Strong
Welcome to Houston, PA. Houston'spublic affairs show, an iHeart Media broadcast.
Our discamber says that the opinion isexpressed on this show do not necessarily
reflect those held by this radio station, its management staff, for any of
its advertisers. My name is LaurentI am the Texan from France and our
(00:27):
welcome our friend Dirk van turan Hout, curator of Anthropology for the Houston Museum
of Natural Science and the man inpossession of the coolest profile picture of the
whole museum, maybe even of allof Houston. I encourage you to go
to HMNS dot org HMNS dot organd check out Van turan Hout's profile picture
(00:50):
where he is photographed with Lucy,the Homanid, who is small compared to
us because Homanids were much smaller.I guess they were precursors to human beings.
But you see in these sorts ofpictures we pose with our dogs,
our cats. Jim Henson did withthe muppets pretty darn cool. But here's
the man with a home in innext to him, and it's just the
most adorable picture. Dirk. Howmany times did you all have to get
(01:12):
that picture? Did you have totake it how many times for Lucy to
give you the right look see whereyou're going to. Obviously, it was
a replica of Lucy right. Yes, yes, and actually that is still
on display at the museum in ourPaleontology Hall. So for anybody who wants
to recreate that picture themselves, byall means, go see it. It's
(01:34):
it's an absolutely awesome place. Thewhole museum is one of the best destination
for families. In fact, it'sit is in the country. Count it
as one of the most popular museumsI think in the world. I think
you're you're just bringing in literally thousandsof kids every week to see the shows
there. The City of Houston helpsto fund these programs. The donors help
(01:56):
to fund these programs. Uh.And yes, Houston Museum of Natural Science
is where they have the giant tRex. There's no other way to describe
at t Rex. They weren't actuallygiant, It's just that their size is
humanly giant. Before we get totalking about the Hall of the Americas,
because that's what we're here, Sowe're gonna talk about American history this our
(02:16):
continent. I since we mentioned Lucy, the home in it. We should
reintroduce her because she's very famous.And it was over a decade ago,
fifteen years ago that you had anawesome exhibit and the museum was part of
creating and touring this exhibit, whichbecame a sensation. I mean I remember
seeing articles about it when it touredin France. It was just it was
(02:40):
such a beautiful success. And forthe museum to have its logo and name
on that, y'all must be stillpretty proud of it. Obviously you're still
exposing Lucy. But so she wasa home in it. What is that
and why Lucy? How did shecome about? Well, Lucy was found
in what is now Ethiopia. Ofcourse at the time it wasn't and that
was nineteen seventy four by professor Johanssonwho is in Arizona. I think he
(03:05):
recently retired. But he was lookingfor evidence of human early human ancestors,
and so at the time our purviewinto the past was going back to about
three million years. Now it goesback to sixty seven million years when it
comes to possible early human ancestors.But he found what eventually was called Lucy.
(03:27):
It didn't come with a dog tagor anything. But the people who
were looking for the physical remains,the bones, the skeleton of early possible
early humans, earlier human ancestors,knew what they were looking at. That's
a bipedal, an upright walking creaturethat we found today, and so they
were extremely excited. Went back tocamp that evening, they had a few
(03:50):
beers, I'm sure, in themiddle of the desert right in Ethiopia,
and they popped the cassette in thecassette player at the time, and the
song that came out was the Beatlessong Seeing the Sky with Diamonds. They
looked at each other and said,let's call her Lucy. But other than
that, we don't know if shehad language, which we do use tools
which she might have, we don'tknow. But at the time we had
(04:11):
Lucy on display as part of thelarger exhibit. The conventional wisdom was no,
not at that time. Yet fastforward fifteen years and now people are
saying, well, we have foundthe stone tools that go back to her
time. So maybe yes, fifteenyears boom, there you go, new
insights, new discoveries. That wouldhave been a time though, where maybe
some of these tribes of women thatwe're using tools before others. In other
(04:33):
words, we may be able todetermine that some are using tools, but
that's hard to identify that way.I mean, they are pushing the time
limit back to that range. Butas to who use them made them,
unless you find a skeleton with theproverbial handlacks still in their fossilized hand,
(04:54):
will you be able to identify,you know, without any doubt that this
particular earlier harmony and there was todaywe walk around, we look at each
other, and we're all members ofthe same species Homo sapiens. At the
time Lucy lived, there were manyothers. So you can only imagine what
they might have thought when they wokeup in the morning and saw others walk
(05:15):
by that didn't quite look like them. And they were different, taller,
more robust, others more fragile likeLucy, And so how did they negotiate
that space? And then they prettycool? They gave her a look because
obviously they found bones, right,they were fossils, well interesting stuff.
We may have heard of nanathals toat a different time period, more recent
(05:35):
and so oh yes, no wonderthey found about four hundred or more now
individuals not complete, but enough tosay we have found representations of bits and
pieces if you want, skeletal remainsof four hundred individuals known as nanathals.
Now you go back in time,millions of years earlier, and they found
about the same number of individuals knownkind of like Lucy. Well, I
(05:58):
grew up in a time when wewere already talking about how we are descendant
of the branch of apes. Weall evolved, We sort of came out
of the water and evolved down thesame line and split up into different groups.
And when you see a picture ofLucy, she's really in between.
It's it's I mean, it's earlydays. It's just it's just she's she's
so beautiful you but smart enough tosurvive for millions of years, not three
(06:23):
millions. But you know, theywere much longer than we have been so
far. So we need to behumble ourselves. Yes, we can go
to the moon and we all walkaround fancy phones, but her species survived
with all the dangers that existed muchlonger than we have been around. So
will we push that proverbial button andblow ourselves up? Yeah? Or will
we eventually get to the point Wewon't know because we still have hundreds of
(06:46):
thousand of years ago before we catchup with her. I'm optimistic on that.
Okay, good, I think thatI think some people might try to
push the button and other people mightcut their fingers off so they can't.
It usually gets bloody and Barbara atthat point. Right. Anyway, you're
listening to Houston PA, Houston's PublicAffairs Show. My name is Laurent and
my guest is Dirk van turin Out. He is the curator of Anthropology for
(07:10):
the Houston Museum of Natural Science.Their online at hm NS dot org hm
NS dot org. So, Dirk, you're the curator of the John P.
McGovern Hall of the Americas. Whoshould honor mister John P McGovern,
Explain why it's named after him,and then tell us what is the hall
about. Well, the John P. McGovern Hall is due to the philanthropy
(07:35):
of this foundation named after a doctorand he or that foundation provided money for
the previous first version, which openedin ninety eight, and both first and
second version now covers the human presencein what we call the Americas now in
other indigenous worlds indigenous among indigenous nationsthat is sometimes referred to not as the
(07:58):
Americas. But for example, TurtleIsland. People in the Indigenous world then
and now have their own way ofreferring to the world in which they live.
And so when we said the America, soon might say, yeah,
but that's named thereafter somebody who camelater and put a sticker on our world.
And so it's like maybe the aztectgoing to Europe and say, well,
we just call it something else now, and Europeans, I mean,
(08:22):
like the Romans did, well,yeah, and we all fall back,
you know, versing jet ricks.Yeah, you know, so the same
story applies to the indigenous world.People resisted anyway. So the Hall covers
the same square footage as the onebefore on the third floor of the museum,
and it deals with it covers areasfrom as far north as the Arctic,
(08:45):
all the way down to South America. And so we're talking about civilizations
that went up to the Arctic.And I told you this before we started
recording that I was fascinated to seethat you have possessions and artifacts that show
that they went up to the Arctics. When I think of the Hall of
the Americas, I think of Centraland South America, because I guess that's
what I've seen of the Hall inthe past. That's what marked me the
(09:07):
most is those those headdresses, thecustoms, and just the education that the
entire installation provides about those Central andSouthern American cultures. But of course in
North America there were a bunch ofpeople and they walked up to the Arctic.
Actually, there's two things I wouldlike to Let me start first by
(09:28):
saying that the new Hall has anew focus. The previous Hall tended to
focus more on the past before Europeanshowed up, and that's to some degree
in the years, in the centuriesimmediately after, but very little in terms
of today. And in the newHall, the overall theme is we were
here, correct, we are stillhere, which might come as news to
(09:50):
some people seriously, and that's agood kind of huh. I didn't know
that realization. So with regard toyour question, they walked up to the
Arctic is not necessarily true. Theyactually might have come, well not might
they came from, but it's notSiberia and came across either by boat or
(10:11):
when it was cold enough and thelandmask was frozen or the ocean level was
much lower, they walked across notrealizing what they were doing. Others are
finding evidence along what is now thecoastline, but would not have been then
twenty thousand years ago. That wouldhave been farther inland hillsides already. And
so if you go do maybe aboutI don't know, like here in Texas,
(10:33):
you can go out into the gulfand realize that at that time in
the ice Age, there was maybeanother hundred miles before you hit the beach.
Galveston wasn't Galveston, it was ahill and now it's an island,
you know. And so the samething applies to Alaska, and people have
been finding stone tools and evidence ofhuman presence going back. In some cases
they claim even to thirty thousand yearsago. That's kind of mind blowing.
(10:56):
But then they went south and soeither probably what we think now is people
came across by boat first hovering orfollowing the coastline going ashore and keep going.
And what was driving them? Youknow, who knows explorations? Well,
we're a nomadic species. It isour instinct, right, and certainly
(11:16):
the North American Indians who populated NorthAmerica were constantly moving. They moved with
the buffalo they moved with the seasons. They had several different camping. I
don't know if probably not all thecivilizations did that, but they were They
did a lot of walking along withmaking. Today we are witnessing that without
(11:37):
realizing it. We kind of zaparound on TV and go another rocket going
into space. Well, that's theequivalent of somebody getting into a kayak and
going another ten fifteen miles down theroad. The scale is different, the
environment is different, but we're exploringand we are getting blase about it.
One section that I'm very biased abouton Towards is the section and there is
(12:01):
a very large movie screen that showsa nine minute video and it's a mix
of photography of nature, and itshows a site, a MIA site,
but when it was still completely inhabited, the houses not in ruins yet.
But it's based on a real sitethat was excavated by a German team and
so they reconfigured everything. The wallsare no longer crumbled, they are complete,
(12:24):
The roof is there, the wallsare painted. People are sitting on
the porch and they're making food orpottery or they're weaving. And there's one
guy you follow through the city onhis way to the Royal Palace. But
the city is not like Houston.Obviously, it's much smaller, and there's
a lot of forests and agriculture happeningin between, so he's walking through fields
and weaving in and out of thecommunity. It rains like Houston, and
(12:48):
they have a solution to what doyou do when the streets flood? So
that's interesting, and it goes onand on, and then my favorite part
of that movie, and I feellike I'm there and a lot of people.
There's a bench, they sit downand they take it all. In
the very end. It starts withsunrise, it ends with sunset, and
everybody goes to bed. So itlooks like everything starts during blue and darker
(13:09):
and darker and darker, and thenall of a sudden, a few of
the you're looking at it from likea helicopter or a drone. You're looking
down onto the site center, andall of a sudden, there are a
couple of lights that start inside someof these houses, and the voice overgoes
there's still people working. It's thepriests, the astronomers, and the only
time of the day they can workis at night. Yeah, and that
gives you another introduction to These guyswere smart, they were doing a lot
(13:33):
of things, and it's like you'rethere. It's not a hologram, but
I feel like I'm there. Yeah, well the movies that our imagination makes
it three D, right, Yes, So this is something that you can
see at the Museum of Natural Science. And as I mentioned, if you
go to HMNS dot org, whichstands for Houston Museum of Natural Science,
of course you're listening to Houston PA, Houston's Public Affairs show. My name
(13:56):
is Laurent and my guest is Dirkventurin out here's a cure raid or of
anthropology for the Houston Museum of NaturalScience. Dirk, you mentioned that they
were looking at the skies way backthen. What instruments were they using?
Their eyeballs so they could only well, the Aztec had an X shaped wooden
tool that might have been a measuringdevice. If you're on a platform somewhere
(14:20):
on top of a pyramid and you'relooking at the sky and so with the
X two yeah, wooden slats youknow you nailed together now becomes the letter
X. If you want, youcan maybe a mark a spot on the
horizon that you keep going back tonight after night, but no telescopes or
anything. It was right phenomenal.They didn't have any kind of lenses at
(14:41):
the time, or they weren't evenworking glass at all. Right, you'd
have to have a kiln just tomelt the sand for glass anyway, So
it's interesting to consider how all thetechnologies have to be invented before any of
these things. Yes, but theamazing thing with some of the people in
the America's especially central, whether it'snot mess America, which is not central,
it's part of Mexico, North America. But anyway, asked the culture
(15:01):
of mana culture um, they cameup with descriptions in some of the very
few were manuscripts that were preserved,and so people who have studied these manuscripts
tell us that some of the observationsregarding some of the planets being as Mars
take more than a lifetime to observe. So how do you start and decide
(15:22):
I'm going to tell my son,you're going to have to continue this because
it's not complete. How would youknow that and yet it happened, Yeah,
how would you know that it wouldcome back? Because they don't that
they they certainly had not figured outthat we were revolving around the sun or
no, not that I know.I don't think so. No, I
mean that took a while, evenin other parts of the world. Copernicus
(15:43):
right, well yes, but andthen that doesn't mean excommunicate him for saying
it. We're not in Galileo.Oh so I think it's yeah. Sorry,
now, um, so many namesget it right, so much so
much to learn. But the thingis that it doesn't mean that in Europe
they they had the knowledge. Inthe Americas they had similar They invented or
came up with a concept of zeroindependently as well. And so there is
(16:07):
that it wasn't just Indus or Induvalley they did it too, and Arabic
nublest. But the Maya also hada it's a growing of a shell.
So it's an entity, but it'san empty and empty entity. It's zero,
So an empty shell that's really cool. Actually may are cool people.
(16:29):
So this is this points to someof some philosophy a bit where we're a
species. Therefore we're essentially I didn'twere very much the same, at least
biologically were Iologically we're the same,and we're we're evolving in different parts of
the planet at different speeds, butgenerally speaking, the evolution is in the
(16:51):
same direction we Like you mentioned theMayans. The Mayans had figured out zero.
The Arabs figured out zero independently.They weren't communicating, and that's the
Is it just a biological destiny tofigure this out? I guess well,
I mean, it's hard to answerthat question, but it just seems like
(17:11):
there's so much has written sort ofin our DNA that eventually some things are
inevitable. We're going to figure thisout because of where of how we're made,
and it kind of blows my mind. It is mind blowing. Yes,
yes, I just I'm kind ofarrested by the fact that I hadn't
considered this idea that we made thesame discovery. Like pottery was discovered in
different places. A lot of thetechnology, iron work and all that was
(17:33):
not necessarily exported to other areas ofthe world. When people started traveling there.
They had already found in some placeshow to forge iron, including India.
America's was starting to happen in SouthAmerica. They had started in Ecuador
and Peru, and then they hadthese balls of floating rafts that went up
(17:56):
the coast to what is now WestMexico, and they were introduced seeing the
very beginnings of metallurgy into the whichis not Mexico or bells. It'll copper
things and nothing beyond that. Andthere was certainly no steel. So when
that was introduced very violently by theSpanish, game over. Yeah. You
know, I saw an article aboutthe Conquistadores and you know colonialism and how
(18:22):
they talk about it in modern times, and how the colonials killed millions of
people in South America and Central Americawhen they came. And the article was
a reminder that actually most of thosepeople were killed by disease, and the
diseases were of course brought over onthose boats. But we ascribe a lot
of those deaths to swords and spears, when, in fact, when when
(18:45):
the Conquistadors actually made their way inland and in all of areas and found
deserted cities, abandoned cities, theyhadn't been abandoned long ago. It's just
that the population had literally been beenwiped out by diseases, that their bodies
were not adapted to fight. Andthat's another mind bending consideration that wherever humans
(19:08):
have evolved they have evolved to fightand and and and harness the powers of
their own environment. Yeah, andit made them inadequate for other environments.
It's in other words, it wasnot unlike going to the moon where you
can't breathe. There's a lot ofthings that you can't do in outer space
(19:29):
and in a lot of ways justgoing to other parts of the planet.
When the time a long time ago, and then we can talk about how
these spread pandemics these days, itwill, but let's not do that because
it makes people mad. Well,imagine the horror that was experienced by people
when they might have heard through thegrapevine. There are treat networks, and
people were aware of the fact thattwo day's walking distance from where you live,
(19:53):
these guys showed up. And thenmaybe within a week or two in
your community, people start getting sick, invisible in ways that you never knew
before. What happened. What happened? What happened. So your world is
turned upside down, and that isstill felt today because a lot of the
people who survive survive because they wereto some degree resistant enough, and most
(20:15):
of them worn't. So you're right, a lot of them die because of
the introduction of diseases, but theirsurviving communities all the way until today are
hanging on as best they can.Language preservation is an issue, and if
you lose your language, there goesa lot of your insights because your world's
story, your world view, istold in your own language. Your creation
(20:38):
story is told in your own language, and if that is gone, you
speak the other one that by defaultin a lot of what is now,
it's going to be English or Spanish, some Portuguese and then other languages in
your I mean, there's the Frenchin what is now a French Guiana and
all of that, but that's notgoing to help you necessarily completely color like
(21:00):
plexity of what used to be orancestors story. We may never figure out
what those writings actually meant to conveyif the language has gone. People like
us who are bilingual know this.Translating is a very difficult and very technical
endeavor, and a lot of timesyou can only fail. It is not
possible to perfectly translate the meaning ofthe systence. You can only get close.
(21:23):
Sometimes it's only within the ballpark.But we have to imagine that,
especially back then, most language wasin idioms. They used images like the
empty shall representing zero. It seemslike a symbol. Written languages are not
very prevalent in the Americas, butoral traditions are very strong, and so
similar to what the story was withthe Vikings and them coming across with the
(21:49):
sagas, which were oral until theywere written down. But that gave people
the idea, let's go fine andlook around in Iceland, and let's go
to Greenland. And then oh wait, they also went to what is now
the Atlantic coast of Canada, andthey found evidence. Well, their oral
stories said, and their poems said, we went there, but of course
(22:11):
they didn't call it Saint John's theLand. But nonetheless that oral tradition was
proven correct. And there are otherexamples in the Old World. And so
there are traditions conveyed in stories inthe indigenous languages of the Americas that also
contain the truth. But people haven'treally been looking too much as far as
I know, to get to thepoint of what they were talking about and
(22:34):
find this. For example, theAztec talk about where they came. They
did not always live in Central Mexico. They were on the very long multi
generational migration, and they keep talkingin their stories, we moved south,
so by the fault, they camefrom farther north. Where is that farther
north? Is it what is stillMexico today on the border with Texas,
(22:57):
or even farther inland to the fourOwners, or even beyond, where is
that land they called the land ofthe Herons? Astland? Will always be
left wondering how many cultures we willnever ever hear from again, and how
many of them had interesting important insightsto share with us, like how many
(23:18):
warnings are we missing? Well,so here's an interesting story nowadays in mostly
Brazil, but surrounding areas I thinkSouth America, whatever part of it that
is covered in rainforest or used tobe so, not that long ago,
maybe the last and fifteen maybe twentyyears, as say, the rainforest in
(23:40):
Brazil gets chopped down, and weget all these big ranches, right,
and people are flying in in theirlittle planes too, from the bigger cities
back to the ranch, and occasionalpeople, maybe not the pilot, but
the passengers look out of the windowand go, my god, what is
that pastures? But in the pasturesthey are seeing circles, they are seeing
squares, they seeing rectangles and theseare like ditches, and the dirt from
(24:03):
the ditch has been piled up onthe other side, and so what they
see is grass with evidence of moatsand structures, but they don't know they
look like Roman legion airs fortresses.Of course they're not. And so then
the next step was, well,if we see this in that part of
the forest that has been cut backand it's now a pasture for the cows,
and then eventually you get to thewire and on the other side is
(24:27):
still rainforest. Would there be similarcircles and rectangles. So he come lighter,
the drones with lasers in the jungleand they're finding stuff and so wait,
it gets better. There's a cityon the Amazon called Manaos. It's
a thousand kilometers up river, andthere are places along that city. It's
(24:48):
a big city, but eventually itpeters out and you get to rural areas.
Farmers in some parts along the AmazonRiver have been farming along the river
on land that is known as teraprieta black soil, dark soil, and
it's because the dark soil was manmade four hundred actually six hundred years ago
(25:11):
before the arrival of Europeans. Theywere mulching they were incorporating all kinds of
charcoal and pottery, and they figuredthat a way way back when for that
land to remain fertile until today.And the farmers found it using it and
they don't have to fertilize. Greatfor them. And eventually the scientists are
(25:33):
like, huh, what's that allabout. They're finally noticed. Okay,
so stories that you say, wedon't know they are being discovered, and
so now we are looking at that. Scientists are looking at and finding more
evidence and then about and they candate it because it's radiocarbon dating charcoal.
And all of a sudden this stoppedbeing made because there are not just fields.
(25:53):
There are cities attached to that,not big cities, but maybe five
thousand people, and then another one, and before you know it, across
the landscape you'll have these fairly largecommunities with raised causeways to communicate. You
can walk during the rainy season,you can take your boat or on the
river, or you can walk acrossthe swamp that has not come because it's
(26:15):
raining, and you just walk onthese levies through the other city to the
market or whatever, go visit people. And so that landscape was totally different.
But all of that stops the samereason you mentioned earlier. The Europeans
show up, the diseases show up, and these cities are abandoned, and
guess what happened. Well, thenature takes over, of course instantly,
probably within a generation. Is completelyvisible. Our appreciation of what that once
(26:37):
looked like has been totally turned upsidedown. Well, we've only scratched the
surface, folks. And if youwant to know more, if if you
like walking away with more questions andanswers in your head, you'll love the
Houston Museum of Natural Science, allof it. I have to mention the
Gems and Minerals collection, one ofthe most beautiful installation arts talking about crystals
(27:00):
and diamonds and all kinds of naturalformations that are forged and unimaginable temperatures and
pressures at the center of the Earth. And they've exposed them in beautiful light.
And we're not talking about you know, ring sized diamonds here, We're
talking about unimaginably big pieces of rockand crystals. And it's magnificent. And
(27:22):
that I mentioned the big t rexthey have, it's an actual fossil.
There's a Terrell dactyl the big wingedbeast that is above it. This is
one of the coolest places in town. The Houston Museum and Natural Science and
the John P. McGovern and allof the Americas is reopened, has been
newly renovated, and it is onits way to being renovated again and again
and again as we figure out wheremore of this stuff is. And one
(27:44):
of the things that would like toadd as we get closer to the end,
but the visitors will be able tosee a Texas sized video screen as
they walk in. It's a welcomescreen and that shows faces and you can
hear voices of people Indigenous who aresaying, I'm still here, I'm still
here, I'm still here. Andwe're continuing to populate that video screen with
(28:08):
additional videos as we move along.And so within a few weeks we're going
to go up to the Alabama Kosharapeople who live in Livingston, about ninety
miles away from here, the closestIndigenous community in Texas to Houston, and
one can go visit, and sowe are working with them on all kinds
of displays to make our exhibits better. But they have also consented to be
(28:32):
recorded, so we are going todouble the number of people who are going
to show share their voice and theirmessage as you walk in. Hello,
my name is so, and soI'm from the Alabama Koshara tribe. I'm
still here, and we have peoplefrom Alaska saying this, we have Maya
people saying this. So, butthere's always room for more, and I
don't want to replace one with theother. I want more human tsunami faces
(28:57):
and voices to make it absolutely clear. Living history people are still among walks
in Houston alone. The number apparentlyis around sixty thousand individuals who are Indigenous
from all over, not from justhere in the Houston area originally, but
from all over who make Houston home. Same thing for the Metroplex Dallas for
(29:18):
Worth. So there's a lot ofpeople in Texas who are Indigenous who are
not necessarily visible, and we wantto help if we can put it that
way, make them visible for peopleto realize, Oh, I didn't realize
that you can at least give usthe opportunity to know about them, which
is exactly which is all that isneeded. Really, I think human curiosity
(29:41):
is going to carry over. Sogo to hm NS dot org. H
n NS dot org stands for theHouston Museum of Natural Science for information.
They have ticketed events and timed events, so that means that you can literally
show up at a particular time andyou know that you're not going to be
crowded with a bunch of people.It's a wonderful experience. And folks,
if you have any questions related tomy guests or the organizations I host on
(30:04):
this show, just send me anemail. Texan from France at gmail dot
com. Texan from France at gmaildot com, and I thank you for
listening and caring about the issues weput on this show. Folks. I'll
see you next week at the sametime. My name is Laurent. This
has been Houston, PA, Houston'spublic affairs show, Houston Strong
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.