White explorers couldn't recognise a smile on native symbols

Source: Telegraph

White explorers couldn't recognise a smile on native symbols
The threatening "devil grimace" symbols that European explorers discovered upon first setting foot in the Caribbean 500 years ago were actually depicting smiles, researchers claim.

By Nick Collins
Published: 7:30AM BST 18 May 2010

The icons of skeletal heads with bared teeth, found carved into wooden seats and shells worn by natives as jewellery, were widely interpreted by early European colonisers to be hostile, anti-Christian and frightening. But an analysis of human and primate behaviour indicates that the motifs were more likely symbols of non-aggression and good will, similar to a smile.

Dr Bridget Waller, co-author of the report, said the misunderstanding of the motif by Europeans could have affected the way they treated the indigenous people on the islands. She said: "It could have had an impact on how they were interpreting the intentions of those people. If they had understood it better then maybe they would have had more positive interactions."

When first encountered by European explorers, the bared teeth motif was characterised variously as a death mask, an image of a skull, and as the face of a shaman in trance.

Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez, who travelled to the Caribbean in the early sixteenth century, wrote that the grinning idols represented an "abominable figure...deformed and frightening with ferocious fangs and teeth and disproportionate ears and burning eyes of a dragon."

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7732776/White-explorers-couldnt-recognise-a-smile-on-native-symbols.html

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http://www.prague.net.nyud.net:8090/blog/images/30.jpg

:kick:

of judging others by our own standards.

"Too bad about the lie-based republicon oil crusade-of-FAIL in Iraq, and the totally trashed Gulf of Mexico and shit like that, but on the bright side profits for fatcat republicon oil cronies are Totally Way UP. Now that's something all republicon fatcats can smile about. Too bad about you American proles, and the natural world and stuff.

"Oh, and while I am pontificating for the 'elite,' allow me to advocate for MORE TAX CUTS FOR RICH REPUBLICONS. Sneer."

- xVP Dickie 'If-you-got-five-military-deferments-and-massive-oil-profits-you-would smile-too' Cheney (R)

Have misinterpreted that face.

And that woman in the example picture... I dunno who's calling that a smile, it looks more like she's grinding coffee with her teeth or something

if the first European explorers in the New World were enlightened or not, the diseases they carried with them would have wiped out most of the indigenous populations anyway.

It matters not what they mis-interpeted, it only matters that they were on a mission and nothing was going to change that. No smiles allowed

If Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez, saw an "abominable figure...deformed and frightening with ferocious fangs and teeth and disproportionate ears and burning eyes of a dragon", its probably because he wanted to see that. Its likely he and his fellow explorers had already pre-judged them as hostile; perhaps their deliberate misinterpretation of the art simply supported their foregone conclusion about these indigenous people.

And then there is the not-so-subtle association of primates to indigenous peoples.

Cool Hand Luke

"What we have heah, is a faylure ta communicate."

Witness Day of the Dead in Mexico. You've got grinning skelatal figures. Hell, they hand out skeleton iced cookies to kids. Death is an accepted part of the culture and is openly acknowledged.

?w=450

These are dead folks living it up in the afterlife.


In Europe, you have the hangover of The Black Death, the motif of the danse macabre permeates the culture. It's a kind of wierdly ironic take on the same subject. The dead intrude upone the living to remind them that life is short. It's not a comforting image at all, IMO.



Still, it's a tragic moment in world history. and even if they had been more culturally aware, the diseases would have done their work anyway.

http://www.bridgetwaller.com/SAMSONWALLER2010.pdf

Why read the summary by a science reporter when you can read the article itself?

The article itself is funny. Of course, I'm not in the field. I find a lot of this kind of anthropology funny: It's "anthropology at the interstices," where you derive the meaning from the gaps, where there's silence. Derrida would be proud.

The number of assumptions made is about equal to the number made by the "bared-teeth = fearful" crowd. They're just different. Diametrically, opposed, in fact. Where it used to be assumed that "natives" were warlike and primitive, now the assumption is that they were peaceful and advanced. "Just people" seems to be an impossible assumption.

Here's an example of the kind of logic: "The word “Taı´no” means “I am good” or “I am noble,”
in other words, a ringing verbal statement of benign intent, a quality the indigenous people emphasized in meetings with the Spanish (Hulme 1986; Love´n 1935:502–503)." Now, imagine that whites in the US called themselves "the good." "I'm one of the good. Jose, he's not one of the good." Another example of "benign intent," I suppose. My point: Autonyms that aggrandize one's own tribe--whether it's Inupiaq = "real person" or any of the others allow the inference that others aren't. Whether or not they intend the implication or act on it is a different matter. Sometimes they're just traditional; sometimes they're threats of genocide.

Personally, I think some of the expressions look like smiles. Others may be smiles, but poorly drawn--it's hard to sculpt detail in hard substances without steel or at least iron. But for me, a smile has turn turn up at the corners of the mouth; there's the woman's faked, forced smile, but using that kind of a posed smile does nothing for the article's argument. A growl shows more teeth, the corners don't turn up--and the creases around the nose are deeper. Even after reading the article, some of the images still look vicious. And it's unclear to me that the underlying assumtion in each set of scholars' assumptions--that all the BTM faces need to be interpreted in the same way--isn't necessary.