Cultural
Dynamics
Research
Proposal
Fact Sheet and
Proposal
1. Title:
Flood myths
and the postulated Sunda expansion: The long-range dynamics of
culture in transcontinental perspective
2. Summary:
This project looks at cultural dynamics as a long-range process in time and space, highlighting intercontinental and prehistoric connections and transformations. Starting out from flood myths as constitutive of Dutch culture, it seeks to investigate and explain the global distribution of such narratives. Oppenheimer’s Sunda thesis (1998) offers one possible explanation, and field research in Africa and Indonesia is to assess its merits.
3. Applicant:
- Prof.dr Wim M.J. van Binsbergen
African
Studies Centre (ASC),
4. Institutional
organisation and co-operation:
-
African Studies Centre (ASC),
- Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), P.O. Box 3304, Dakar 18524, Senegal.
- Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies (CCRS), Parahyangan Catholic University, Jl. Nias 2, Bandung 40117, Indonesia
5. Project
duration:
- 4 years: starting February 2008.
6. Research
team:
-
Prof.dr Wim M.J. van Binsbergen
African
Studies Centre (ASC),
-
Prof. dr. Francis Nyamnjoh.
Council
for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa
(CODESRIA), Avenue Cheick Anta Diop x, P.O. Box 3304, Dakar
18524, Senegal, Tel: (+ 221) 825 98 22/23, Fax: (+ 221) 824 1289,
E-mail: Francis.Nyamnjoh@codesria.sn
.
- Prof.dr Ignatius Bambang Sugiharto
Centre
for Cultural and Religious Studies (CCRS) / Department of
Philosophy, Parahyangan Catholic University, Jl. Nias 2, Bandung
40117, Indonesia, E-mail: ignatiussugiharto@yahoo.com
7. Classification:
Of the five
perspectives (‘invalshoeken’) within the NWO-WOTRO
programme ‘Cultural Dynamics’, the proposed research
project concentrates on
8. Project description number of words: 1029
990 words
The unmistakable focus in the ‘Cultural Dynamics’ Programme is the Dutch cultural heritage today. This includes the image and narrative of the Flood (Du. Zondvloed < Mdl. Du. Sintvloed ‘general flood’ – only secondarily associated with ‘sin’). From the oldest historical times (Tacitus’ Germania) to the Great Flood of 1953 CE, the Low Countries have been prone to flooding, which invited great hydraulic and social-organizational achievements. Schama’s description of the 17th-c. Amsterdam orphanage brings out that being Dutch means escaping from drowning. Hence ancient flood stories from Hesiod, Plato and Ovid have always been eagerly appropriated in Dutch belles lettres. But they were far exceeded by the biblical story of Noah. After warning from a God bent on annihilating His sinning creatures, the righteous Noah build his Ark, saved his family and the animal kingdom, and became the ancestor of post-flood humans under a new covenant symbolised by the rainbow. From van Maerlandt (1350) via Vondel’s Noah (1667) to Nijhoffs Awater (1934), this story from Genesis 6-10 has captivated Dutch authors (as it did Dutch painters such as Bosch, Wtewael, van Mander and Appel), and persuaded them to see Holland itself as the Ark, surviving the onslaught of the waters because the piety of its people had secured them God’s privileged treatment.
Although thus highly constitutive of national identity, the Dutch share their flood stories with Antiquity and Christendom. Nor does the distribution end there. Spurred on the apparent confirmation of the biblical account, scholarship discovered flood stories everywhere. This includes the Ancient Near East to which Genesis is indebted, but also the Australian and African interior, Alaska, Oceania, without precolonial penetration of the biblical message. A recent inventory lists 395 flood stories from all continents. Less than two dozen hail from sub-Saharan Africa (yet enough to shame Frazer who denied there were any in that continent). About half of this voluminous collection is, surprisingly, from the Americas but still recognisable as cognate to Genesis. However, alternative themes appear such as the earth diver; the animal trickster as flood hero; the naturally grown reed, calabashes etc. (and even mountains) as counterpart of the man-made Ark; whilst it is not human transgression or divine agency which triggers the flood.
If flood stories have such a global distribution in ways that can scarcely be attributed to the spread of Christianity (and by what method may we established this!), then they might well serve as ‘index fossils’ that contain essential, if veiled, information inviting us to think– and to begin to discern empirically, on the ground – in terms of some overall dynamics of global cultural history.
Scholars have
advanced various, largely implausible, theories in order to
account for the near-ubiquity of flood stories, from
Roheim’s recourse to full-bladder dreams; via Woolley
believing to have found the sediment of the original flood in
Mesopotamian soil; Heyerdahl staging his own racialist flood myth
in an ark of his own design; to Anati’s interpretation of
flood myths as reflecting the a global phenomenon, the
post-glacial ocean level rise (8,000 BCE). The was recently
(1998) taken up by Oppenheimer. He proposes that at the Sunda
plateau (now insular South East Asia) such flooding caused a
sea-borne population expansion, both eastbound and
westbound. He proposes that Sunda expansion triggered Indus
valley and Mesopotamian cultures, and specifically conveyed
the mythical themes (creation, paradise, fall of man, flood,
covenant and dispersal of nations) that so far have
only been traced to the Bible and Mesopotamia.
With its
idiosyncratic comparative mythology, poor Near Eastern
archaeology, and improbable high dating, Oppenheimer’s
theory was welcomed only by geneticists and Oceanic
archaeologists. Global diachronic distribution patterns suggest
that – except the flood myth – most of the Ancient Near
Eastern mythical core lacks a Sunda background. Yet the Sunda
thesis has advantages. Like Bernal’s Black Athena
thesis (1987) it is an exercise in anti-Eurocentrism. It could
explain, not only the mythological material that is absolutely
central to the European tradition, but also the occurrence of thalassaemia
genetic types both in S.E. Asia and the Mediterranean, the sudden
rise of nautical skills in the Mediterranean Early Bronze Age,
and Berossus’ Oannes myth. Finally, the Sunda hypothesis
casts some light on the unmistakable though understudied genetic,
linguistic and cultural (notably in the fields of sea-faring,
music, architecture, royal court culture; to which we might add
flood myths!) indications of extensive Indonesian influence on
sub-Saharan Africa – in the face of the unmistakable fact
that the huge island of Madagascar before the African coast was
peopled by Indonesians c. 2,000 years ago.
This suggest the following interrelated tasks
Recent publications and work in progress by Witzel, Villems, and van Binsbergen already offer the general outlines of a diachronic theory of global mythology, out of which (a) may plausibly be constructed, so that a plausible answer to (b) can be proposed. For question (c), we intend to involve three PhD candidates:
·
two in Africa in order to investigate (c) in the provisionally
most promising chosen regions, notably the Cameroon Grassfields,
and in the Mozambique/Angolan corridor with special attention to
the Nkoya people (among whom Sunda-reminiscent elements are
particularly striking); and
·
one in Indonesia to assess evidence for the Sunda hypothesis
from insular S.E. Asia.
These researchers will be supervised by the three project leaders, who are senior academicians from Africa, Indonesia and Europe respectively, working in close collaboration. The day-to-day co-ordination of the project will be in the hands of one post-doc researcher, whose main task however will be to explore the theoretical and methodological requirements for the type long-range, diachronic cultural comparison central to this project.
Literature
Amselle, J.-L., 2001, Branchements:
Anthropologie de l’universalité des cultures, Paris:
Flammarion
Anati, E., 1999, La religion des
origines, Paris: Bayard; French tr. of La religione delle
origini, n.p.: Edizione delle origini, 1995.
Bernal, M., 1987, Black Athena The
Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation Vol 1 The Fabrication
of Ancient Greece, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers
University Press
Bernal, M., 1991, Black Athena: The
Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. II, The
Archaeological and Documentary Evidence. London: Free
Association Books; New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Berossos, in: F. Jacoby, 1923-1927, Die
Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Leiden: Brill, section
iiiC, Leiden: Brill.
Dick-Read, Robert, 2005, The Phantom
Voyagers: Evidence of Indonesian Settlement in Africa in
Ancient Times, Winchester: Thurlton.
Dundes, Alan, 1988, ed., The Flood Myth,
University of California Press, Berkeley and London, 1988.
Frazer, James George., 1918, Folk-lore
in the Old Testament, London: Macmillan and Company Ltd.
Heyerdahl, Thor, 1952, American Indians
in the Pacific: The Theory behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition.
London: Allen and Unwin.
Isaak, Mark., 2005, ‘Flood Stories
from Around the World’, at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/floods.htm
Jones, A.M., 1964, Africa and Indonesia:
The evidence of the xylophone and other musical and cultural
factors, Leiden: Brill
Kent, R., 1970, Early kingdoms in
Madagascar 1500-1700, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Oppenheimer, S.J., 1998, Eden in the
East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, London: Weidenfeld
& Nicholson; second impression 2001
Reeb, Wilhelm., 1938, ed., Tacitus
P. Cornelius Tacitus Germania, Teubners Schulerausgaben
Griechischer Und Lateinischer Schriftsteller, Leipzig: Teubner
Schama, Simon., 1987, The Embarrassment
of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age,
repr. New York: Vintage Press 1997.
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., &
Woudhuizen, Fred, in press, Ethnicity in Mediterranean
proto-history, Cambridge: British Archaeology Reports
Villems, Richard, 2005, ‘The Earth
Diver Myth and Genetics’, paper, Pre-symposium of Research
Insitute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and 7th Ethnogenesis
South and Central Asia (ESCA) Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable, Kyoto:
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto
Witzel, M., 2001, 'Comparison and
reconstruction: Language and mythology', Mother Tongue, 6: 45-62.
Witzel, M., in press, Homo fabulans,:
Origins and dispersals of our first mythologies, New York:
Oxford University Press.
Woolley, Sir Leonard, 1955 Ur Excavations
IV: The Early Periods. London: The British Museum/The University
Museum, Philadelphia.
9. Project
output
For this project
the following outcome is envisaged: three PhD theses; two volumes
of conference papers in which the initial perspectives and the
findings of the project will be discussed by an international
academic forum; several other academic articles; a scholarly book
on flood myths in their global distribution and interrelatedness;
a scholarly book on the theory and method of long-range
diachronic comparison; a popular book (possibly for children)
bringing out the diversity and unity of humankind by reference to
flood myths; and at the end a cultural manifestation (to be held
in the Netherlands but with participation also from Africa and
Indonesia) that will highlight intercontinental connections and
the construction of identity through flood myths.
10. Curriculum
vitae principal applicant
Wim M.J. van Binsbergen is currently Professor of the Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy, Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands. His research interests include: religion in Africa; intercultural philosophy; African and Ancient Mediterranean history; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; ethnicity, ancient and modern statehood; globalisation, commodification, virtuality and mediatisation; and the long-range, intercontinental diachronic study of myth, divination, board-games and other formal cultural systems. He has pursued these interests as research leader, university teacher and thesis supervisor; as author of several books and numerous scholarly articles; as editor of numerous edited volumes; and through extensive fieldwork in Tunisia, Zambia, Guinea Bissau, and Botswana, besides historical projects on South Central Africa, the Ancient Near East, the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and worldwide. He held professorial chairs at Manchester, Berlin, Amsterdam (VU), and Durban-Westville, and directed Africanist research at the Leiden ASC throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His authored books include: Religious Change in Zambia (1981); Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and History in western central Zambia (1992); Culturen bestaan niet (1999), and Intercultural Encounters: African and Anthropological Lessons towards a Philosophy of Interculturality (2003). He has been the Editor of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy since 2002.
11. Relevant
publications of the applicants
Nkwi, P.N., & Nyamnjoh, F.B., 1997,
eds., Regional balance and national integration in Cameroon:
Lessons learned and the uncertain future. Yaounde: African
Studies Centre/ International Centre for Applied Social Sciences
Research and Training.
Nyamnjoh, F.B., 1999, ‘Cameroon: A
country united by ethnic ambition and difference’, African
Affairs, 98: 101-118.
Nyamnjoh, F.B. & Rowlands, M., 1998,
‘Elite associations and the politics of belonging in
Cameroon’, Africa, 68: 320-337.
Sugiharto, Bambang, 1998, Culture and
postmodern philosophy, PhD thesis, Roma University.
Sugiharto, Bambang Ignatius, 2007,
‘Culture, Core, Concern’, paper read at the
International Conference on Philosophy of Culture and Practice,
Organized by Soochow Philosophy Center and Department of
Philosophy, Soochow University, June 2007.
Sugiharto, Bambang Ignatius, in press, Culture
and Cosmopolitanism: Proceedings of an International conference
held at Bandung, Indonesia, July 2006.
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2007, 'A new
Paradise myth? An assessment of Stephen Oppenheimer’s thesis
of the South East Asian origin of West Asian core myths,
including most of the mythological contents of Genesis
1-11’, paper to be read at THE DEEP HISTORY OF STORIES:
Annual Conference, International Association for Comparative
Mythology, Edinburgh 28-30 August, 2007
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2006, 'Mythological
archaeology: Situating sub-Saharan African cosmogonic myths
within a long-range intercontinential comparative perspective',
in: Osada, Toshiki, with the assistance of Hase, Noriko, eds., Proceedings
of the Pre-symposium of RIHN and 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto
Roundtable, Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
(RIHN), pp. 319-349.
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997,
‘Rethinking Africa’s contribution to global cultural
history: Lessons from a comparative historical analysis of
mankala board-games and geomantic divination’, in: van
Binsbergen, W.M.J., ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After,
Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special
issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and
Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 221-254.
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1992, Tears of
Rain: Ethnicity and history in central western Zambia,
London/Boston: Kegan Paul International
12.
Research budget
- 3 PhD projects (sandwich)
Eur 180,000
- 1 post-doc (0.75 fte for 4 years):
Eur 170,000
- travel, research, boarding and lodging costs 120,000
- seminars/
workshops: 4 x 12,000
48,000
Publication costs
40,000
Concluding manifestation
30,000
--------
Total:
588,000
Additional funding
will be sought from Leiden