Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

The Science Channel just concluded a feature on pyramids. They talked about those in Egypt and Mexico, as well as newer ones in Las Vegas and Idaho. What caught my interest was how people use history.

For centuries the archeological community have been convinced the pyramids in Giza were built using slave labor. Consensus was that these slaves were primarily Hebrews from Judea. Today, Egyptian archeologists are convinced these structures were built by Egyptians working as conscripts or as paid laborers serving their pharaoh.

The people studying the Mayan and Aztec pyramids are pleased that locals in the area take great pride in these edifices. “The faces in stone carvings look just like them.”

I am always interested in how people look to the past to define their present. It is a human trait, I guess. We want to tie our fate to something that happened long ago.

My first thoughts were of cultural biases. Did archeologists digging near Cairo lean heavily on biblical tales to determine who built the pyramids? Do Egyptian archeologists ignore historical fact in order to avoid the unpleasant reality that “Jews” built the pyramids? I don’t have an answer. Nor can I answer why something done thousands of years ago has any bearing on today. Whoever built the pyramids did something phenomenal. Whether they were Egyptian or Hebrew is irrelevant. They were human beings, and these are monuments to the ability of man to do something…monumental. The skill and knowledge of the builders was not passed along through genes. The ability to acquire that knowledge was. And that knowledge was gained, as it is now, through effort and training. It wasn’t implanted by magic or breeding. Just because someone could accomplish such a thing doesn’t mean his progeny could. And it certainly has nothing to do with the abilities of descendants hundreds of generations later.

My great grandfather was a German Jew. I am neither. Another was half Apache. I’m not. I’m an engineer. None of my children are. And I can’t trace my ancestry beyond five generations, nor do I want to. Any person I become is due to choices I make, and opportunities I take advantage of. My personality is an amalgam of people I’ve known and loved, and the values I learned from family and friends.

Then again, maybe my ancestor designed the Great Pyramid. I should look in the attic for a deed.

*****UPDATE*****

I have to point readers to a post at La Shawn’s regarding Afrocentrism. It falls right in line with what I mean.