The share of vulnerability in societies of the past – Liberation

Archeology and history affirm the mutual aid between men which, alone, guarantees the sustainability of societies hit by various clashes. To undertake and build, man has been able to forge solidarity links. Has this survival of the communities been accompanied by care for the very young, the old and the vulnerable? Our current societies claim to fight against discrimination in opposition, they believe, to a “before” which would be that of the exclusion of differences.

Paleopathology, a recent science, reveals the diseases and health of our ancestors, even if the disgraced body has always fascinated collectors of “Monstrosities” ! Pliny the Elder writes that the Emperor Augustus, in the first century of our era, exhibited bones of “Giants” and surrounded himself with grotesque dwarves. Bruised bodies, preserved in honey, even “adorned” certain Roman pleasure gardens. Shortly after the modern “cabinets of curiosity”, Teratology, the science of monsters, appeared by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; then as archeology developed, many physicians understood the need to study ancient bones. In Paris, in 1835, the Dupuytren museum was created, exhibiting wax casts of organs and real skeletons. The living is still cruelly absent.

Rudimentary paleo-altruism

At the start of the 20th century, races to diagnose a pathology and search for its oldest clinical expression multiplied: they ignored humans, their fragility and possible dependence. Then inclusion and exclusion, these strong themes, gradually imposed themselves in the gaze focused on past peoples, finally considering the patient and his link to others. The contours of a rudimentary paleo-altruism, a sort of «care» archaic, observed from the first homo erectus then take shape.

Funerary archeology and anthropology offer some avenues. If the biological component provides access to the identity card of a deceased person (sex, age at death, stature, health status, etc.), part of the collective “cultural fact” is also accessible. Thus, the ostentation of certain tombs suggests a privileged status, just as it is possible to characterize the burials of banished, slaves or sacrificed. This questioning is now legitimate when it comes to “different bodies”, these cripples of the past whom it was said that failing to get rid of them, they were only “Unnecessary mouths”.

One example suffices: Neolithic men, 4,000 to 5,000 years before our era, cultivate, raise and know how to show solidarity as well. We often practice trepanation, this piercing of the cranium aimed at relieving the compressed brain. The prowess of these prehistoric neurosurgeons, scraping or piercing the bone with a flint, surprises as much as it confuses: they identified the evil (expel evil spirits?), Programmed the operation, performed the surgical act. They also had to help the “survivors” (nearly 70% of those operated on) during their convalescence and accompany them through dizziness or hemiplegia.

Archaeological evidence relates the voluntary and altruistic action of human groups: what applies here for Prehistory will unfold over the millennia. Far from pandemics, wars and climatic disturbances which damage societal fundamentals by excluding, sometimes barbarically, the vulnerable, the history of men is also – perhaps above all – the story of organized solidarity to exalt the living in its continuity.

Valerie Delattre is an archaeo-anthropologist at Inrap, full researcher UMR 6298, and author of the documentary children’s book Once upon a time there was a difference, Actes Sud junior / Inrap, 2020.

And also

Waiting the next festival of Agir pour le vivant, which will be held in Paris from June 3 to 6 around the theme of the city, and the meeting in Arles at the end of August on the theme of territories, the drafting of Release, in partnership with the Actes sud editions and Commune, offers its readers forums, interviews and insights, as well as a selection of articles on the theme of biodiversity. To find here.

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