Page 98 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 91

million years ago as Homo habilis or one million years ago as Homo
erectus—sneaks wistfully into analyses of fossil evidence and not infre-
quently precipitates speculative scenarios, it could turn into a bona fide
quest undergirded by a bona fide methodology that would elucidate the
living meanings of animate form and tactile-kinesthetic experience—or in
more general terms, that would elucidate what it means to be the bodies
we are, and to have been the bodies from which we evolved.^^ What is
needed to realize the full import of corporeal invariants is thus a shift
in attitude both about animate form and tactile-kinesthetic experience and
about method itself.

^^ For a discussion of paleoanthropological methodology and its possibilities,
see Sheets-Johnstone, chapters 13 and 14 ("Methodology: The Hermeneutical
Strand" and "Methodology: The Genetic Phenomenology Strand") in The Roots of
Thinking.
It is pertinent to point out that paleoanthropologists are not above self-
admonishments and -criticisms with respect to engaging in what they commonly call
"story-telling," but what one well-known authority more dramatically and derisively
called "theatre." See Lord Zuckerman, "Closing Remarks to Symposium," in The
Concepts of Human Evolution^ edited by Lord Zuckerman, Symposia of the
Zoological Society of London 33 (New York: Academic Press, 1973), 451.
It is pertinent to point out too that a lack of recognition of the experiential
dimensions of hominid corporeal invariants and a concentration instead on the body
as mere featured surface can egregiously skew interpretations of the fossil evidence.
One need only consider the status of Neandertals. Until recent times, when
multicultural awareness and pluralism have become de rigueur and new theories
have begun to upset the long protected and privileged applecart of Homo sapiens
sapiens, Neandertals were paleoanthropological outcasts. With their prognathous
features, strongly recessive chins, prominent brow ridges, and bulky frames, they
were not appealing creatures, at least not to most white European male evolutionary
scientists. No matter that their cranial capacity was larger than ours—^that fact was
either brushed quickly aside or explained away—and no matter that they buried
their dead—^not only the first such known practice, but a practice carried out in
extraordinary ways that necessarily signify a concept of caring as well as death—they
were simply not comely. In view of the facts and non-facts of the matter, it is
difficult not to interpret their long disinheritance as merely a felt repugnance: "We
don't want to be related to themV The abhorrence is similar to the reaction of
people in Darwin's time who recoiled from the thought of being related to apes.
One hundred-thirty and more years later, some people are still fussy. For discussions
of recent re-evaluations of Neandertals, see Bruce Bower, "New Evidence Ages
Modern Europeans," Science News 136.25 (16 December 1989), 388; Bower,
"Tracking Neanderthal Hunters," Science News 138.15 (13 October 1990), 235;
Bower, "Neandertals' Disappearing Act," Science News 139.23 (8 June 1991), 360-
361, 363. For an early discussion of the facts and non-facts of the matter, see C.
L. Brace and M. F. Ashley Montagu, Man's Evolution (New York: Macmillan, 1965).