Today, we look for the oldest technology. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
What's the oldest
technology? Farming came late in history. Before
farming, settled herdsmen and gatherers made
clothing, knives, tents, spears -- but so did
nomads before them. Go back further: archaeology
tells us that pictures and music were among
stone-age technologies. Some really magnificent
cave paintings survive, along with evidence of
rattles, drums, pipes, and shell trumpets. Even the
Bible -- the chronology of the Hebrew tribes --
identifies musical-instrument-making as one of
three technologies that arose in the 7th and 8th
generations after Adam.
Music is clearly as old as any technology we can
date. Couple that with the sure knowledge that
whales sing -- that the animal urge to make music
precedes technology, and I offer music-making as my
candidate for the oldest technology of all.
The societies with the least technology on earth
are strongly tied to music. Australian aborigine
culture is defined by its song, dance, musical
instruments, and poetry. Music is the most
accessible art, and -- at the same time -- the most
sophisticated. In almost any age, or any society,
music-making is every bit as complex as other
technologies.
But our own experience tells us as much as
archaeology does. Experience tells us that music is
primal. It's not just a simple pleasure. A
Shakespearean lady says, "I am never merry when I
hear sweet sounds of music," and her lover answers:
The reason is your spirits are attentive. The
man that hath no music in himself is fit for
treason ...
and we know what he means. If we can't
respond to art -- to music -- then something's
missing. We are fit for treason. Music helps us
understand the human lot. Music is as functional as
any worthwhile technology. Its function is to put
reality in terms that make sense. That means
dramatizing what we see -- transmuting it into
something more than what's obvious. Wallace Stevens
wrote:
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
The blue guitar -- music, or any art --
does change reality. It turns the human dilemma
around until we see it in perspective. Sometimes it
takes us through grief and pain to do that. It
disturbs us at the same time it comforts us. But it
serves such a fundamental human need. That's why I'm
so sure that music-making had to be the first human
technology.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
The conversation takes place between Lorenzo and
Jessica in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice,
Act V, Scene 1.
Stevens, W., The Man with the Blue Guitar, The
Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York:
Albert A. Knopf, 1982. This episode has been
greatly revised as Episode
1559.
From an 1882 German
Bible
Musical instruments of Biblical times
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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