Dr. Freund's Lecture

We can only wonder what our future generations will think about our codes and symbols. How crazy will they think that they are when they see the dancing and singing purple dinosaur that guided us through our childhood or see how many hours we waste playing Legend of Zelda on our Wii. We are fortunate to have recording devices so that we can save some semblance of our perceived sanity by explain on television or in writing about our insane ideas and beliefs  This technological luxury is something the ancient people never had. They did not have any sort of permanent communication that we can review in attempts to understand them and their thought processes. We leave the guessing to the archaeologists such as Dr. Freund who believe that "archaeology is the study of pre-ideas". 

I have a new profound respect for archaeologists because when they look at something for the first time they have to put what they know behind them. They have to take a fresh look at even something is so common and everyday and be able to see it's extraordinary properties. By putting your personal ideals behind you, you can really get at the meat of what that image could have meant to the people of that time frame. An example of this was shown with a picture of an anchor. Dr. Freund explained that for a long time several people thought that this image represented a cross even though it was created well before Jesus's birth or death. Freund then pointed out that we now understand it to be an anchor. However, we should not blame the archaeologists for this mistake because when we see an image that has a large line with a smaller line intersecting it we automatically think, "it's a cross". Like this "cross" something are such a common part of our culture that we subconsciously are on the look out for these familiar things. 

By putting aside the prejudices that we have formed from our current culture we are able to understand another mindset better. We can see an astrological sign in a Jewish temple and understand that it was not put on the floor to be disrespectful but maybe because the people in the temple liked the image and believe in it. A mixing of ancient religions in the olden days was found to be acceptable because that is who they were and how they believed. They do not share our common day prejudices and we need to allow them to believe whatever they wanted, even if it goes against our own beliefs.

Our common practice of how we view love and desire as a culture is not so different from the ancient practices. The ancient people carried around statues of fertility and love to help them become fertile and turned on. Now people can take drugs to make them more potent and fertile. On the walls of a pubescent teen male are quite likely to be donned with some sort of half-naked woman, this depicts a current image of desire. Go back a thousand years and you will see such images as Zeus as the Eagle or with Ganymede on the walls of houses showing the, then vogue, picture of love and desire. Besides our technology we are not all that different from the ancient people. If we put aside our current prejudices it is possible to try to look back and understand them more as humans then ideas and what we wish to perceive them as.