Man's Inhumanity to Man
There is, at the present time, a good deal of disquiet over Muslim fundamentalism - and justly so. The destruction of the Twin Towers in New York were a reminder of the depths of depravity to which religious fanaticism can lead people and I certainly do not wish to defend or excuse those who carried out that atrocity.
Nevertheless, the problem is not Islam nor even religion per se, for every religion, or even none at all, has been stained by murder, torture and worse. We rightly deplore the war crimes committed by Japanese, Germans, Serbs or Sudanese, but British and Americans have also been guilty of war crimes and a United Nations report has lately declared that both Jews and Palestinians were guilty of war crimes during the recent conflict in Gaza.
The problem is human-kind - as Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, lamented, "Man's inhumanity to man". This was highlighted for me recently when I read a biography of Evans, the excavator of Knossoss, which quoted David Hogarth, director of the British School in Athens in 1897, who wrote:
"No Greek may answer surely for any other Greek, since individualism and intolerance of discipline are in the blood of the race. In the stormy history of Levantine religious warfare you may note one unvaried law of consequence. Where the Moslem has prevailed, the votaries of the two creeds have resumed peaceful life as of old, the Christian knowing that Moslems act under orders as one man, and that when Islam is triumphant its minorities are secure of their lives. But if Christians gain their freedom, the Moslem leaves the land of his birth. For whatever pledges the new authorities may give, he knows for his part that, since Eastern Christianity supplies no social discipline, each Christian will act on occasion as seems best in his own eyes."
I feel he was a little too sanguine with regard to Muslim treatment of minorities, for there have been many massacres of Christians and other minorities by Muslims throughout history, but on the whole his comments are justified.
I had to chuckle over the quotation in the same book from a British sailor who recorded the unavailing attempts by various powers to keep the Cretans under control.
"Each nationality had its own way of punishing the blood-thirsty native. The Italian shot them on sight; the French chopped their heads off; the Russians whipped them to death - all without a vestige of a trial, But the British - good old solid British - brought them on board the battleships, imprisoned them in cages composed of torpedo nets on the mess-deck and solemnly tried them by Court-Martial. Afterwards we hanged them - solemnly, and in the face of all men; and I don't think there was a man among us who felt sorry for these degraded beasts whose murders had been so fearful."
Alas, with all the Greeks as bloodthirsty and undisciplined as Mr Hogarth described, there were many who deserved hanging but who escaped the richly deserved fate. Charles Trick Currelly, who had been assistant to Flinders Petrie in Egypt and in later life founded the Royal Ontario Museum, excavated at Palaikastro and drew his labour force from a village about three-quarters of a mile away. This is what he had to say about his workmen:
"The people were very merry and very devout, and I found them attractive: it was very interesting going to church with them and watching their intensive piety. It was hard to realize how truly bloodthirsty they were. One day two men turned up who did not belong to the village, but who wanted work. Their chief recommendation was that they had recently killed two Mohammedans. This led to the discussion of the part that our workmen had played in the troubled times only five years before. Some distance over the hills was a Mohammedan village. The Mohammedans were unsuspecting, and had no watch; when they heard the first volley fired they sprang up in total darkness, of course, as their little lamps are difficult things to light. Parents grabbed their children and what weapons they could find, and all ran to the mosque.
"Once assembled there, they found themselves very badly armed, and therefore called for a parley: they offered, in return for the sparing of their lives, to march away leaving behind them everything they possessed - their fields, their animals, their implements and their household gear - everything but what they had on their backs. These terms were accepted, and our villagers swore on the Gospels that they would be truly carried out; but they demanded that all arms should be passed through the mosque windows so that the Mohammedans, when they came out, would be completely unarmed. The weapons were handed over, and the Mohammedans were told to come out and form a line to march away. They came out and drew up in line, the mothers with their babies, the old people helping with the children, and the men carrying some of the smaller ones. As soon as they were well in line, our people let loose with their new guns and killed them all except one little girl, who ran out from the line towards the Christians. A small boy, who had followed his relatives to the Mohammedan village, tripped her and threw his dark cloak over her, and the little girl was wise enough to lie hidden till all was over.
"At another village not far away a similar massacre took place, but there the Christians took the Mohammedans to a cliff, stuck a knife between their shoulders, and dropped them over one at a time."
Apparently the little girl was adopted into her deliverer's family and seemed to be doing very well, but that brief flash of humanity is scarce recompense for the brutality of the massacre that left her orphan.
The story of how the Christians treated their Muslim neighbours can be paralleled by similar treatment meted out to Muslim villagers by their Hindu neighbours during Partition between India and Pakistan or by the Muslims to their Sikh neighbours at the same time. Equally foul treacheries were carried out by atheist Russians, Yugoslavs, Chinese and Koreans, so lack of religion does nothing to moderate man's inhumanity to man.
Perhaps the most important lessons we can learn from a study of history and archaeology are to recognise the taint of Cain in ourselves, and to see the humanity of others, no matter what differences of race or creed may exist between us. The bones we dig up are just as fragile as our own, and the hopes and dreams cut short by death no less precious than the ones we hold.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
