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irak special
strong traditions, but all over the place, people
who are in charge of money think, “Well, do
we really need this? Is it of any use?”
I believe in being assertive in saying why
it’s important. There are lots of really good
reasons, and one involves politicians. It’s very
common for them to think, when they look
back on what they know about the history of
the world, that they in themselves represent
the highest achievement of humankind
because they are the leaders.
The fact is that the human race has not
evolved at all in any way which is noticeable or
important. The corollary of that is that human
beings have been making the same mistakes
over and over. If you consider what’s happened
since the beginning of writing, what with
nations with tyrants and judicious religious
open the Olympics with the blazing torches, leaders as well as corrupt ones, it’s the same all
we should have some young person running the way through. It is an unchanging disaster
around the museum all the time, passing the because people are not living by intelligence
torches round and round and round. but sex drive, greed, commerce, violence, all
those things.
So, you think there should be some
international movement? It’s amazing to me that the world does work at
I would think so. All the directors of those all when people are so uncivilized. It’s really
museums should know that they’re holding extraordinary that murder doesn’t happen
hands, linking arms, and if someone’s rude every five minutes. I have a kind of naive idea
about St. Petersburg, well, just a minute, and that if teachers, clergymen and other such
then the other museums will come down on people had a really good grasp of what we
the offender. can see humans have done since they arrived,
they’d be a bit more modest about being
What about recruitment to your field? dogmatic.
It’s not good because of the disasters of how
museums are treated. This country has been Before Homo sapiens, there were the
financially undermined. People in Britain say Neanderthals. I don’t know how many
that science is of prime importance and the hundreds of thousands of years they lived
arts generally aren’t. By arts I mean theaters, in Europe before Homo sapiens turned up.
cinema, painting and all that. “We do not The thing about them is they were physically
really need that, and it’s not so important.” slight in build compared to us but their brain
Museum departments, which are in the arts capacity was slightly larger. They survived ice
suffer badly. They don’t teach Latin and Greek ages and ate mammoths, and they obviously
very much anymore, which used to be the had a language and they married their sisters
staple of proper education. and bred, and they were healthy and strong
individuals and they buried their dead.
Several of the departments where Assyriology,
cuneiform used to be taught don’t do it But the interesting thing is that for about
anymore. So, it’s shrinking. There are countries, 600,000 years they were here then homo
Holland, Germany, America and France and sapiens arrived and very soon afterwards they
other places, where there are or have been disappeared.
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I have an idea that this was the first example “The Babylonians believed in ghosts,
of “normal” practice. Homo sapiens arrives
in Europe. What do they do? They kill all and they produced a huge amount of
the blokes and marry the women. They’re writing about them, how to get rid of
probably dark looking, hairy and all sorts of
things like that. them, what they looked like, what it
meant when they were there, how to
You know people all over Britain are looking
into their DNA to find out about their roots. exorcise them, how to bring them up
The fact is that DNA contains a good amount from the dead.”
of stuff from the Neanderthals, and when it
was first published people gave the impression
that a couple of Neanderthal girls got a bit
drunk at the party and ended up with an Mesopotamia; it’s called The First Ghosts.
unwanted pregnancy and that’s how we have it The Babylonians believed in ghosts, and they
in our genetic pool. But of course, it isn’t. They produced a huge amount of writing about
must have murdered the men, all of them, and them, how to get rid of them, what they looked
married the women. And that explains why like, what it meant when they were there, how
it’s still such a strong trait. The whites come, to exorcise them, how to bring them up from
they like the land, they kill off the indigenous the dead.
people, marry their women. So, in the very
first stage of history, we have this happen Before that, I wrote a book called The Ark Before
like the Americans with the Indians and the Noah, which was based upon a cuneiform
Australians with the Aboriginals. tablet which came to light from a visited
museum. It was part of the flood story which
Things like racial prejudice are there from the we had already known about in Mesopotamia
beginning of the species. It seems endemic since the 19th century. This was a tablet which
to the human race to be religious – and to be was written in about 1800 B.C., and it was the
racially prejudiced against the other. So, it’s moment when the gods told a human being to
very difficult to expect racism to disappear. I build an ark because the floods will come. So,
think we should take history and archaeology he did and put all the animals in it, and that’s
and writing as a kind of tapestry: the more the story behind Noah in the Bible, but it was a
you know of the stitching, the more you thousand years older.
understand why we’re in such a mess.
So, it’s real?
Apart from YouTube do you have other Real I don’t know, but in ancient Iraq, they had
channels that people can watch? this flood story with a boat that rescued life at
The thing about the British Museum and least a thousand years before the one in the
YouTube is that they get people who know about Bible because the Euphrates and Tigris rivers
their own subject, and who are enthusiastic which bring all the water there sometimes
about it, and then they do videos and post flood. There must have been a very serious
them on YouTube. There’s someone who does flood. When the Judeans after the destruction
clocks and watches, some good things about of Jerusalem were taken to Babylon under
ancient Egypt, about the Romans etc. Several Nebuchadnezzar, they heard this story. In
of the curators do videos but some won’t. It’s the construction of the Genesis book, they
a widespread thing, and it’s a very beneficial decided to take the narrative as a teaching
matter. I’m all in favor of it. structure in the Hebrew text which then went
into Greek and Latin and Christianity. So,
I just heard that you said you have written what is so extraordinary is that the god who
a book, a new book. Could you tell us more has this information gave the size of the boat,
about it? the shape of it and all the materials you need
I wrote a book about the ghosts of ancient to make it.
Ramos Horta
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