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THE ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY OF OROMO PRE-HISTORIC ROCK ARTS VERSUS THE “LOST CIVILIZATION” NOISE IN ABYSSINIANIST HISTORIOGRAPHY Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD) 1 College of Social Science and Humanities Haramaya University, Ethiopia Email:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Abyssinianist historiography is notorious not only for its hypostatization, anachronism and de- Africanization of everything that is of Ancient Black African civilization but also that it leaves no stone unturned to counterfeite, misappropriate, dismantle our social epistemology and make it so difficult for us to trace our (pre)history. For the old Solomonic Ethiopia and “lost Ge’ezites” narrative is no more palatable to a new generation of Ethiopians, another mystification has recently been brewing dancing around the hitherto low profile “lost” communities like “Harla”. This ‘community’ is always ascribed the ethno-/social-archeological finds of Eastern Ethiopia of Hararqee/Hararghe, where numerous pre-historic rock arts and material cultures are found, though they are rare objects of evolutionary multi-disciplinary research. The interjection is to mystify the socio-cultural srcin and significance of these resources and, this alienating epistemology has quite successfully excluded the autochthonous Cushites. It has preempted any question as to why can’t they be possible agents or their traditions can’t be (potential) analytical devices for understanding the mechanism that generated or the meaning and significance that underlie these arts. As a result, evolutionary social sciences might have missed golden opportunities, given the geo-historical importance of this area in natural history and the Cushites in the history of world’s civilization. Thus, this study intended to inquire into the social semiotical structures underlying beneath the signs and styles of the ‘pre’-historic rock arts of the area by using the ancient Qaallu-Gada Institution of the Oromo as a general analytical device. Field, archival and artefactual data was collected and analyzed qualitatively by adopting multi-theoretical and cross-disciplinary approaches to social semiosis and (pre-)historic rock-arts. Results showed that the the “lost” civilization noise is a systematic distortion of truth to outsource or misappropriate a real history of Oromo-Cush peoples. The Oromo social epistemological technique that uniquely systematizes the semiotic-rhetorical structures offers substantive and methodological insights. This technique combines one at a time, into a single communicative structure, complex features of social semiotical-rhetorical structures, namely, homophonic, homosemic, homosememic, homomorphic, homologic and imagistic/symbological, all resonating with the regularities in Qaallu-Gada Institutional systems. It is a system that regularizes social structure down unto grammatological structure and, viceversa, the latter upwards to the former. Keywords: ethnoarchaeology, Oromo, Cushite, pre-history, rock arts, lost civilization, Abyssinia, Ethiopia, historiography BACKGROUND Abyssinianism or an Abyssinianist is a fluid term difficult to succinctly define. Anyway, Abyssinianists are two interrelated groups who, on the one hand, claim “South Arabic” (some claim the far north “Mesopoamia” and “Babylonia”) srcin of Ethiosemitic people with their Ge’ez language that got “extinct” and/or “evolved” into Abyssinian languages, mainly Amhari a and 1 ©Dereje Tadesse Birbirso. Anyone can use this with due acknowledgement. Originally Presented on Annual Research Review Workshop, Haramaya University, September, 2013. The author would like to thank Haramaya University for partly funding the project “An Analysis of the Ancient Rock Paintings of Laga Oda and Goda A awa, Eastern Hararqé” by Birbirso, T. Dereje and Gashaye, G. Zelalem, 2012-2013, from which this paper grew. 1 Tigri a and, on the other hand, those who claim the “re-establishment” (some prefer “establishment”) in the 13 th century of the kingdom of the Biblical Solomonic Dynasty that evolved into “the” nation of Abyssinia (called Habasha or Habesh in Ethiopian languages 2 ) of Amhara and Tigire until around 1900, after which it, again, evolved to the present day Ethiopia, which herself is still a “State at the Crossroads” (Lata, 1999). Both groups jointly and equally preach us that the Classical Axumite civilization and the contemporary Ethiopian “civilization” have been but due to that super-race (known by various evolving names such as Sabaean, Agazean, etc.) that cruised over the Red Sea and settled among the “inferior” Black Africans, themselves being Non-Blacks (Hable-Sellassie, 1972; Jones & Monroe, 1955; Ullendorff, 1960; Marcus, 1994). Rooted deep in this ideology, Abyssinian historiography is notorious for anachronism, phantasm and de-Africanization of everything that is of ancient and Black African civilization. One critical scholar treated this dyslexic historiography in his article “The Ethiopia Metaphor: A Dialectic Myth of Africa” wherein he wondered if at all “the vast body of Western or European or early white colonial writing on Africa” or if at all the so-called Classical writers, if we should believe there were any befor 1800, understood “the Ethiopia metaphor, the dialectic myth of two [sic] kinds of Ethiopia”, the so-called Abyssinia, “what was taken to be the ‘real’ Ethiopia”, and the rest of Black Africa (van Wyk Smith, 1999: 15). With the decolonization of Africa (politically and ideologically) and advent of post-colonial or post-modern era with globalizing and reflexivity thoughts, the old dogmatic piles of fake texts that were produced by racist ‘scholars’ of colonial Europe went bankrupt. That mythical drama designed Abyssinia/Ethiopia as the poster child for sucking up to colonial era Europe, presented her as bastard size to Black Africa or bastard child of the fabulous Solomon of the Lion of Judea who prostituted a female character known by various names, lived at various geographies, turned various colors like a chameleon, at various historical junctions (well summarized by Gebreab, 2013: 301-305). To a considerable size of new generation of Ethiopian youths and (some) leaders, this dyslexic legend became so unpalatable and waned off, unfortunately, nevertheless, after gnawing off the minds of two/three generations of Northern Ethiopians. The repercussion, however, is still going on leaving millions of Ethiopian youngsters and politicians in geo-historical disorientations (locational-nationality disorientation, inferiority complex, social-psychological anomie, identity 2 The Oromo name for Abyssinia is ‘ Sidaama’ from srcinal Se i ap’a the opposite/opponent of Se i Nama ‘sons of man’ i.e., the Oromo-Cush. 2 crisis, sycophancy to Eurocentrism/Orientalism, transplantation of abroad solutions to to every local systemic problems) and above all loss of what the great sociologist Anthony Giddens (Giddens, 1984) says “ontological security”, roughly meaning a sense of trust in durability of life, living and the daily activities of social life. These pathologies can easily be observed in the terribly discourteous daily chats—racist, ethnocintric, blasphemous insults and counter-insults among the Amhara versus the Tigre versus the Oromo groups or the Christian versus the Muslims, but less or no debates over social issues or political ideologies--over the Facebook and Bloggers’ websites or the frequent hazardous attempts to flee the country crossing boarders and seas, usually ending up in appalling miseries and number of deaths. If anyone is interested in direct, but critical, observation of these Ethiopic pathologies, it suffices to make visits to Ethiopian higher institutions and observe student behaviors while reading Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. To quote a few applicable lines from his work: In alienated societies, men oscillate between ingenuous optimism and hopelessness. Incapable of autonomous projects, they seek to tr ansplant from other cultures solutions to their pr oblems. But since these borrowed solutions are neither generated by a cr itical analysis of the context itself , nor adequately adapted to the context, they pr ove inoperative and unfruitf ul. Finally [they] give in to disheartenment and feelings of inf er ior ity (Freire, 2005: 10). A fundamental causative of this Ethiopic phenomenon is the incessant Indo-Semitic and Abyssinianist ‘scholarships’ of de-Africanization of Ethiopia or de-Ethiopianization of Ethiopians. Professor Ephraim Isaac, a professor of Semitic at Harvard University, recently wrote an important online short essay in which he regretted: ‘Unfortunately, not on account of their own fault, our young people are not up to date on the study of ancient languages and ancient world history, particularly their own. On the contrary, some half-baked foreign experts of Ethiopia and political philosophy condition them’ (Isaac, 2013). As if that half-baked Abyssinianist historiography was not enough, a formerly low profile discourse is now growing into another form of grand narrative only awaiting few decades before it is fully built into a recuperating Ethiopia (since 1990s), a shattered autocratic-Stalinist empire at the embryonic stage of another phase of nation-building process after unsuccessful one hundred or so years. The discourse figures in histories of “lost” civilizations/languages at the heart of Ethiopia, in contrast to the former delimitation to Abyssinian (Northern Ethiopian) “lost” Ge’ezites, Axumites, Zagwe, etc., ‘civilizations’. One notable Southern Ethiopian “lost” ones are the so-called ancient/medieval (?) “Harla” (besides the so-called “Argoba”, “Efat”, “Gafat”, 3 etc.), allegedly located in Eastern Ethiopia, specifically in the vast land of Hararqee 3 which covered the entire Rift Valley from Central Ethiopia to the boarder of the ‘Greater’ Somalia before 1970s. This enigmatic community in focus is since the second half of 20 th century is designated by the form “Harla” (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975; Braukämper, 1998 4 ) but known in earlier literature by “Arla” (Azais & Chambard, 1925). It is usually associated with the pre-historic (and medieval) Hararqee vast land abounded with numerous pre-historic social semiotic resources, none of which, nevertheless, has been socio-culturally explained. All the researchers on pre-historic rock arts (i.e., rock paintings, engravings as well as monoliths and stone constructions as significations of social memories) and material cultures of Hararqee unanimously and unqualifiedly ascribe the sociocultural srcin or agentry of their archeological finds to this fabulous community claimed to have been “destroyed by the supernatural powers through natural catastrophes as punishment” (Cervicek & Braukämper, 1975: 49). They automatically exclude the autochthonous Cushitic peoples and preempt any question as to why these native communities’ age-old languages, cultures, social institutions or, in general, social epistemological structures couldn’t be used as (possible) analytical devices for understanding their (the pre-historic rock arts and material cultures) social srcin, meaning, and significance. As a result, evolutionary social sciences might have missed golden opportunity, given the tremendous geo-historical importance of this area in social evolution and early civilization. Dictators, fascists, Nazis and colonial era ‘historians’ have one behavior in common: They speak for somebody and insist on I-know-it-for-you principle instead of making the forum open to anybody without any restriction. No single contemporary real, existing Ethiopian community has 3 Phonology is indispensable in this study. The orthography ‘Hararqee’ is preferred to the usual ‘Hararghe’ or ‘Hararge’ for it conceals that the sign is composite of two free morphemes wherein the second morpheme qee/qa’é (also spelled kee, keé, q ē , qêe ) is hypocoristic-caritive (marked by -e e/ - é ) meaning ‘home, house, dwelling, habitation; ancestral home, birthplace, native land, environ, village; homestead, property, life and living condition’ (Gidada, 2006:100; Viterbo, 1892:89; Foot,1913:35, 82) from the archaic root qa ɣ / k’ã ‘(to have) opportunity, expedient, way, orifice’ (Tutschek,1844: 44, 60). This is a cosmogonal-eschatological concept that coheres the Being/Man, His cosmos/topography and His spirits in the post-death times. Qee appears before or after the element it modifies as a toponym across Oromia (Oromoland, according to the contemporary Ethiopian Federalist structure): Qeemi ş ee/Kamissee, Qeelamii/Qalleemi, Qee ȥ iida/Qa ȥ iidaa, Qeeba Ȧ aa, Qeeball’ee/ Qaball’e, Qeebaee/Qeebbee/Gibee, Qeelatee; Ǘ oorqee, Baaqqee, Qaaqee, Mayyu Mulluqee , etcetera. The other part, ‘Harar’, shall be explicated ahead. 4 Ulrich Braukämper, who produced amazing critical, balanced, scholarly anthropological works on Oromo and Ethiopia after he co-authored Cervicek and Braukämper (1975), really deserves deeper gratitude not just from the present author of this paper, but also from the whole Oromo people and the international community of true scholars dedicating themselves to advancing human knowledge, freedom, love and respect. 4 been found claiming, for themselves, either of the “lost-communities” identities listed above. Only Abyssinianist ‘historians’ claim they interviewed one or two individuals or quote and re-quote one another’s colonial era biased, cooked texts, precluding readers’ rights to intertextuality, or presentations of social history in its cultural, social and political contexts, openly addressing competing or alternative sources, and dialogicality , or presentation of a social historical phenomenon without stereotype and dogmatic conjure-ups (these concepts borrowed from Fairclough, 2003). Their local dictatorial regimes orchestrate the same on media that they alone absolutely control, absenting every alternative, private, free or dissent media. Thus , how can any logical mind consider their works as a plausible, authentic historiography or trustworthy, credible data? Subsequently, here are more intriguing, unanswered questions: Who were the Harla of Hararqee (and beyond)? What social epistemological structures (linguistic, semiotic, rhetorical, cultural, institutional) had they that can help us for advancing human knowledge about social evolution/history? Whose interest does the discourse of Harla serve and how (validly)? How does this discourse conceal the socio-historical srcin and meanings that generated/underlie the pre-historic rock arts of the area? How does it undermine (or advance, if any) the cultural history and identity of the autochthonous peoples? How different/connected are these arts from/to the general cultural-artistic themes, styles or history of Black African peoples? These are some of the generic and fundamental questions which this study intends to explore as a part of the overall project that was born in 2012. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE STUDIES ON ETHIOPIAN ANCIENT ROCK ARTS Abyssinianist historiography associates ‘rock arts’ only to ‘paintings’ and, still, only paintings on or around ‘caves’ or ‘pagan rock tombs’. For Abyssinianist historians, any rock engraving or erected stone slab or megalith or stele does not constitute social semiotic works of human agents. It might only be considered as great works of great men if only if it constitutes a painting or engraving of “Christian” cross or some Biblical seraph. Otherwise, it is kept unreported or reported by systematic distortion. If it is reported at all from the area south of the enigmatic “Christian Abyssinia”, it is only done so as ‘paganish’ work or as works of ‘natural’ causes rather than as project of human ingenuity. Researchers report that, the first reports of some ancient rock sites of Hararqee came initially (around 1840) from the French Missionary scholar Antonio d’Abbadie (Bravo, 2007; Lofrumento et. al., 2011) who lived with, especially, the Wallaggaa Ma čč ’a Oromos, studied and produced 5
