I have found a few apparently dissimilar points of
interests to readers of classic Weird Fiction, but I suggest that they converge
with H. P. Lovecraft’s writings. If
nothing else, enjoy the pretty pictures, consider them Props of the Gods.
The Jōmon were a very early human culture, in fact we are
only now in the past few decades realizing how early and how advanced they
were. One of the most durable items a
culture can leave behind are their ceramics and the Jōmon made some spectacular
items that are perplexing to our Eurocentric eyes and conservative
expectations. To say they are alien to
our expectations of Asian art probably isn’t too extreme a statement for the
average reader. I suggest there is an
interesting link between Jōmon artifacts, H. P. Lovecraft and Erich von
Däniken, which I want to explore in this post.
I’ll have more on that later.
Keep in mind that I am not an archeologist, nor a Lovecraft scholar,
just an interested fan, so bear with me if I am both too obscure for some and
yet too obvious to others in the wide range of readers out there. First a little background.
The Jōmon
are one of the oldest (and obscure until recent times) cultures known to us,
starting about 11,000 BCE and lasting for some ten thousand years or more
producing some enticing artifacts, most of which were seldom seen out of
academic circles until the past few of decades. These artifacts were known as far back as the mid 1870s when
American zoologist and naturalist Edward Morse, found
some amazing items from an unknown and early culture in Meiji Era Japan. He christened them “corded-marked” from the
way some of them been decorated prior to firing. This title translated into Jōmon in Japanese and this became the
name of the previously nameless, unknown culture. Eventually his collection of Japanese artifacts went to the Peabody Essex Museum
in Salem MA, where he was director of Archeology and Ethnology from 1880 to
1914 after which in 1915 he became Chairman. It wasn’t just the anthropomorphic figures that were startling,
but their abstract, stylized ritual containers that really draws my
attention. A timeline of the Jōmon can
be found here and
some more information here.
I wonder if Lovecraft ever saw some of Morse’s Jōmon
artifacts at the Peabody Museum on one of his visits to Salem. Lovecraft did name one the of the
explorers, Frank H. Pabodie in his Cthulhu Mythos story, At the
Mountains of Madness (originally written in 1931), in which a fabulous
and very ancient unknown city is found in Antarctica. Could this been a tip of the hat to the Peabody and to Morse? [2]
So today I am showcasing some Jōmon Culture artifacts, which
are the product of a vibrant, very ancient and very real culture, which have
been neglected until the past few decades.
Personally, my first exposure to Jomon Culture artifacts was through a
book popular in the late 1960s, Erich von Däniken’s
book Chariot of the Gods?, published in 1969 in an American translation
and release. The fact that most of the
American public’s first glimpse into creations of the Jomon Culture comes from
this book, so to an extent von Däniken has some association with the common
perceptions around the Jomon Culture and this leads me into my usual cant about
Weird Fiction. Look the photos and see what great props
they would make.
This isn’t a new idea really, a number of authors have
suggested a single very ancient world culture.
For example the Platonic literary reference to Atlantians [1]
and their diaspora (taking their technology with them) were considered the
seeds of civilizations with a number of writers of esoterica over the
years. I’ll leave it to the reader to
Google this stuff out if it is of interest as I only mention it in
passing. The point is that it really
isn’t a new idea in Lovecraft’s time nor in von Däniken’s time either.
While not the first to suggest a single causal influence to
all of human civilization(s), Erich von Däniken was a popular modern author from the late
60s through the 70s and beyond, whose speculative books on alternate views of
human progress are deeply rooted pseudoarcheology and pseudohistory. But he did shake up a number of laymen with
his misattributions of artifacts and fanciful imaginings. Also on the positive side it did get people
to think out of the box. His first
book, Chariot
of the Gods? was a runaway best seller and subsequent books and films
found fertile ground with the public for years. I’d like to think that initially it was all a good-nature prank
that got out of hand.
A film documentary based on the book was made in Germany, Erinnerungen an die Zukunft in 1970, but was later dubbed into English
with a voiceover by Rod
Serling, being released in the US as In Search of Ancient Astronauts in 1973. Most
Americans were introduced to the ancient astronaut idea at this time, making
it pop culture craze. Yes, we had those
before internet memes, even 40 something years ago.
To get back on to the props, von Däniken’s technique for
rendering alien inspired artifacts was to reduce a number of highly diverse,
original cultural items to the level of props for what was in essence a Weird
Fiction/Lost Worlds trope, which is why he is mentioned in this blog entry
today. In some cases there was
complete fabrication of new purpose made props, when existing artifacts simply
wouldn’t fit the bill. It’s rather
clever really and was quite effective in the pre-personal computer era. Now it's possible to do a quick search to verify "facts", even obscure ones. On the downside there's a lot of information to wade through and there's a lot of opinions and "static" to sift. Still a good traditional and private is a good resource.
To get to the nub of the question, there are suggestions that von Daniken’s influence came from
multiple sources, one of which was Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, possibly
borrowing from The Call of Cthulhu and The Mountains of Madness, at least
according to an article in Skeptic Magazine[3] as well as other
sources. No doubt Lovecraft was an
influence on him, but then the long literary influence of Lost Worlds as well
as the Atlantean followings of such groups as Theosophers showing he was
just one of a long line of writers to follow this trail.
Consider now that in story telling, the best prop is a real
item. A real artifact becomes a prop
when it is yanked from context and its time stream and rechristened with a new,
fictional history and context. That
saves time in making a new prop or using Photoshop to make a picture. Now this technique can be misused and abused
when it stops being shown as a prop for a fictional story and is used to lie to
the viewer about the reality of the context.
Writing fun fictional stories for the amusement of readers are one thing
and knowing falsehood is another. I’ll
leave it to the reader worry about connotations and ethics as I’m ready to
press on.
The main problem with von Däniken ’s theory was that he
fell into the same trap as contemporary and earlier academics, whose
presumption was that the ancients were rather dense and could not have pull off
impressive feats of engineering. More
importantly, they had a limited capacity to create complex abstract thoughts
and dreams simply because they fell farther back on the time line. He and others sold humans short. Von Däniken suggests space aliens as a
primary default and driver of human progress, rather than native intelligence,
misrepresenting the often obscure artifacts he showcased. He also suggests that later ruins and
artifacts might be the result of a kind of cargo cult created by
humans longing for recontact. This old
view of linear progression is now challenged by new generations of
archeologists and many believe that ancient man had the same cognitive capacity
for understanding that we have today. You can see how the Victorian lost worlds was useful influence in such writings. 
Now I didn’t post this article
to throw rocks at von Däniken, but to show the impact of earlier writings about
lost worlds from other authors and from specifically H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos
and the importance of the ideas in his essay Notes on
Writing Weird Fiction (written 1933), which explains, “… present
an account of impossible, improbable, or inconceivable phenomena as a
commonplace narrative of objective acts and conventional emotions.
Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and
this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in
every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel.
This marvel must be treated very impressively and deliberately—with a careful
emotional 'build-up' —else it will seem flat and unconvincing.” The "realism" here are from the artifacts presented. There is no emotional build up, just an initial bombshell at the beginning and a roller coaster ride, while being bombarded with questions and supposed facts. It's a powerful tour de force in storytelling really, especially the documentary film. Throwing props at the reader/viewer at a machine gun pace keeps the suspension of disbelief at bay, because it's impossible to process all the items and information. In this case the props which include photos of locations and buildings, are the key for ensuring "realism".
Back to our props presented here in this blog, when seen out of context, the Jomon culture items do seem to be alien. But not alien as in space alien, but in the sense of unknown. I’ve got to say that the Jōmon are pretty amazing and there are new discoveries about mankind’s past that are very exciting.
Archeology is rolling back some of our old misconceptions
about early people. For example new
information from southern Turkey, with the discovery of a fabulous late
Paleolithic temple complex at Göbekli Tepe, is
challenging what be believe about very early cultures. Traditional teaching tells us that there
were no structure building cultures prior to the Neolithic and people were very
primitive and incapable of thinking abstractly. That view may prove to be completely wrong. Lovecraft died long before the discovery of
the temple complex in Turkey, which was found only a couple of decades ago in
1994, but it places some of his and other author’s stories about very ancient
cities in a new light.
Also in 1987, some enigmatic underwater structures off the
coast of Japan, the Yonaguni
Monument in the Ryukyu Islands, which may be Jomon or another culture if
they indeed prove to be man-made.
Neither von Däniken, Lovecraft or Morse knew of their existence. I wonder if more intriguing cultures and
structures will be found.
The Lost World
trope is an old literary genre and many writers have drawn from earlier authors
for inspiration. This doesn’t mean they
stole the idea, just that they made the genre their own by putting their own
spin on the idea. The only difference
between some of them is that one group presented it as fiction and others as
fact. Hopefully this short and somewhat
chaotic romp in the genre of Lost Worlds, nameless cities, ancient astronauts/Chthonian
aliens, and interesting authors has left you with some interest in following the
links and doing a little sleuthing on your own. If nothing else, you have an interesting list of books for you to
read. See you next post.
CoastConFan
Footnotes
[1] Atlantis: TheAntediluvian World (1882) by Ignatius
Donnely, and its sequel Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883) Links to download are below.
[2] Lovecraft had a few ancient nameless cities in his
stories, some of which were … The Nameless City and the city on the
Plateau of Leng, which may be the same one as in The Mountains of Madness,
and a city from Dreamlands Cycle. H.
Rider Haggard’s input was the creation of the Lost Worlds Genre starting in the
late 1880s. See also footnote 1, above
for more lost civilization literature.
Lovecraft was familiar with Mystery
Hill near Salem, NH which is also known as America’s Stonhenge,
but it’s difficult to fit the timeline of his 1929 visit to any of his earlier
stories such as The Dunwich Horror (1928). Not every buys into the scenario though: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-depressingly-fake-mysteries-of-americas-stonehenge Also see links below for Haggard’s
contributions, which can be downloaded.
[3] Jason Colavito’s article, Charioteer
of the Gods -- An investigation into H.P. Lovecraft and the invention of
ancient astronauts” from Skeptic, Issue 10.4 from 2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptic_%28U.S._magazine%29
Links and Downloads
For those interesting reading more about Jōmon ceramics,
download Origins of the Jomon Technical Tradition , a nine page PDF http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/16859/AP-v19n1-107-115.pdf?sequence=1
Download the Catalogue of the Morse Collection of
Japanese Pottery (1901) at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Morse Collection,
PDF 680 pgs https://archive.org/details/catalogueofmorse00bostrich and
https://ia801407.us.archive.org/31/items/catalogueofmorse00bostrich/catalogueofmorse00bostrich_bw.pdf
Bad Archeology’s article, Erich von Däniken’s Space-Gods http://www.badarchaeology.com/extraterrestrials/erich-von-dnikens-spaceman-gods/
See the book Crash Go the Chariots (1976) by Clifford
Wilson, an interesting person in his own rights, being a Young-Earth proponent
himself, but that is another story.
Article Charioteer of the Gods -- http://jcolavito.tripod.com/lostcivilizations/id26.html
A Lovecraft bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft_bibliography
Lovecraft’s essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/nwwf.aspx
Download Atlantis, The Antediluvian World (1882)
by Donnelly http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4032 and the sequel Ragnarok, The
Age of Fire and Gravel (1883) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5109
A biography of Ingnatius L. Donnelly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_L._Donnelly
Text © William Murphy aka CoastConFan 2015; you may link if you wish,
quote if you like, but give me a little credit, it took time to research and
write this article. Photos and art are property
of their respective owners.
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