Tag: Carveth Wells

In 1912, British engineer, adventurer, travel-writer and later, television show host Carveth Wells arrived in Pulau Pinang to do a survey for the construction of railroads and roads in the Malay Peninsula. After arriving in Prai, he saw several salt-water crocodiles on the shore. In his book Six Years in the Malay Jungle he mentioned how the locals believe that when a crocodile leaves the sea and enters the mangrove swamp, it turns into a wild dog.

That may seem absurd to us all now but that and other theories of spontaneous generation, such as dirty rags kept in closets will turn into rats, were popularly accepted for two millenia. It was people like Pasteur and others who provided new scientific evidence to disprove of those absurd theories.

CHALLENGING ESTABLISHED BELIEFS

Just as how those in my generation were told that Malaya was colonised by Britain and that Melaka was established in 1400, through new evidences obtained by the release of classified documents, we know now that we were never a colony of Britain and that Melaka was founded circa 1262.

New evidences can shake the core of our historical beliefs. There were so many things that we did not know about our “independence,” and we believed everything the school text books had told us. In the end we knew that the Federation of Malaya Agreement, 1957 was all about the transfer of executive powers back to the Malay Rulers, and then to be delegated to a cabinet of ministers chosen from the various elected representatives, who then replace the British officers to serve the Rulers and their subjects. Merdeka was just a political cry to rally the voters of Malaya to support the Alliance rather than the Independence of Malaya Party who first used ‘Merdeka‘ as its election slogan.

What the above had done was to change the whole perception of the formation of this nation. Then it answers the rude claim by a certain politician in 2011 that the policemen who died in the Bukit Kepong tragedy in were ‘British Dogs.’

SHAKING THE CORE

The late Tony Horwitz who authored the non-fiction book ‘Confederates in the Attic,’ a book addressing the American Civil War, was very thorough in his research and was considered to be one of the authorities of the subject. He visited virtually all the major battle sites.

One day he met anthropologist Paul Hawke at a major battle site in Shiloh, Tennessee and the latter shook his belief. Hawke explained that previous interpretations of the battle of Shiloh did not include one major artefact – the ground itself. The interpretations were made based on first hand accounts: accounts of Civil War veterans who gathered at the site in the past.

And as the New York Public Library narrated, the loudest, most influential, and most repetitive veterans—and the ones with the most to gain—spoke with writers and journalists and their accounts were taken as the true accounts of the event, and passed on to future generations in newspaper accounts and diaries.

But Hawke found that first hand accounts and reports did not match the written histories. After the battle of Shiloh, General Ulysses Grant ordered that the dead be buried on the line—meaning where they fell. As an anthropologist, Hawke went and looked for the burial ground and found that they did not align with generally accepted history.

The same treatment must be applied to the findings at Sungai Batu. If previous samples dated in 2009 were found to have originated from 788 BCE, yet later with more advanced and sophisticated technology found that they existed only a millenium later, the latter has to be accepted. Historical interpretations are not cast in stone. The latest findings would have to be peer-reviewed by others who are authorities in the matter before they can be accepted. And that process is already academic. It has been accepted that the Sungai Batu iron-smelting industry had flourished only after the Common Era.

CHARTING THE PAST FOR OUR FUTURE THROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS

With history evolving, through emerging technologies, new methods, narratives, and influences, what sense do we make of the attempts to tell the truth to others as it is seen through thoughts and biases? This is the question that we must ask ourselves and answer, as more and more evidences will be available to us that will change the narrative that we believe in today.

And it is only up to us as lay persons and academicians, to accept the latest findings with an open mind to bring to the present what has made us what we are today.