Survival During Turmoil
This semester I've been teaching an Ancient Civilizations class for college freshmen—that's how it's listed in the course catalog: Ancient Civilization. But that's not how I've personally been referring to the class.
I've been calling it Ancestral Civilizations and stressing at every turn that, while these civilizations no longer exist, they are not entirely gone. To call them dead or extinct or lost negates the fact that through every time of turmoil and collapse, people have lived.
People lived through the Bronze Age Collapse or the fall of the Mayan Empire or the dissolution of a Chinese dynasty. They got up in the morning and combed their hair and tended their crops and nurtured their children. They were uncertain then just as we are now, and nevertheless, they persisted. So will we.
The archaeological record is full of evidence of that day to day persistence, just like it will be full of ours. Everything you do is important—every moment of joy you snatch or quotidian defiance matters. Your life and your history matters.
Talk to your friends and loved ones. Make something. Come up with plans for the future. Keep living during tumultuous times. Persist.
