Kathy Petras - A History of the World Through Body Parts: The Stories Behind the Organs, Appendages, Digits, and the Like Attached to (or Detached from) Famous Bodies

TABLE OF CONTENTS KEY

T HE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK came from a famous nose. Specifically that of Cleopatraand more specifically from mathematician Blaise Pascals famous observation about it:

Cleopatras nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.

Pascals nasal focus was philosophical: Cleopatras nose was, in his eyes, trifling in one sense, but hugely important to world history in another, because it captivated Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and through them greatly affected the Wests greatest empire. Pascals speculation has gone on to spawn numerous discussions of contingency theory and how important seemingly minor events such as the size of a nose can be to later events in world history.

But our interest was far more prosaic. Forget the contingencies of later world history, we said. What about that nose? Was Cleopatras famous nose actually that long and captivating? And secondly: If so, how did Pascal know this? And thirdly: Why did it captivate Caesar and Antony? Particularly in our age of ubiquitous rhinoplasty, this seemed, well, a different cultural desideratum. What was the Roman attitude toward noses and why were they such a big thing? Or were they?

We did a little research, and, in so doing, became fascinated by body parts and their role in history in general, and their reflections on the societies in which they existed specifically. In short, we found that one can learn a great deal by focusing, as did Caesar and Antony, allegedly, on an individual body part. And so began our journey into discrete pieces of history (and discrete pieces of bodies). Beginning with Cleopatras nose, we became captivated by more and more historical body partsfrom famous craniums all the way down to infamous feet, from prominent breasts to bygone bowels. Most important, we realized what so many of us miss when reading or thinking about history: the human body. Yet of course we all have one, and so did all of those figures in history. So why do we so frequently ignore the body?

In this book, we look at different body parts in historyspecific famous or infamous body parts of specific historical figures, more general body parts as related to specific cultures and ideas of the timespresented in chronological order, from paleolithic hands to space-age bladders. We also address questions such as, What did the people of the past feel about their bodies? What did they do with them? What part did they play in history? And how can we understand their lives and culture more by looking at their certain telling body parts?

We found that zeroing in on a body part can lead to fresh and often surprising insight into ideology or thought. Through looking at Lenins moldy skin and the mechanics of body preservation, we see Soviet communism more as an extension of medieval religion (and specifically, in Lenins posthumous case, as textbook hagiography) than as a modern political economic system. Through ancient Egyptian ruler Hatshepsuts beard and Vietnamese heroine B Trius breasts, we see the power of the patriarchy and the struggle even the most prominent women faced. In short, smallish body parts give us a biggish picture of the human condition.

Like it or not, we are all embodied beings with all the problems and glories of fleshly, bodily existence. We all have functioning, and sometimes partly or nonfunctioning, body parts, and they play a role in our lives and in our thought. In some cases, they may actually direct our thought, although causation is hard to prove. Would Tamerlane have been as monstrous with two fully functioning legs? We can only speculate. Would the Reformation even have occurred if Martin Luther had fully functioning bowels? We dont know. But we do know that Luther frequently alluded to his chronic constipation and admitted that he thought of his famous 95 theses in the cloaca, Latin for sewer, what is thought to have been Luthers euphemism for toilet.

Indeed, our bodies, as we all know, have their unpleasant or little-talked-about aspects. And that is what makes bodily history so interestingit truly is human , warts, bowels, noses, and all. We can learn much from the historical body, although it has been so overlooked.

By focusing on body parts, weve tried to make history truly human in ways one might not expect and make people from the past come alive. Take Martin Luther and his bowels. Based on our research, we now think that the pained, strained expression he commonly wears in paintings and engravings is suggestive in ways that are perhaps unwarranted but certainly plausible! And certainly and more seriously, each body part we cover is a jumping-off point for a wider look at the times.

(50,00010,000 BCE)

W HAT WAS THE WORLDS FIRST art movement? Think hands. As in hand stenciling, simple outlines of hands usually in either red or black. This was The Happening Art Thing beginning 40,000 or more years ago. Strange prehistoric hand stencils have been found on cliff faces and particularly on walls deep in caves all from Argentina to the Sahara. Theyre probably the first human artworks, the first time humans interacted with the environment to make something other than a utilitarian rock tool. And they were, in effect, a major art movementa hand-art fixation that lasted for tens of thousands of years, which is a lot longer of a creative run than impressionism or pop art. So what are these hands trying to tell us?

Lets first take a trip back in time 28,000 years or so and go deep inside the limestone caves of Gargas in the French Pyrenees mountains, and tag along with some putative cavepeople artists so we can see how it was done (we think). Were with five others, a young woman, a young man, two teens, and a seven-year-old. Back then, deep cave ventures were usually done in multigenerational groups, probably families. After walking barefoot for almost half a mile in mostly darkness and almost total stillness punctuated only by the sound of water dripping from stalactites, and after sometimes ducking through narrow and low corridors with clay floors, we reach a large gallery. Someone lifts up their light source, cleverly made of several resinous pine sticks bundled together which allows decent illumination, and we see 200 hand stencils all outlined in either red or black. It looks something like a weird surrealistic flower garden growing on the cave wall. Roughly half of the hand outlines are macabrely missing parts of fingers as if theyve been chopped off. Now the woman (most handprints are feminine) raises her hand and places it against the cave wall. Then either she or someone else puts some red pigment (either dry, to be mixed with spit or water, or premixed with bear fat) into their mouth, aims a hollow bone tube at the hand, blows, and voil!as their French will say 30,000 years latera hand stencil is formed.