So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything
Autor Chip Colwellen Limba Engleză Paperback – 5 oct 2024
Over three million years ago, our ancient ancestors realized that rocks could be broken into sharp-edged objects for slicing meat, making the first knives. This discovery resulted in a good meal and eventually changed the fate of our species and our planet.
With So Much Stuff, archaeologist Chip Colwell sets out to investigate why humankind went from self-sufficient primates to nonstop shoppers, from needing nothing to needing everything. Along the way, he uncovers spectacular and strange points around the world—an Italian cave with the world’s first known painted art, a Hong Kong skyscraper where a priestess channels the gods, and a mountain of trash that rivals the Statue of Liberty. Through these examples, Colwell shows how humanity took three leaps that led to stuff becoming inseparable from our lives, inspiring a love affair with things that may lead to our downfall. Now, as landfills brim and oceans drown in trash, Colwell issues a timely call to reevaluate our relationship with the things that both created and threaten to undo our overstuffed planet.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780226836638
ISBN-10: 0226836630
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 60 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.49 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10: 0226836630
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 60 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.49 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Notă biografică
Chip Colwell is an archaeologist, former museum curator, and editor-in-chief of SAPIENS, a digital magazine about anthropological thinking and discoveries. He is the author and editor of twelve books, including the award-winning Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Extras
Some years ago, I was visiting family in Seattle when my sister casually asked me a question. A question that, as an archaeologist who makes his career studying the things humans have made and left behind, I felt I should have been able to answer.
“Why do we have so much stuff?” she asked.
My mouth opened to reply, but no words came. I stared awkwardly at my sister.
“I mean, where does it all come from?” she added.
My mind froze because the answer at first seemed so obvious— but also so obviously complex.
I looked around my sister’s place. It was a nice American home. Framed pictures hung on the walls. Matching chairs encircled the dining table. Fat couches squatted next to a wood coffee table planted on a patterned rug slung across the floor. A guitar hung next to the fireplace, surrounded by bookshelves. A flat- screen TV hung on the wall. I could catch a glimpse of the kitchen, which I knew contained a stovetop oven, a sink and dishwasher, and cupboards overflowing with plates, silverware, Tupperware, and canned and fresh food. It was easy to guess all the stuff in the other spaces— the bedrooms, bathrooms, closets. Then I thought about the house itself, made of thousands of nails, bolts, screws, knobs, latches, along with all the metal, stone, wood, and plastics for the roof, walls, plumbing, electricity, and ventilation. Outside was patio furniture, tools for yardwork, the family cars, a boat, and a storage unit stuffed with more furniture, photo albums, and family heirlooms.
In that moment, as I sat there stumped, I was surrounded by perhaps 300,000 things— according to an especially enthusiastic estimate of the average American home.
I knew why my sister had so much stuff. Some things were inherited. A few things were gifted. Most of it had been purchased, made in distant factories in China, Cambodia, and India. The simple answer was that she had so much stuff because she is an American consumer with enough resources and space to keep packing more and more stuff into her life.
Even as I began to offer this reply, I knew that my sister’s question pointed to a deeper one about how humans have arrived at this moment. My sister’s place— and my place, and likely yours too, whether in Swansea or Shanghai or Seattle— are spectacularly strange phenomena. In our planet’s 4.5- billion- year history, no other organism has invented such a unique relationship with things. In some ways, our species Homo sapiens is only a single iteration on a long evolutionary trend. The seeds of toolmaking are deeply buried in humanity’s animal instincts. A dizzying array of creatures use the world’s raw materials to survive. Octopuses off Indonesia turn broken coconut shells into homes. Elephants use branches to swat flies. Tuskfish swimming along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef break apart clams using anvil stones. Crows, beavers, orangutans— the list goes on— all use tools.
And yet, while toolmaking is not unique to humans, humans have done something fantastically unique with the things they make. Humans make things to survive— houses and clothing— but we also make things because they give us pleasure, power, and pride. We make churches to worship God. We make art to express beauty. We make exuberantly expensive purses to display wealth. And we are constantly inventing ever more stuff. That is unique. After all, elephants make flyswatters. They don’t make nuclear missiles and whoopie cushions and Italian villas.
What my sister was really asking was this: How did humans come to make the things that make us human? How did Homo sapiens also become Homo stuffensis, a stuffed species, defined and made by our things?
“Why do we have so much stuff?” she asked.
My mouth opened to reply, but no words came. I stared awkwardly at my sister.
“I mean, where does it all come from?” she added.
My mind froze because the answer at first seemed so obvious— but also so obviously complex.
I looked around my sister’s place. It was a nice American home. Framed pictures hung on the walls. Matching chairs encircled the dining table. Fat couches squatted next to a wood coffee table planted on a patterned rug slung across the floor. A guitar hung next to the fireplace, surrounded by bookshelves. A flat- screen TV hung on the wall. I could catch a glimpse of the kitchen, which I knew contained a stovetop oven, a sink and dishwasher, and cupboards overflowing with plates, silverware, Tupperware, and canned and fresh food. It was easy to guess all the stuff in the other spaces— the bedrooms, bathrooms, closets. Then I thought about the house itself, made of thousands of nails, bolts, screws, knobs, latches, along with all the metal, stone, wood, and plastics for the roof, walls, plumbing, electricity, and ventilation. Outside was patio furniture, tools for yardwork, the family cars, a boat, and a storage unit stuffed with more furniture, photo albums, and family heirlooms.
In that moment, as I sat there stumped, I was surrounded by perhaps 300,000 things— according to an especially enthusiastic estimate of the average American home.
I knew why my sister had so much stuff. Some things were inherited. A few things were gifted. Most of it had been purchased, made in distant factories in China, Cambodia, and India. The simple answer was that she had so much stuff because she is an American consumer with enough resources and space to keep packing more and more stuff into her life.
Even as I began to offer this reply, I knew that my sister’s question pointed to a deeper one about how humans have arrived at this moment. My sister’s place— and my place, and likely yours too, whether in Swansea or Shanghai or Seattle— are spectacularly strange phenomena. In our planet’s 4.5- billion- year history, no other organism has invented such a unique relationship with things. In some ways, our species Homo sapiens is only a single iteration on a long evolutionary trend. The seeds of toolmaking are deeply buried in humanity’s animal instincts. A dizzying array of creatures use the world’s raw materials to survive. Octopuses off Indonesia turn broken coconut shells into homes. Elephants use branches to swat flies. Tuskfish swimming along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef break apart clams using anvil stones. Crows, beavers, orangutans— the list goes on— all use tools.
And yet, while toolmaking is not unique to humans, humans have done something fantastically unique with the things they make. Humans make things to survive— houses and clothing— but we also make things because they give us pleasure, power, and pride. We make churches to worship God. We make art to express beauty. We make exuberantly expensive purses to display wealth. And we are constantly inventing ever more stuff. That is unique. After all, elephants make flyswatters. They don’t make nuclear missiles and whoopie cushions and Italian villas.
What my sister was really asking was this: How did humans come to make the things that make us human? How did Homo sapiens also become Homo stuffensis, a stuffed species, defined and made by our things?
Cuprins
On the Origin of Things: An Introduction
Leap 1: Make Tools
1. First Things First
2. The Matter at Hand
3. Everything under the Sun
Leap 2: Make Meaning
4. A Thing of Beauty
5. Articles of Faith
6. Dress Coded
Leap 3: Make More
7. In the Thick of Things
8. A Material World
9. Too Much of a Good Thing
On the Future of Things: A Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Key Terms and Concepts
Notes
References
Image Credits
Index
Leap 1: Make Tools
1. First Things First
2. The Matter at Hand
3. Everything under the Sun
Leap 2: Make Meaning
4. A Thing of Beauty
5. Articles of Faith
6. Dress Coded
Leap 3: Make More
7. In the Thick of Things
8. A Material World
9. Too Much of a Good Thing
On the Future of Things: A Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Key Terms and Concepts
Notes
References
Image Credits
Index
Recenzii
"Colwell, too, argues that it’s time to rethink our ties to the material world. But Colwell is an archeologist, and, as such, he takes a longer view. In So Much Stuff, he seeks to explain how Homo sapiens went from knapping chert to ordering granite countertops. What happened, he asks, 'that led our species from having nothing to needing everything?' . . . The industrialized world was built out of mountains of sand, iron, and copper, and it cannot operate without vast quantities of these or other materials. Colwell traces the problem back even further. Our special talent as a species is our ability to refashion raw materials—first rocks into tools, then, eventually, quartz into integrated circuits. We are, he suggests, Homo stuffensis, a creature 'defined and made by our things.' We should change our ways—we must change our ways—but this long history is against us."
"The book ends on one of its strongest points: the honest, personal account of Colwell’s attempt to streamline his material life and get rid of things and how the system of things we live in defeated it. This account does not solve the dilemma the book poses, but it highlights it in ways that will resonate with most readers. Ultimately, So Much Stuff provides an engrossing introduction for nonexperts into the big questions of material culture studies."
"In So Much Stuff, Colwell takes readers from that genesis in eastern Africa to Hong Kong, New Zealand, Europe and, excitingly, to Denver’s dump. It’s probably no surprise that he found stuff everywhere he went."
"After Colwell’s engaging account of scattered developments over huge stretches of time, much of it drawing on archaeological finds, the third panel in his triptych covers much more familiar territory—the world as reshaped by capitalism and industrial production, with everything that happens doing so at a manic pace. . . . It’s an engaging book, and the photographs of artifacts are occasionally stunning. . . . Colwell makes an observation that may prove as memorable as Carlin’s monologue: he defines hoarding as 'an animal instinct that is often veiled in humans by what some consume and insist on keeping and what others consume'—and then store in a landfill."
"Since this is the season for accumulating and giving so much new stuff, this is the perfect read. Archeologist Colwell does an entertaining and expansive dive into how humans evolved into diehard consumers (hint: that transformation began almost three million years ago)."
"Chip Colwell presents us with a history of humanity’s ever-growing desire for possessions, together with the looming catastrophic results."
“Humans have too much stuff, and it is breaking the planet. Colwell brilliantly relates how and why we got here. Weaving an engaging, and fun, narrative through deep history and across societies, he describes our intense relations to the stuff we make, dream about, and accumulate. And most importantly, he offers us a path to more just, equitable, and sustainable lives with our stuff (and each other).”
“In this engaging and personal exploration into the world of things, Colwell reveals the very stuff that makes us human. Eminently readable, So Much Stuff takes us on a journey around the world, examining everything from stone tools to fast fashion, and asks how we became attached to so many things and whether we’ll ever be able to survive without them.”
“Colwell gives us a fascinating, beautifully written, and provocative history of how humans acquire possessions, or, as he describes it, ‘stuff.’ His journey takes us from human origins to today, with a glance at the future, where, he says ‘our story with stuff goes on.’ This is a notable, and at times humorous, essay on the excesses of consumerism since prehistoric times, of relevance to all of us, rich or poor.”