Broken legs

 I came across an interesting story in Forbes magazine the other day that may provide some important context for the issues of the day.  Apparently, several years ago, the American anthropologist, Margaret Mead was asked by one of her students, "What is the first sign of civilization?"  It's really an interesting question when you think about it.  I can imagine that Dr. Mead would have said something like tools, clay pottery, or even some rudimentary form of writing.  Nope.  She said that the first sign of civilization was a 15,000 year-old fractured human femur found at an archaeological site.

What does a broken leg (the femur, or thigh bone, is the longest bone in the human body) have to do with civilization?  Well, in this case, the femur revealed a healed fracture.  As Dr. Mead explained it, if an animal breaks its leg, it usually dies.  Animals with broken legs can't run away from predators.  They can't even move to find water to drink or food to eat.  If the animal happens to be part of a social group (like a herd), it is often left behind to die.  The same would have been true for early humans prior to the dawn of civilization.  The fact that the leg bone revealed a healed fracture suggests that someone stopped to help this early human.  Rather than leaving the human behind to die, someone actually took care of the human until his or her broken leg had healed.

In other words, caring for our fellow humans was considered by a leading anthropologist to be the earliest sign of civilization, that point in our history when we moved from being just another member of the animal kingdom to perhaps the essence of what makes us truly human.  We became humans when we showed empathy, when we cared for each other, and we took time to help each other.  

I look at what is happening in our world today, and I can't help but wonder whether we've lost something along the way.  The Austrian physician Alfred Adler said, "Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another."  We seemed to have lost some of that empathy, and perhaps as a result we have lost some degree of our civilization.

Incidentally, Dr. Margaret Mead was awarded the President Medal of Freedom (posthumously) by President Jimmy Carter on January 19, 1979.  Her citation read, in part, as follows:

Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn.

Perhaps we can learn something from Dr. Mead today.