Double, Double, Toil, and Trouble: the Ergonomics of African History1

The longtime-accepted equation of Xian with the Siamese kingdom of Suhkothai having been discarded now … Knowledge and speculation would appear to have been confused.” “Considering the enormous output … of theories concerning the Assyrian kings and their chronology—by far the greater art of which has proved untenable in the light of later discoveries and most of which, as we can see now, might well have been avoided by refraining from premature speculation … As I was growing up—when the automobile was becoming a standard accoutrement—two large car parks were in the downtown area of the city where I lived. These were not street level but were laid out 15 to 25 feet below the streets, and thousands of cubic yards of dirt had been removed to create these. Since then, much reconstruction (“urban renewal”) has occurred in the area, which entailed putting back just about as much dirt as had been removed earlier. Doubtless, each project required an enormous amount of time, labor, and money, yet the end result was a configuration very much like that which had existed before one minute, one bead of sweat, and one dollar had been spent. Some might regard this as simply an accommodation of differing needs for different times, whereas others might wonder how necessary it all had been—why, for instance, was it thought useful to render these car parks subterranean in the first place. Was the dirt needed elsewhere? Or were they make-work public works projects during economic downtimes? In short, what was the point? After all, the car parks were surrounded by imposing concrete walls, ramps were constructed to gain access; even the floors were concrete to neutralize the elements.