Mexico
In March 2023, I went to Mexico City as a tourist. It was my first visit to my neighboring country (not counting short trips to Tijuana), and I was super impressed with their history and culture. It was in stark contrast to the history I find in the US, which is only from the time the "white fella" arrived, as if this country was virgin uninhabited land with no history or culture before the "fair Christians" came from Europe and tamed it. That is really sad. So much wisdom is being missed out by the US citizens.
In Mexico City, there are many great things to see, the best of the lot that had me mesmerized was their National Museum of Anthropology. The museum has exhibits from the beginning of human existence in their country to the current date. It is an U shaped museum with two floors packed with exhibits and information. I only had half a day to spend there due to our tight schedule and plans for the rest of the day (I was traveling with a friend, I could not just ditch the other plans), so I breezed through the museum. On my next trip, I will visit the museum again and spend a whole day or two, for it was that amazing, and left me with the desire to absorb more.
In brief, this museum was built in 1964, and is located in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. It displays the archeological and ethnographic heritage of the country for Mexicans and foreigners like me. Of particular interest to me in this museum was the aesthetic and technical quality achieved by pre-Hispanic cultures as well as the distinguishing characteristics that helped identify (and differentiate) the indigenous peoples scattered all over the country. These indigenous people, even to this day, produce extraordinary works of folk art which are proudly on display. There are 12 Archeology halls on the lower floor, with Ethnology rooms above. They show the entire evolution of life on earth, from the first creatures living in the sea to the modern human. The collections include maps, village/ town/ city layouts, food crops, burial customs, pottery, metalwork, stone carvings, calendar systems, scripts, trade manifests, folk medicine, etc. Quite a bit of the story is told by huge murals on the walls of the museum, along with the artifacts from the key societies like, Pre-Classic (2500 - 100BC), Teotihuacan (100 BC - 700 AD), Toltec (750 - 1200 AD), Mexica (1300 - 1521 AD), Zapotec and Mixtec of Oaxaca (from before 1000 BC to European conquest), Olmec on the Gulf Coast (1200 - 600 BC), other local cultures from 600 BC to 900 AD up to Huastec culture till 1521. The room dedicated to Maya culture is superb, this culture developed over a period of 1000 BC to 1521 AD, and some of their planned city-states are even active today! The Northern Mexico room covered the enormous arid regions showing how the people there adapted to the harsh surroundings, and also the agricultural achievements of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Paquime/ Casas Grandes. The Western Mexico room had the cultures from 800 BC to 200 AD, including the Capacha and Chupicuaro cultures. Of course, post 1521, after the Spanish colonization, there is a fair bit of history too, which being more recent, has more in depth coverage. The Spanish were there for about 300 years, and Mexico got independence from Spanish in 1821, and then in 1910 they had their internal Mexican Revolution which established the current Mexico state.
Yes, I gathered all this from one 4-hour fast paced visit. Imagine how much I could glean if I spent a whole day or two!!! I am so eager to do that again. I am still fascinated by the fabulous storytelling in that museum and the artifacts in display. I will highly recommend a visit to this museum, and may you take enough time to absorb all the juice there is.
India
As I was walking around this museum with my travel companion, who is also of Indian origin, we couldn't help but keep commenting that we needed a similar museum in India. There is so much to show! Sure, we have a long list of museums in each state, with the Indian Museum in Kolkata and the National Museum in Delhi being purported as the national showcase of Indian history and culture. My companion and I had been to both these museums and to quite a few on the state list. Both of us felt that while the artifacts were probably adequate to begin with, the storytelling and information displays were dismal. We remembered how disappointed we were when we had visited these buildings that were so badly maintained, with dilapidated structure often crumbling, having cobwebs and dirt, unclean and broken showcases, very poorly lit, and had many incorrect signs. We discussed at length why it was so. Several excuses floated up - these museums were not properly funded, work ethics of government employees being poor, lack of good leadership, no training, pervasive general apathy of the Indian citizens, etc. We also tried to reason - Well, Mexico had about 200 years of independence from their colonial overlords, so they had more time to put their history and culture together as an item of national pride. India has not yet had 100 years of "freedom". Indian history, even now, is still worded with a strong colonial era wash that accentuates the cultural, moral, and ideological superiority of the "white fella". But then, the intellectual wealth and the educational savviness of the Indian people is no less than that of the Mexicans. After all, India has been the back office service center for the entire world for several decades now and has built up a substantial roster of skills. There is money. There is the education and ability in house. The only conclusion we were left with was that the pride in "whole history" has not settled in the Indian zeitgeist yet. In some way they are still revolting against the British, yet still using the very same words and practices that they so proclaim to detest.
These days, for a personal project of mine, I find myself "going down the rabbit hole" in reading about ancient India (before 200 BC), in light of newer findings by DNA mapping, remote sensing, ground penetrating radars, etc., used for archeological purposes. My 10th grade history textbooks from 30+years back had framed my ancient world/India view, and now it is getting thoroughly revised. I'm fascinated as I read new research covering that particular period of history. Especially after I found out that they have definitively located the old legendary Saraswati River, the whole of it, from the Himalayas to the delta, which was lost due to climate change?! I remember my grandfather telling me stories from the Puranas, Panchatantra, and the great epics that mention the river, and I had always wondered how a grand river like that can one day just disappear, to remain only in legends and myths. I also learned during my research that modern DNA mapping has found that some tribes in India are more closely related to the aboriginal people in Australia than to the folks in their neighboring city! How cool is that!
I am very happy to find "new" historians starting to bring these discoveries up to the top and are writing pretty good narratives, so the storytelling is getting polished as well. On my last trip to India, I had bought this book called Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography by Sanjeev Sanyal. I really liked reading the way he framed the key events during the era of my current interest - Harrapan/ Indus civilization through Vedic to Maurya age. I am eager to read more. I have borrowed almost all the history books on India that are available in San Diego's Libraries, and am going through them systematically. Some of these books have been written post 1991 (when I last read history!), but most of the information seems to still be from the old texts, not updated with findings from the new research. I remain insatiably curious and will keep reading. I am eagerly awaiting William Dalrymple's new book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. That book will not be available in the US until Summer 2025, which is a shame! How I wish I could lay my hands on it earlier.
Here is my wish for India's Grand National Anthropology Museum. I hope they build one similar to the one in Mexico. I'd like it to be in a new structure, maybe modeled using the principles of Vastu Shastra. I am sure we can find some engaged and enthused architect in India who can make this happen. And like Mexico's museum, I'd like to see rooms covering each era of Indian history from the pre-historic times, through modern times. It is important to showcase the advanced technical prowess and the rich cultural heritage of each era. India gave the world numbers, particularly the ZERO, without which the modern market of dollars and electronic trades would not have happened. We would still have been trying to multiply LCXIV with MLCXV and be utterly confused. (I am joking, of course!) These numbers went from India to the Muslim/ Mediterranean world, and then on to the "white fella" world where these numbers were posited as Arabic numerals. There was sea trade happening in aplomb using the great natural monsoon bellow effect that pushed the sails back and forth in both directions on the Indian Ocean - eastward to Indonesia and westward to the Red Sea ports. This allowed pepper to reach beyond the Indian shores and spice up the rest of the world! So much so that in European conquests, the main exchange of wealth was once in pepper. There is great opportunity for storytelling here. I sure hope some good writers from our grand Bollywood storytelling machine will participate in this effort to shape the narrative such that it excites the visiting public. Let's face it, if we leave the information panels and displays to academics, they will turn out to be monotonous, drab, and boring, and make people run away after the first 10 minutes. That is one of the reasons the current museums are unattended and uninspiring. The curators of these museums are very good researchers maybe, they are definitely not good storytellers. India has the skills and technical ability to do very innovative displays, maybe use 3D immersive visualization and narration to excite the audience. The government has the money to make this happen. And why just the government, some of the richest people on earth are of Indian heritage. (Don't look at me, I am not rich by any measure.) Can't they set up a fund to do this work? Well, a girl can hope!!
United States of America
As for my adopted country, the great United States of America, "the land of the free and the home of the brave", I would like to see a grand museum of anthropology here too. I did not grow up here, so I did not go to K-12 school here, neither did I have kids through whom I could see and understand the history and culture curriculum. I have, however, interviewed many of my US-born friends on this topic. I have unfortunately found that their knowledge of US history, if at all, starts from the early 1600s, when the colonial era was being established in the US. So, from the first peoples arriving in 15,000 BC to about 1600AD, that is over FIFTEEN THOUSAND years of history not taught to nor appreciated by the American Youth. I find this unspeakably sad. When huge civilizations were being established all over the world, and it is well known that there was active trade and transfer of ideas, I am sure there was development here in the US landmass too and exchange of ideas was happening as well. Yes, way before a very disoriented Columbus thought that this continent was India! Unfortunately, there is no concerted effort among US historians and government to find that information and then share it with the world. Mexico has gone back and found their pre-historic and pre-columbian history and proudly display those riches. They are not even as wealthy as the US! One often wonders why the "common man" here has such a severe "island mentality", and has a particular distrust, even disgust, for anyone with a different skin color or culture. I posit that if the US K-12 curriculum stressed EQUALLY on the pre-1600AD history and post 1600AD history, the citizens of this country will grow to be a tad bit more appreciative of views of other people and not be so self-centered. Much of the pains of division and strife that we see in the political sphere today can be mitigated to a large extent when the education is in line with a whole-earth mentality and not constantly reinforcing the island mentality. I am asking for the TONE of education to change, along with the content.
From the beginning of time, as soon as the human-being was able to walk, they started establishing settlements, and then civilizations along the great river systems of the world. For example, just to name a few - Nile, Zambezi, Niger, Congo in Africa; Danube, Rhine in Europe; Volga, Yangtze, Mekong, Irrawaddy, Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra in Asia; Amazon in South America; Murray, Darling in Australia, even the Rio Grande in Mexico - they all have some history of settlements and stories that go back to ancient times. The Tigris-Euphrates river system in West Asia supported the great Mesopotamian civilization, which was purported as one of the oldest civilizations, but now, with the advent of advanced technologies applied to archeology, there are a few others vying for "The Oldest Civilization" title. I often wonder why Mississippi and Missouri, two of the world's largest rivers do not have ANY recorded civilizations. How can that be? It seems improbable. Most folks I have talked to here (no, not academics in anthropology) either confessed ignorance or dismissed the pre-1600AD indigenous peoples of this land as heathen uncivilized hunter-gatherers of no consequence in the history of the world. Such a characterization reeks of the colonial/class discriminatory mindset, and is shameful. I sincerely hope and wish that the people with the power to change education in this country will put some effort in revising the history and culture curriculum. And then a grand museum of anthropology on the National Mall in DC would be really awesome - one that tells the story from the beginning of time to this day, giving equal weightage to every wave of change in the human history and culture here on this continent. I am sorry, the National Museum of American History is not adequate. Neither are the collections at the National Museum of Natural History. A lot more effort is needed. While this country prides itself with the label "melting pot", the underlying ethos is still very much equal but separate. And this applies to not just white and black skin colors, but also the various shades of brown and yellow. Sure, there are anthropology museums in the country, but most of them are in universities and cater to limited number of people who study there or visit those campuses. The "common man" does not have any knowledge of those museums and their contents, nor have developed any interest, and unfortunately knows Anthropology only as the fancy garment retail store Anthropologie in their sparkling malls.
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