Are we important?
Does our society matter?
Are our customs worthwhile, and if not, why do we keep them?
I'm standing in a field of megaliths built by a people completely lost to the world.
We've only barely begun to understand these things.
They were built 2500 years ago.
The people who produced them are dust, but these jars remain.
So, were they important?
If these jars weren't here, would they still be?
Let's talk death.
Nobody can control the future, but we all sort of feel like we can.
At least, our own.
We just create these plans and fulfill them in a way that we hope will make us happy,
and then get so frustrated when real life gets in the way.
But our goals, our aspirations, our dreams, whatever you want to call them, those are
our visions of the future.
And we manifest those visions through our children.
We try to implant our views on them as best we can.
Not just because it helped us to get where we are, but because we believe it will help
us get where we're going.
Having someone continue a cycle that you were a part of helps to give your role in that
cycle more meaning.
The longer the unbroken chain, the more important the cycle feels.
But what happens when it breaks?
How do we sustain our own beliefs as true when we see the discarded beliefs of other,
long dead societies.
Or I guess more directly, why?
To answer that question, I want to look at my own life for a minute.
I've lived most of my life as a foreigner, and nearly a third as a visible minority.
I moved out of my hometown 11 days after being born, left my family home at thirteen, and
moved to Japan for work before I was a legal adult.
My wife grew up in communist Hungary, a non-Indo European nation with drastically different
customs than my own.
Because of all this, I've felt like an outsider for virtually my entire life, including in
Canada where my accent implies I'm from.
There have been many times in my life when I've come up against the wall of not knowing
what pattern I was supposed to be keeping.
If you aren't certain what society you're supposed to represent, what does your wedding
look like?
Do you serve cake?
What are your holidays?
Is Christmas in December or January?
How are you buried?
It may sound silly, but these are really important questions.
Because they're deeper than what your wedding cake looks like.
They define you.
2500 years ago, during the Iron Age in Northern Laos, a society existed that no doubt asked
themselves the very same questions.
They would have lived in a land before kingdoms, before writing, and likely before centralized
authority outside of one's clan.
But they were still people.
Their concerns were almost certainly the same as ours.
They wanted to see the future and live in a cycle that gave their lives purpose.
We know virtually nothing about them, but I can guarantee they were scared of dying.
Because we're all scared of dying.
I can guarantee that they made rituals that help them cope.
Because we all make rituals that help us cope.
In Canadian society, we bury people under a headstone and leave flowers.
In ancient Laos, they built jars.
Giant, megalithic, incredibly durable jars.
Signs of this culture can be seen across Laos, with similar structures stretching as far
as India and Indonesia.
Whether they're from the same culture, we don't know.
After all, it's only since the late 1800's that we even began to study them.
But I feel it is important to understand them, because in doing so we understand more about
ourselves.
To learn more about their history, we spoke with a local Lao guide whose been working
with UNESCO to uncover the jars' past.
Let's let him tell it.
The stone jars in total, in Laos, we find real number one thousand nine hundred ninety nine jars.
Or as I would say like two thousand jars.
Because one, you know?
[laughter] Only one, yes.
And, 85% the stone jar they made from sandstone.
And a few percent they made from granite and also you know, conglomerate.
Conglomerate.
When you look inside you could see also the pebble inside, yeah.
The stone jar not only in Laos, they have them in the South of India, and Indonesia,
and also in Vietnam.
And why we don't say 'the Plain of Jars' there?
Because few jars so more jars in Laos.
So, that's why we call Plain of Jars in Laos.
But when you see not plain, like on the hill like this.
And why we don't say like Hill of Jars?
Because we translate French into English, because Madam Colani she was a French person.
She just presumed probably the ancient people they used the stone jar for funeral urn because
in 1930 when she excavate at 12 plain of jar sites, she came here and she excavate and
you know inside the jar and around the jars and also underneath of the jars but actually
inside the jars she found human.
You know, burned bones.
The ashes.
And also the charcoal inside the jars.
But when people they die, they not cremate the body inside the jars directly.
So they probably cremate the body inside the cave at jar site one.
Because when you get inside the cave you could see also the chimney on the top, so that's
why she just presume like when the ancient people they dead they might cremate the body
inside the cave there then they took something remain from the cave into the jars.
And when she came in 1930, she also found some stone jar they have the lid on also.
And you could imagine the one that got the lid on the top you could see the rim and the
one that have no lid on the top is flat, you know?
And she just presumed probably the ancient people they use for two thing different.
So the first thing like maybe they used for storage.
The one that have the lid on.
So this is for offering things when the ancient people they dead, they offering food or water
or whatever, the water in here, and then offering to the spirit.
And the one have, uh, the lid on, so this one would be for, uh, for, for the body.
When people you know, cremate and then put something, you know, inside there.
Next rain could raise the people and they could go out and touch new life.
So that's why they don't put something to cover, you know.
Free spirit, yes.
So actually when we helping UNESCO TEAM you know, so actually we just do excavate and
finally we also found something remain in the ground, like, you know, symbolic very
special symbolic like human remains, like, skeleton and also corpse and skull, and also
bracelet and pottery or whatever.
So that's why they just presumed probably the ancient people they used the stone jar
for you know, secondary burial sites.
Those people who make the jars actually we didn't know for sure, exactly.
Because this culture it was long lost civilization.
It was polished long gone because the stone jars about 2500 years old.
So that's why everything, you know, gone.
We didn't know exactly what tribe, who made the jars.
Now, it is impossible to go because not safe.
Because too many landmines or bombs on the surface or whatever.
Because during, you know, the secret war, uh, there were many Viet Cong, you know.
They hidden here.
So that's why USA bomber to bomb everywhere, but not only the bomb, you know, that you
know, attack in Laos.
So actually we also have like, you know, Agent Orange, also.
You see it everywhere here on the mountain.
Landscape no tree grow because contaminate from Agent Orange.
So about fifty percent, you know, the stone jar have been damaged from the bombs.
The scrap metal or the fragmentation hit.
You see so many of them, before the stone jars they were like, upright.
You know, stood up.
And how come today some of them have been broken and some of them like, lying?
Because from the bombs.
So when you walk around here, you see a lot of bomb crater also.
What I see when I look at these structures is a society that yearned to control the future.
They wanted a pattern that gave them solace in the face of their mortality.
They wanted a culture that provided them a path free of doubt.
They weren't asking why they were making the jars, they were simply making them.
Hoping that their children would do the same.
While their burials are no longer customary, at what point in time it would have been virtually
impossible to imagine a world without them.
So, were they important?
Are we important?
Well I'd argue that we are.
It's impossible to see the future.
I have absolutely no idea what our culture and society will look like in a few thousand
years.
But just like these ancient potters, we were important to each other.
To ourselves.
It doesn't really matter the culture or pattern you're perpetuating in your life.
Because it's yours.
It helps to define you.
It's how you deal with the world.
And I think that's worth celebrating.
But do you serve cake?
This is Rare Earth.
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