Archaeostorytelling: How the past can blow your mind | Ted Papakostas | TEDxAthens

The past can shock us, make us laugh, move us, and change us. If you think archaeology is interesting, you are in for a big surprise. It’s way more interesting than you think. Let the past fascinate you in a way you never thought possible.

Dr. Ted Papakostas is an archaeologist who decided to introduce a different view of what antiquity is in modern Greek mentality and promote what is called “pop archaeology” through his Instagram project @archaeostoryteller.

Starting out as a fun pastime, its reception by the general public led him to the realization that there is indeed room and necessity for a more approachable way of viewing archaeology in Greece. Through his work, he aims to introduce a fun way of perceiving the past and denounce the notion that antiquity is sacred and untouchable, by making archaeological information plain yet accurate and enjoyable to a wider audience.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

You enter a museum.

There are display cases everywhere,

those wooden, old, retro,

rustic, elegant ones.

Do you look at the vases one by one,

knowing that further down
there are more halls,

with big statues, sarcophagi,
mosaics, golden jewelry?

According to the answers you gave,

52% of you would pay attention to them.

You are lying, that's obvious.

Even I wouldn't do that.

(Laughter)

But surely there is value
in looking at each one.

Let me give you an example.

This is an ancient vase.

We are used to calling
all ancient vases amphorae.

Nine out of 10 times
they are not amphorae.

(Laughter)

This one actually is an amphora.

I could tell you

about the excellent symmetry
governing the artistic form of the vase,

but this vase is fun.

Let's have a closer look.

The Trojan War.

Achilles and Ajax, they
are not fighting, they are playing.

Achilles is wearing a helmet.

They are relaxing, having
a good time and talking.

Achilles says, "I have rolled a four."

Ajax has rolled a three.

It's obvious that Ajax is losing.

They seem a bit impersonal,
a bit cold, a bit indifferent,

but the clues are there.

Starting with their spears.

Achilles's spear is looser;
his fist is not clenched.

He's winning; he doesn't care.

Ajax is clenching his fist;
he is stressed.

But it's not just his hand,
it's his eyebrow too.

The artist has managed to represent
Achilles relaxed and Ajax frowning.

Pottery is the Instagram
of ancient times.

(Laughter)

He was a great influencer, Exekias,

but the next question
has to do with the extent

to which a vase can engage
our other senses.

What do I mean?

Obviously not taste,
because you can't eat it.

But maybe hearing.

Let's have a look at another influencer

called Psiakas.

Another amphora.

You see four figures, nothing special.

These are four gods; they are in Olympus.

Let's have a look at them one by one.

The first one is Apollo.

He's young; we can tell
by the sparse beard on his face.

He's jamming, playing his guitar;
he's soloing and enjoying himself.

First off, we see the honest, glorified
Greek mother, proud of her son.

She's the type that makes
an excellent mother-in-law.

(Laughter)

Totally unrelated fact:
Apollo never got married.

(Laughter)

Second comes Artemis.

More stylish, wearing her tight-fitting
clothes with rhinestones,

a panther's skin on her shoulders.

(Laughter)

True fashionista.

(Laughter) (Applause)

The last one is Ares.

Now you may wonder, why not Dionysus?

He's the party guy.

Because music relaxes everyone,
including the god of war.

He is unarmed; he is not
in an aggressive mood.

He is in a different mood,
and that is apparent on his shield.

It has a rooster on it.

The rooster was an erotic symbol.

Someone once told me the word
for rooster in English -

I can't remember what it is.

(Laughter)

But there is something
that we haven't noticed.

They are clicking their fingers
to the rhythm of the guitar.

They are having a good time,
and you can see it clearly.

(Laughter)

Who would have thought
that you would go to a display case

to see a piece of clay, baked
two and a half thousand years earlier,

and you would hear the sound
of the gods clicking their fingers.

That's all to do with pottery,

but the lady in the front row
wants to see the statues.

She's stuck on them
ever since I mentioned them.

She wants to go to the statues,
so let's go to the statues.

This is Hercules.

Hercules is 3.17 meters tall.

For a demigod, he's considered
of average height.

(Laughter)

The sculptor is amazing.

He managed to put all the mythology
of the demigod hero in the sculpture.

It's not immediately obvious.

To start with, this sculpture
is an anatomy lesson.

A proper anatomy lesson.
All the muscles, one by one.

He's leaning against a rock
where he has placed the lionskin.

The lionskin is the skin
of the Nemean lion.

The Nemean lion was his first labor.

His right hand is hidden behind his back.

He wants you to go back there
and see what he's hiding.

It's the Apples of the Hesperides,
that was his twelfth labor.

The eleventh, sorry.

So this shows us
the first and the twelfth labor.

It's a moment of relaxation.
He's resting. He's thinking.

His last labor, the twelfth,
was to go to the underworld.

Nobody likes to go to the underworld,

that's why he looks thoughtful.

Essentially, he's presented magnificent,
muscular, impressive as a god,

thoughtful and anxious as a human,

which in the international literature
is referred to being at his wits' end.

(Laughter)

So his first and last labor,

as well as his dual nature,
all that depicted on a piece of stone.

He managed to do it.

And since we are talking
about the demigod.

The next question was whether
Hercules was the archetypal male.

You said yes.

24% said no.

For those who said no,
listen to this story.

Hercules was 18 years old.

He goes to the palace of King Thespius.

Thespius was somewhere in Boeotia.

Up on Kitheronas mountain was a lion
that ate people, everyday stuff.

(Laughter)

Hercules goes there.

Thespius had 50 daughters.
Hercules stayed there 50 nights.

(Laughter)

He slept with 49 of the daughters.

He had 50 sons.

The last one had twins.

(Laughter)

So he wasn't always the good guy we know.

Sometimes, he was naughty.

Once he committed a murder.

Zeus got angry

and forced him to go to faraway Lydia,

to serve Queen Omphale
for three years as her slave.

So Hercules went there; he had no choice
but to follow his father's orders.

He meets Omphale. Love at first sight.

They fall in love and spend
three wonderful years together.

Of course, at night,
they exchanged clothes.

Hercules took Omphale's
spindle and himation,

Omphale put on the lionskin
and held the club.

They were having a good time.

To be honest, I personally

don't care what ancient
demigod heroes did in their beds.

I have ancient demigod hero friends.

(Laughter)

As long as they are not
doing it provocatively.

(Laughter)

Of course, all that within
the sphere of mythology.

They are words, imaginary stories.

Let's go to something more realistic.

Ancient Athens.

Bursting with philosophers, writers,
sculptors and orators.

They bumped into one another.
You threw one rock, you hit five of them.

(Laughter)

Which one do you think prevailed
over there, the value of rationality

or superstition?

You answered that
it was mostly rationality.

It makes sense,
I would have thought the same.

Listen to a nice story.

Pericles was an up-and-coming politician.

His opponent was mostly Thucydides.

Not the historian, a different one.

He's from the village. You don't know him.

(Laughter)

So one day, in one of Pericles's
numerous farmlands,

a goat appeared, which only had one horn.

A seer appears.

A total scoundrel.

(Laughter)

His name was Lamponas.
"Pericles, you will be the winner!

First of all, I have a feeling,
and secondly, the gods said so.

One horn, one winner; it was found
in your farmland, so you will win."

Anaxagoras was there as well.

Anaxagoras was an astronomer,
a philosopher, a bit of everything,

that's how it went back then.

He couldn't tolerate stupidity,

so he started explaining,
that guys, cool it.

This can be explained
genetically and biologically.

It's not a divine sign; it's not
a message from Zeus. Let's chill.

Another seer comes, Diopethes,

and he persuades the church of the city

that whoever doesn't believe
in the divine signs

but rather in the celestial objects
and talks about them -

without naming names -

is dangerous and should leave Athens.

To your surprise, obviously,
Anaxagoras stands trial,

is convicted, and leaves Athens,

at great speed.

Superstition won.

(Laughter)

I think we know what archaeology
is in this country.

We think that we dig to find
an impressive statue,

to reveal a beautiful temple.

It's not just that. Archaeology
is purely a philosophical science.

It tries to understand "man" by means
of the material remains he left behind.

Man.

We affect everything we touch.

We assign it different interpretations,
essences, uses and meanings.

What we consider obvious,
isn't always obvious.

For example, let's take
a random simple glass vase

from antiquity.

It's totally random.

Is it a useful object?
Is it a religious object?

Is it packaging? Is it decorative?

Is it all of the above?

In order to explain it to you,
let me give a more specific example.

Let's take a hazelnut spread
product, Nutella,

that comes in a glass packaging.

When I asked if Nutella
is a religious object,

I didn't mean that we worship chocolate,

because we all love it
and chocolate is awesome.

Is it an actual religious object?

So Nutella, you eat it.

Relatively quickly, you don't wait around.

So when it runs out, I wash the container
and use it as a glass.

It automatically becomes
tableware, a useful object.

Or you can put a nice tealight inside,
and make it a decorative item.

And upon moving to a new house,
a box is dropped,

the vigil light breaks,
and grandma freaks out,

so she takes the Nutella glass,
adds water, oil and a wick,

and hey, presto, the glass turns into
an actual religious object.

(Laughter)

Therefore everything is relative

and subjective.

And this is something
that archaeology can achieve,

to touch the person behind the objects.

You may ask what all that
has to do with TEDx.

State of X, 10 years,
the future, what's to come?

How does archaeology fit in?

That's why I asked you
when TEDx came to Greece.

Obviously, most of you answered
that it came in 2009.

I'm sorry, but it was a trick question,

because TEDx didn't come to Greece,
it has been here since ancient times.

(Laughter)

Initially there were small,
regional TEDx events, in the Agora ...

(Laughter) (Applause)

Some more elite, for the few.

If you were loaded,
you could study at a better place.

(Laughter)

Some didn't last very long,
like the Macedonia one of King Archelaos,

who collected everyone who did anything,

whether he was writing a play
or making a sculpture,

and invited them to the village.

And there were many exclusive ones,
for members only.

No foreigners allowed,
just us, having a good time.

One of them was more important
than the others.

We knew about the Olympic Games,
but in ancient Olympia,

every four years, for five days,

the most important people
of the international Greek community

gathered together.

This is where

a youngster called Thucydides -

the historian, you know this one -

heard Herodotus reading the stories
he had written for the first time,

and he was inspired to do the same thing.

This is where Gorgias made the speech
in favor of pan-Hellenic unity.

This is where Lysias
called all Greeks to unite

in favor of democracy and against tyranny

that existed in various cities.

This is where Isocrates wrote,

and even distributed copies,
to spread it even more,

his speech where he called
upon Athens and Sparta,

the two age-old enemies,
to finally unite for the common good.

Here, in this melting pot,
the whole Western civilization was born.

We have 27 centuries of recorded history.

We have more than 90 centuries
of documented cultural presence.

This alone constitutes a heavy burden.

We perceive it as heavy;
we experience it as heavy;

and our perception of it
is indeed heavy.

And I ask:

If we make it a bit lighter,
if we have a more relaxed attitude,

can we bring it closer to us?

Can we have fun with it?

Are we allowed to?

Is the past a holy cow on a pedestal

that we are not allowed to touch?

Either way, the past,
be it personal or collective,

concerns everyone.

We look to it to find out who we are.

We are not looking for our ancestors,
we are looking for ourselves.

Archeology is like a global
"Long Lost Family" show.

(Laughter)

Can we forgive our ancestors
for not being perfect?

Pericles must have had a headache one day.

Diogenes must have had constipation.

Alexander must have had a cramp.

Socrates must have said,
"Broad beans, again?"

(Laughter)

Do we want our past
to just be our heirloom?

Or do we want to use it for inspiration?

We say that the past doesn't change.

Newsflash, spoiler alert, spoiler alert.

The past doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist. It's not there.

Whatever you show me as past today

is what remains of the past today.

The Acropolis, if we all
go up to the Acropolis,

we won't go back to the 5th century.

We will still be in 2019.

It's the present. The past
doesn't exist; it's not there.

It doesn't have any material substance.

It only exists in our perception of it.

And perceptions change.

This talk will soon be
a thing of the past,

but your perception of it may change

tomorrow, the day after that.

So does the past change or not?

And now I have to leave you,
but not here, or in ancient Olympia,

or in the museum.

I will leave you in the sea, and more
specifically in the middle of the sea,

and I hope that you will take
some antiquity with you

out of the retro, rustic,
stylish display cases.

(Music)

(Singing) [Zeus was a womanizer]

[Leto was inexperienced]

[She got pregnant]

[Hera was mad]

[She sent a message that no place
should allow Leto to give birth there]

[A small rock was floating
in the Aegean sea with no place]

[It was undefined, adelos]

[It accepted Leto, and she promised
that it would take its rightful place]

[It became defined, Delos]

[Leto held onto a palm tree
in the center of the island]

[And gave birth]

[Young Apollo became an adult right away]

[And the place was filled with light]

[The other islands came to worship
the small rock that gave birth to light]

[They made a cycle around it]

[This cycle became Cyclades]

Thank you.

(Applause)