“I am a prehistoric man,” says Juan Luis Arsuaga (Madrid, 1954), smiling, an urbanite who feels good in nature, with which human beings connected at the dawn of time. “We have broken that alliance,” laments the paleontologist, who reissues his first … and only novel, ‘On the other side of the fog’ (Destino). He combines science and literature in a song and the strength of legends and the art of a scientist for whom “researching in a Spain without industry is crying.”
–We are ‘homo sapiens’ but it seems that technology turns us into ‘homo ignorantis’
–We know less and less. Much more had to be known in prehistory. Do many careers: biology, geology, astronomy, meteorology, technology… Know about hunting, clothing and sewing. Now by knowing a little bit about something you defend yourself.
–For a man of science, is literature a liberation?
-Definitely. The least important thing is the material. The difficult thing is to capture the spirit. Writing a history of Romans is within the reach of anyone who knows a little about archeology and literature of the time. But recreating their mentality, their thinking and their aspirations is only achieved by those who are capable of living the Roman world. You have to become a Roman to count the Romans. I am a prehistoric man.
-What does it mean?
–That my home is nature. It’s where I’m happy. Urban life has great advantages and allows me to carry out my work, but it is artificial. I use my cell phone, my laptop, I have a car, television, a heated house… But you can be urban and ‘natural’.
–Do we punish nature more than it supports?
-Definitely. We have gone from being their allies to their enemies. It is ‘the’ problem of humanity. Number one, along with war conflicts. We have broken our ancestral alliance with nature. A pact to maintain the natural order of things and not alter the laws of the world. In prehistory, reality was sacred. They knew that what you do has consequences in the environment. It was inhabited by spirits with dignity and respect was demanded. Now there is disorder, chaos, misfortune and suffering. The idea of nature as something spiritual is today that of science. Through science we have become aware of this connection. What any aboriginal knew we have discovered now that we know the consequences of throwing CO2 into the atmosphere.
Cover of the novel.
Destination
–Writing in Spain is crying, Larra said almost two centuries ago. Today is research?
–Research in Spain suffers from the absence of industry. And researching in a country without industry is crying. We have a small market. The university trains great engineers, chemists or biotechnologists, but so that they go abroad. Where is the technological, chemical or optics industry? The great tragedy of the Spanish university is to train formidable professionals for a foreign industry. Training is good, like research, but it is not applied. I’m not interested in politics, but we need reindustrialization. A country without industry has no future. They ask me if there is a way out for a chemist and I ironically say yes, but that it should come out where the industry is.
–Every species becomes extinct sooner or later. The human species when?
–Human beings are young as a species. Let’s not be alarmed. Tranquillity. We are a recent species. We are in our childhood. We don’t have to go extinct yet.
–Artificial intelligence: Threat or progress?
–Artificial intelligence doesn’t scare me. It is overrated. I think that in fields like medicine it will allow us, perhaps, to solve cancer or Alzheimer’s. It may help achieve clean energy. But if you want to sell books, catastrophism is the formula. If I say that AI is wonderful, that it will make our lives easier, I don’t sell a single book.
–Your novel is located at the birth of art.
–In the Upper Paleolithic. It is the time of the Altamira caves, about 14,000 years ago. But it could also be from the time of the Chauvet Cave, 35,000 years old and with formidable paintings. He is a legend, and legends are timeless.
Arsuaga contemplates a classical sculpture.
Carlos Ruiz
–Is speech and the ability to tell us things what makes us human?
-Yeah. Literature has no limits. It’s the only form of reincarnation I know. We have only one life. There are those who believe in reincarnation, but tell us that they do not remember their previous lives. You may like your life or not, but it is what you have. Literature, archeology and history allow you to experience others through stories and sites. Literature allows you to live in other times and that is true escape. In a site or in Baelo Claudia I am not a Spaniard in the 21st century. I’m not a visitor. I identify and become someone of the time.
–Humans die. Do stories never?
–There are stories that they tell themselves and I collect them in the book. Like the crows, which were white in a snowy world, stole fire from the spirits who had it, from gods. They captured the embers, gave them to the humans and blackened them.
–Some legends that are almost universal?
–In essence, yes. In the Far West, in southern India or among the Arctic ice, almost all cultures share that there were beings who had the knowledge that humans obtained through someone. ‘Gilgamesh’, ‘The Iliad’, ‘The Odyssey’, the ‘Lazarillo’… we don’t know who wrote them. And it doesn’t matter. The story survives. Speech is a communication system based on symbols. Like art.
–Storytellers and artists are dreamers, seekers. Are they the ones who move the world forward?
–In technology without a doubt, as in geography. Whoever is satisfied with what he does and has does not change anything. He doesn’t move. Restless and unorthodox people are the ones who change the world.
