The Ten Types of Human by Dexter Dias

Author:Dexter Dias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

TWO

The Pier

THE SEVENTH BOOK of the Bible, the Book of Judges, relates how two Semitic tribes, the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, went to war. After a monumental battle, the Gileadites installed a blockade across the river Jordan to trap fleeing stragglers from their enemy’s troops. Since the two groups were visually indistinguishable, the guards at the crossing were instructed to ask each person seeking safe passage to pronounce a single word. The word was ‘shibboleth’.

It had a number of meanings: an ear of corn or an olive branch, a stream of water or torrent. However, the significance of the word was that the Ephraimites had no ‘sh’ sound in their language. They could not pronounce it the same way. When they failed the test, they were slain.

But that was a biblical story. That kind of arbitrary test – what has come to be known as a ‘shibboleth’ – could only be a grand metaphor for human discriminative behaviour, for base tribal behaviour. Surely.

When on 6 December he landed on the island, he believed he had happened upon either Japan or even the legendary biblical kingdom of Sheba. Then a few weeks later, on Christmas Day 1492, his flagship ran aground further along the island shore. He named the place La Isla Española. The island itself, the tenth biggest in the world, is still known by the name Christopher Columbus gave it – Hispaniola.

The isle was not uninhabited. For several thousand years a population of farmers and fishermen had spread over the island and flourished. They were a Taino/Arawak people, part of the great migration that began thousands of years before, passing over the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska then progressing down through the Americas, possibly as far as South America, before making their way up into the Caribbean.

Still, the islanders warmly greeted Columbus and his troop of newly arrived Europeans. As Columbus himself wrote:

They have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they capable of using them, although they are well-built people of handsome stature, because they are wondrous timid.… Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts.

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