Alfredo González-Ruibal (Madrid, 1976) has spent many years researching the history of violence and, as an archaeologist, follows its trail both in sites thousands of years old and in excavations corresponding to contemporary times. With this perspective, he has just published Scorched Earth (Critical), a book in which he explains human history from various episodes of violence in wars, which allow him to study from Nazi Germany - "Hitler's ethnic cleansing project triumphed ”- to the Roman world –“Rome used violence for an educational purpose”. After this evolution, has the human species learned anything? González-Ruibal maintains that yes, because the war in Ukraine in the past would have been much worse, but, he warns, climate change is already translating into an extension of violence in various parts of the planet.
Where did the idea of writing a story about the violence of war come from?
I have worked a lot on the archeology of contemporary conflict and that has led me to touch on many different cases. Two years ago I gave a class on this subject and realized that no one had told the human story from the archeology of violence. I saw that this discipline could provide a different way of looking at history, because from the first states to the present, violence has left its traces, there are very powerful stories that can be told very well.
The history of violence actually has a double dimension. On the one hand, it is a practice carried out by a superstructure, by the State, which often leads us to end up counting things with perspective and distance, forgetting the people, who are the ones who ultimately suffer the violence. My intention is to narrate that dimension, the human one, and how it connects with the other.
Is violence inherent in civilization?
What is inherent to civilization is, in reality, conflict, but, although it may seem contradictory, violent conflict is not the norm in history, it is not the most frequent, and within the latter, phenomena such as genocide are exceptional. What happens is that, since they have such an important echo in the media and historical disclosure, they seem much more frequent than they are. It could be said that we have been killing each other in wars for a long time, but within an order, and that “within an order” is an important nuance because if we do not keep it in mind we run the risk of getting used to extreme violence, and even trivializing it.
From a historical perspective, is climate change a source of violence?
More than climate change, it is climate crises that are behind outbreaks of violence. Human beings are capable of adapting to climate changes, an evolution that has been demonstrated on many occasions. The problem, however, occurs when this change is rapid, becomes unpredictable, and societies cannot adapt to it: it occurred in North America between the year 1,000 and 1,500, for example, and is now happening in certain regions of the world. world, such as the Sahel with Islamist terrorism, an issue to which weather conditions are no stranger.
Could the current climate crisis end up causing violent outbursts?
It is that in the most affected areas, such as the one that explained to you, this is already happening today. However, there is an important difference with respect to the past, which is that in ancient societies it was believed that climate crises were a divine punishment and now that is no longer perceived as such. We now have a greater capacity for adaptation and mechanisms to cushion its impact. And today we also know why they occur.
Have we learned anything from the past in terms of violence in terms of wars?
Yes, because now we do not face this phenomenon in the same way as before. One demonstration is that we have not returned to a level of destruction as great as that of World War II, because we have memory. In short, countries do not get involved in major global conflicts like those of the 20th century because public opinion is aware of the human catastrophe they represented. That's why history is so important.
But Ukraine does not seem to confirm that.
The fact that the war in Ukraine has not overwhelmed the region does confirm this. If this had happened in 1914 or 1939 we would be fully involved in a world war, and for now things are not like that. We have the memory of what happened in its day very alive, another thing is how long we will have it.
How is the violence of war or its perception today?
We live in a very paradoxical time because, on the one hand, there is a level of war in which killing is increasingly done from a distance: strategic missiles or drones are directed by people who are very far from the place where they impact. On many occasions, war is very similar to a video game, which is a very effective instrument in the process of dehumanizing the enemy. But, at the same time, although the governments do not want them to be disseminated, there are more and more images that show the horror resulting from that violence, much more than before and we are seeing it in the invasion of Ukraine. All this creates a very contradictory situation.
Historically there are several cases in his book that powerfully draw attention in terms of violence. The Roman world, for example, for us the cradle of our civilization, was extremely violent.
It is that from childhood in school and later in historical disclosure, we are told that the Romans are our cultural ancestors, we speak languages derived from Latin and their architectural, artistic and legal legacy is immense. This is why it may come as a surprise to us to learn that the Roman world practiced violence in horrifying and systematic ways, with the goal of crushing entire populations and enslaving the survivors. It was a way of using violence for a pedagogical purpose, frightening other peoples into seeing that opposing Rome was the worst option.
It is true that archeology is not necessary for that, because the same classical sources speak of this violence, but it is one thing to read it and another to see it in an excavation, seeing the destroyed people makes you understand what happened in a different way. That is the value of archaeology, that it allows you to see and touch the past.
What feeling does an archaeologist have when faced with sites that contain remains of battles, persecutions or executions?
It's hard. When you dig you don't constantly have the same feeling because then you wouldn't be able to do it, but there are hard times and in practice you find yourself on an emotional roller coaster. For example, in one of the last excavations I've been on (González-Ruibal has been in Poland digging mass graves in which Polish elites were buried after being executed by the Germans) the work is monotonous, but suddenly you come across something that shocks you, like the glasses of one of the people massacred and buried here, such a personal object.
Another notable case, of course, is Nazi violence, which was very different in Eastern Europe compared to the West.
It's usually easier to dehumanize someone with whom you have fewer cultural similarities. In the case of the Nazis, they had already dehumanized the Jews in Germany, but these were, after all, very similar to them, practically indistinguishable. When they arrived in Eastern Europe, they saw that the Jews dressed differently, spoke different languages, very different from their own, so this process of dehumanization was much faster and easier, and the violence was on a larger scale.
In fact, you maintain that, in a way, Hitler won.
Yes, Hitler won in the sense that the process of ethnic cleansing that he wanted was successful, and not only at the hands of the Nazis, but also at the hands of the allies who, after the Second World War, carried out border movements and large population masses. Now, for example, the vast majority of people who live in Poland are of Polish culture, but before the war it was not like that, it was a mosaic of different cultures that had lived there for centuries. That was lost forever.
And in Spain, what mark has the violence of the Civil War left?
The violence had a pedagogical function that basically consisted of instilling fear, of leaving a mark in the memory of the survivors. That's why now either we don't talk about the past or when we do talk it's done simply with commonplaces. That is the legacy of violence in Spain.
In this sense, we were better off twenty years ago than now, because today we are in regression in this regard, but in a democratic society we should be able to analyze events in a much more serene and clear way.
What case of historical violence impacts you the most?
Well, probably the pogroms in the Spanish cities of the 14th century. There is talk of the 1492 expulsion of the Jews, but very little of the murders of a century earlier in various cities. What shocks me the most is that they were crimes committed on our streets and for a purely racial or cultural motive. Committed in our streets and by our predecessors.
