==== ==== From Somervell’s abridgement of Toynbee’s “A Study Of History”, volumes 7-10 page 236: “An air of failure or, where there is not positive failure, futility surrounds practically all the examples of Archaism that we have that we have been examinin, and the reason is not far to seek [should be “to be sought”]. The archaist is condemned, by the very nature of his enterprise, to be for ever tryin to reconcile past and present…. If he tries to restore the past without takin the present into consideration, then the impetus of life ever movin onward will shatter his brittle construction into fragments. If on the other hand, he consents to subordinate his whim of resuscitatin the past to the task of makin the present workable, his Archaism will prove a sham. Greetins, o Child of Wotan! RU fed up with bein treated like a 2nd-class citizen in your own land? Discover that, which the ancient sources prescribe for our victory! Check out THE BOOK OF ODIN! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0065QN8KW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=4faskidstorem20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789 ==== ====
Modern humans (Homo sapiens) existed as an uncultured, uncivilized nomadic entity for most of humanity's time on Earth. Then whoosh, within an incredible short period of time, apart from isolated pockets, our nomadic days were over and we settled down to a civilized and cultured existence, which continues right through to this 21st Century. But there's something very odd about that. Why did it take so long? Why then did the transition happen so quickly? Why do mythologies throughout the world tend to credit the gods for this transition when we all know the polytheistic gods don't exist? Modern humans, Homo sapiens (Latin for 'wise man' or 'knowing man') have existed as a separate species, originating in Africa, with all associated anatomical and related mental faculties in tact, for about 200,000 to 400,000 years. All modern behavioural characteristics have been evident in the fossil and archaeological records from about 50,000 years ago, like Palaeolithic cave art and the practice of burying the dead. Human culture or civilization blossomed not in the heart of Africa where modern humans evolved, but in the Middle East. Why not Africa? I would have thought that at first glance Africa was a more environmentally habitat than the Middle East. There was ample enough time, yet apart from ancient Egypt, Africa isn't associated with early civilizations. Perhaps that's just an historical mystery that's bound to remain a mystery. The earliest origin of what we'd call settlement civilization happened roughly 10,000 years ago, though the first real city-states didn't come into their own, like Mesopotamia, Egypt's Nile Valley and the Indus Valleys until about 6000 years ago. So, for most of our time on Earth, we were hunter-gatherers going wherever the flow took us. If civilization and established communities and domestication over plants and animals were such a good idea, why did it take so long for the 'eureka' moment to strike? If you have an hour to complete a maths exam with one question, 'how much is 2 + 2?', and you only figured it out after 50 minutes, then you hardly qualify as an Einstein. Well we figured out civilization 50 minutes after the one hour time limit start button was pushed,
but to add to the mystery, at 49 minutes into the test, we still hadn't a clue. It's almost as if we received some outside help at nearly the last minute - but outside help from whom? According to mythologies around the world, the gods gave the gifts of culture and civilization to ancient human societies. The Near East: There are various divine bringers of culture associated with Near East mythology. These divine gods were credited with cultural advancements, such as the development of agriculture and animal husbandry as well as the creation of sophisticated urban culture. Various myths suggested that cultural accomplishments were gifts from the gods. The Egyptians: As a scribe of the gods, the ibis-headed god known as Thoth was viewed by the Egyptians as the inventor of all spoken and written languages. The Greeks: The Greek goddess Demeter taught humankind agriculture. The Greek goddess Athena taught the Greeks how to cook and sew. Along with fire, the Greek god Prometheus gave people the mechanical arts, sciences, and wisdom. China: At the centre of the world lay China, the 'middle kingdom' which was ruled by gods. These gods created China's inhabitants and taught them arts and skills. The first heavenly rulers also provided their subjects with technologies essential to life. Each invention - such as cooking, writing, medicine, the wheel, the fishing net and the plow - was credited to a specific deity. The Chinese god Shennong invented the plow and taught people how to farm. Africa: A cultural hero brings to a group of people the skills necessary for survival. Like in many cultures throughout the world, the cultural hero in African lore is a mythological figure who brings monumental change to his people, through invention and discovery. Gifts brought by these heroes were often the knowledge needed to farm, hunt, and build. The gods are also the law givers. An obvious case in point is the monotheistic God and His Ten Commandments. The gods gave humans all these things but we all know there are no gods (including God) so that must mean that humans came up with all these things all by themselves. But if that's the case why doesn't human history record this in the same way that history records Edison (for example) with lots of inventions instead of attributing human inventions, human culture, and human civilization to nonexistent gods? That makes no real sense at all. However, while the gods might not be real, the 'gods' could be - 'gods' cleverly disguised as gods, but ultimately revealed as extraterrestrials. Extraterrestrials would just about automatically qualify as deities to primitive earthlings who had no concept of life on other planets. Now all the extraterrestrial 'gods' really needed to do was just give us our first kindergarten lessons and that alone would have kick-started us on our way, eventually to land up on the Moon, hunting and gathering those rocks to take back to Earth. It's like the child attending school. In the beginning the child is spoon-fed all knowledge, but pretty soon the ability to find things out by him (or her) self kicks in.
The question is, what's so special about us that we and we alone as a terrestrial species have actually reached out and touched the Moon? Homo sapiens alone as a terrestrial species have advanced intelligence, technology, and overall that nebulous concept called civilization. The evolution of technology isn't inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached; ditto civilization. I've speculated that the latter two were kick-started by the 'gods', the extraterrestrials. What about our intelligence? Might our intellectual abilities ultimately prove to be another gift from the 'gods'? IMHO, intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have evolved life forms with ever higher IQ's. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ's at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring. However, if the evolution of intelligence were the be-all-and-end-all to ensuring survival and being fruitful and multiplying, then your everyday household moggy would be catching mice through pure intellectual genius and setting down mousetraps - and the mice avoiding the cat by figuring out what the cat was planning! No, there are many evolutionary pathways to success and survival and reproducing. In the case of the moggy, evolving faster reflexes, being able to run faster for longer durations, evolving ever more acute hearing and vision - well that's probably going to ultimately catch more mice than pure brainpower. So, yes, intelligence will be selected for, but that trait is in serious competition with other traits in terms of ensuring that you live long and prosper. Just like there are many roles or occupations humans play and work at in society, not all roles or occupations are equal in ensuring success and longevity, yet maximizing whatever abilities you have at least give you the maximum odds that whatever role or occupation you have will ensure you have the maximum chance of living long and living in prosperity. However, we're not just slightly ahead in the IQ stakes, but proverbial light-years ahead. We'd be hard-pressed to imagine any other terrestrial species remotely accomplishing through sheer brainpower alone something akin to the most primitive of our cave art or even picking up and chucking rocks at an enemy. In the time since the arrival of the 'modern' human, Homo sapiens, all our other primate relations, the great apes and monkeys, etc. haven't moved one centimetre closer to reaching the Moon, or for that matter, any of the other hundreds of thousands of 'advanced' or complex life forms currently inhabiting Planet Earth. If Homo sapiens vanished off the face of the Earth today, what odds would you give that our closest evolutionary cousins, the chimps and/or baboons and/or gorillas and/or any of the old or new world monkeys would be the next terrestrial species to land on the Moon, however far into the future you'd care to speculate?
So we have puzzlement over why, of all the creatures on Earth, do Homo sapiens have not only the highest IQ, but relative to the next in line - well it's not even a close contest. It's sort of like pitting the professional baseball major league New York Yankees against a little league baseball team. Both play baseball, but the relative skills are again light-years apart. Might I suggest that the 'gods', from the get-go, deliberately assisted by bioengineering or genetically engineering our advanced IQ levels? Our intelligence was indeed yet another gift from the 'gods'. It should come as no surprise that when it comes to creation myths, the gods created humans. I'd just replace the word 'created' with the phrase 'assisted Mother Nature's natural selection process by their artificial selection of various traits in selected primates'. The end product of the 'gods' bioengineering was humanity with all its glorious top of the pops intellect. There's another puzzle. That puzzle involves the gods or 'gods' creating humans or humanity in the first place. Before I get to the puzzling bit, consider some examples: The Near East: The creation of humanity, the first people, according to the ancient myths, were either born or formed by hand. Two deities were responsible for creating humankind. Often, the reason given for creating humankind was to provide workers so that the younger generation of gods could be relieved of the hard work. Kindly note that last sentence - humanity was created to do the hard work while, I guess, the 'gods' could eat, drink and make merry and enjoy the good life! That's quite a common theme in mythology; gods create and rule; humans toil. Greece: The Greek god Prometheus was a Titan who created people from clay. Norse: Odin was the leader of the Norse gods and the creator of both the world and people. Maya: The gods made people from corn. They used corn for the bodies, and corn meal for the arms and legs. The corn people were the ancestors of the Maya. Australia: The supernatural creatures of the aboriginal Dreamtime created the empty world, followed by landscapes, lakes and rivers, plants, humans, and animals. As cultural heroes, they brought advances such as the power over fire, weapons, and hunting skills, as well as clan orders and wedding regulations to humanity. Lastly, we all know about the Book of Genesis and the so-call creation of Adam and Eve from dust and ribs and probably from whatever else was handy. Now here's the puzzle. It's somewhat difficult to understand why humans would attribute the creation of humans (and plants and animals) to mythological gods. I mean, even to our earliest ancestors, it's obvious that people come from people (or at least from females - the biological role of the father might not have been obvious nine months after the fact). In most cases it's obvious that like comes from like (that's why Siegfried, a student of nature in the Richard Wagner opera of the same name figured out he wasn't really the son of the dwarf Mime). So, if direct observation tells you that people create people, why not assume an infinite backwards regression (or in reverse, generation follows generation follows generation) and there was no beginning, no first creation of people. That makes logical sense. Why would humans not accept this as the natural order of things? Now of course if the 'gods' really did assist in the evolution of
the modern human, and told humans as much, well that explains those creation tales. But there are several other puzzles. The first is why did some cultures seemingly defy the 'gods' and reject settlement civilization (cities, towns, villages) and remain a nomadic hunter-gather society? The most obvious answer is that not all physical geographical environments are equally suitable for a sedentary existence of permanent settlements. The Australian aborigines and Australia a case in point - too dry, too hot, too wet, too constantly changing from drought to flood and back again, coupled with a lack of a suitable native agricultural crops (wheat, corn, rice) and/or native domesticated eatable animal, like sheep, pigs and cattle. There's more to civilization than urban living. The aborigines have culture - art, music, language, and law, the ability to cook, even though they had no cities, towns or villages. Yet another puzzle might seem unrelated, but I'll present it anyway. All humans are one interbreeding species, yet we have one other unique feature (apart from top of the pops in IQ) different races or breeds. Now skin colour is easily explained by resorting to environmental factors. But what evolutionary selection pressures accounts for other racial differences, which tend to be facial features? We all look pretty much the same from the neck down; at least after you separate the males from the females. That's apart from fingerprints (or toe-prints?), but unless you're into law enforcement we don't tend to identify our family, friends and neighbours by examining their fingers! How do you tell people apart? - By their faces primarily. And it's not just the broad spectrum racial facial features - it's just as easy to distinguish an Asian from a Caucasian as it is to distinguish two separate Asians or two separate Caucasians (identical twins excepted perhaps). What is the survival value, the evolutionary selection pressure that makes nearly everyone facially unique? Take any other wild creature - one that humans haven't domesticated and genetically tampered with. Say the great white shark or the common house fly or the blue-ringed octopus or cane toads. As is the case with elephants or zebras, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. You can't tell them apart. In a police line-up, of say half a dozen German cockroaches, could you identify the one that you saw crawl across your kitchen floor? I feed and watch a lot of wild birds, but I'm damned if I can tell one sulphur-crested cockatoo from another. They all look the same! Perhaps that's why wildlife biologists and medical researchers have to tag their wildlife or little white mice so as to be able to tell who's who. Even with our domesticated and artificially breeding of selected species, we usually tell them apart in the first instance via their size, behaviour pattern and most of all external colouration patterns. So why our unique faces? Perhaps the 'gods' further genetically engineered us that way in order to help tell us apart. Here's another mystery. Say you lived 8000 years ago at the dawn of the transition from 'primitive' hunter-gather to 'sophisticated' urban dweller (well maybe a farmer or herdsman in a small settlement). Now you have no knowledge of modern biological evolution, the origin of species, or physical geology or cosmology or astrophysics. Would you, in pondering life, the Universe and everything (in your spare time of course) come up with an 'in the beginning' or 'as it is, so shall it have ever been so'? I would suggest the latter because in your world, your environment, your environmental world
view, everything is cyclic - a seemingly endless repeat of events, of events, of events, of events (like a stuck record): Birth-death-birth-death; seasons come and seasons go, but always in the same order; the Sun rises-sets-rises-sets-rises-sets; ditto the stars, their patterns and movements are endlessly fixed (patterns) and cyclic (movements); you go from full Moon to quarter Moon to new Moon to quarter Moon to full-quarter-new-quarter, etc. You witness no Big Ticket newness no acts of grand creation. You have no real reason to assume any grand scale 'in the beginning'. Why would you assume that the ground beneath your feet hadn't always existed as that solid good earth? Wouldn't such an idea seem rather alien? It would go against the grain of commonsense. Day after day, year after year, you see the Sun rise and the Sun set. The exact same set of observations, the circumstances surrounding what the Sun does daily, has been passed down generation unto generation. Nobody has experienced anything different no matter how far back your ancestors go. Why would you not assume it has always been that way; that way forever and ever, amen? There seems no need to postulate that some natural event, or deity, created the Sun. That's not to suggest you wouldn't invent deities in order to explain natural phenomena you had no understanding of, like the tides or volcanoes or earthquakes or eclipses or where does the Sun go at night and why rain, wind, thunder and lightning? It's just there's no need to invent creator deities, deities who did things 'in the beginning'. Yet ancient mythologies nearly all adopt creator deities and an 'in the beginning'. The Universe isn't cyclic - it had a creation (the Big Bang event). Ditto the Sun and the Moon and the stars and the Earth (land, sea and sky) and plants and animals and humans. All were created 'in the beginning'. Why? Maybe because there were 'people' around 8000 years ago who did have knowledge of biological evolution, the origin of species or physical geology or cosmology or astrophysics and were able to pass on that information to the human populace who (not fully grasping the technical fine print) incorporated those revelations into their world view: what has come down to us as mythology. In conclusion, there are anomalies with respect to the origins of humans (Homo sapiens), some of our attributes like our intelligence and facial features, as well as our relatively rapid rise from hunter-gathers on the plains of Africa to hunter-gathers on the Lunar plains. Mythology explains much of this as acts of the gods (yet why creator gods), yet we reject the existence of the gods and thus gloss over the resulting anomalies. The compromise is to give short shrift to the supernatural gods, but credibility to the 'gods' as flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials who stumbled across Earth while exploring and colonizing the Milky Way Galaxy many hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Science librarian; retired.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Prytz
==== ==== From Somervell’s abridgement of Toynbee’s “A Study Of History”, volumes 7-10 page 236: “An air of failure or, where there is not positive failure, futility surrounds practically all the examples of Archaism that we have that we have been examinin, and the reason is not far to seek [should be “to be sought”]. The archaist is condemned, by the very nature of his enterprise, to be for ever tryin to reconcile past and present…. If he tries to restore the past without takin the present into consideration, then the impetus of life ever movin onward will shatter his brittle construction into fragments. If on the other hand, he consents to subordinate his whim of resuscitatin the past to the task of makin the present workable, his Archaism will prove a sham. Greetins, o Child of Wotan! RU fed up with bein treated like a 2nd-class citizen in your own land? Discover that, which the ancient sources prescribe for our victory! Check out THE BOOK OF ODIN! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0065QN8KW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=4faskidstorem20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789 ==== ====