Re: memetics-digest V1 #1296

From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Fri 07 Mar 2003 - 20:35:13 GMT

  • Next message: Grant Callaghan: "Re: memetics-digest V1 #1296"

    ----- Original Message ----- From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com> Kenneth,
    > Levels are always compared with things of today and that is some-thing we
    > can 't do with ancient sociaties, they got their merite in their own
    space/
    > time. Denying that is historical and intellectual unjust.
    Grant,
    > To study ancient cultures it is not necessary to judge them morally. What
    I
    > want to find out from them is how we got from there to here. From that
    > space/time to this one. What was retained and what was lost? While we
    > can't know everything, we can compare what we learn with what other
    cultures
    > of the same time had and did. One of the things we learn is the
    > evolutionary path of culture and what influenced the directions that path
    > took. It may give us a clue or two about the path or paths this culture
    is
    > be taking.

    I see one problem with this. If, by pure chance, ONE and the SAME thing in ALL ancient societies is wiped clean by the eons of time you will never know that they had it. Your comparision will fall flat by the lack of one single, but very important piece of the puzzle. And that one single thing can blur the view we have now today of evo- lution and the path it took and takes. The clues we think we have where this culture is going to can be biased upon an incomplete suppostion.

    Did all the early peoples have ' fire ' at the same time or did only one !? If only one, we can deduct that a than advanced being arose ( he learned himself the use of fire) but that doesn 't mean it was necessarily so ! The find of one single fireplace in some outskirt of Africa can 't be seen by us that the people who lived there were already more advanced than the ones on the neigbouring site where we found nothing. The picture of the one- step- by- one- step- evolution changes accor- dingly to the above, there is nothing that can 't exclude the possibility that the early humankind took ONE big jump ALL together.

    Evolution runs for eons smootly away, taking on small steps and than suddenly, bam.. one big leap forward.

    Kenneth

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