by NoelC » Fri Jul 24, 2009 8:00 pm
I cannot begin to imagine, sitting here in this air conditioned office with a full stomach and a cup of coffee and with Pandora playing my favorite music, how unbelievably hard it must have been for very early Man, in his ignorance and with a lifespan of only one or two decades or less, to survive. I'm sure most evenings he or she was passed out from the exhaustion of trying to make ends meet (e.g., get enough sustenance to survive the day while enduring the misery of infections, parasites, fights with other people and animals, etc.) It's hard to think that many would have had the time prior to "modern civilization" to sit back and look at the stars much for other than a brief diversion. And that's even considering they had minds every bit as complex as ours going a long way back. They must have been bored senseless - in those brief moments when physical needs did not dominate their senses.
Not long ago I visited the sites of many petroglyphs in the American west, some well off the beaten path and quite clearly authentic. Primitive people of only HUNDREDS or a very few THOUSANDS of years ago were clearly far more preocupied with the sizes of various parts of the bodies of their leaders, the suffering they imparted on others (disembodied heads being carried around, for example), and of the animals they kept/hunted for food, than with the little lights in the sky at night. Notably there really are images that look suspiciously like beings in space suits; perhaps that was just early cliff carving sci-fi. I recall seeing only a very few images of the sun, let alone Jupiter.
-Noel
I cannot begin to imagine, sitting here in this air conditioned office with a full stomach and a cup of coffee and with Pandora playing my favorite music, how unbelievably hard it must have been for very early Man, in his ignorance and with a lifespan of only one or two decades or less, to survive. I'm sure most evenings he or she was passed out from the exhaustion of trying to make ends meet (e.g., get enough sustenance to survive the day while enduring the misery of infections, parasites, fights with other people and animals, etc.) It's hard to think that many would have had the time prior to "modern civilization" to sit back and look at the stars much for other than a brief diversion. And that's even considering they had minds every bit as complex as ours going a long way back. They must have been bored senseless - in those brief moments when physical needs did not dominate their senses.
Not long ago I visited the sites of many petroglyphs in the American west, some well off the beaten path and quite clearly authentic. Primitive people of only HUNDREDS or a very few THOUSANDS of years ago were clearly far more preocupied with the sizes of various parts of the bodies of their leaders, the suffering they imparted on others (disembodied heads being carried around, for example), and of the animals they kept/hunted for food, than with the little lights in the sky at night. Notably there really are images that look suspiciously like beings in space suits; perhaps that was just early cliff carving sci-fi. I recall seeing only a very few images of the sun, let alone Jupiter.
-Noel