There's a subsequent article regarding human evolution ("What Were Humans Doing All That Time") with the posit of a mutation forty thousand years ago that resulted in self-awareness in humans. We started cave painting and went on to spray paint graffiti in L.A.
The significance for me is this means vastly more of human history is known that it otherwise seemed. When there is an eighty thousand year period about which we don't know much, humans might have had some vast kingdom that eventually collapsed and was forgotten. Based on the latest research, that's extremely unlikely and for me that's comforting as we know more about ourselves than it seems and there is no grand story from a vast kingdom in that empty period as it really was empty ... well ... except for eating all the mammoths.
Note: it's not clear whether humans wiped out the mammoths or if extinction would have happened anyway.
Cadillac Man is the historian but his enthusiasm is more localized to specifics of American history while still keeping a view on how that affected things internationally, what were the roots, etc. I believe his primary theme was the Reconstruction after the Civil War as was that of Dr Henry Shapiro who lived across the street (cool guy and a guitar player).
What it means to me from their perspectives with their knowledge of human history is now a much larger percentage of the full range of human existence. In fact, it's three times larger when you cut out that eighty thousand year void.
Maybe it amuses you that this makes it appear "One Million B.C." may have portrayed humans fairly well in communicating with grunts. We weren't stupid but we weren't capable of much abstraction. That change came at forty thousand years and from it came language, symbols, art, etc.
I hope this isn't boring for you as it's a blazing fascination to me. What made us what we are. Where did we come from. It appears we actually know quite a bit more of that than it had seemed.
Call it the most grandiose case of narcissism ever as it doesn't matter what made me; I want to know what made everybody. I'm not the only one with that type of narcissism and there's some damn cool stuff to read.
(Ed: where's the music?)
Music is all through this as my biggest wistfulness about the eighty thousand years is that it might have been full of music, stories, legends. We didn't lose anything as it was never there. It looks much like our music started at the forty thousand year point as there would be no music without abstraction, there would only be sound. We see it in animals when they hear it as some may even move in a kind of rhythmic response but how much of it do they really 'hear' as in the piece being about a warm rain on a Summer day.
Plenty of mystery remains as I know Greeks were writing about musical modes around the Sixth Century B.C. That covers about three thousand years but still we have another thirty-seven thousand years in which we may have been making music but no-one knows.
There is comfort and peace for me in this as if finding something that was lost. Finding something was never lost at all is a comfort in any context. It's a glorious anthropological moment for me as we really didn't lose anything. There are still tremendous discoveries to be made but, regarding human history, those discoveries will be within a context we already know; there is no mystical realm in the past that floats out of reach.
What it means from a Biblical standpoint is that it's the best written record of human history. That doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate but it's the only one. There's no disrespect regarding accuracy as the Gospels are all stories told by different people and no storyteller ever was photographic about the telling. Eyewitnesses are the most unreliable in a court of law, etc. It's not my purpose to slash the Bible as there will be errors in it but it remains the only record of human history and the significance of that increases tremendously.
(Ed: it was the best record anyway)
Yes but the significance is the same as with Cadillac Man. The record it covers of human history as a percentage of human existence is now three times larger than it was previously.
I'm almost apologetic that I find this material astonishing.
The significance for me is this means vastly more of human history is known that it otherwise seemed. When there is an eighty thousand year period about which we don't know much, humans might have had some vast kingdom that eventually collapsed and was forgotten. Based on the latest research, that's extremely unlikely and for me that's comforting as we know more about ourselves than it seems and there is no grand story from a vast kingdom in that empty period as it really was empty ... well ... except for eating all the mammoths.
Note: it's not clear whether humans wiped out the mammoths or if extinction would have happened anyway.
Cadillac Man is the historian but his enthusiasm is more localized to specifics of American history while still keeping a view on how that affected things internationally, what were the roots, etc. I believe his primary theme was the Reconstruction after the Civil War as was that of Dr Henry Shapiro who lived across the street (cool guy and a guitar player).
What it means to me from their perspectives with their knowledge of human history is now a much larger percentage of the full range of human existence. In fact, it's three times larger when you cut out that eighty thousand year void.
Maybe it amuses you that this makes it appear "One Million B.C." may have portrayed humans fairly well in communicating with grunts. We weren't stupid but we weren't capable of much abstraction. That change came at forty thousand years and from it came language, symbols, art, etc.
I hope this isn't boring for you as it's a blazing fascination to me. What made us what we are. Where did we come from. It appears we actually know quite a bit more of that than it had seemed.
Call it the most grandiose case of narcissism ever as it doesn't matter what made me; I want to know what made everybody. I'm not the only one with that type of narcissism and there's some damn cool stuff to read.
(Ed: where's the music?)
Music is all through this as my biggest wistfulness about the eighty thousand years is that it might have been full of music, stories, legends. We didn't lose anything as it was never there. It looks much like our music started at the forty thousand year point as there would be no music without abstraction, there would only be sound. We see it in animals when they hear it as some may even move in a kind of rhythmic response but how much of it do they really 'hear' as in the piece being about a warm rain on a Summer day.
Plenty of mystery remains as I know Greeks were writing about musical modes around the Sixth Century B.C. That covers about three thousand years but still we have another thirty-seven thousand years in which we may have been making music but no-one knows.
There is comfort and peace for me in this as if finding something that was lost. Finding something was never lost at all is a comfort in any context. It's a glorious anthropological moment for me as we really didn't lose anything. There are still tremendous discoveries to be made but, regarding human history, those discoveries will be within a context we already know; there is no mystical realm in the past that floats out of reach.
What it means from a Biblical standpoint is that it's the best written record of human history. That doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate but it's the only one. There's no disrespect regarding accuracy as the Gospels are all stories told by different people and no storyteller ever was photographic about the telling. Eyewitnesses are the most unreliable in a court of law, etc. It's not my purpose to slash the Bible as there will be errors in it but it remains the only record of human history and the significance of that increases tremendously.
(Ed: it was the best record anyway)
Yes but the significance is the same as with Cadillac Man. The record it covers of human history as a percentage of human existence is now three times larger than it was previously.
I'm almost apologetic that I find this material astonishing.
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