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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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how deep is your love?
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CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam
1067 posts

Fed up with this lark...
Nov 01, 2005, 23:40
Frankly I'm fed up, I'm really fed up of this 'wise all-knowing ancients' malarkey. The people who lived thousands of years ago, compared to now, knew next to nothing about the world, how it works and why it works. Practically nothing. What they may have <i>believed</i> and what they <i>'knew'</i> are two completely different things that we (with thousands of years of observation, measurement, testing and experiment) have to seperate with the fullness of the knowledge we have <i>now</i>. Its very true that they were more in tune with the natural rythmns of the natural world and were as intelligent as any of us, but that is only one side of the equation, scientific experimentation and observation is the other. There they fall way short of what has come since, through incredible feats of abstract thought and dedication to what is provable and logical.

What is incredible is that in these monuments we see the <i>beginnings</i> of measurement, experiment, engineering, art and a defiance of the transient nature of life. That is what we should be interested in, as well as their beliefs. But if we start to believe ourselves what they may have believed hundreds as well as thousands of years ago, we may as well throw in the towel because if they had that attitude of backward-ness then we would still be chasing pigs with a lump of flint for breakfast.

Its nice to fantasise that they knew fundemental scientific things we dont know now, that we 'lost touch with'. We should lose touch with things that science tells us are imaginative ceations of the mind. These people were much closer to the edge of existence than we are, one thing we do know about human nature is that the closer you are to exiting the planet the more inexplicably superstitious we become. Even for some hardened athiests, the Bible/Koran/whatever is the last book they read. Superstitions tell us about human nature, not the natural world and that is how we must look at the motivation and beliefs of the builders of ancient stone monuments.
In reply to:
Re: how deep is your love? (cropredy)		 Replies:
Re: Fed up with this lark... (cropredy)
Re: Fed up with this lark... (StoneLifter)
Re: Fed up with this lark... (Jane)
Re: Fed up with this lark... (PeterH)
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