Further Late Night Thoughts From My Balcony Over A Calvados
I have always found anomalies intriguing because they tell you that something that you think you know or your reasoning must be wrong. So you have to rethink. Here’s my latest.
A humanoid skull dated to 200,000BC and attributed to Devonian man was found some time ago. Much more recently DNA has been extracted from it and undergone analysis which proved it identical to current homo sapiens DNA. That surprised no one since Devonian man has for several years been presumed to be homo sapiens prime ancestor, with little bits of Neanderthal and possibly others in the mix. What we don’t and can’t ever knnow is which bits of the DNA were switched on or off. That has some significance because we all now carry the DNA to potentially turn us all into hairy apes, but it is switched off. We don’t know what got switched on or off or when but what we can quite reasonably infer is that Devonian man had the same potential as humans today.
Set that aside for the moment look at the generally agreed picture of human development after 10,000BC, the end of the last ice age. Hairy cavemen (and women) and primitive technology come to mind. Recent discoveries, particularly Gobekli Tepe, have shown that at that time technology in some places at least was more advanced than previously thought. Agriculture and farming, understanding of astronomy and ability with stone carving, for instance, were more advanced albeit still quite primitive. But…..if the ice age and its cause had wiped out all previous technology that would be the case (a big assumption, admittedly). So consider then advances in technology from 10,000BC to today. They are huge and have been developed over a mere 12,000 years. So, if we are to assume that this is the height of human technology development to date we must assume that Devonian man, with the same potential, did nothing with that potential for around 170,000, as against 12,00 years. It’s an equally big assumption. You can choose which assumption you wish to make but I think you must make one of them.
The root problem here is hard evidence, virtually all of which if there was any would have been wiped out by the last ice age. There is, in fact, more evidence for technologically very sophisticated societies existing prior to the last age than there is for only hairy cavemen roaming the planet (the two could co-exist, of course, as they do in effect now). But none of the evidence is really hard; it’s anecdotal, the stuff of myths and legends. Prior to year AD0 there wasn’t one god but very many different ones who were worshipped all over the globe. So what then constituted a god? Someone/thing with technological capabilities you couldn’t comprehend? Items discovered embedded in coal seams, which must be at least 300 million years old (we currently think), pose further conundrums.It’s all very puzzling but try imagining a man in a pin-stripe suit and a bowler hat carrying an umbrella and brief-case 50,000 years ago and see what that does to your picture of pre-history.
