Why so Special?

Fraggle Rocker · Feb 2, 2012

It seems that early people - who were, in fact, more special, or at least less mass-produced and programmed than we are - didn't see themselves as so different and separate from the rest of the world.

And you know this how? They didn't leave any written records because they hadn't invented writing yet. They didn't leave any films or sound recordings because they hadn't invented those technologies either. This is just romanticized speculation about people who aren't here to speak for themselves.

They were very much more in and of the world; very much more respectful of other species.

Again, please tell us where you learned this remarkable information.

I hope you're not basing this on the accounts of explorers in the Colonial Era. They generally fell into two camps: either portraying the Noble Savage as better than their own people, or regarding them as animals who could be enslaved and sold.

The few Paleolithic (pre-agricultural) tribes left on earth today have by now had far too much contact with civilization to be accepted as accurate examples of the culture of the prehistoric past. They're "stone age people with chainsaws and iPods."

aaqucnaona · Feb 2, 2012

spidergoat said:
We are special, but not as special as we like to think.

wynn · Feb 2, 2012

Uh.

The anthem of all speshal people.

Grumpy · Feb 2, 2012

Fraggle Rocker

The last transitional species was Homo erectus. His brain was half the size of ours, which means that his forebrain, where all the serious thinking takes place, was about a third the size of ours.

While not our ancestors Neandertals were not far behind us in cognitive abilities and the last of them died out just 20,000 years ago, give or take. Most of what we have been able to accomplish relies upon being able(through speech, writing, etc)to pass down knowledge on which to build further technology. Otherwise our supposed superiority is more a matter of degree, not of unique abilities, either physical or mental.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/30/kanzi-chimpanzee-cooking-with-fire_n_1176518.html

Grumpy

Me-Ki-Gal · Feb 2, 2012

wynn said:
Uh.

The anthem of all speshal people.

That is a great song . More to it like the bird song . It sounds simple but more going on there than one would think . The subtleties of sound are unbelievable .

Me-Ki-Gal · Feb 2, 2012

Grumpy said:
Fraggle Rocker

While not our ancestors Neandertals were not far behind us in cognitive abilities and the last of them died out just 20,000 years ago, give or take. Most of what we have been able to accomplish relies upon being able(through speech, writing, etc)to pass down knowledge on which to build further technology. Otherwise our supposed superiority is more a matter of degree, not of unique abilities, either physical or mental.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/30/kanzi-chimpanzee-cooking-with-fire_n_1176518.html

Grumpy

Yeah I been saying that . Clones and copies of the past . built on . We are built by many blocks of knowledge. Stacks upon stacks of the past . Like lines really . That is where predictability lays. Like a time loop or wheel moving at a steady rate except speeding up by the advancement of knowledge step by step . That we could brake the bonds of the wheel we could jump to the future out come now . That would be something . To live in the future that would of been but is now instead because of braking free of the wheel of destiny .

Ripley · Feb 3, 2012

Fraggle Rocker said:
And you know this how? They didn't leave any written records because they hadn't invented writing yet. They didn't leave any films or sound recordings because they hadn't invented those technologies either. This is just romanticized speculation about people who aren't here to speak for themselves.Again, please tell us where you learned this remarkable information.

Don't good scientists not shy away from extrapolation when need be? Obviously the cave paintings in southern France are among the closest recorded data of early man's association with nature, hence also closest to earlier subspecies of Homo sapiens? And what do these paintings reveal sagaciously? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to perceive the dexterity, sensibility, care, respect given to the rendering of nature.

And that's the point. They don't have the cognitive power to consider issues like that.

Well, if you're going to use that criterion then you should also apply it further out—like, to the entire Milky Way perhaps, apart from smart pompous man, of course.

Ripley · Feb 3, 2012

Me-Ki-Gal said:
We are built by many blocks of knowledge. Stacks upon stacks of the past.

Exactly. Smart pompous man inherited the building blocks from the past to erect a modern civilization—so why disparage the earliest blocks—the foundation, really—by classifying primitive man as essentially inferior and inadequate?

Fraggle Rocker · Feb 3, 2012

Ripley said:
Don't good scientists not shy away from extrapolation when need be? Obviously the cave paintings in southern France are among the closest recorded data of early man's association with nature, hence also closest to earlier subspecies of Homo sapiens? And what do these paintings reveal sagaciously? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to perceive the dexterity, sensibility, care, respect given to the rendering of nature.

There are plenty of artists today who produce great renderings of nature, while the rest of us are paving it over and admiring those renderings on our monitors. It's an unwarranted extrapolation to assume that the community in which those few artists worked shared their sensibilities.

Well, if you're going to use that criterion then you should also apply it further out—like, to the entire Milky Way perhaps, apart from smart pompous man, of course.

I have no data from which to guess whether there are other species out there who have a better relationship with nature than we do.

As I pointed out in another thread, nature ranks somewhere on everyone's list of good things. When they become prosperous enough to go that far down their list, they begin spending some of their income on preserving nature. We've certainly reached that point in the USA, with our reforestation and our pain-in-the-ass trash sorting (the Japanese happily deal with 27 different recycling categories) and our dismantling of dams, but many people have not.

Ripley · Feb 5, 2012

Fraggle Rocker said:
There are plenty of artists today who produce great renderings of nature, while the rest of us are paving it over and admiring those renderings on our monitors.

Next, I suppose, you'll be extrapolating those caves as being stone age art galleries, and cavemen from afar would come visit and stroll through their painted hollowed spaces, pointing out the nuances of line and earthly tones.

It's an unwarranted extrapolation to assume that the community in which those few artists worked shared their sensibilities.

And it's an unwarranted extrapolation to assume that these early –refined– men were not a product of their age, a realization of their heritage, a reflection of their communal culture.

I have no data from which to guess whether there are other species out there who have a better relationship with nature than we do.

That's not what I meant.

As I pointed out in another thread, nature ranks somewhere on everyone's list of good things.

So it's come to this for lofty modern man?? The welfare of this planet as some sort of extracurricular activity?

Why so Special?

Fraggle Rocker

aaqucnaona

This sentence is a lie

wynn

˙

Grumpy

Curmudgeon of Lucidity

Me-Ki-Gal

Banned

Me-Ki-Gal

Banned

Ripley

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Ripley

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Fraggle Rocker

Ripley

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