The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?
Not the strongest; not the cleverest–
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way in determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.
“Fitness”, then, is only another term for survival.
Darwinism:
That survivors survive.
Charles Fort
The Book of the Damned
1919, page 40
When was the wheel invented?
Well, the oldest dated one was a pottery wheel, from around 5100 years ago, in Mesopotamia, and you have depictions of wheels and toy wagons all the way back to 6000 years ago.
So, then, is that the answer? The wheel was first invented around roughly 6000 years ago?
Well, isn’t that a mighty nice coincidence:
We just so happen to have physical tangible evidence of one of the very first wheels, in our hands.
The oldest specimen on record just so happens to be among the very first wheels that humanity ever manufactured.
We just so happen to be lucky enough to have a complete view all the way back to the very first wheels.
No wheels before that.
The first wheels are dated to around when the oldest one we could find is dated.
The oldest wheel we could find is among the first ones.
Very logical.
What would we do without modern academia?
When was writing invented?
Well, the oldest dated writings found were clay tablets, from around 5400-5100 years ago, in Mesopotamia.
So, then, is that the answer? Writing was first invented 5400-5100 years ago?
Well, isn’t that a mighty nice coincidence:
We just so happen to have physical tangible evidence of the very first writings, in our hands.
The oldest writing on record just so happens to be among the very first writings that humanity ever produced.
We just so happen to be lucky enough to have a complete view all the way back to the very first writings.
No writing before that.
The first writings are dated to around when the oldest one we could find is dated.
The oldest writing we could find is among the first.
Very logical.
When was farming invented?
Well, the oldest dated evidence of farming is from the Natufians, around 11500 years ago, in the Levant, with sickles used to cut grain, and mortars and pestles to process them; along with evidence of sedentary lifestyle, like permanent dwellings and cemeteries with signs of social stratification.
So, then, is that the answer? Farming was first invented around 11500 years ago?
Before that, everybody had always been nomadic, the world over?
Before 11500 years ago, we were all hunters and gatherers?
Well, isn’t that a mighty nice coincidence:
We just so happen to have physical tangible evidence of the very first farming, in our hands.
The oldest sickle on record just so happens to be among the very first farming implements that humanity ever produced.
We just so happen to be lucky enough to have a complete view all the way back to the very first farms.
No farms before that.
Just hunter-gatherers before that.
The first farm is dated to around when the oldest one we could find is dated.
The oldest farm we could find is among the first.
Very logical.
When did beavers first start building dams and lodges?
When did ants first start systematically transporting goods along specific routes and storing them in collectively constructed and collectively accessed warehousing?
When did whales first start communicating long-distance?
When did humans first start building irrigation and housing?
When did humans first start moving goods from one building to another along specific routes and pooling the harvest in collectively constructed and collectively accessed warehousing?
When did humans start talking to one another long-distance or over vast stretches of time through writing?
These two sets of questions – for humans and for non-humans, are treated differently by professionals.
For us humans, we are considered a blank slate – nothing innate. The grunting and hunting and gathering caveman is our default state. We never farmed the land or built a city before the archaeological record allows us to have farmed the land or to have built a city.
For animals, we afford them innate qualities which we have no problem extending back to before the archaeological record:
As long as beavers have been beavers as we generally know them today, they’ve built dams and lodges. That’s what they do. You can see it in their teeth and shoulders. Maybe one or a few generations went by when no wood was available to build dams and lodges, or no running river was to be found, or with no need for dams to be built – like a generation living in a lake; but, considered over their ~ten million years of existence on earth, beavers, all throughout this vast period, were, most of the time, building dams and lodges. Nobody needs to hire an archaeologist to verify this. That’s just what these critters are designed to do, from teeth to toes.
As long as ants have been ants, as we generally know them today, they have been organizing their efforts by transporting goods systematically and building collective structures, among other organized activities. That’s what they do.
The low frequency part of a humpback whale’s song can reach 16 thousand kilometers away. Being able to command the ocean by communicating with others 10 kilometers, 100 kilometers, or even thousands of kilometers away is one way these creatures managed to become so dominant in the ocean that (before the modern whaling industry) ships had to wait for them to pass by in their multitudes before being able to continue sailing through a point. Whales communicate long distance, as long as whales have been whales, as we generally know them today, they’ve been calling out to each other to coordinate various affairs. That’s what they do.
What if there are some traits which are essentially innate within us, that are part and parcel with being human, which express themselves eventually? Considered over enough time and with enough variety of ecological situations humans find themselves in, is it not reasonable to assume that we have innate characteristics that develop as sure as a plant sets a flower?
When did humans first start examining their situation systematically, examining natural phenomena systematically, refining their tools and technologies systematically, and otherwise investigate nature, including themselves, and effectively apply this understanding to gain advantages in the world?
Wait – isn’t this what every successful human population, in every part of the globe, from the north pole to the Himalayas, has always done, a good portion of the time? Isn’t that just how humans have always behaved? No???
When did humans first start planting their stored seed from the previous year?
Wait – isn’t this a basic, obvious, clearly visible cycle of nature that one can behold every year – that seeds sprout new plants?
When did humans first start saddling horses or training wolves, or herding cattle or shearing sheep?
Wait – isn’t any human capable of understanding that animals have more uses than roasting?
After living in a region for a thousand years, is it not reasonable to assume that somebody at some point will domesticate plants or animals in that region?
The need to build shelter would be obvious. This realization – that you need a house, this would eventually naturally occur to anybody. “Oh, it’s raining out, let’s build a hut.” It wouldn’t take more than a generation to fully develop a cottage industry of cottage makers. Even some hunter gatherers build temporary huts where they temporarily stay. Is this not something to be expected to have always existed, so long as us humans have existed?
For the beaver, no one would take the position that beavers started making dams or lodges only once we documented their existence in the archaeological record. That would be dam silly. Everybody would assume that beavers have pretty much always been up to the tricky business of designing these intricate waterworks as long as they’ve been beavers. That’s just what they do. That’s just what they’ve always done. Right?
Farming is not necessarily as obvious as realizing that one could build a house, but, how long do you think you would take to realize, from scratch, that you could domesticate plants and animals? A few years? Decades? Really? A lifetime? Howbout a whole generation of people living in an area? Centuries? Howbout a whole friggin’ millennium of people living in a region: somebody at some point must surely realize that plants and animals can be systematically domesticated!?!?!
Instead of grunting, hunting and gathering and sleeping in a cave, maybe humans, as we generally know them today, have always been growing crops, building canals, herding animals, building houses, making things like boats and wagons, smoothening the wagon’s path between houses, fashioning bridges across rivers, and communicating symbolically or through writing over vast stretches of distance and time.
We try to ascertain: when did Ugh-Ugh-Cave-Man turn into something more effective, cunning, efficient, making use of tools, and fashioning his and her environment in significant ways, to give advantages in life, to ensure survival and put food on a collective table, by employing the power of their minds to ensure the welfare of their friends and family?
But what if Ugh-Ugh-Cave-Man never existed? If he was human, as we generally know humans today, then he was accomplishing a lot more and living much more gracefully than we depict today. What if, to be successful, humans before the modern Holocene period must’ve made tools and infrastructure, and must’ve domesticated animals and plants, in order to survive as human?
Maybe our lack of body hair, for example, demonstrates a history of making clothing? If so, can we really expect to answer the question “when was the very first sweater made”? Making clothing when the climate requires it might simply be part and parcel with being human. Anybody would consider fashioning some fashion when it’s raining out.
Evidence for us humans – our species – goes back (at least) 300,000 years.
The first evidence of farming is found just after the end of the last ice age, roughly 11,500 years ago.
David Attenborough proclaims, concerning the Holocene (from 11,700 years ago onward) that it is when: “We invented farming.”
So, before 11,700 years ago: no farming.
We were always hunting and gathering before the Holocene, Attenborough insists. We never planted a single onion, nor did we ever goad a single goat – for 288,300 friggin’ years.
Before the end of the last ice age, before the start of our current period - The Holocene, so before 11,700 years ago, during 288,300 years, even with catastrophes bombarding beaver populations, returning the beaver societies to a more unlearned and primitive condition at times, maybe even for a few generations at times; and even with beavers taking breaks from building dams (living in lakes for generations, for example); is it not reasonable to assume, without doubt, that many beaver populations, around the world, from 300,000 years ago to 11,700 years ago, must have built dams, at some point, at many points in fact? Like, absolutely, some beaver populations must have built dams in this vast stretch of time – 288,300 years, right? That’s what beavers do. That’s what they must’ve done.
Not a single anatomically modern human soul, for 288,300 years, noticed that seeds are the start of a new plant, and so they never bothered to store and then sow them systematically the following year?!
Professionals who insist that nobody performed agriculture for 288,300 years of our history, have probably never worked the land, demonstrate a complete lack of imagination of the various circumstances that may present themselves to populations – the range of ecological and social situations that various populations may encounter at different times, show a huge lack of respect for our ancestors as well as for the human ingenuity evident across the globe today, and these professionals obviously know nothing of what human ingenuity, even in isolation, can produce, both in situations of desperation as well as in periods of warmth and abundance and collective cooperation.
We don’t just underestimate the intelligence of plants and animals, we also clearly grossly underestimate our own abilities, and our own intellect, of our very own species, including underestimating our parental drive to feed and clothe our kids – which would surely have pushed us to farming and herding and providing basic amenities like shelter and clothing. This really should not be controversial.
Even though some beavers don’t bother building dams, even for generations at times, we should still expect that some populations of beaver built dams at some point in those 288,300 years.
Even though there are some human hunter-gatherers today, and there have probably always been and always will be some populations picking around, we should still expect that some populations of human built farms and cities at some point in those 288,300 years.
At the very least, professionals could say: “there is no evidence for civilization before the end of the ice age, but we just don’t know”. That would be more fair. It would be like saying: “we don’t know for sure if beavers built dams before we documented this effort”. This would still be a silly thing to say, but way more fair than saying beavers never built a single dam before we documented their existence.
Howbout this instead:
“We don’t know for a fact that before 11,700 years ago people tended to plants and animals, built infrastructure, organized their efforts collectively, and communicated with each other systematically like with writing; there is no hard evidence for this; but, you can rest assured that they certainly did this at times, because they were us and we are them, and that’s what we do, so that’s what they must’ve done too.”
This would be a perfectly sensible, a perfectly rational, a perfectly reasonable position to promote, even while based purely on assumptions.
The current “rational” “academic” “scholarly” position belittles our ancestors, making them look like fools, while only revealing our foolishness. Our characterization of human souls before 11,700 years ago is derogatory, insulting, and reveals more about us than it does about them (in that we reveal our need to be the peak of human existence – we must be the best because we are the most recent, and everything only ever gets better with time, right? We are always evolving, right?). To depict anybody and everybody before 11,700 years ago as an unkept, toothless, cross-eyed, grunting, hairy moron lumbering along hunch-backed, only ever wearing a loin cloth, arranging a stone bed in a damp and dreary cave, with vermin crawling all over; reveals a huge lack of imagination of what must’ve been possible for (at least) 288,300 years.
A few millennia can present enough of an opportunity for us to go from primitive barbarism to super-computers. And it would only take a few millennia to wipe clean most traces of our modern advanced accomplishments.
288,300 years is a friggin’ long time.
Over a quarter-million years.
288 millennia.
We’ve been around a long time.
24 Holocenes worth of time.
Over 10 thousand generations of humankind, coming and going, waxing and waning.
(at least)
The point at which we first “invented farming” is something that we will never be able to establish.
During the Gold Rush, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, near Sonora California, gold miners had dug deep tunnels into Table Mountain.
They found anatomically modern human bones and hundreds of human artefacts, like multiple stone mortars and pestles, ladles, and obsidian spear points:
“In 1891, George F. Becker told the American Geological Society that in the spring of 1869, Clarence King, director of the Survey of the Fortieth Parallel, and a respected geologist, was conducting research at Tuolomne Table Mountain. Becker stated:
“At one point, close to the high bluff of basalt capping, a recent wash had swept away all talus and exposed the underlying compact, hard, auriferous gravel beds, which were beyond all question in place. In examining the exposure for fossils, he [King] observed the fractured end of what appeared to be a cylindrical mass of stone. The mass he forced out of its place with considerable difficulty on account of the hardness of the gravel in which it was tightly wedged. It left behind a perfect cast of itself in the matrix and proved to be part of a polished stone implement, no doubt a pestle.”
Mr. King is perfectly sure this implement was in place and that it formed an original part of the gravels in which he found it. It is difficult to imagine a more satisfactory evidence than this of the occurrence of implements in the auriferous, pre-glacial, sub-basaltic gravels.
From this description and the modern geological dating of the Table Mountain Strata, it is apparent that this object was over 9 million years old.”
In 1870, Llewellyn Pierce, describing a 31.5-inch-wide mortar found in the Boston Tunnel Company mine, at Table Mountain:
“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have this day given to Mr. C. D. Voy, to be preserved in his collection of ancient stone relics, a certain stone mortar, which has evidently been made by human hands, which was dug up by me, about the year 1862, under Table Mountain, in gravel, at a depth of about 200 feet from the surface, under the basalt, which was over sixty feet deep, and about 1,800 feet in from the mouth of the tunnel. Found in the claim known as the Boston Tunnel Company."
James Carvin, describing a hatchet and mortars found at Table Mountain:
“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, did about the year 1858, dig out of some mining claims known as the Stanislaus Company, situated in Table Mountain, Tuolumne County, opposite O’Byrn’s Ferry, on the Stanislaus River, a stone hatchet… with a hole through it for a handle. Its size was four inches across the edge, and length about six inches. It had evidently been made by human hands. The above relic was found about sixty to seventy-five feet from the surface in gravel, under the basalt, and about 300 feet from the mouth of the tunnel. There were also some mortars found, at about the same time and place.”
A skull fragment found at Table Mountain, is housed at The Museum of the Natural History Society of Boston:
“From a shaft in Table Mountain, 180 feet below the surface, in gold drift… Overlying strata of basaltic compactness and hardness. Found July, 1857. Given to Rev. C.F. Winslow by Hon. Paul K. Hubbs, August 1857.”
On August 2, 1890, J. H. Neale, supervisor and chief engineer of Montezuma Tunnel at Table Mountain, signed the following statement about discoveries made by him:
“In 1877 Mr. J.H. Neale was superintendent of the Montezuma Tunnel Company, and ran the Montezuma Tunnel into the gravel underlying the lava at Table Mountain, Tuolumne County. … The mouth is approximately 1200 feet from the present edge of the solid lava cap of the mountain. At a distance of between 1400 and 1500 feet from the mouth of the tunnel, or of between 200 and 300 feet beyond the edge of the solid lava, Mr. Neale saw several spear heads, of some dark rock and nearly one foot in length. On exploring further, he himself found a small mortar 3 or 4 inches in diameter and of irregular shape. This was discovered within a foot or two of the spear-heads. He then found a large well-formed pestle, now the property of Dr. R. I. Bromley, and nearby a large and very regular mortar, also at present the property of Dr. Bromley.
All of these relics were found the same afternoon, and were all within a few feet of one another and close to the bed-rock, perhaps within a foot of it. Mr. Neale declares that it is utterly impossible that these relics can have reached the position in which they were found excepting at the time the gravel was deposited, and before the lava cap formed. There was not the slightest trace of any disturbance of the mass or of any natural fissure into it by which access could have been obtained either there or in the neighbourhood.”
The layer of gold-bearing gravels where they found these bones and tools, is dated to between 38-55 million years old.
In these layers of gold-bearing gravels are also plant and animal fossils that date to between 38-55 million years old.
Layers above have been dated, using the Potassium-Argon method, up to 33 million years old.
“In a paper read before the American Geological Society and published in its journal, geologist George F. Becker (1891. pp. 192-193) said:
"It would have been more satisfactory to me individually if I had myself dug out these implements, but I am unable to discover any reason why Mr. Neale's statement is not exactly as good evidence to the rest of the world as my own would be.
He was as competent as I to detect any fissure from the surface or any ancient workings, which the miner recognizes instantly and dreads profoundly. Someone may possibly suggest that Mr. Neale's workmen 'planted' the implements, but no one familiar with mining will entertain such a suggestion for a moment .... The auriferous gravel is hard picking, in large part it requires blasting, and even a very incompetent supervisor could not possibly be deceived in this way. In short, there is, in my opinion, no escape from the conclusion that the implements mentioned in Mr. Neale's statement actually occurred near the bottom of the gravels, and that they were deposited where they were found at the same time with the adjoining pebbles and matrix."
^^^
All these accounts (and many more), are extensively detailed in:
Forbidden Archaeology
The Hidden History of the Human Race
Michael Cremo and Richard Thomson
Section 5.5.3 - Tuolumne Table Mountain
The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California
Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History
1880
Dr. Josiah Dwight Whitney
State Geologist of California
J.D Whitney, Harvard-educated, chief geologist of California, was the one who reported these findings. Mount Whitney is named after him. His report was published by Harvard University.
Dr. William Holmes, an anthropologist working at the Smithsonian Institution in 1880, dismissed the report, which was full of proper evidence, with this argument:
“If Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated, despite the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted.”
In other words: finding 38-million-year-old plant and animal fossils alongside mortars, pestles, hatchets and spears, is imposing evidence, but, because it didn’t align with the story of evolution, the evidence should not be announced! So, this evidence gets deleted from the textbooks! Or, more correctly, this evidence never made it into any textbook in the first place!
How many other such similar essential discoveries have gone unreported over the years? And, in terms of the archaeological bonanza that occurred alongside American expansion westward, much of which administered by the Smithsonian, in this very same period of time, how many other finds that “didn’t fit the story of evolution” were simply deleted from the archaeological record?
The undeniable fact that species change, has been confused with a very specific story of human evolution, and of human antiquity. Note how William Holmes above said it was “…the story of human evolution as it is understood today…”. That’s precisely right – it’s a story, a very specific narrative.
These are two separate concepts:
House pets were bred from wild animals, and birds of a species separated by islands change over time to suit the needs of their isolated environment, and species change in other such ways.
Humans recently evolved over extremely short geological time-scales, and civilizations only arose starting 6-10 thousand years ago, and there was absolutely no writing, mathematics, astronomy or engineering before 11,500 years ago, when only cave-people hunting and gathering food could possibly have existed, because things only ever evolve, including civilization.
Species change.
Indeed they do.
This is fact.
Nobody needs to call this a “theory”.
We could just call the “The fact that species change”.
But:
It is impossible for anatomically modern humans to have roamed this Earth before a few hundred thousand years ago; and human civilizations only arose starting maximum 11,500 years ago, and before that we were only cavemen and cavewomen; and after that, and only after that, we have the wheel, cities, writing, mathematics, etc… because we have not found things like pottery, wheels, scrolls or built structures before 11,500 years ago.
It is not logical to treat this as the default assumption.
There are plenty of other reasonable scenarios.
Not only do we not have a full inventory and understanding of natural catastrophes that can wipe clean the traces of human accomplishment, skewing our view of how far back human civilizations have thrived; we don’t even study the ways in which civilizations can be wiped clean, because, the dominant paradigm in geology insists that the present is the key to the past – only processes we are familiar with today account for the entire geologic record of the past, and changes are gradual, and only very rarely catastrophic.
It is not helpful to base our view of civilisation in antiquity with an illusion of a continuous unbroken improvement (evolution) leading to us – the best of the lot – the best stock of humans – the best ever seen – the brightest minds, the most advanced societies, offering the most developed understanding of the universe.
One thing evident from geological strata and glacial cores is that there are ups and downs, all the time, on short-term and long-term scales. This should inform our view of the story of humans on earth. This view would involve regression at times. This view of species change would involve both evolution and devolution.
There are cyclical patterns of ups and downs in the geologic strata and glacial cores, and so, maybe the most logical default view to take concerning human provenance would be one of having adapted to consistent significant oscillations that occur on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. With this view, human antiquity might stretch back to time periods well beyond our means of studying. With this view, the human stock would oscillate into different forms as needed on these extensive time-scales of cyclical change, while continuing to pass along the adaptations from millions of years of living through these cyclical changes.
The assumption that we (in the Holocene) are the first to do science or engineering is a philosophical opinion, not some sort of scientific fact, and does not represent some logical default position to take. This assumption reveals a massive underestimation of the potential of our ancestors to do basic things like make a wheel, build a house, or saddle a horse, or build a barn for the horse, or figure out that Earth is a sphere.
If you think accomplishing these things is such a huge deal (impossible before 11,500 years ago), you must have very little confidence in your own self, as a human, living on this earth – you must be almost completely incompetent yourself – if you think these things are beyond the human mind before recorded history – you must be projecting your own inability to conduct basic investigation, basic woodwork, basic animal husbandry – it must be that you’ve never accomplished these yourself – so you proclaim “how could people without cellphones, tractors and powersaws have ever accomplished anything like animal husbandry, or the wheel, or astronomy”? So, you must think people, over the course of 288,000 years, were as stupid as you – not able to imagine a wheel – not able to look at boats disappearing on the horizon and imagining a spherical world, not even able to make boats in the first place – not able to keep even chickens as livestock – completely unimaginative primitive useless people like you, for 288,000 years – that must be the reason you have this derogatory view of human antiquity – all based on your complete lack of connection to any real science or any real connection with the land. Lost in a world of big-bang, time-travel and multiverses, you modern educated science-zombies have no understanding – no imagination, when it comes to what can be done, as a human being, standing on planet earth. You can’t even imagine people building friggin’ boats before the end of the ice age. You embarrass yourselves by saying that all of humanity – all the ingenuity of humanity, for at least 288,000 years, was not able to even fashion a wheel.
You have put your own selves well below the skill level of countless ancestors in ages long past and even countless peoples living all across the globe today.
Termites have not changed much, over millions of years.
They are termed “living fossils”.
So why do we insist on a constant progression for our own provenance?
Why do we insist on constant evolution for our species?
Why do we consider this option alone?
Just because species change, this does not necessarily mean that our species has been constantly evolving, or that we are at the pinnacle of this evolutionary tree, in our time.
If termites haven’t changed, it should therefore be entirely possible that creatures like us have been around for millions of years as well, and could even be a necessary part of the living network of interactions that sustains surface-life itself on Earth – protecting and preserving earthly surface life through various assaults like space-rocks, solar outbursts, severe fires, severe floods, severe droughts, global volcanic dust veils, severe cold, severe outbreaks of disease and famine, and whatever other nasty calamities that would threaten to extinguish or smother surface-life here – on this open-faced surface roasting around a weird giant ball of plasma, with rocks flying all over the place. We might be the ones regularly saving seeds and soil cultures, and preserving “two of each beast”.
It is entirely possible that we have been here a heck of a long time, like termites (preserving essentially the same bloodlines over vast stretches of time) – possibly as an integral part of a functioning living whole.
By wishing to be the best humans the planet has ever supported, we have blinded ourselves to all the possible accomplishments humans could have produced before 11,700 years ago.
Most people dwelling in the Sahara region, while it is thick with lush greenery, full of wildlife, lakes, forests, mangrove marshes, and extensive river systems, from coast to coast to coast, – most people dwelling in this are not aware that the Sahara region will eventually return to desert, like clockwork.
Most people dwelling in the Sahara region, while it is desert, barren, without a scrap of wildlife, or green vegetation, and all the mega-lakes have dried up, and the forests have been cleared, – most people dwelling in this are not aware that the Sahara region will eventually return to lush green water-rich wilderness, like clockwork.
Every 20 thousand years or so, the Sahara region switches from desert to green paradise, and then back to desert. Seeing as this cycle involves geologically very large things over very large areas, it is generally hard to notice and track, due to our relative speed of perception of these events, and so: during the thousands of years of desert, it seems like it has always been desert; and during the thousands of years of green, it seems to have always been green. This has been consistently transpiring for a few million years now (within the current geological paradigm, and with the information currently available).
Smack-dab in the middle of the Sahara, located 1000 miles south of Algiers, “Tassili n’ Ajjer”, which translates to “Plateau of Rivers”, a seemingly sarcastic name, is the site of the first modern discovery of the remnants of an amazingly rich, lush, green Sahara:
“Carved and painted on the rocky cliff walls, usually under an overhanging ledge, were pictures of animals now found only deep in the jungles and savannahs of Central Africa. Great processions of elephants, antelopes, and wild buffalo marched across the rock. Hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and water snakes swam over the stones. And baboons, wild boar, ostriches, and lions cavorted around the walls. All the animals now associated with tropical Africa are seen in the paintings – plus some prehistoric beasts that are now extinct.
Obviously, the climate of this area was once much, much different. Great life-giving rivers bordered by teeming, humid jungles must have once flowed through what is now only an endless sea of sand. How different life must have been for the people who lived here then!
The animal pictures most often appear on the exposed faces of high cliffs. Deeper inside the natural caves, however, the drawings show the people themselves: farming, dancing, hunting, herding animals, and playing music. The drawings have a simple, childish, and sometimes comic character, with the women looking like plump little butterballs. (Perhaps fat was beautiful for these people. Certainly they suffered no food shortages!)”
Where Did They Go?
James Cornell
pages 3-7
Scholastic Book Services, 1976
“The hippopotamus, shown being hunted from canoes, indicates the existence of living rivers. And for a huge beast such as an elephant – which eats an average of 450 pounds of forage a day – to have lived on the Tassil N’ Ajjer and the surrounding area, there must have been a dense cover of vegetation. This must have existed, too, to satisfy the appetites of a large number of domesticated animals, whose existence can be assumed from the many painted pastoral scenes. …”
“… There is a wide variety of colour and pattern in the coats of the animals, and the cows’ udders are well-developed – both characteristics which point to an advanced stage of domestication. As far as can be judged from the paintings, the cattle seem to have been in excellent physical condition, and their graceful outlines are a further indication of very good pasture.”
The World’s Last Mysteries
Henri Lhote
Author of a short summary in this Reader’s Digest special
The Reader’s Digest Association, 1978
Page 214
“… until about 5,000 years ago, Lake Chad still covered a considerable area. Rivers such as the Tilemsi, the Tafassasset, the Timmersoi and the Tamanrasset ran regularly, keeping the region moist and encouraging the growth of a luxuriant carpet of vegetation. The peaks of the Hoggar, the Tassili N’ Ajjer, and the Tibesti enjoyed a Mediterranean climate, and analyses of ancient pollens have shown that Allepo-pine grew there, together with cypresses, cedars, ash trees, evergreen oaks, nettle trees, walnuts, alders, myrtle, limes and olives.”
^^^
Page 212
“ … The present camel period started around 2,000 years ago.”
^^^
Page 209
Might it be the case that regions other than the Sahara are significantly affected by the same phenomenon? What else is there we don’t know? This is so fundamental. What other cyclical climate-changing processes are we unaware of? Our view that all of the regions that we inhabit today have been the way they are forever, is a nice little cozy fabrication of ours. Ecosystems change drastically on millennial timescales, not just over millions of years.
Our view of a constant stable unchanging climate maintaining an orderly ecological balance across the globe, over millions of years, until we showed up on the scene, is simply a silly invention – a view eagerly adopted and promoted by self-hating humans.
“In the late 1800’s, the great German historian Leopold Von Ranke, in the last years of his career, set out to write his own Universal History, which he called A World History, and it was left unfinished upon his death in 1886. Writing in the 1880’s, he was well aware of the challenge of Darwinism, and the nature of geological time. He knew that the archaeologists were digging up the fossils and antiquities of Man, but as he wrote in the preface to his first volume:
“The province of history is limited by the means at her command, and the historian would be overbold who should venture to unveil the mystery of the primeval world – and of the relation of Mankind to God and Nature. The solution of such problems must be entrusted to the joint efforts of Theology and Science.”
-Leopold Von Ranke
The opening chapters of his book then go on to narrate the story of Genesis. That Genesis should still be relevant in 1886, is not that remarkable. In certain circles, the habit of writing histories that begin in Eden has never abated. It is significant only because many historians in the United States and elsewhere consider Leopold Von Ranke to be the father of the modern discipline of history. He may have accepted the existence of something that lay on the other side of the veil, but he chose to consign that history to Theology and Science.
Now, that pair, Theology and Science, do not exactly make ideal foster parents. Ranke’s own history was sandwiched between several important volumes in the early history of the warfare between Science and Religion, which were being published in the latter decades of the 1800’s, and the theologians and scientists have been duking it out ever since. Yet historians, in the tradition of Ranke, continued to watch indifferently from the sidelines, and this is because History, for all intents and purposes, tells a story that is chronologically and geographically indistinguishable from Genesis.
Though the history has been translated into secular terms, it still begins in Mesopotamia, and it still begins 6000 years ago. To this extent, History gives no comfort to the disciplines who are still fighting the time wars.
Ranke aside, the textbooks that emerged in the United States in the 1880’s, textbooks, part of the new history curricula, typically start, you can go look at them, they typically start with the fully formed pyramids of Egypt. None of this was a problem as long as humanity’s deep past remained unknown and concealed. But in the 1800’s, geologists, archaeologists, and biologists began pulling aside the veil that had hitherto obscured our knowledge of the speechless past. This is what troubled figures like Leopold Von Ranke, whose careers had spanned the time-revolution of the 1860’s, for how could he hope to keep the time of Judeo-Christian history uncontaminated by the tens of thousands of human fossils and eoliths that had been dug up by the 1880’s. The only solution was an epistemological one – to declare that these kinds of sources are not suitable for History!
As the French historians Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, disciples of Leopold Von Ranke, wrote in an important manual of historical methodology (Introduction aux études historiques) published in the 1890’s:
“The historian works with documents. Documents are the traces that have been left of the thoughts and actions of men of former times. For want of documents, the history of immense periods of the past of humanity is destined to remain forever unknown. For there is no substitute for documents.”
No documents, no history. In the wake of this epistemological move, scientific history came to be restricted to written documents.
Just to summarize: Why documents? Well, it eliminates the threat posed by archaeology, a threat not only to the sacred history, that people like Leopold Von Ranke still believed in, but also the bewildering threat of: how the hell are we going to write a history that embraces all of that time.
So what are we left with? A historical framework, that by chronological and geographical sleight of hand, continues to teach the history told by Genesis.
I was teaching in New York State, and I went to the New York State social studies high school curriculum and had a look at when that curriculum began history, and it began in 4000 BC. That’s when human history began. I was chatting with high school history teachers and I asked them: “do you know why they chose 4000 BC?”. First city? No – the first city is younger than that. Howbout writing? Nope, that’s 800 years after that. What they didn’t know is that 4000 BC is pretty much the same date that Archbishop Ussher had assigned, in the 1600’s, to the creation of the world (October 23rd, 4004 BC).
This made me wonder: is it possible, that the field of History, is in some way, some small way, complicitous with Young-Earth-Creationism?!”
Daniel Lord Smail, professor of history at Harvard
Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0, Symposium, 2007