51–59 of 59 posts
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I don't have evidence the Ancient Greek gods were/are not real. I do believe they are real in a sense. At least in collective unconscious, they will influence humankind.
I don't have any evidence that I'm a (buggy) computer simulation, either. But that's not reason to believe that I am one. > I do believe they are real in a sense. Which ones are real, the Greek gods or the Norse gods?
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When the only means of preserving your history is to speak it truthfully, that's what you do.
That might be the main difference. They would have considered the idea of "preserving your history" to be not worth considering. It didn't seem to be something they valued (at least in the sense we understand it).
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So what is your explanation for the spacefaring journeys through the solar system found within ancient Hindu texts? Animals do speak, actually. This is something you might not have come to understand or accept yet, but science is no longer able to assert that animals are not communicating in distinct languages. Everywhere we have studied, we have found one. So the ability to understand an animal and learn its languag…
> Unless we think gods, talking animals, totems, spirits are real we've learned that many stories are embellished. Notice, I prefixed it with "unless we think...". Surprisingly some of us do think, so then the statement doesn't apply there. And I suspect this forum is not appropriate to convince otherwise. > So what is your explanation for the spacefaring journeys through the solar system found within ancient Hindu t…
And yet now we know that it is indeed possible, and are close to achieving it ourselves.
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> Ancient peoples would think this is ridiculous. How would we conclude what ancient people think?
Because they tell us in their writings.
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Except that in an orally transmitted culture, stories are _also_ told to communicate actual, factual history. So the issue is that we no longer communicate our history through stories told out loud and therefore decided not to be able to conceive of any culture actually doing the same.
And those stories transform with needs of each generation. We don't trust what past people wrote about their own history either and not just because of fantastic elements.
The presumption of rapidly shifting history in orally transmitted culture is being debunked by this and other works. The shame is that if people would just for a second stop coming from places of assumption like the one you have written, we wouldn't need to wait for research to prove it is worth listening to before trying to learn from it.
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That might be the main difference. They would have considered the idea of "preserving your history" to be not worth considering. It didn't seem to be something they valued (at least in the sense we understand it).
That's entirely the cultural bias of treating other humans as savage and primitive and not listening to a word they say.
Going to go out on a personal opinion limb here, but I think we dismiss far too much in archaeology and ancient recorded history, even with the evidence all around us. I predict one day there will be a great revival in archaeology as we start to cast off our erroneous assumptions about native peoples stories of their history. A few Examples that have really stuck in my mind: The recorded history of the Egyptians says…
You definitely have to be a conspiracy theorist to buy any of the myriad contemporary Atlantis myths and the veracity of Plato's claims. The history podcast Our Fake History has an excellent three episode arc about Atlantis, including Plato's account. https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-2/ The upshot is that his account does not match up with any real world location, unless you are willing to engage in cherry…
It always amazes me why historians and researchers start with the assumption that any tale from the past is fanciful until proven otherwise. We have little to no proof that our very distant ancestors sat around making up stories for the fun of it and then passing them on to future generations, when they'd surely be more likely to pass on useful information that keeps the tribe alive. Yes there will be embelishments,…
For just one of endless examples, do you believe the ancient Greek gods were real? Some stories may indeed have persisted for millenia. But how does one separate those from the fanciful ones? With corroboration. Because some are true does not mean all ancient stories and myths are true, and one must be careful to not impute meaning that isn't there, i.e. finding pictures in clouds.
It always amazes me why historians and researchers start with the assumption that any tale from the past is fanciful until proven otherwise. We have little to no proof that our very distant ancestors sat around making up stories for the fun of it and then passing them on to future generations, when they'd surely be more likely to pass on useful information that keeps the tribe alive. Yes there will be embelishments,…
When the tales violate the laws of physics, the tales are fanciful. Vedic flying palaces for example, involve expense of energy and energy transfer that a high school student can calculate. Tragically, there is no mention of the energy source in the tales or we could solve our current energy needs.