>glenn
>Foundation,Fall and Flood
Glenn makes an excellent point with the very same example that I wanted
to put in my original post, but left out for brevity. I think too that
he has done a better job than myself at expressing it. Examples similar
to Australian aborigines can be found... some of the cultures recently
discovered in the Amazon, perhaps even our own recent Plains Indians
(except their stone points and tools are not so "primitive") but there
perishable technology would some day give few if any clues to their
"humanness".
I wonder if sometimes we don't develop an a-priori bias that we are
somehow intellectually superior to ancient man merely due to the
technology that we have accumulated and relied upon (and developed
further). Perhaps it is not merely a question of organic mental or
intellectual development (evolution?) but rather a function of what is
available to us to use and how we have reconfigured it for our benefit.
All of those artist renderings of Neanderthals sure make them look "dumb
and primitive", but were they really? I am interested in knowing what
methods are being used to determine their intellectual fitness and are
they truly valid.
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"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17"
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Paul Durham pdd@gcc.cc.md.us
Oakland, Maryland