Humans are Stupid! What is time?
I am looking at where to began in history and what I am finding is that humans are stupid! We learn lesson after lesson and just have to relearn it. It reminds me of a teacher that I had in High School and I went back a few years later to say, “Hi”. I asked him how he was and he basically said, “Same place. Same kids just new names.” (i.e. all the students where the same just they had new names to go with their personalities.) He had been teaching over 20 years.
Of course, I asked, “What is my name this year?”
He stopped breathing for a second and this wave of shook was showing on his face and his eyes bugged out. It was like he was reviewing his brain for who I was for a moment then he stated very deeply and a bit aggressively, “I have never had one like you and I don’t want another.” He left the classroom with some excuse but I could see that all the stuff I did to him went flashing through his mind.
Yes, I am going off topic but I have a point so bear with me.
I was not a great student or a bad student. I was just very different. I looked like a certain type of girl but I was not. I wasn’t popular but I know someone in every group in the high school. I was a geek but did not look or act like one. If anything, I had my own style and I did not apology for it. I never fit into any of the boxes which confused people and even scared them because they did not know how I was going to act on any given situation.
The teacher who said this was most likely thinking about the ten or twenty page paper that I wrote. You had to give a speech with the paper. His face just got redder and redder when he was reading the paper and I was getting ready to give my speech. He told me to sit down and that I was not allowed to give a speech on the subject of the paper. After class, I objected to as it would lower my grade. I got an A on the speech without doing one but I am sure that was to keep the parents from coming in and having a fit about the subject and my thoughts on it. Teen pregnancy which I basically dealt with in the first 5 pages then I added in all the different sexually diseases that you could get in detail as to part of the issue will teens having sex early. Like I said, I was different.
But if we go back to the fact that he stated that it was the same kids just new names. He had been teaching for over 20 year because he was retiring in the next few. To him, the class never changed as the teenagers were basically the same year after year with the same cliques, same issues, and just different names. Nothing surprises him any more.
If you look at history, the same can be said. Nothing changes but the date and the names of the people. We go through this dance year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millennium after millennium. The only change is human technology.
Humans are Stupid!
When I read history books or watch shows that talk about early humans or any humans that were before them, the historians keep talking about how early man wasn’t all that smart. I don’t believe it. I think that humans have been the same as we are now. We don’t learn our lesson and we keep doing the same thing. In addition, humans are basically lazy as they are allowed to be for the conditions that they are in.
When European came to American, they believed that the Natives were ignorant because they had not gotten into dividing land, creating cities, and a social society like that had in Europe, Russia, China, and other countries around the world. But I think that was lacking in education of what was really happening in the Americas vs the Europe countries at the time.
In 1257, Samalas erupted. Samalas is a volcano in Indonesia but it caused global environmental effects which caused famines and political turmoil around the world including in the Americas. If you visit Native sites in the Southwest, you can see that they seemed to go down around 1250s but no one knows why according to the signs at the Local, State, and National Parks and Sites. Several groups of Native Americans just disappeared. No one know really what happened to the tribes only that it happened around 1250. The more that I look at the history of the world, events like Samalas are the reasons that it took humans so much time to advance and have those advancements of electricity, cars, phones, a man on the moon, etc.
It seems that it is events like this that have held back, stopped, and/or reversed humans from advancing and possible, helped killed off the Neanderthals who were alive at the same time as modern human were. I don’t believe that humans have ever been stupid but rather they have certain items that are more important then other things. For example, if Einstein was alive 10,000 years ago, he would not have the ability or basic knowledge to think and make papers about nuclear energy. He would have spent his days, hunting and hoping to get enough food for that day and others.
If you believe in evolution then the things that are being found at this moment are that all life started from inorganic compound which became plants, animals, and humans. The human branch started as a small mammal during the dinosaur times which later turned into humans through many many years of evolution. Recently, different types of humans like bones have been popping up in every area of the world. In each of these areas, it seems that humans primates were very different depending on which area they evolved in.
For example, Neanderthals developed in Northern Europe. They developed certain things that made them better in their environment then modern human who developed for their environments. They were shorter and stockier which helped them in colder environments. They had larger noses which allow cold air to warm before going into the lungs. It was like when I lived in Alaska, the locals were shirtless when the temperature went up into the 60s because they were so hot. Being from California, I had a large warm jacket on. I had yet to adapt to my environment.
It seems that when you find barriers that stopped the transport of plants, animals, or beginning humans types, you find great difference levels of specialization in those such as the Neanderthals. Barriers include ocean, mountains, ice, etc. Then you built in that most early Homo’s were only in small groups that a whole group could go extinct not unlike the Dodo bird.
One of the best places to see how barriers effect the change in animal adaptions is Madagascar. Madagascar is a large island off the African coast. It has a primate called Lemurs. Lemurs are not monkeys but primates that are unique to the island. In the last 2000 years, many have become extinct. The Silky Sifaka is currently critically endangered. The island is just under the size of Texas. It has very different terrain from dense rainforest to desert to waterfront beaches.
The Ring Tailed Lemurs live in the desert and eat cactus. When you think about a Lemur, this is the one that most people recognize and it kinda the size of a cat, about 15 to 18 inches long. But then you have the Mouse Lemurs which they have several different kinds which live in more in the forest areas of the island. They are about the size of a rat, about 7 to 12 inches long. Note: the measurements don’t count the tail which can be twice the size of their bodies. Darwin was completely taken with this island and all the different things that he found.
Therefore, if we take the Earth and all the different barriers, homos could have been in every corner. Every corner would have a different type. Every type would become a type of homo. But in the end, not every one would be able to survive due to environmental issues, over population, diseases, birth rates, being hunted by a bigger animal, etc. Neanderthals were one of those that did not make it as a group. But recently, they have found that the most modern humans has Neanderthal DNA of up to 2%. They also found that it seems that they liked human women because the DNA has come through the human females mating with them rather then the male human mating with their women. But this is just early on in this field.
But it seems to me that humans are not stupid so much as lazy and until recently, always fighting nature for survival. According to something that I read or saw, a while ago, humans almost went extinct about 900,000 years ago. They believe that we were down to around 1,200 individuals. They think that we stayed small for a long time before we exploded and headed out to conquer the world.
Each time humans have started settlements something has created a breakdown and those settlements have disappeared. One of the biggest issues have been that as we start a civilization that could last Mother Nature does something from flooding to a volcano to a drought to a tsunami to an earthquake to anything that changes the environment and/or diseases. But then you also have wars, political issues, or other human causes. But humans are stupid because we allow things to happen and just past it to the next generation to deal with and don’t learn our lessons because that will not happen to us again.
At the same time, humans are very intelligent when we want something. One of the things that I seem to keep hearing is that early humans like beer. As hunters and gathers, beer was not really going to happen as you have to have grain and wait for it to become beer. It seems to have motived the European cultures to settle down and work together. Along with high populations which mean that you need more central food sources.
The Americas did not really have beer until European came over. They had pot which just grow around and they could find it when they wanted it. They had a few other drugs as well. But they could be gathered and did not have to be farmed. In addition, they did not have horses which slowed their growth. If you don’t have cities then you don’t need to tax people, therefore, you don’t need to have written words to write down things to control the population.
Taxes and ownership is one of the biggest reasons that civilization started to use the written word. Civilizations need to have a way to track things. Keeping history, arts, and other things came second and down the line.
Today, I am watching as Los Angeles is on fire and the Santa Ana winds are high and keeping it going. My beloved Pasadena is at risk. The environmental issues in the Americas seem to be very different then other places in the world and with a later start to getting humans over and more land, they had a different population which meant that they could stay hunters and gathers.
But things like this would have keep the population down to a point that allowed them to stay hunters and gathers. To be able to live a simpler life without large cities, leadership, taxes, etc. As they still had lots of land with wild game and gathering of wild plants. No reason to settle down into major cities. Without horses, they had feet to get them from place to place and they had to carry everything. Yet, they had a place that manufacture site which products rocks that could be turned into arrowheads in Alibates Flint Quarries which is a wonderful place to visit if you have a chance. These would be traded across the Americas.
Christopher Columbus also did a death blow to the Native Americans when he and his crew brought over small pox and other diseases to the Americans which killed of between 80 to 95 percent of Native Americans within about 100 years. This decreased in population helped Europeans become become the dominant force in the Americas. With that many of your family and tribe members dying off, it must have been emotional crippling for the survivors. It must have seemed like the God’s have turned against you.
But because they stayed hunters and gathers, they seemed stupid to the Europeans. They also were not into money grabs as they keep moving and when you move, you want to carry very little with you. Native American were not stupid, they just did not have the populations that forced them to settle down into cities. Without cities, you don’t have as much free time to have the ruling class and have time to create things or increase your knowledge into the sciences. Your free time is built around keeping alive and enjoying the simple things in life.
Cities need planners and planners need money which creates greed. Greed is the most unfortunate thing in humans. Greed has caused so many issues. Even today, we have enough for everyone to have food and shelter but greed has make us not give everyone this. But the Native Americans had enough to make them happy without this. It was a lifestyle choose and we are finding more and more settlements in the Americans.
They had major cities and sites but with each of those had a fall. We might never know if it was political in fighting or environmental issues that caused the decline of these civilizations, ie the Aztecs. But they just did not get anything to stick. But another important thing is that most of beginning populations centers around the world start near the ocean side properties. A lot of those are now under water as sea levels have rose. We might never be able to find the populations, cities, and the life that they had as they are now underwater and can’t be excavated to find them.
What is Time?
I have been doing a bit of free thinking above but one of the things that I wanted to touch on is time. For those that believe in Creation and that everything was made in 7 days, I have to ask, “What is a day?” I am sure that most people believe that a day is 24 hours but actually it is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds on Earth. It take the Earth 365 days 6 hours and 9 minutes for the Earth to go around the Sun. But 600 million years ago, a day was 19.5 hours but it still took about the same amount of time for the Earth to go around the Sun.
On Mercury, a day is 1,408 hours, i.e. about 59 days. It circles around the Sun in 88 days. On Mars, a day is 24 hours 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds. A year is 687 days as that is how long it take to circle the Sun. Each planet, has a different day depending on it’s rotation and a different year depending on how long it take to go around the Sun.
I want to go more into what is time later. But a brief moment to say that Time is relative to the place that you live. Time is one of those measurements that have been made by us to control everyone getting to appointments on time. A minute can last forever for a child waiting on Santa. But a second for the parent that it trying to get everything together for Christmas. Time is relative to your situation but is a measurement that we needed to keep crops being planted and harvested in a timely manner.
I will end with this as I am trying to keep my post up in a timely manner. Plus I want to watch the news on LA fires. A change in my life time that will forever change the landscape of my childhood.