Lost Wisdom of the Ancients or failure on our part?

reply to post by Hanslune


I read a really interesting piece awhile back about domestication and disease. Actually just how the overall quality of health declined DRASTICALLY once we entered the agricultural age. I wish I could remember where I read that, but the paper was arguing that one of the main reasons for the sudden decline in health was due to people replacing water with milk to drink. Off topic a bit, but one of your posts reminded me of this. It was fascinating.

reply to post by SLAYER69
Slayer, I'm a little confused by your premise as I do believe that we live at the pinnacle of human civilization thus far, though there are still a bunch of moral issues that could use a little tweaking. But the Golden Record (Link) that you illustrate carries a far more sophisticated message and amount of information than your Sumerian tablets, et al. Including cultural...which is so very hard to communicate in the abstract.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Yes, I agree.

It does carry more information. That isn't debatable. However keeping the message it carries as simple as possible so those who follow can easily understand is not new.


No?

reply to post by SLAYER69

Oh, sure, we use different materials and attempt to be a bit more sophisticated in our approach but in the end it's all about keeping it simple.

I have to agree with you there, El Hefe',



Vs.



I think that I could operate the one on the bottom with one thumb and my eyes closed. On top of that, I am pretty sure that that gnarly, biology-defying plastic that the original 'pod' is made from would go toe to toe with your 'stone' tablet.

reply to post by SLAYER69


You won't get any argument out of me, Mr. Smartypants (no sarcasm-- your threads are always very informative and highly researched.) I have actually, in the past 6 months had the same epiphany on both counts below. (So like, great minds think alike?

I'd be willing to challenge those who believe we are the end all be all to take their most modern sophisticated hand held device and I'll take an already 5,000 year old Sumerian tablet and we both bury them in the desert sand for another 5,000 years. Which do you believe would fair better?

And books... it goes without saying that all of our books will degrade in no time flat. Preserved texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls come closer to being preserved... but for how long? Heck, we don't even do that.

The question is why? What prompted them to make sure certain knowledge would withstand the ages? Why did they not assume knowledge would remain resident from generation to generation? Did they scurry to chisel in stone the information they felt most worthy of withstanding a cataclysmic event they believed would take out most of the population in the know? *Edit to add: What have we NOT discovered yet?

How about simply trying to convey an understanding or a concept to another future group who may not know our language or points of reference? How do we project our knowledge?

And this. All the pictograms we so take for granted as the works of an inferior predecessor... isn't it quite possible, and worth serious consideration, that they sought to communicate with future generations in ways that did not depend on knowledge of some ancient language? I thought of this same concept you propose here, when viewing ancient cave paintings from around the world, depicting a very similar theme: a man & goats climbing a mountain, dead fish beneath, and a spiral in the sky. (Sorry I searched and could not find the images-- but I did see them on ATS. Maybe someone remembers?) Anyhow... someone proposed that it was a warning that when you see 'the spiral in the sky' (whatever the heck it could be) it's time to join the mountain goats... aka: Head for the hills! (Perhaps they are the work of survivors of some cataclysmic event, who had escaped to the mountains, and returned to find their civilization demolished, so they were reduced to cave-dwelling until they could rebuild. And so to tell the story, and process what had happened, they painted it, knowing their written language would likely not be understood later.

Who knows? The theme is pretty consistent throughout the world... hundreds of thousands of years old!

*Edit to add: If what I posted above holds any water, are they related? Like... here's what happened, and here's some knowledge to help you rebuild!

Originally posted by Hanslune

Originally posted by LUXUS
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

When people are saying ancient Egyptians carved hieroglyphs into pink granite stone obelisks with copper chisels I think its a failure on our part

Why do you think the fringe says that? No modern archaeologist believes it.

Some obelisks were made of sandstone on which copper and bronze works just fine, a few obelisks were made of granite and these were made by using harder stone, usually diorite.

edit on 14/6/13 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)

I just don't believe it, would be too brittle and then you have the problem that we have hieroglyphs carved in diorite too.

Great thread Slayer
It certainly makes sense that we have de-evolved spiritually.


And bizarely enough, i started watching and listening to Rudolf Steiner.
Yes it takes an open mind to believe what he is saying, but to me it is a very plausable theory.
How in certain epochs of time we seem to remember something within ourselves from our past, yet never quite grasp it, but its there, the faint recognition of power, senses etc.

Even if it dosnt fit your personal paradigm, it makes for good watching/reading either way.

It certainly fits in with your thread anyway.

Here is part 1 of 12


For those who prefer text
Rudolf Steiner Lecture Text

Originally posted by Hanslune
Howdy Slayer interesting thread and topic

I'd be willing to challenge those who believe we are the end all be all to take their most modern sophisticated hand held device and I'll take an already 5,000 year old Sumerian tablet and we both bury them in the desert sand for another 5,000 years.

If the Sumerian tablet hadn't been fired it would crumble but if fired it would be in okay shape as long as it remained buried - if exposed to heat, water, sunslight and wind it would erode away. But lets assume it is safely buried

What would be left of say an Ipad, well the out cover is made of aluminum and the main screen is made of glass and would still exist plus that type of plastic would still be there, the silicon and gold connectors would still be there.

I'm not sure how stable a lithium-polymer battery is and whether it would react with the soil, perhaps someone with a better knowledge of chemistry could comment. So under idea conditions you'd have something that looked kinda like an Ipad but of course wouldn't work but it would be recognizable as a piece of electronic gear.

Astrolabe

How could the Sumerian item be used as an astrolabe?

The link for the Minoan item is broken, we have seen that before on ATS 9as you noted)

Man is NOT presently the most sophisticated he has ever been, not by a long shot. Oh, sure, we have plenty of high-tech modern electronics and a better understanding of the Micro, Macro and even of the Multi but in the end what have we really obtained?

Not really sure what you mean by the statement above. Our present technology is magnitudes of levels above the Sumerians, they were at the beginning of what would become science so its a little unfair to compare them to science today, they did the best they could with the limitations they had.

We have obtained a great deal, especially in santiation, health, basic knowledge of the universe, etc. Perhaps it might be easier if you were to list where you think they were ahead of us. We can explain with science what the Sumerian could only blame on gods

good stuff

edit on 14/6/13 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)

Your Ipad would be completely gone if left out in the open. The aluminum case would oxidize away in a few years. The glass screen would last a long time. In a mere thousand years even the plastic case would bio degrade, all the chips inside would crumble and reduce to their original minerals.

The ONLY thing that lasts indefinitely is huge blocks of STONE. Even granite will become eroded over tens of thousands of years of rain and wind. Reinforced concrete highways will crumble to dust and the rebar will rust away in less than a thousand years.

This is why all the "unexplained mysteries" of the world are things made of GIANT BLOCKS OF STONE.

And, for example, the so called Mayan Calendar was the most accurate clock/calendar ever made until they built the atomic clocks.

Originally posted by JayinAR
There is actually a lot of stuff that would last quite awhile if civilization was wiped out today. Though maybe not our IPads, but other stuff. Interstate I-40 here near where I live has an expanse of hundreds of miles of reinforced concrete slabs. That would last quite awhile. As would the excavated embankments running parallel. Underground bunkers, etc...

It's actually only a few millennia before all traces of us would disappear... At least until the archeologists from the next great civilization start excavating, then its only a matter of time before that civilization's ATS is having this discussion about us.



www.thenakedscientists.com...

reply to post by SLAYER69


Storing and retreiving data has become a lost art, kind of like letter writing. Anyone remember penpals? Electronic data will not last as long as the inscribed or written word. I have Cds and Dvds that have been played a few times that now skip or stop, of course right at the chorus or finalel and yet my cassettes and VHS tapes from a long time ago play like a charm. We live in a disposable world. Unfortunately.

reply to post by SLAYER69


I'm going to put a different spin on this... how about "modern society doesn't recognize the origins of many of its technologies."

For example: The technology behind the "computing device" was hardly lost, as you can see from the Antikytheria Mechanism. Instead, it proved itself useful in a number of ways, from Chinese robots (200-400 AD), to a whole host of automata from ancient Greece onward. There's a number of Medieval Automata -- and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci's various inventions.

But every one of those is based on older knowledge.

Nor did we lose that. Instead, as we have more complex needs and as we create better and stronger materials, we lose the more primitive technologies in favor of those that are better suited for the new materials (die stamping instead of laborious lost wax casting/sand casting, for instance.) We can currently make and remake the Antikythera Mechanism out of Legos -- a design that would have been staggering to the ancients who had to hand make every single thing and couldn't check tolerances and standards as well as we can.

The "ancient aliens/modern wonders" shows have done a great disservice in glossing over what we know about the past. Yes, they were sophisticated, but our society couldn't function with such sloppy standards as they had (and no, don't quote me a "couldn't put a knife blade between the joints" as an "astonishing engineering marvel" when we can construct items that match together so perfectly that you can't find the areas where they join.)

reply to post by Byrd


Hey Byrd..

I agree for the most part. But isn't it interesting how they were able to convey what they knew so efficiently?

The mechanism is a remarkable piece of ancient tech. Now, whats more impressive, How it works and what it conveys or the engineering that went into its construction?

Which says more about those who first conceived and later built it?

reply to post by SLAYER69


Oh... and the longevity of information... I'll take that challenge. Baked clay does break down over thousands of years (otherwise we'd have a lot more cuneiform tablets), however, our plastics have a much longer lifespan than that. That 2 liter bottle of soda you tossed out last year is going to be around for centuries (unless WE break it down or change our recycling policies.)

Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by Byrd

 

Hey Byrd..

I agree for the most part. But isn't it interesting how they were able to convey what they knew so efficiently?

Actually, they didn't. Only the elite understood it.

However, the technology for THAT transfer of knowledge is well understood -- scientists and inventors and scholars and the literate shared a common language: Latin.

The mechanism is a remarkable piece of ancient tech. Now, whats more impressive, How it works and what it conveys or the engineering that went into its construction?

Which says more about those who first conceived and built it?

That technology came from older technologies common in the ancient world.

reply to post by Byrd

Baked clay does break down over thousands of years (otherwise we'd have a lot more cuneiform tablets)

Byrd..

Yet we have those very same 5,000 year old clay tablets [Whether fired or not ] still around don't we?

Plastic will be around for thousands of years but will a hand held device still function say after the batteries that power them explode or rupture and or corrode?

Originally posted by Byrd

That technology came from older technologies common in the ancient world.

That's my point

Originally posted by SLAYER69

Originally posted by Byrd

That technology came from older technologies common in the ancient world.

That's my point

Deary me.
Byrd is too fast for herself to quash these claims
But actually just agreed with you Slayer, obviously her soul is consciously aware she is wrong.

I know your an expert Byrd in this field, but sometimes we need to look at reality and realise the ancients had a message of utmost importance for future peoples.
But just like the thread title, we have failed massively in understanding the messages.

I like the direction of your thought Slayer. These days the sciences want to bury their mistakes without having to dig a hole though With a stroke of a key, all info can be changed as if the errors never existed. What you read today may not be the same tomorrow......Well, maybe you misunderstood it.....I printed copies of some things that have been changed..... the change radiates around and makes you feel like you erred until you read the printed copy. Covering your tracks is very common in today's society, nothing is written in stone anymore.

Interesting food for thought.
Our modern technology does not what so ever helps us to survive.
It merely entertains us and distracts us from living.

Give me an example of something that has been invented in the last ,say,40 years ,that helps you live a better life,not simplify it or entertain you.

Did cars make things better?
Did microwave ovens make things better?
Just made people lazy and become slaves .
Independence to survive for an individual person without relying on others is a advancement.

And so on.