[MD] Food for Thought

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: "Case" <Case at iSpots.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>Subject: Re: [MD] Food for Thought
>Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:15:45 -0500
>
>[Dan]
>Well, from what I understand the Pyramids were constructed as tombs.
>Obedience to the dream of an afterlife seemed to drive the building of the
>Pyramids. Perhaps that's what RMP is getting at?
>
>[Case]
>I believe most of the megalithic structures from Stonehenge to the Mayans
>were built as aids to astrology. An agricultural society depends on 
>accurate
>prediction of the seasons. In Egypt this was especially important since the
>entire culture depended on the annual flooding of the Nile. Even the mound
>builders of North America and some of the ancient pueblo sites have 
>features
>suggesting that they were built to gauge the alignment of celestial bodies.

[Dan]
I take it you mean astronomy. Living isolated from nature as we do it's hard 
to imagine how important the night sky must have seemed to our ancestors. 
There's no doubt many observatories were built and used ages ago to gaze at 
the heavens and fix important dates as well as predict eclipses and other 
celestial events. Are you saying the Pyramids were used as observatories 
too?

>
>One of the significant features of writing was to allow the accumulation
>such observations. Without this shared memory across generations the
>patterns of heavenly events had no significance. Without any means to pass
>along these observations planting was a hit or miss activity. Hunter
>gatherers lacking this access to shared culture lived in a Randian paradise
>of forced individualism overlaid with just enough social contact to keep 
>the
>species in the ballgame.

[Dan]
There are humans alive today with highly specialized intellectual knowledge 
of the world who are incapable of reading or writing a word. Where did they 
get the knowledge they've obtained? And why couldn't the same be true 
thousands of years ago?