[MD] Case's Answer to Marsha

[Case]

[SA]
I noticed, so far, that your (1) stating that patterns accumalated and then
we eventually had agriculture and calendars, etc... but this jump from
Paleolithic (hunters and gathers) to Neolithic (agarian) was an accumaltion
of patterns, but just making sure this isn't just because evolution says (a)
now that we have agriculture 

(b) we can say humans have been on track from the beginning to gain
agriculture.  Not so, due to the hunter and gathers still around.

[Case]
I could hardly have painted a picture of history with a broader brush. What
I am saying is not that we have to have agriculture or science or any of the
complexities of the modern world at all. Our ancestors for tens of thousands
or years did not. A dwindling number of our brothers still do not. But I am
saying that in order to get them we must have a larger memory buffer than
can fit in a single skull. Society is shared memory. Writing is shared
memory made static. I would add that once this static process begins it
seems to snowball and voila we get Coke and Doritos.

[SA]
As (2) hunters and gathers the world over, I don't have all the tallies, but
they didn't believe in the supernatural, abstract either. This is why
shamans and Zen monks have been correlated at times. Hunters and gathers
said bears talked, but this was no supernatural abstract bear - this was the
real bear walking in the woods.
Just thought I'd add.

[Case]
>From what we know of the hunter gatherers that we bothered to talk to before
trying to assimilate them into the collective, they do not seem to have made
the kinds of distinctions we do about much of anything.