cladking

I believe there is "truth" that can come from philosophy outside of math and physical processes but that this "truth" is always dependent on definitions and is provisional based on the premises and assumptions. Unless we hold something as "sacred" such as the importance of human life or human freedom then there can be no real truth. Unless we accept concepts like free will and the reality of observation then truth becomes nothing more than a dream or so ephemeral that it can't be defined or held. To a very real degree "truth" is like "knowledge"; it exists only viscerally and contingently.

It's my opinion that the ancient people were not nearly so war like as is usually suggested. I doubt they even had the capability to fight at great distances due to logistical problems. My guess based on my understanding is that most battles were skirmishes and both sides were usually close to home. There were expeditionary forces sent out to Nubia and to battle "troglodytes" as recorded on the Palermo Stone but there's not substantial or verifiable evidence of extensive warfare before 2000 BC. Since no books survive this could be jumping to conclusions. Even were there lots of wars and battles there's no reason to suppose every single copy of every book could be destroyed. Even a single copy could be preserved and duplicated so something should have survived barring an organized attempt to eradicate books or some other reason such as language change rendering them incomprehensible. Here's a link to the physical evidence proving such a change. I have virtually overwhelming evidence though it is, unsurprisingly, mostly low grade. But there is one exceedingly high grade aspect to it; it has a very high predictative capability. This can really only be the result of the simple fact that it's generally true. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/78598-pyramids-through-the-eyes-of-the-builders/

The title really needs no punctuation. It is a pun on countless levels and the colon exists partly to represent a set of eyes and primarily as a tribute to Samuel Mercer whose intellectual honesty in translating the PT made it possible to crack it using a computer. Mercer splashed punctuation everywhere. How the great pyramids came to be spills out of the "only" written source that exists from ancient Egypt; the Pyramid Texts. But it is also evidenced throughout the physical record. The ancients didn't really communicate in puns but it looks like it to us because of the nature of their language. It looks like puns because their language was a natural language like computer code that was based on the logic of the various aspects of nature they studied. Each of these aspects of nature were called something we mistranslate as "god" and they were each heavily anthropomorphized. The gods were created in man's image. But man was an animal; a part of nature himself so when an animal better represented a trait then that aspect of nature (god) was depicted with the animal part that best represented the concept. The language arose naturally and was probably just an enhancement of whatever animal language proto-humans spoke before the mutation of the speech centers which allowed for complicated language. But how the language came to be isn't at issue here, only how the language expressed meaning and the proof of this which is the pyramid. The question really boils down to were our ancestors superstitious bumpkins who dragged tombs up ramps or were they sophisticated scientists made powerful by their ability to think in a language that was a reflection of nature itself. I believe the answer will someday be seen as obvious and that even a casual observation of the evidence will show they were the latter. A logical place to start might be what is the nature of the pyramid; 1416b. N. truly ascends to heaven, permanent like the earth. The meaning of this does not become clear until each referent is solved by context. "N" is the dead king and he ascends to heaven as the pyramid. The Pyramid Texts consistently say the pyramid is not a tomb and this meaning can be extraxcted in many instances. In no instance at all does it say the pyramid is a tomb. We must assume that the pyramid is not a tomb and that it represents (is) the dead king. So how does the king ascend as the pyramid; 1405a. To say: The earth is high under the sky by (means of) thine arms, Tefnut. Again each term must be solved by context. Each time a term is used it gains definitional and connotative properties. Indeed, a word is these properties because some will use worrds incorrectly to mean something else. But in every case in the PT "tefnut" is the "physical phenomenon of downward" they used this term as a synonym for what we call "weight". Word usage was based on whether the concept under consideration was being viewed scientifically or colloquially. "Tefnut" is the scientific term and "earth" is a colloquial term. The scientific term for earth was "Geb" (physical phenomenon of the earth). Here it's not the planet being lifted but rather constituent parts of it. Gods can act at a distance only through their arms so this states that earth is being piled up by means of weight. This is consistent throughout the PT and all the little literature that survives. Osiris (physical phenomenon of water under pressure and its discharge) is even said to tow the earth by means of Ma'at (the physical phenomenon of balance). In modern terms what they said and said consistently is that the pyramid was built by using counterweights full of water. They said that the gods built the great pyramids and men merely helped. Men made the counterweights and maintained them but it was gods who did the heavy lifting. 1101a. Further, to say: Men and gods, your arms under me, 1101b. while you raise me and lift me up to heaven, They said this consistently and coherently. They never contradicted such statements. The pyramids were built by pulling stones up in an ascender one step at a time using counterweights full of water (Seker was the phenomenon of ballast). This is exactly what every single piece of physical evidence points to. Ramps have been debunked based on evidence. The meaning of the PT probably isn't as important as the implications. It answers how and why the pyramids were built but, more importantly, it answers why and how human history before 2000 BC was lost. Language changed because it became overly difficult to express meaning in a natural language. The invention of writing was the final starw for the ancient language since it allowed one teacher to instruct many students and human knowledge exploded over the next 1200 years. It simply became too difficult to say what you wanted to say. Everyone used this language and many people simply weren't up toi the task. Improper phraseolgy resulted in an uitterance being mere gobblety gook. One wrong word would make your statement something akin to word soup. So a new language was invented and confusion has reigned since for the main part. Of course modern language has undergone 4000 years of tweaking and word invention to reduce the confusion but it is hardly solved. It is observation (heka; magic) which enables men and gods to act. It was the Eye of Horus through which Atum created the power (Sekhmet) to lift stones. It was men's ability to observe which led to being able to use nature itself to do the lion's share of the work. People have simply got to get the idea that the ancioents thought like us but were none too bright out of their heads. It's not true in any sense. They shared our values (even invented them) but they did not think like we do. They were scientists and had no religion at all. They did not believe in "magic". Each person had to understand science to even speak and one could get ahead by invention and discovery.

Indeed. Philosophy is the attempt to define and understand nature in language. Since language is for most practical purposes the means by which we think and understand everything (consciousness), philosophy is the root of individual existence. It's possible for individuals to ignore this connection or to not understand it but their beliefs still constitute their personal philosophy. As such philosophy is and can be different for each person. We each understand our own thought because word definitions are fixed and grammatical errors become irrelevant since we know what is meant. But the primary function of language is communication and the ability to relay thoughts and ideas to other people (at least in theory). This is where philosophy becomes important. We must understand premises and definitions to understand other's statements. We must have a referent for each of their words whose meaning depends on context. Ideally philosophy will serve to include logic and definitions which allow communication. Philosophy should by definition include theory and all human knowledge, or at the very least, never run counter to it. Philosophy is a sort of applied science for language. To have value to humans it must place human life and value above all else. In the modern world it seems philosophy is not being pursued, understood, kept current, or expressed as adequately as it should be. People are losing sight of what's right and wrong and most have come to believe in the absolute supremacy of their gods or the knowledge of man. They have come to put their trust in astrology or the latest fad in thought. Or they believe that so long as they are politically correct then they can do no harm. It's no longer even considered practical to avoid waste and destruction. I used to consider logic the mother of philosophy and math but recent learning has tweaked this perspective somewhat. I now believe observation is the mother of logic which is the mother of both philosophy and math. There might always be new ways to skin a cat even though there is nothing new under the sun.

It's not my thread. The topic is essentially whether or not the ancients had a concept or a memory of evolution. While my work answers this strongly affirmatively any other discussion borders on being OT. I am happy to continue the discussion as it is relevant and will start a new thread later (probably tonight) to support the proof that there was a distinct ancient language that described how the king and the stones ascended on the great pyramids. As such it's relevant but there's a great deal of discussion that could be engendered and I believe it would be considered thread hijacking. I do intend to link back to this thread.

The first writing dates back 1200 years earlier. Some "proto-writing" may be even older.

Ok, I'll open up a new thread later to deal with the physical evidence which is OT here. We each have our own perspective and my perspective on this has evoilved over time to closely match what I believe is the ancient Egyptian perspective. I believe I have a fairly good understanding of the PT despite the fact it's written in natural language and poorly translated. I believe I solved the PT by discovery of referents through context and the writers were highly sophisticated and intelligent. They were very knowledgeable about nature and its nuances. I'm sure their knowledge exceeded ours in a few limited areas. It's really extremely extensive knowledge and it wouldn't have been solved without google and images that can be searched. They had a very very different way of thinking and expressing themselves. It is the pyramids themselves which have been the focus of my study but as seen through the eyes of the builders. I've worked for years to get the Egyptologists to do any of the science but none at all has been done. No real science has happened at Giza since 1986 when it was essentially proiven ramps weren't used. But further research and data gathering is indicated anbd they won't do it and won't allow others to do it. Instead they continue to trowel for ramps and drill holes in the pyramid and under the Sphinx and filling important infrastructure with concrete. Again though, you must bear in mind that the quality of the evidence is not so impressive as its scope and that it all supports a literal interpretation of the ancient writing. There is a strong implication that nothing changed in human beliefs or practices until the mother of all changes at the Tower of Babel. Some will want to discount this just because it's in the Bible but one can always just figure there were two separate events and the Bible version is wrong. Frankly I suspect even if it's right that it has the location wrong. Maybe it was Babel University in a different city. The Pyramid Texts is comprehensible and I can show it but can't prove it until basic science is done.

The difficulty here is in no way the lack of evidence. While there is very little evidence and it tends to be low grade evidence it's scope and range is very impressive. Meanwhile there is no evidence whatsoever to support the paradigms that say our ancestors were superstitious other than the projection of ideas and beliefs from thousands of years later. While the quality of the evidence tends to be poor, all of the known facts fit this interpretation and no facts support the paradigm. The paradigm leaves only mysteries and the idea the language changed answers all the questions including why this wasn't discovered previously. Truth to tell, I believe when (if) this is looked at in hindsight most would agree that the evidence is already pretty solid even though Egyptologists refuse to do the scientific work that would prove it or to allow others to do it. There is simply too broad a range of evidence for me to believe it's happenstance. The fact that there is no recorded history before 2000 BC could be considered highly telling. This is the closest thing to high grade evidence until science is done. When you hear of battles before 2000 BC they are simply extrapolated from pictures on pallettes or a line on the Palermo Stone. There is no independent confirmation of such events. Since the language isn't understood even those things that seem obvious might not be real at all. No battlefields have been excavated and no cemeteries found full of young men who died at the same time. Everything is based on assumption wirth the least legitimate assumption being that nothing changed in the religion or culture for 1000 years. The problem is that modern day culture is virtually gounded on the concept that our ancestors were superstitious and highly primitive so dislodging this belief requires not only that I show the facts of the matter but also how flimsy and insubstantial the basis of our beliefs are. People are married to their beliefs so they can't even entertain the notion that there are simpler and more rational explanations of the little evidence we do have. The most damning single piece of evidence against the paradigm is its absolute inability to make predictions. They've been arguing ramp configurations for building great pyramids for countless decades but the the literature says exactly how they built it and it is in evidence; they pulled stones up a step at a time. The paradigm has failed to answer basic questions not only about the Egyptians and their practices but about all people. It has left even recorded history with no foundations and no precedents. It has come to seem natural to us that this should be the case so this is an argument that must wait but it does explain things like alchemy and the story of the Tower of Babel. It does explain other ancient (yet modern language) texts including some of the hermetic texts. It certainly explains how superstitious and primitive stone age peoples could have competed with those who used observation and logic; they didn't. They couldn't have competed because the non-superstitious people would forever be eating their lunch. Using the information in the ancient language has already been sufficient to debunk ramps as a means of lifting stones to build pyramids. This debunkment employs a significant amount of factual and evidential information but isn't relevant here. The point is that if ramps are debunked on the basis of the ancient literature then it probably follows that it is written in a natural language that hasn't been understood in the past. It also follows that these people put a lot of time and effort into all the natural sciences before 2000 BC but that their conclusions are largely lost (at least mislaid). This would account for how they knew that some dry land had once been in the ocean just as they actually stated. They simply would have known that the fossils which comprise the Great Pyramid could only have formed in the ocean. They could have written books about it and we wouldn't know. A far better question than do I have any evidence is do Egyptologists have any evidence that the ancients were superstitious bumpkins. When they start trotting out volume after volume be sure to filter out everything dependent on the assumption that the Egyptians never changed because there will be nothing at all left. There are no books so everything gets interpreted in terms of an era that there were books. We need answers to some basic questions and these answers will point to more questions. The most important thing at this point is to determine how the pyramids were actually built with some simple infrared imaging. But in seven years this is happening. The past is held hostage by thoise who can't entertain the possibility they are wrong. This isn't to say there are no other ways to prove these points and in my opinion the logic is pretty strong as it exists. I simply don't know any other way at this point in time to prove ancient people didn't speak gobblety gook than to prove beyond doubt that they meant exactly what they said. They meant it literally and were accurate when the said the dead king watered the land after itr came out of the ocean. Just because we don't talk or think this way doesn't mean those who did were primitive and superstitious. It might merely mean they employed a science that we never even thought of. They used observation and logic rather than observation and experiment. This is probably the nature of nature itself. Man once was a part of and a force of nature as was his language. The ancient word for nature was "neter" which we mistranslate as "god" so in actuality they spoke the "words of nature". We speak a confused language. It is symbolic where words take their meaning from context. Excellent point. Thank you. I'm dubious though this this could account for 100% attrition. You'd have to also postulate that all structures were inflammable and that they were all burned. Anything short of 100% attrition would be expected to result in a reprinting of the old texts but none of these were recopied later other than lists. To me this is a strong suggestion that the old texts were untranslatable or incomprehensible. Based on the existence of what we actually see the suggestion is they were incomprehensible. It appears people tried to save the science in various ways such as the invention of religion (gods). It appears that people 4000 years ago misunderstood this stuff in a very similar way to how we misunderstand it.

I'll try again. There is not a single book or manuscript on paper or papyrus from before 2000 BC anywhere in thwe world. None exist. There are scraps and fragments of paper with a few words on them but no complete sentences. There are no books from before 2500 BC in any form at all. None. There are apparently some short Sumerian writings from this early on clay but these aren't available on-line with dates. So far as I know this includes no corpus and no "book". After 2500 BC there is writing that has been copied from the walls of timy little tombs and are known at the "Pyramid Texts". This is extensive writing but it is all religious in nature as is all other known Egyptian writing (don't forget there are no books). The PT can be thought of as a book but can not be thought of as being comprehensible (unless you define "comprehensible" to include no definitions of the subject). There were numerous writings on wooden coffins but this writing is very similar to the PT but is not a corpus because parts of it come from many different places. There is some Sumerian writing from this 2500 to 2000 BC time frame as well, but again, not on paper. These are on clay and they are mostly incomprehensible as well though "Gilgamesh" looks vaguely recognizable in this form. As far as I know there is no Chinese and no Indian writing surviving from before 2000 BC unless there could be some lists there as well. But there are no books. Pretty much the only ancient writing that survives (and the only corpus) was inscribed in something. There were no books. The inscribed words are almost strictly (at least by percentage) incomprehensible gobblety gook. I don't know what happened to all those books that no longer exist. I don't know why none of them were copied in later times to preserve the ancient knowledge and the oral traditions that must surely have been recorded when writing was invented. But I do believe there's a very simple explanation and this explanation is based on the facts and logic. The ancient books were just as enigmatic and just as much gobblety gook to the people in 1999 BC as they are to us. They knew their ancestors were wise and knowledgeable but they couldn't take the meaning of the writing. It mustta been highly frustrarting if you catch my drift. If I'm right the ancient scientists would never have even tried to translate their science into the new language which they referred to as "confused" or had meaning that was "divided". They would have believed all science would forever be conducted in the ancient language and that it wasn't really translatable anyway. It would require not words, but flow charts and logic charts. They saw no pressing need to preserve their science. They did not foresee that the inability to adapt to the rest of society would eventually doom them and that society could function and thrive on the existing knowledge being passed down father to son. Populations were high and man's control of his enviroment was strong enough that even without the ancient science people could live. The ancient knowledge was preserved in bits and pieces in alchemy, religion, astrology, witchcraft, and many other esoteric lores. This is not to say that I believe in any of these or that there is truth in them, merely that knowledge in a fragmented and distorted form underlies these. Perhaps the knowledge was best preserved in alchemy but this is not the same thing as ancient chemistry nbut rather they use some of the techniques and knowledge of ancient chemistry (this means "of Chemis" which was a city near the pyramid) are used to attack a single chemistry problem which has been forgotten. I could even tell you how "chemis" became the root word for chemistry but it would be OT. I'm sure this all sounds strange to people. But it is a simple fact that there is a void in history between 3200 BC and 2000 BC because "all" the exceedingly few wrirtten sources are incomprehensible. Experts believe there is no useful knowledge in any of this but these are the sources that suggest why chemis became the root for chemistry and what alchemists have forgotten. It suggests an explanation for all human history and even parts of the Bible and Koran. All I mean is what I say. I may not always say what I mean as well as I might but it is what I mean and no more. There are no books. All we have is the Palermo Stone which is chiefly a list, the PT (incomprehensible), and the titles. These do not add up to the paradigm without a lot of assumption that makes the whole package illogical. I don't believe there is anything in the Sumerian literature that will change these equations.

Maybe this will help; http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ Some of these pre-date 2000 BC but it's too difficult for me to study them without knowledge of the origin or more substance to thew works. I can only solve the meaning of ancient writing by referent discovery where words are used in context sufficiently often to determine meaning.

Now this might be progress. Tell me, what exact books do you have from before 2000 BC? I'm of course willing to accept translations of any such books.

. No books at all survive. Papyrus could have survived and a blank scrill exists. But not one single papyrus book survives or one single scroll survives with writing on it. I don't understabnd what's vague since I try to speak in tautologies and absolutes as possible. No books. There are not even any sentences that survive from before 2500 BC unless the Nefermaat title is actually a sentence. I'm aware that it's possible Sumerian writing exists but If it can be found it will be just as incomprehensible as the Egyptian. I have read all the Sumerian writing I can find that positively pre-dates 2000 BC and it is not necessarily written in modern language. All of it can be described as being superstitious as it is translated. The only corpus that survive is the Pyramid Texts. It was inscribed in tiny little tombs euphimistically called "pyramids" by Egyptology. This dates to between 2500 BC and 2000 BC but does not exist on papyrus. A few of the utterances have been found in similar form and language on wooden coffins that date to between 2300 BC and about (probably) 1900 BC. There is a collection of various writings on coffins which is apparently all superstitious and some are written in modern language (after 2000 BC). These are the PT; http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/ Rather than addressing the logic and evidence presented you are merely claiming it is unsupported while even failing to specify what is unsupported. If you want to actually argue the points then please say what you disagree and then say why. You've already allowed numerous points to stand that would answer your charges here that my argument is unsupported. In point of fact the only argument that is unsupported is that statements like "Men and gods, your arms under me as you raise me and lift me to heaven", must be accepted as "religious" in nature. That it is religious is an interpretation that has failed to answer basiuc factual questions like how the pyramids were built or how the ancients knew the land came upout of the ocean. Listen carefully to this sentence: It has even failed to explain the ancient religion. It's the interpretation that is in error. It is the logic that is in error. Please list any ancient writing or specific objections for a further response.

You most assuredly have done no such thing. You quoted a wiki page thatr supported my argument that the vocabulary didn't change so lists, labels, accounts and the like survive But no written sentences. There is no science, no literature, no anything at all except what is interpreted to be nonsense and religious gobblety gook. We don't understand one of their gods, sceptres, icons or most of their heiroglyphs so it's rather baseless to claim that we understand the religion. We're told their religion was magic but we don't know how the magic was supposed to have worked because the writing is internally inconsistent as it is interpreted today. I can phrase this in many ways but the fact remains exactly the same; there is no comprehensible writing of any sort from before 2000 BC. It's true that some of the gobblety gook looks comprehensible when taken a sentence at a time but it will be contradicted or unsubstantiated.

quote]You haven't yet presented any evidence that this "ancient language" existed. It would be considered OT here. I’ll start another thread at some point. If you’ll notice I did sneak in one earlier that implied the ancients were aware that some land had come out of the ocean. The oldest written records are about 1,000 years older than that. And entirely comprehensible.From wikipedia: Wiki is an immensely valuable tool but it’s always wrong. They’re closer here than usual; “administrative accounts; long lists of various objects, foodstuffs and animals that were probably distributed among the population from a centralized authority.”. Again, it’s not the words which are the problem. When the language changed the vocabulary did not change. The only change was the way words were put together to express meaning. This is why things like account, lists, and labels survived. They were understood quite clearly. Writing such as “I believe there are many gods which protect me” or “add natron to the solution to produce a very powerful soap” simply do not exist at all. Everything that survives makes no sense. Indeed, only a single sentence from before 2500 BC might survive, “Nefermaat is he who makes his gods in words that can not be erased”. My own opinion is that this is a mistranslation of a title rather than a sentence. In any case it has no meaning without interpretation. If you’re aware of any such writing I’d truly love to see it. No. This is what is projected to the public by Egyptology but it’s simply not true. If you’ll look more closely they never say this. We can make extremely good inferences about things like geneolgy from written information but no sentence regarding geneology exists. It’s names and titles extracted from tombs and not books. Everything is “religious” such as “the dead king inundates the earth after it came out of the ocean”. I simply do not believe that this sentence or any other that was actually left involves religion or magic. It is misinterpreted and it needs retranslation to reflect intended meaning rather than our estimation of what these people must have believed. Purina Dog Chow? A great deal of behavior can be instinctive if you lack the learning to supercede it. It might be possible for a human to raise a dog from a puppy without knowing anything about digestion but then why would such an individual believe he and his dog eats and eliminates waste at all? Surely even an animal knows there's a link between food and waste. Eventually we almost all have even visceral knowledge of this process. If that's a pun then please forgive me. It's very difficult to remove oneself from his place and time to see how others might see things. This is why the ancient writing is mistaken for incantation and magic. I believe things like dam building in beavers and fungus farming in termites is far too complicated behaviors to be the result of natural selection. Nature can't select for those who build rockets until someone builds a rocket. Nor can she select for dam building until someone builds a dam. I believe the simplest explanation is we are looking at the problem wrong. People tend to believe that humans alone are intelligent and that humans got here from highly superstitious ancestors who thought they could talk to gods and animals. Logic suggests we are mistaken. Observation suggests it's not intelligence that sets man apart but language. I think it took a long time to domesticate animals and grow crops because it is extremely complicated. It couldn't begin until there was enough theory to support it which means man had to understand some genetics and the myriad other subjects necessary. Obviously they didn't understand DNA and the like but they had to observe how offspring were like and dislike their parents. They had to know how to care for the animals at less expense than their ultimate value as farm produce or meat. They had to know the hydration requirements or risk expending more effort than the value of the animals. A huge amount of knowledge was necessary. They also would require some sort of security or human marauders would make off with their handiwork. A great deal of sophistication was absolutely required abnd this sophistication is reflected in the evidence. It is merely opinion that the ancients were superstitious and this opinion is founded almost solely on what, I believe, is obvious misinterpretation of the written material that survives. The interpretation is simply illogical and not even consistent with the written material. In each case what is said is interpreted to mean something else. I'm sure you're right that the knowledge was transmitted orally but it appears that the language used was distinct from our own and more like prairie dog language or computer code. Until some effort is made to recover the language, its syntax, and grammar it is very difficult to make many statements about it. In the meantime the general concensus remains that humans used to be superstitious but we're all better now. The concensus is that it was easier to live with predators and a lack of most basic tools and weapons so long as you are superstitious. It was easier to drag stones up ramps if you were building a tomb for a god. There was no need for logic or common sense if you were sufficiently primitive. There's no logic to our beliefs about ancient times and this is why the evidennce doesn't fit the beliefs and why there is a void before 2000 BC instead of a record of numerous oral traditions and scientific works. This is why we have myth instead of history.

How did they breed animals and keep them alive without knowledge of biology. They not only had to do all they did but they had to do it at a profit or they would have all died. Nature is the ultimate accountant as well as a cruel one, and feeding cows to chickens just might be more a liability than an asset. I'm not sure what you mean here or intended but there is nothing from before 2000 BC other than what we understand to be "religious writings" and incantations but which make no sense. There is no science and no records from before this date according to modern understanding. I have no idea what that sentence means. And it doesn't seem to address the question. This is how easy it is to lose one's audience in the modern language we are using here. Most people can't understand directions for almost anything. The directions are written in computerese that make sense only to those who know the language and think in pure logic with no intuition. When computer language is expressed in everyday English it makes no sense to most people. I have no idea what that sentence means. And it doesn't seem to address the question. I do not believe this is true. There is almost nothing in Egyptian and the only other source to my knowledge is Sumerian but these are all short works and undatable apparently. It appears that the ancient books were unintelligible and discarded after the change in language. Most all of what survives was inscribed in stone or clay. Yes it is. We have written records of oral histories going back thousands of years. Much of it is supported by, for example, archaeological and other evidence. You seem to have little in the way of evidence other than your own beliefs. I'm confident you know of none of this from before 2000 BC. Evidence that this is a destructive force? This is the nature of nature. People act on their beliefs and if there are beliefs are unnatural there will be no benefit to them collectively. Even if some unnatural belief were able to protect them through mere happenstance, eventually conditions would change. Reason and logic are puny tools but superstition and foolishness are very powerful tools against survival. They were not superstitious at all. They were not religious and didn't believe in magic. This is a misunderstanding caused by a misinterpretation of ancient writing. Which also seems to argue against cladking's beliefs: many pre-literate, oral societies have been studied. They are just like us. No ancient pre-literate societies left enough evidence to understand their beliefs and knowledge. Even literate societies before 2000 BC are assumed to be superstitious because all the writing they left appears to be gobblety gook. There are no known cultures before 2000 BC. Later ideas have created our understanding and not the evidence left by those societies. This is just the way it is. It doesn't prove I'm right but it leaves the door open to me being right and the fact that my understanding of the ancient writing makes accurate peredictions indicates very strongly that I am right.

I see now. I should have expected a reasonable point since your other point and logic all seems to fit. I'm looking at this from a different perspective and much of the difference hinges on the meaning of the word "know". I've been using it colloquially but when applied to individuals the meaning changes. We are each a product of our time and place and this determines most of our perspective. When the term "know" is used from any specific perspective its meaning changes because what's real from "god's" perspective may not be from any individual's. In other words all true knowledge is visceral and usually learned through experience. If you don't know it in your bones then it's not true knowledge but something else. Even visceral knowledge though is dependent on things like current conditions. In aggregate man's visceral knowledge is much less extensive in scope but much more accurate. From my personal perspective it doesn't (no longer) annoys me to be ignorant on a very broad range of subjects (all of them) as I try to understand nature and gain knowledge in those things and in those ways I can. Most other people fill in the gaps with something. So long as reason is at the heart there's every chance the individual will succeed. So long as reason underlies the reporting of knowledge and experience I'm willing to listen. Gees cut off a huge bite with this thread but it's still entertaining.

This all is probably true enough I needn't quibble with it. I certainly agree strongly with one of the conclusions; that change in language should be continuous throughout human history. Of course the veracity of this conclusion is contingent upon those things which apply to our language also applying to the ancient language. This is where we run into trouble with the current paradigm; in order to understand the ancient language word meanings and beliefs from many centuries after the origin of the writing have been inserted to understand it. There simply is almost nothing available to solve the meaning internally from the actual words so definitions and ideas are imported from later religious works. It's hardly surprising that this has made the earlier work incomprehensible and made it appear to be religious in nature. If we were talking about a single work here or there were in existence writing that could be understood, if the our understanding of the writing were consistent with known facts, if any of this understanding were internally consistent or otherwise comprehensible none of this would be at issue. The fact is almost no writing survives from before 2000 BC and none of it is comprehensible. Experts believe words change meaning by context and none of these meanings are known except as they relate to later definitions. Since we believe almost every word they left was about magic, incantation, and paganism we tend to assume everything they did and thought was magic. This is most probably impossible. There is most probably a very fundamental problem in our understanding. Using observation and logic would be nearly as likely to lead to evolutionary success as language itself. Indeed, if the only thing language is used for is to communicate superstitions language would become a massive liability rather than an asset. So which groups of humans hunting mastadons had a greater likelyhood of surviving the cold wimter? Was it the group which saw, knew, amd planned or the group that prayed the hardest and invented the more gods? Since 2000 BC humans have been riding the coat tails of our ancestors for survival. We have been surviving on the fruits of their effort. It was only the discovery of a new kind of science that could be done in the new language that allowed progress to resume.

I really don't understand your point. On one hand we have everything there is to know and on the other we have everything man knows. There is no balance here from any perspective. We not only don't know about the cave light years away but we don't know how to get there or understand the forces which we'd encounter along the way. We have a tendency to think about what we actually know and to be blind to the virtual infinity of what we don't know. Just because we don't know what gravity is or dark matter or how the two might interact doesn't give us the knowledge that all possibilities of other people's observations are explicable in terms we do know. I'm not suggesting we should all start taking reports of ghosts or flying saucers at face value. I'm merely suggesting that we need to take all evidence into account and not automatically dismiss all low grade evidence. Obviously nothing becomes theory until it is confirmed by experiment and observation. Until then it is an unknown.

No matter how I attack these points it's always going to come down to the fundamental problem which is the lack of evidence and the lack of written records after the invention of writing. This lack is due to the facts that not only does so little exist but it's all incomprehensible gobblety gook that can shed no light on how the ancients thought and believed. I haven't really made any assumptions in my work with one possible exception and that is ancient people were intelligent and sophisticated. So now I've gotten to the point that I believe I understand the ancient writing and that it reflects a highly scientific perspective which comes as little surprise. But it doesn't prove I'm wrong and this exact perspective can be used to help show that maybe the ancient writing really isn't gobblety gook. This aspect is off topic so I don't intend to dwell on it except to answer the specific point and to observe that the underlying meaning in the ancient work is proving to be supported by the physical evidence and capable of making accurate predictions about undiscovered evidence (predicting the news). That computer like languages are less susceptible to corruption seems almost a given. With few words in the language and the meaning of words not being dependent on context there's little reason to have drift. Look at a word like "print" in computer languages. Yes, the word will probably mean something different in the future, and printers have already evolved greatly in the last half a century but the sense of this word will probably remain intact until and unless it is superceded by a more accurate word. We've only very recently been able to understand prairie dog communication but I'd wager it would be quite similar over time. It's not really the words in question in the old writing so much as the meaning and the referents of those words. If the referent for a single word like "sick" changes then this change should be expected to be apparent. Truth to tell it's largely just my opinion that suggests the language was resistant to change but this opinion is based on the fact that if my understanding of the meaning is correct then language was the metaphysics of ancient science founded upon observation and logic. As such language would be very much sacrosanct and the users actually called the language (especially in its written form) "the words of the gods". No matter how these words are inrterpreted it is very much apparent that they cared deeply for past and future generations. It is apparent and logical that theory must precede all advancement. It is unlikely that a beaver accidently created a dam and then passed the knowledge and ability down through the generations. It's far more likely that a beaver observed nature making a dam and realized it could duplicate it through intention. By the same token man didn't inadvertantly domesticate cattle or corn. First they had to frasp the concept that tamer animals and choicer corn could breed true. It required a lot of time and effort to accomplish this and to produce enough surplus to create cities. While beavers aren't obviously progressing it might be simply the lack of complicated language to pass down knowledge and the fact that their primary natural gift is to fell trees and shape them. Human progress by this perspective simply demands the ability to pass theory between generations. Yes, we could maintain stasis or a specific habitat by merely passing knowledge father to son or teacher to student but it requires the ability to pass down actual knowledge, actual theory, to progress. The fact that we accomplished this (progress) is probably indicative of the ability to pass theory unchanged. This doesn't necessarily support the contention that history and other (hopefully) more static ideas could be relayed but it still suggests a mechanism which we haven't understood. The existence of myths and legends seem to support this. The lack of any ancient scientific knowledge simply screams that we are missing something. Obviously, scientific precepts would be among the very most important things they'd record yet all we have is religious hocus pocus and a void of history and science until 2000 BC. We make assumptions about such things based on drawings and single words in the record. It's simply not logical that the evidence would be laid out the way it is if our assumptions were true. It's not logical to assume that ancient people looked at fossils and simply made no record or inferences about them. It's not logical to suppose that the superstitious bumpkins as seen from the modern perspective could invent agriculture and cities or build pyramids. I believe it took 40,000 years to get to the invention of writing was largely low population caused by food scarcity and the irregularity of its availability. There may also have been a relative lack of need of writing if knowledge could be passed down intact. Writing wasn't invented until farmers stumbled on the concept of symbols representing assets and this was extrapolated to representing sounds. The explosion of knowledge made possible by writing simply overburdened a language with so few words and that was already stressed in expressing new concepts. It was a natural language ill equipped to deal with a lot of new knowledge made possible by widespread dissemination of books. By 3200 BC when writing was invented there was thousands of times more human effort available for study of things like paleontology than there had been only 6000 years earlier. Agriculture drove the invention of cities which drove the invention of writing which drove the collapse of the ancient language leaving the massive void before 2000 BC. Let me put it this way; I once designed a computer system that controlled a little processing plant. The objective was to give operators a fine control over every stage of production and mixing. I hadn't done any computer programming since the 1960's so the actual programming was done by a consultant. Upon completion they were asked to write up a little synopsis of what they had done to aid the operators in using the interfaces and controlling the processes. When I first saw this report I thought they had accidently forwarded the wrong thing but there were a few key words that suggested it might apply to the project. I read it over and over because it made no sense at all. Finally after reading it about the tenth time it all made perfect sense. They had simply set the computer code to English!!! They described this in the only terms they knew. I've read and studied all the ancient literature (one massive corpus in particular) hundreds of times and it makes perfect sense. There are two possibilities for this; either archaeologists and scholars have very poor reading comprehension skills or it is written in a distinct language. I can no more believe that scholars are so stupid than I can believe the meaning of the words is coincidental. The problem is apparently translation and interpretation. The ancients must have had the ability and means to pass theory and knowledge between generations and it's nowhere else in evidence. It is most highly illogical to presume that our ancestors were very highly superstitious yet still managed progress from one generation to the next. Superstition is a very destructive force yet they survived and prospered. There must be a very fundamental problem and such a language change would explain not only the problem but how we missed it. Perhaps there are other explanations but it's this explanation that defines the problem. It gets back to the heart of the issue which is the predictive ability of theory. It gets to the heart of the very nature of science. It is not necessarily observation and experiment but can also be observation and logic. It might not even be coincidental that this is the direction we seem to be heading.

Human language changed. In modern language things are stated directly and words get their meaning from context. It is symbolic as words are expressed to take the place of actions, processes, etc. "He ran to the store" can have a virtually infinite number of meanings dependent on context and the shared referents and word usage of the participants in the conversation. There are also infinite shades of meaning and implications if this is in response to a question like "Where's Joe?". If our words are lifted from context, even in aggregate, they will have no meaning to anyone who isn't privvy to referents and the nature of the language. Modern language requires a great deal of intuition to phrase or comprehend. There are no road signs to tell us when we misconstrue meaning because we automatically assign meaning to each word dependent on context. Since almost any statement can make sense then barring internal inconsistency, it will make sense. Of course there's no reason this sense will be shared by other listeners or the speaker. Ancient language was wholly distinct. Words didn't vary in definition and meaning was in context like computer code or prairie dog language. Words were used to "paint a picture" and if the meaning weren't comprehended then the words would sound like gobblety gook or word soup. It is likely that everyone used this exact same language which required remarkably few words to express meaning. Of course, the exact vocabulary and pronunciations varied but the format was the same so it was very easy to learn a new "language". The strenght of the ancient language was that there was very little misunderstanding. It might require some effort for two disparate people to establish communication but there was no misunderstanding as they worked. To us the ancient language appears to be gobblety gook and magic and no useful information has ever been extracted from it. Because it looked like nonsense ever since 2000 BC there was no real attempt to preserve it. It couldn't be readily translated into modern language so it wasn't preserved in any fashion. The language was metaphysics and contained the theory and knowledge that allowed ancient man to progress; it was the knowledge derived from as well as the logic and observation that underlay mans' progresss. But this language became geometrically more complicated as knowledge increased aritmatically so it collapsed as a tool of communication. Today language must be in flux and meaning far moreso. Even the meaning of something written long ago will change over time. Look at the vast difference between modern interpretation of something like the Declaration of Independence and the author's intent!!! Science largely overcomes this by having set definitions and axioms that can be expressed in math. Experimental results are generally more easily translated than a simple description. But it took us about three and a half millinea to recover from the loss of the old language. Now "recorded" history dates only back to 2000 BC because earlier writing is misinterpreted as being religiuous mumbo jumbo. When it finally becomes properly stuidied a whole new world is going to open up to us. It's not just our history lying in wait but the knowledge we gained in our first 40,000 years of language. Unfortunately much of this is lost but it matters little because much of what's lost should be deducible and there will be information in what survives to uncover much of the rest. Only what was written on paper as been discarded in utter frustration. I have no proof at this time. I believe that something passed down in a language like computer code is relatively impervious to being changed since each generation will perform something equivalent to a "spell check" on it. Somehow "recorded history" doesn't begin until 2000 BC or 1200 years after the invention of writing. Additionally, we know nothing about ancient people, how they lived, and what they "believed". We don't know such basic things as how they invented cereal grains or passed knowledge across generations. Logically if there was much degradation of this passing of knowledge there would not have been progress. We are missing something fundamental. We are missing all the knowldege that existed before 2000 BC. Are you exploring for "new age" beliefs? I have none at all. However I've stumbled onto a vast store of lost knowledge that applies to everything and could even apply to the concept of "Atlantis". Any such connection is somewhat speculative though. Until even the most basic science gets done I'm avoiding speculation to the degree possible. ...now if you want to talk about alchemy or "fossilized" auric sulfate then I'm your man. ...but we'll need a new thread.

Not exactly. All we really know for fact is that in the last 4000 years we have been making mistakes. I believe that this was when the language changed and all the writing and the oral tradition that preceded it was lost. It might not be permanently or entirely lost.

The problem here is the paucity of any writing that exists from before 2000 BC. It's recently come to my attention that there could be significant amounts of Sumerian writing but anything I find on the net isn't dated so I haven't even tried to study it in detail yet. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ It will be a major project if I ever do. I have read everything that I know is pre-2000 BC but this is almost insignificant. Basically this leaves only the Egyptian writing and, according to the experts, it is all religious in nature and reflects a highly superstitious people who even vary the meaning of words in context: Words have only "shades of meaning" rather than definitions. These writings are not extensive and one is said to be just incantation to get the king to heaven and the other is an agglomeration of spells and magic that was written on coffins between about 2400 BC and 1800 BC. This leaves us with no information whatsoever about the people and their beliefs other than interpretation of job titles and bottle labels based on their "religion". In other words if the Egyptologists are wrong about these words being superstitious gobblety gook than nothing is known from before 2000 BC when numerous other works begin appearing. I believe that there is a coherent meaning to these words and this meaning is expressed such that it is not as susceptible to deterioration as modern language. The meaning appears to be expressesd in context like computer code or animal languages; http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/researcher-decodes-praire-dog-language-discovers-theyve-been-calling-people-fat.html If a person's only job were to remember as much of a subject as he were capable a great deal of information could be retained over generations. When writing was invented it would have been the first thing recorded. None of this seems to survive. No books (from Egypt) survive from before 2000 BC except the hocus pocus (per Egyptology) inscribed in pyramids. We know that papyrus can last for millinea because we actually have some of the first papyrus paper made which is a blank scroll from 3300 BC. This leaves the question of what happened to our history and all those books. I'm betting that there was an actual change in the language and the books looked like hocus pocus to people so no care was taken to preserve them. Now the ancient beliefs, science, and history are all primarily lost except for snippets and fragments in the Bible, hermetic writings, Koran, as well as legend and myth. Ancient people are greatly misapprehended. I don't know how much they knew about paleontology but there's little doubt it was studied. And since they did study such things and exhibited a deep and abiding concern for both future and past generations, it stands to reason they also passed history down from generation to generation as well as all the sciences. They didn't lack writing because they weren't smart enough, they lacked it because no one had thought of it yet. We don't understand the formatting of the ancient language so it's as incomprehensible as most animal languages. We're only now starting to comprehend some of the animal languages.

This is an assumption. It is a very commonly made assumption and very logical since it is supported by evidence. But it is still an assumption and all the evidence applies only to times since 2000 BC. I actually don't believe the concept of deterioration of information over time applies to the time before 2000 BC and especially not to times before the invention of writing. Admittedly there wouldn't be any evidence it did apply even if such deterioration existed. Modern thought is based on a lot of assumptions and this is one that is likely wrong. The simple fact is that it is ludicrous to believe that the invention of cities was possible without theory; theory had to be maintained through oral tradition. Since man did progress in an apparently straight line fashion before 2000 BC the logical conclusion is that their theory (science) could be passed generation to generation intact. I believe that this ability to pass information was due to the nature of their language and the reason all history and science before 2000 BC is lost is that there was an invisible change in the language. I've never been much of a Darwinian myself. He had keen insights but "survival of the fittest" is not by any means the best fit logically nor with the evidence. Any sentient being looking at a strange fossil or an out of place fossil is going to see change and great lenghts of time.

Yes. This is one of the biggest problems even during recorded history. Not only does the story evolve but the details get muddied because all the place names change and word meanings change. But this shouldn't be a prime problem since the invention of writing as original narratives should exist. They don't exist (at least dated and in context) from before 2000 BC because such sources aren't comprehensible. It's little better since 2000 BC since few sources exist and they tend to be religious in nature. Not until the 7th century BC Greeks is there anything approaching a continuous history and many of the details are hazy at best. I doubt our oral history was so broken and confused. They would have taken great pains to assure it was passed down correctly. When writing was invented this oral history would be among the very first things recorded yet it appears to be lost nearly its entirety save bits and fragments which might exist in legend. Certainly they lacked the vast data that we have but they would be aware that these fossils must be extremely old since marine animal fossils would be found high on dry land. A great deal can be pieced together from observation and logic alone. 388a. It is N. (the dead king) who inundated the land after it had come out of the ocean; This specific sentence might be so ancient that it even pre-dates writing itself, yet the concept that land might have once been part of the ocean seems quite clear. They also would probably see fossils for which no animal was known to exist including some dinosaur bones. But we seem to have no memory of ever writing such words. They knew that animals came and went and likely changed. They would have guessed at the mechanisms just as we do though they would not have large amounts of supporting evidence. There seems to be a disconnect between ancient and modern times caused by much more than just our habit of downplaying ancient knowledge and capabilities. http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/index.htm

The Bible says that "Adam named the animals" which could certainly reflect the development of language as the result of a genetic mutation such as Chomsky suggests. Obviously man couldn't remember millinea of evolution if we can't even remember the most basic and important events of human history but there is certainly no reason to suppose that our ancestors couldn't look at a fossil and put two and two together. What happened to our memory?