Re: Troels: Check this out: Re: Attention George Kerby, Mr. Un-Science (OT)
- From: brian@xxxxxxx (Brian Tung)
- Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 11:25:35 -0800 (PST)
Aaron wrote:
But without speech it is even more unlikely that the stories could be
kept straight. Historically it has been shown that oral/written word
history is passed down much more consistently than pictures drawn on
the cave walls or in the sand/dirt.
I don't disagree entirely, but I think it's a marginal point. We know
that writing has only been around for several millennia; that means
that for some record of thought to have made it to us from a million
years ago, it would have to have been oral for most of that million.
Do you really think an oral record could have been retained for that
long? I think that even if we had speech a million years ago, the
probability of something surviving that long would be trillions to one
against. We can't even get our stories straight for a century. It's
much more likely that comparatively recently (say, within the last
several thousand years), the *notion* that we had been worshipping for
a million years crept in.
Frankly, I bet it crept in within the last few decades, as people try
to keep up with the enlarging time scales implied by scientific work,
but it's really not my specialty.
So, lacking speech would make it even harder, but it's an incredible
long-shot as it is, the lack of speech would only be the cherry on top.
--
Brian Tung <brian@xxxxxxx>
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