Monday, January 24, 2011
Win an iPod
WIN AN iPOD 8Gb. Purchase a copy of Uttuku from Amazon.com (Book or Kindle) and submit your reciept number to my message box, at author@altair-australia.com. Winner annouced March 1 2011. Please share this with your friends.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Yesterday for Today
Why look back in time when we have so much to look forward to in the future?
In the examination of the past it is becoming clearer that the future might not be the bright shining beacon futurologists of visionaries are branding and selling the people of Earth. Some are now asking, have we actually travelled this road before? It might even be suggested that technology is simply masking civilization and its slow decay, a slow narrowing of though through exclusivity based on pointed knowledge.
It is possible. Knowledge of some kind went into the construction of a deliberately buried structure at Gobekli Tepe around 12 000BC. Here a civilization which predates the time when archaeologists say civilizations existed, broke away from hunter-gatherer living to set down something so amazing that it has all thrown into question all visions of the past. The builder people were building well before the concepts of henges went through Europe. A builder and thinker civilization existed in Neolithic times; a time many modern thinkers consider primitive and far removed from today.
While Gobekli throws up some tricky questions, it is perhaps the Thorbourough henge in North Yorkshire that suggests the greatest example of knowledge and lost knowledge. Here there is a construction on a massive scale with an accuracy undeniably sophisticated - and sadly still denied by those who believe maths and complex calculations and use of the stars belongs to the great thinkers of a much later age. 5-6000 years ago a civilization was realising its potential and was creating structures that would, even today, take some thinking.
For some reason the builders faded away and only the constructions have managed to survive the scourge of time. So, has this knowledge been lost forever? No, not at all. The knowledge used to create place like Gobkli, Stonehenge or Thorbourough has already been rediscovered and it was considered very modern thinking when it was used again in the Renasance period across Europe. In fact some very early Neolithic sites exist across France, so many of these old knowledge could have been passed down through groups in dribs and drabs; enough to keep thinkers of the new age thinking, testing and discovering.
What can be suggested is that during the thousands of years after the construction of such buildings the knowledge ownership narrowed and possibly continued to narrow to only a few wizened priest/builders knew all there was to know, but had become so exclusive ta]hat fewer and fewer new converts came to learn these ways. It would have only taken illness or more likely a fight or uprising against these priest type people to eliminate the knowledge completely. Instead of a widespread knowledge base it was very narrow, and like the Egyptian builders who took their secrets with them, the knowledge was lost.
In today's world, where knowledge is everywhere it is becoming quite obvious that it would on take a century to lose all known knowledge we share today. With the advent of the digital world, and the fragile nature of digital media, all known knowledge could be lost with just the flick of a switch, or the multiple crash of hard drives. Information stored in digital formats thirty years ago are unreadable unless you use equally antiquated devices - which are even more fragile.
Like the Neolithic knowledge loss modern knowledge is poised on a pin head, granted a big pin head, but its access is restrictive and become more and more exclusive as media ownership buys up known knowledge for sale. When will it become too expensive to make knowledge available? An, when, like the civilizations of 12 000 BC or 6000 BC the exclusive owners fade away, just how much will be lost and how much will the world have to relearn?
In the examination of the past it is becoming clearer that the future might not be the bright shining beacon futurologists of visionaries are branding and selling the people of Earth. Some are now asking, have we actually travelled this road before? It might even be suggested that technology is simply masking civilization and its slow decay, a slow narrowing of though through exclusivity based on pointed knowledge.
It is possible. Knowledge of some kind went into the construction of a deliberately buried structure at Gobekli Tepe around 12 000BC. Here a civilization which predates the time when archaeologists say civilizations existed, broke away from hunter-gatherer living to set down something so amazing that it has all thrown into question all visions of the past. The builder people were building well before the concepts of henges went through Europe. A builder and thinker civilization existed in Neolithic times; a time many modern thinkers consider primitive and far removed from today.
While Gobekli throws up some tricky questions, it is perhaps the Thorbourough henge in North Yorkshire that suggests the greatest example of knowledge and lost knowledge. Here there is a construction on a massive scale with an accuracy undeniably sophisticated - and sadly still denied by those who believe maths and complex calculations and use of the stars belongs to the great thinkers of a much later age. 5-6000 years ago a civilization was realising its potential and was creating structures that would, even today, take some thinking.
For some reason the builders faded away and only the constructions have managed to survive the scourge of time. So, has this knowledge been lost forever? No, not at all. The knowledge used to create place like Gobkli, Stonehenge or Thorbourough has already been rediscovered and it was considered very modern thinking when it was used again in the Renasance period across Europe. In fact some very early Neolithic sites exist across France, so many of these old knowledge could have been passed down through groups in dribs and drabs; enough to keep thinkers of the new age thinking, testing and discovering.
What can be suggested is that during the thousands of years after the construction of such buildings the knowledge ownership narrowed and possibly continued to narrow to only a few wizened priest/builders knew all there was to know, but had become so exclusive ta]hat fewer and fewer new converts came to learn these ways. It would have only taken illness or more likely a fight or uprising against these priest type people to eliminate the knowledge completely. Instead of a widespread knowledge base it was very narrow, and like the Egyptian builders who took their secrets with them, the knowledge was lost.
In today's world, where knowledge is everywhere it is becoming quite obvious that it would on take a century to lose all known knowledge we share today. With the advent of the digital world, and the fragile nature of digital media, all known knowledge could be lost with just the flick of a switch, or the multiple crash of hard drives. Information stored in digital formats thirty years ago are unreadable unless you use equally antiquated devices - which are even more fragile.
Like the Neolithic knowledge loss modern knowledge is poised on a pin head, granted a big pin head, but its access is restrictive and become more and more exclusive as media ownership buys up known knowledge for sale. When will it become too expensive to make knowledge available? An, when, like the civilizations of 12 000 BC or 6000 BC the exclusive owners fade away, just how much will be lost and how much will the world have to relearn?
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