The Seven Sisters story motif has crossed my path a few times in the past few months, including a couple of weeks ago with a lovely Gunditjmara man at Budj Bim. On the age of the story, I'm ambivalent: you give ample grounds for scepticism – and I like that you strike that balance.
The romantic in me enjoys the speculation; the sceptic accuses romantic-me of cherry-picking and confirmation bias.
On the crucial point that humans were clever, as clever as us, possibly more so, long before they / we invented writing: this has always fascinated me. Our prehistoric ancestors needed their wits about them much more than we do today, in many regards. What stories, what theories, what beliefs will they have come up with? And maybe passed down over many generations before they finally faded into obscurity, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago? We don't even really know what the Druids believed at the dawn of the historical period: we just have some glimpses in the literature of their enemies, the Romans, some much younger Welsh poetry and a lot of 19th-century hokum.
It's so fascinating to think about, isn't it. Modern humans seem to assume technological advancement makes us 'smarter' than our predecessors. There are many smart people in our age, and many more ignorant ones at that. I fear our age is increasingly losing the ability to think.
Very thought-provoking, and timely for me:
The Seven Sisters story motif has crossed my path a few times in the past few months, including a couple of weeks ago with a lovely Gunditjmara man at Budj Bim. On the age of the story, I'm ambivalent: you give ample grounds for scepticism – and I like that you strike that balance.
The romantic in me enjoys the speculation; the sceptic accuses romantic-me of cherry-picking and confirmation bias.
On the crucial point that humans were clever, as clever as us, possibly more so, long before they / we invented writing: this has always fascinated me. Our prehistoric ancestors needed their wits about them much more than we do today, in many regards. What stories, what theories, what beliefs will they have come up with? And maybe passed down over many generations before they finally faded into obscurity, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago? We don't even really know what the Druids believed at the dawn of the historical period: we just have some glimpses in the literature of their enemies, the Romans, some much younger Welsh poetry and a lot of 19th-century hokum.
It's so fascinating to think about, isn't it. Modern humans seem to assume technological advancement makes us 'smarter' than our predecessors. There are many smart people in our age, and many more ignorant ones at that. I fear our age is increasingly losing the ability to think.