What makes us better than the Ancients?

[Add My Msn]

Back then, they survived and worked towards food and just surviving. Now people today are just slaves for money.

This. And because of this they didn't have to kill each other for no reason.

 

[Divine_God]

Woah, they observed astronomical signs and incorporated their religion to predict the end of existence?

Shockingly original.

We are a product of the ancients, I don't see how we are "better" than them. Many aspects of our lives are different or more conventional but that doesn't make us "better".

 

[T V]

We are better than the ancients because of the better ability to share experiences, which therefore makes the average person smarter and more adept. Its really a simple concept, shared experiences lead to smarter people on average than singular experiences. People complain about how stupid the average person is now, but comparing to back then when the average person COULDN'T READ their native language, it really is no comparison.

Yes a literate person is by default smarter than an illiterate one, being unable to explain your ideas to multiple people across different boundaries truly questions whether or not you actually know the idea you claim to know.

Alright, so not everyone could read back then. But most, if not all, cultures in those times transmitted knowledge through stories. Now, whether or not you want to believe in what they had to say is a different matter, but there is no question that knowledge was transmitted verbally from one generation to the next.

I concur, which I touched on slightly in my previous post.

Our knowledge is a pool of understanding that has been built from globalization. Few early civilizations moved so much as to amass knowledge of the world greater than a hundred or so miles away from where they were born. They had just figured out how to domesticate animals (some didn't even know how to do that) and grow crops. Now when you refer to the Mayans, Incas, the Babylonians you have to make yourself clear as to if you are referring to the early civilization or the later civilizations - because each of those evolved a lot in the time that it took to go from agriculture to road building. (thousands and thousands and thousands of years)

I'm just referring to ancient cultures in a general sense, because despite the differences in technology, there many similarities between their perceptions of the world, and it shows in their mythology.

My stand is still that we are definitely much better than the Ancients in many ways! The time that the ancients used for hunting, building their homes, we use them for socializing, Submersing ourselves with knowledge.

Let's be honest. Do you really think the average person today uses their free time to "submerge themselves in knowledge", or is it more likely that most people today prefer to spend their free time watching television, browsing for funny videos on the internet, or looking at things on facebook?

The Ancients surely didn't know as much as we do.

Ah, they didn't know as much as we do about what? I often ask myself if over the course of the past 40,000 thousand years or so we've done nothing more than distance ourselves from the world which fecundated us. If we evolved from wild animals, and the workings of nature are inherent in all living things, then, by questioning and inquiring, have our increasingly complex little minds merely blinded us from seeing the way the universe is?

Do not take the beliefs of ancient cultures at face-value. Again, here's a quote I used earlier

"It was said concerning the Mayan astronomers that the connections were what counted. In the archaic universe all things were signs and signature of each other, inscribed in the hologram, to be divined subtly... 'The economy of classical language...is rational, which means that in it words are abstracted as much as possible in the interest of relationship... No word has a density by itself, it is hardly the sign of a thing, but rather the means of conveying a connection."

You may say that we're closer today to understanding our origins than we were 3,000 years ago, but who's closer to the actual time of the emergence of the human species? Us or them? Keeping in mind that our brains have remained relatively the same for the past 40,000 years, you don't think it's possible that our primitive ancestors may have known something about life that the modern man has overlooked through his constant probing and calculating?

We have instant access to vast amount of knowledge through the Internet, be able to communicate and trade with people from all across the globe, we are able to do things much more efficiently than the Ancients.

Again, what do you mean by "we"? Yes, we have access to vast amounts of knowledge, but who's using it to that extent? Almost everyone I know prefers to use their technology to play Angry Birds or browse Facebook. And I know for a fact it's not just the people I know.

As what Emporor Nero said above, our knowledge are all collective bundles served right at our very door step. We can use known results to aid in our quest for more advanced technology, thereby skipping many research procedures.

"A great gulf, however, has been opened between man's material advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which he may one day be lost if it is not closed or narrowed. Man has conquered outer space. He has not conquered himself. If he had, we would not be worrying today as much as we are about the destructive possibilities of scientific achievements. In short, moral sense and physical power are out of proportion."


Do you think there's any truth to that^ statement?

Woah, they observed astronomical signs and incorporated their religion to predict the end of existence?

I didn't say that. But it's surprising how many people think the ancient cultures pulled their mythologies out of their asses.

Well, maybe it's not that surprising

We are a product of the ancients, I don't see how we are "better" than them. Many aspects of our lives are different or more conventional but that doesn't make us "better".

True that

 

[Saint Grimm]

I UNDERSTAND THIS IS OFF TOPIC FROM WHAT TV IS TALKING ABOUT AND I DOUBT HE WANTS PEOPLE DISCUSSING THIS ON HIS THREAD. I JUST THOUGHT HE WOULD FIND IT INTERESTING. IF YOU WISH TO DISCUSS WHAT I HAVE SAID PLEASE DO SO ON THE THREAD I HAVE MADE ON THE SUBJECT SO YOU DO NOT CLUTTER UP TV'S THREAD

MY LINK: http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?p=11783404#post11783404​

Well, I don't know much about Mayans. I do know a bit about conspiracy theories and mythology however and as I can see you are interested in ancient civilizations I will share some of them with you here and now. This will be a long post, but it should easily keep your attention and make you think hard. So bare with me and enjoy the read.

I am an Odinist by religion, meaning I worship the Norse gods, mainly Odin, and believe in life after death in Valhalla. But I heard a story that made me think ALOT on the history channel.

Here I will explain the Norse Mythology, so you will understand what I'm talking about when I speak of the alien theory later on.

It is said there are 9 "worlds" within space. These 9 worlds are "homeworlds" of a certain family of beings. They are Midgard (Earth), home of the humans. Asgard, the homeworld of the Gods including Odin as well as the location of Valhalla. Vanaheimr is also a homeworld of Gods, mainly gods associated with fertility, wisdom and the ability to see the future. Jötunheimr, the homeworld of the Giants. Álfheimr, the homeworld of the Elves. Svartálfar, the beings of this world have been interpreted to be either Dark Elves or Dwarves. Niflheim, is a world of the dead, but is sometimes also said to be the home of the Ice Giants. Muspelheim, is the homeworld of the Fire Giants. And lastly, Hel, which is the homeworld of corpses and other world dead.

The end of times, or apocalypse in Norse Mythology is called "Ragnarok". It is said that Ragnarok will happen when Fenrir (a great wolf) is set free of the binds Odin and the other gods put upon him. The cause of Fenrir being set free is this; Fenrir has 2 children who are on quests. Sköll's quest is to chase and devour the sun, while his brother, Hati's quest is to chase the moon through the sky, and devour it as well. When Fenrir's two children succeed in devouring the Sun and Moon Fenrir will escape from his binds and Ragnarok will begin. A great battle will happen during Ragnarok in which the death of Odin, Thor, Tyr, Freyr, heimdallr and Loki will occur. After Ragnarok the surviving gods will meet and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors.

It is also said in Norse Mythology that the Valkyries, a race of beautiful winged women, would take a half of those who die in combat to Valhalla, which is ruled over by Odin. Valhalla a great hall where the dead warriors drink and feast all night and battle each other all day. The other half of those who die in combat go to Fólkvangr, which is a field ruled over by the goddess Freyja. And those who die of sickness or old age go to Hel.


Now for the Conspiracy.

In old times when the vikings roamed the lands, if an alien were to come to earth, it could easily be mistaken for a god, correct? Well look at it this way. Perhaps the Nordic gods were actually aliens. They had "high-tech" weapons, for example Thor wielded a hammer that could "shoot" lightning bolts. Currently, the USA military has "laser" weapons similar to this. Infact we have weapons such as a "death ray" (I will not explain all of this, if you want to learn more look up "the death ray conspiracy"). These gods also descended from the sky. It is quiet possible that these gods were a highly advanced civilization from another planet.

It is also very possible the 9 homeworlds are possibly other planets here in our galaxy, or possible planets each in its own galaxy. Perhaps Odin and the other gods came to Earth looking for warriors to help him battle Fenrir during Ragnarok, and Valhalla is/was where these recruited warriors would live and practice their combat for the coming war against Fenrir. As it is said there were gods who could see the future, it is very possible that Odin was the "king" of the "alien" planet of Asgard and Fenrir was the "king" of an enemy "alien" planet and a person who could see the future warned him about Ragnarok.

It is also possible that Ragnarok happened long before what the Christian religion calls the beginning of time. In the Christian religion the world is still VERY young and at first there were only 2 people, Adam and Eve. After Ragnarok the world was supposed to be reborn anew and the 2 surviving humans would repopulate the world. Science has proven the world to be MUCH MUCH older than it is said to be in the bible. The continents were at one time one big continent and were separated. At the end of Ragnarok the world is submerged completely in water before it is reborn. Perhaps even the submerging in water caused the continents to split apart. And if this were to be true, then one of the surviving Norse gods would be the deity Christians know only as "god". Which would mean that most of the current religions today are branched off from the Nordic religion today known as Odinism.

Conclusion:

These are many things one could spend HOURS thinking about. Perhaps "Gods" are simply highly advanced aliens from another planet, galaxy or universe. Perhaps the end of the world has already happened and the Christian Adam & Ever were the only surviving humans. Perhaps, also, Ragnarok has already happened, and the other 9 worlds were destroyed and Earth is the only remaining of the 9. The possibilities of the unknown are endless.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.