Prometheus, the divine rebel who in myth brought fire down to man, and was punished for it by being chained to a rock with his liver pecked by a raven -- a sort of metaphor for the morning after the right night.In my favourite myth, a sort of sequel written by Wagner, man uses fire to stand up straight; to burn the gods out of house and home, redeeming Prometheus and freeing earth from the mystic busybodies. If only the secular nannies could be so easily routed.
7 comments:
True story. The Tasmanian Aboriginals lost fire. They had it, but lost it.
IP,
How many great discoveries have been lost?
Most of the primitive peoples of the world may be traced to earlier higher civilisations.
Mankind is in flux.
It is not all progress but a constant battle between enlightenment and regression.
Brute force has destroyed many more reasonable, technologically advanced and comparatively peaceful/civil societies.
I believe it is possible to link New Zealand Maori back to ancient Egypt and if this is true it would show us that as they migrated further away from the heart of civilization to the utmost parts of the earth, they lost many of the arts and sciences and reverted to a state of barbarism and primitive savagery. Some Maori say that the Maori learned cannibalism from Fijian cannibals who already here when Maori arrived. This would suggest the process of abandoning previously held ethic of a higher society by assimilating the practices of lower barbaric peoples upon contact.
Australian Aborigines are not part Neanderthal as evolutionist say. They are part Caucasoid!...The great granddaddies of your fireless Tasmanians were White men!
Tim Wikiriwhi
IP, could you or I start a fire without a match?
Emerson’s ‘Law of Compensation’ says that for every progressive event there will be some downside that is inevitable results with the change. Eg When you buy a car the positive is you may be able to travel more efficiently, yet the negative might be your physical fitness may degrade due to lake of walking!
Eg2…One of the downsides of Technology is that ancient survival skills can be lost.
This is not a problem as long as the social and physical infrastructures that supports this higher mode are secure, but when Nature destroys mans innovations, people die like flies because they have lost the ancient survival skills that any primitive savage will know because that is natural to him and the level of his tek!
When we make judgments like …Shall I buy a new car?...We must weigh up the ‘positives’ to see if they ought weight the ‘negatives’
And in vital skills like Fire, we ought to make use of the highest tech yet still send out Children to boy scouts and the guides!
Tim Wikiriwhi
jeez Tim, dont you know the real hidden truth is that Maori are descendants of True Aryans :P http://www.ethnomath.org/resources/tregear1885.pdf
love that stupid book. I think I'll rely on DNA tracing to see where we came from rather than mumbo jumbo racial myths.
I quite like The Ring story too. The Maui myth is the Maori 'Heroes Journey' though doesn't cap it off as well as Wagner. Looks like Prometheus is farting though
Tim, the Maori come from southeast asians who were present in those areas long before Egypt arose. I know of no evolutionists who believe that the Aboriginies were part neanderthal. Aside from that I agree with your point.
Tim,
I thought it was widely accepted that Maori became cannibals because they had already eaten their way through most of the megafauna protein sources: by the time tribal wars broke out--over resources--the temptation to make use of a human protein source became too compelling.
Tasmanian aboriginals became isolated from the rest of Australia following the last ice age: the population boom that followed Aboriginal arrival collapsed again once Aboriginal populations had eaten through some of Australia's megafauna: the fate of the extraordinary diprotodon is testament to humankind's inability to manage its natural resources.
Obviously, what happens when populations begin to explode is that the skills become more specialised: instead of ten people in a clan doing everything, fifty people in a clan will divide the skills among them and specialise. So were as previously everyone would have hunted, fished, stoked the fire, collected the wood, etc, two or three people would be tasked with each job.
Once the major protein sources become more scarce, the population becomes vulnerable. The two or three fire-stokers in a clan might succumb to disease, and suddenly the entire clan is without fire.
My comment about the Tasmanian aboriginals losing fire really has nothing to do with the evolutionary origins of Aboriginal people. I take your point: many, many discoveries have been lost in human history. There's a warped view that Maori were some idyllic society before European arrival: they were no more sophisticated, or any less, than any other stone-age people. They certainly weren't living in any harmony with their environment.
IP.
Your Tasmanians were in a very sorry state!
As for Maori Cannibalism, some may have become cannibals in their Wakas...while adrift on the oceans.
Others may have learned it from Fijians they 'met'. Others (like you have said) may have had the scruples to resist cannibalism until all other sources of meat inland became scarce due to over hunting and no/poor animal husbandry skills. eg the Moa.
In one generation a practice can be established so that to the children of the first cannibals, eating Human flesh may appear completely natural and they will teach it to their own children.
Conversely even today values can be lost in a few generations.
eg The belief in the right to smoke in a pub if the owner allows it.
This is an important ethic that has been lost to great portion of New Zealanders. It is scary. It is a regression and while we might despise smoking, we still need to reestablish this old and just truth in the minds of our youth.
I only mentioned the Aborigine-evolution thing because it is a commonplace belief of non-Abo atheist dullards is that Aborigines are lowest humans on the evolutionary scale.
Mendel proves this old Darwinian wives tale as false. It is genetically proven we are all children of Adam and Eve, and that no evolution exists between Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid- the three sub groups of the human family.
Our modern world appears 'natural' to us and some find it impossible to conceive of life in ignorance in Tasmania (like Adam and Eve when they were thrown out of the garden of Eden). Yet despite this alienation, the difference between us and those fireless Tasmanians is superficial. All individuals of all times and places are the same in essential respects.
We are all born naked and ignorant. We all sin. (There is no such thing as the noble savage!)
What arts and values we are taught by our parents we may abandon at will and choose to adopt a lower level of society than they had, or we can strive to progress, and improve upon our inheritance, and spend our lives dedicated to self improvement and happy thanksgiving to Almighty God..
I don’t accept Ice age theory, but believe the Earth has been completely submerged in water at least twice, once within the history of mankind.
If there have been Ice ages, I say they must have occurred pre-man.
I don’t accept that Aborigines have been in Australia for more than 4000 years and challenge all dating methods/myths used to arrive at absurd dates like 50 000 years.
Aborigines come from the same family as we all do originating in Turkey, settling around Babylon, and from there migrated out to the utmost parts of the earth over the last 4000 years.
I have no wish to open up the God/Bible debate here.
I am merely stating my personal view which I know is not the popular view on NotPC or in our socialist education system, yet is currently and historically a very popular view in the big wide world.
Tim Wikiriwhi
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