"...faerie dust"
Some now suspect that certain "Faerie Tales" may be based on stories 5000+ years old. As "Ring Around the Rosy" is traced to near 800 years ago during the Black Death.
Some version of Superman, and the mix of industrial era popular heroes may survive into the 40th century. How could they not. Invincible saviors.
In the West history is generally taught as the rise, and fall of cultures. In school we learned of them as separate civilizations with little or no connections. Some suggest a more wholistic view of the human story.
Starting during the last Ice Age there began one continuous human culture. Different varieties within it the rose evolved faded. Adding their stories to the ongoing enterprise. The current space faring post industrial digital information era is directly connected to the Bronze Age, and back, and back, and back. Perhaps to them folks figuring what flint can do.
One learning one remembering from the Ice to now.
20,000+ years, and still in business.
That continuous human culture that began in the last Ice Age is now at its end. This is staring us in the face on all counts.
ReplyDelete"Our world of self-delusion will admit none of that. It will perish amidst its evasions and fatuities. It is like a convoy lost in darkness on an unknown rocky coast, with quarrelling pirates in the chartroom and savages clambering up the sides of the ships to plunder and do evil as the whim may take them. That is the rough outline of the more and more jumbled movie on the screen before us. Mind near exhaustion still makes its final futile movement towards that 'way out or round or through the impasse'.
That is the utmost now that mind can do. And this, its last expiring thrust, is to demonstrate that the door closes upon us for evermore.
There is no way out, or round or through."
-H. G. Wells,"Mind at the End of Its Tether"
No not ending.
ReplyDeleteWe are profoundly persistent. Not even the Ice extinguished us. In fact it ignited our current civilization. The rising seas, and mass extinctions will ignite yet another kind of humanity.
So no we don't get off that easy...we don't die yet. Not super volcanoes nor plagues or even our own efforts at suicide have so far worked.
We're just changing once more.
From the ice to now rising seas. Still the story goes on.
There will soon be far fewer of us.
That, and only in a few hospitable places. Last time 70,000 years ago we survived in caves on the eastern shores of South Africa after a volcanic winter lasting decades.
Best we figure by the genetic bottleneck in our genome's history there were only perhaps 500 to less than 1000 women of child bearing ability left. We are descended from them,...all of us everyone.
Bad news for racists, and tribal nationalists, but it's the truth. Our genetic map sez so. We each walk about with that map in our flesh...even Nazis black nationalists, and lesbian separatists.
Everyone of us has this truth ringing through their veins.
For us personally, and our immediate decedents,...we're fucked. We're going to lose our worldwide interconnected culture. Mad Max world will look like paradise to those folks surviving in the coming centuries.
Most of our tech will be gone. limited separated semi-organized communities. Primitive agriculture. Mostly hunter gather life after the near centuries. Possible till the next great change.
I see no rise of anything like us for many tens of thousands of years,...for one it will not be needed...there will be so few of us. Though some varieties of literacy, and memory will continue.
Who we have been for the last 500 years or so to now will be the new "Atlantis" in our future tales myths, and even in more advanced places...written history.
It is not the end of us. Just the end of who we are now.
On reflection if things are worse than now imagined...we will lose memory of everything we were, and all trace of literacy as well.
ReplyDeleteHowever some tiny human communities spread around the world will continue. In the recovering biosphere we at best will be a middle level species. At worst lower.
Like chickens or rodents. However still here.
Sidney, Species are going extinct every day and they don't come back. That event roughly 70,000 years ago that reduced the human population to roughly 2000 people in a small area of Africa and caused the bottleneck in our DNA was an anomaly.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, you are right, we are descended from that small group of people in Africa. It is correct to say that everyone alive in the world is of African origin. There is only one human race as you have stated.
Once a species goes extinct, it does not come back. Have you seen any dinosaurs roaming around Brooklyn these days?
Furthermore, extinction IS THE NORM. Of all species that have existed on earth, 99% are extinct... gone for good!
Read this for more details on the matter:
https://answersdrive.com/what-percent-of-all-species-have-gone-extinct-585879
Yes.
ReplyDeleteWe are going to be extinct.
A relatively early extinction at that,...we're on the road.
Just not right away. Lots more hideous fun left.
As for the timetable that's nature's decision. Though it's not decades or centuries. We're too persistent for that. Even a full nuke exchange wouldn't do the complete job.
However yes we will go.
Not as an elder species. Not even in our middle years. Rather we'll leave sadly young. We'll be barley out of the cradle when we leave.
...and that is sad.