Ancient / Primitive Self-Actualization.

[SoothedByRain]

Just a short passage from Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari that made me smile so I thought I'd share it.

In most habitats, Sapiens bands fed themselves in an elastic and opportunistic
fashion. They scrounged for termites, picked berries, dug for roots, stalked rabbits
and hunted bison and mammoth. Notwithstanding the popular image of ‘man the
hunter’, gathering was Sapiens’ main activity, and it provided most of their
calories, as well as raw materials such as flint, wood and bamboo.
Sapiens did not forage only for food and materials. They foraged for knowledge
as well. To survive, they needed a detailed mental map of their territory. To
maximise the efficiency of their daily search for food, they required information
about the growth patterns of each plant and the habits of each animal. They
needed to know which foods were nourishing, which made you sick, and how to
use others as cures. They needed to know the progress of the seasons and what
warning signs preceded a thunderstorm or a dry spell. They studied every stream,
every walnut tree, every bear cave, and every flint-stone deposit in their vicinity.
Each individual had to understand how to make a stone knife, how to mend a torn
cloak, how to lay a rabbit trap, and how to face avalanches, snakebites or hungry
lions. Mastery of each of these many skills required years of apprenticeship and
practice. The average ancient forager could turn a flint stone into a spear point
within minutes. When we try to imitate this feat, we usually fail miserably. Most
of us lack expert knowledge of the flaking properties of flint and basalt and the
fine motor skills needed to work them precisely.
In other words, the average forager had wider, deeper and more varied
knowledge of her immediate surroundings than most of her modern descendants.
Today, most people in industrial societies don’t need to know much about the
natural world in order to survive. What do you really need to know in order to get
by as a computer engineer, an insurance agent, a history teacher or a factory
worker? You need to know a lot about your own tiny field of expertise, but for the
vast majority of life’s necessities you rely blindly on the help of other experts,
whose own knowledge is also limited to a tiny field of expertise. The human
collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual
level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.
There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually
decreased since the age of foraging. Survival in that era required superb mental
abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could
increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’
were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next
generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.
Foragers mastered not only the surrounding world of animals, plants and
objects, but also the internal world of their own bodies and senses. They listened
to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking
there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits,
beehives and bird nests. They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and
knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and
constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had
physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of
practising yoga or t’ai chi. - p54

I wonder what certain Human awareness and levels of consciousness would have been like 20.000 - 15.000 years ago.

Anyone have any good book recommendations on the topic of Anthropology and Spirituality?

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2018 by SoothedByRain

[Guest Quanty]

Humanity before agriculture was more awaken. They learned and did things 10x faster than today's average. 

20.000 years ago a human being will laugh at today's society that people need to write down to not forget. 

Basically being awake you simply not need to write down, writing has impaired society. 

What i say contradicts the inventions of history, because is like that, 90% of history is pure fiction. 

[Prabhaker]

15 hours ago, SoothedByRain said:

what certain Human awareness and levels of consciousness would have been like 20.000 - 15.000 years ago.

The primitive man was simple living a natural life.  You will find people in the primitive societies are happier than those in civilized ones. Even Adam and Eve had no cloths, nothing to eat but they were living in a paradise. Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge he was thrown out of paradise, to become knowledgeable is to fall from grace.

Human consciousness rise and fall. Civilizations reach to their peaks and fall apart. In Buddha’s time India was the richest land. The spirituality that we have in India today is just a leftover from those days. Great civilization in Greece produced Heraclitus, Socrates,Pythagoras, Plotinus -- declined. 

If you talk about human awareness and levels of consciousness, we are living in dark ages.  So-called civilized countries are as primitive and barbarous as you can conceive. In the twentieth century , you can produce Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse-tung, send the beautiful people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima directly to paradise together. 

List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_conflicts_in_the_Middle_East