Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolf1066" data-source="post: 5234115" data-attributes="member: 88680">First and foremost, a heartfelt thanks to you, Galloglaich, for starting this thread and your many extremely informative, thought-provoking posts herein.  Likewise thanks to the other contributors.  This has pretty much got to be the best thread on any forum I've been on (and that's coming from a veteran "Forum Whore").Subjects near and dear to my heart - it's taken me a number of days to read the thread with "minimal" side-trips to chase up some of the interesting links I've found here.Well said.  I note that a lot of people have the attitude of "but people were more ignorant/stupid/savage/uncivilised/etc back then" and it's quite common to be dismissive of our ancestors' capabilities - to the point, it seems, of being prepared to believe crack-pot theories that the ancient wonders had to have been built by aliens "because there's no way those ignorant savages could have built it..."In fact, you listen to half the fad-diets these days and you would be forgiven for wondering how we managed to survive for so long as a species, given that everything we've traditionally eaten is "gunna kill us for sure".  Our poor ancestors must've had a hard time surviving without the benefit of having half a dozen quacks pointing out where they were going wrong with their food every fifteen minutes...People latch onto anything they can to feel that we've improved as a species, that we're smarter, more civilised, better, than those who came before us.The reality is far far more interesting.My favourite cultures/periods of history are "Pre-Christian "Celtic" Europe" and 1700s.A bit of a contrast in some ways.  But the thing that doesn't change is the inventiveness and complexity of people.</blockquote>

Verification