The History of Humans is Yet to Come


There are so many ways scholars can try to plot the migration of humans and their ancestral origins. Besides archeological clues and DNA, there are language clues. That is, languages change in somewhat similar ways and we may figure out the ultimate origins of all the races and ethnic groups by plotting backwards our language changes. The link makes the case for Native Americans having origins in Europe. I think he limits his analysis too much with the last 3,000 or so years. 

Recent evidence is our human ancestors go back much further than we previously thought. I have often said here there is evidence people similar to us dated back to 300,000 years ago. Now artifacts of human of human-like people have been found in Greece dated to 600,000 to 700,000 years ago. Evidence of ancient humans seems to show up the deeper into the earth archaeologists dig. It seems only logical the longer the history of human beings on the planet the less important is the 2,000 year dominance of Christianity. Any religion that only existed for a tiny fraction of 1% of all human history doesn't seem to me to be the only true religion for all of humankind. I understand, of course, that every person's god seems like the only god that ever existed, i.e., all other gods were fake gods. 

It's apparent that Christians and all other of today's religions need to be ready for more bad news about the history of humans. The trend is both digging deeper into the earth and/or going deeper into caves and finding evidence of humans further back in time. New cave drawings, the earliest form of writing, have been found moving the earliest ones from 40,000 years ago to 60,000. One would imagine the skill of interpreting the messages or cultures of drawing will improve as well. We may well learn more about religious thinking of those people.

So far as I know, every religion has a version of where man came from. It's not surprising they all have a different version. The Bible is but one of many. It would be a service to those in the pews if every preacher/priest would point out this "one-of-many" disclaimers every time passages from the Bible are read. I realize it is something too truthful to be included in a church service.

In the recent 200 years or so in the U.S. there have been periods strong in secularism and others strong in religion. A major street one block away from where I live is named after a famous man who made a living giving speeches about secularism. Then there was the election of 2016 [don't get me started :) ]. By understanding humans have been here 600,000 years it opens up the possibility there have been many more cycles of gods and no gods than we ever thought before.

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