Part – 2 of 2
What I believe is this. Perhaps technology did exist a long time ago. I am talking high technology. Indulge me and keep in mind that there were not a lot of people living on earth at that time… and there was no internet, :).
Since labor and society were not as organized as they are today there would have been small groups of people living here and there. Perhaps they made the space shuttle…
I said – indulge me! … ok?
So people go flying around and everybody claps and pats each other on their backs. Then wars happen since everyone wanted the shuttle. But its makers don’t want to share it. One weaker group gets wiped out. Say the guys who drill for petroleum. Keep in mind that knowledge is not free in their time as it is now. Everyone guards their own secrets jealously, since they would become useless if everyone comes to know what they do and how they did it. For a while the space shuttle flies around and lot of legends are born. Then normal wear and tear happens and they need to replace some of the wiring. They ask the guys who make the wires to make some more but these guys can’t. They have all the metals but they don’t have insulation. The rubber guys are dead and it is a petroleum byproduct. Soon the washers and couplings on the space shuttle are all in need of repairs and it is grounded. People know how it works, they can make it, they can fly it and they can repair it but they don’t have rubber. After a while it just decomposes and the people whose job it was to make it and fly it starve to death since they don’t get paid because they can’t do their jobs. Or they move on to something else for survival, like farming.
The stories are told and passed on from generation to generation but with each passing generation more and more technical aspects are lost as knowledge no longer needed is forgotten in favor of knowledge that is needed, like farming. Only the legend remains… a flying ship. Then legends become myths and after four thousand years (or roughly 200 generations) it is passed on as religion and those people are admired and revered. They become gods since everyone looked up to them and religion is the only way to ensure that their story survives long enough so that the lessons are not forgotten.
After all Homo Sapiens have been around for two hundred thousand years. That’s us. Our technology came about because of the developments concentrated in the last three thousand years. What about the remaining hundred and ninety seven thousand years? Its possible that civilizations were built and destroyed many many times during those years. Its only logical. Our genes have changed little in that time. We have nearly the same capabilities now as we did then. And no metal or plastic or man-made artifacts would usually survive that long for us to find. Maybe they were built over each other repeatedly and lost in time. Maybe the nose-cones were used for storing grain and fins for plowing till they crumbled to dust in the hands of generations that came. They had no other use.
We do fight a lot and most of the time without any reason any of us can look back upon and justify against greater efforts for peaceful negotiations. Wars cost money and they tend to destroy things. We are a violent life-form but its a double edged sword. The technology you see and use is made possible by the re-channeling this same hunger for power and greed for superiority. Point it in one direction and it makes the space shuttle, point it in the other and it makes the bomb. That’s just who we are.
Leave a Reply