Well, Anthony,


I still don't think the sentence is inherentlycontradictory on a purely semantic level. I read it originally as an awareness of ancestral involvement, but not necessarily a complete understanding of that involvement. Now, of course, Rick has admitted that he wrote carelessly and did in fact write something contradictory. That's not quite the same thing, however. His admission does not mean that the sentence was not susceptible of another interpretation.

You are certainly right to point to Steven's point about the "blindingly obvious" fact of the rise and fall of civilization; I'm not sure why I missed it. Perhaps I too regarded it as obvious and didn't see that Steven wasn't really disagreeing with that portion of it. As for Rick's claims, per se, I am not defending them. I do not believe that anything I have seen points to a vanished "supercivilization" from which we have degenerated. I hold no brief for "the lost civilization" whatsoever.

Lee