And this motive force would be.....?

Incidentally, I'm not bad-mouthing monkeys; they're well-adapted to their environment, and I'm sure are very generally adaptable, and technically adept in that environment. However, they don't have the same planning and organization abilities (which I see as a function of communications, oral and written), and they don't have the same technical skills (by which I don't mean gas powered engines, nanotech, or anything that advanced). And no, we don't have an exclusive on intelligence. I do not think monkey could have built the pyramids.

But some people do tend to think that we are smarter than our equally human forebears, only mere thousands of years distant from ourselves, and therefore, they couldn't have been responsible for, for instance, the pyramids, or Stonehenge, or Baalbek, or you-name-it. It's possible that I mistakenly inferred that this was your viewpoint; if so, I apologize. If not....I think you're wrong.

Anyway...I'm done. This is not, in any case, an area that interests me much; I should probably not have got involved in this thread in the first place.

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It is hard to convey five-dimensional ideas in a language evolved to scream defiance at the monkeys in the next tree. -- The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch, by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2008 02:14PM by cicely.