Fields Recordings From The Sea

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FourWinds F
FourWinds Apr 21, 2004 07:14:58
Replying to TomBo

When considering Carrowmore two possibilities leap out at me. On that little plateau they built over 100 tombs in the space of 500 years or so, possibly a bit longer. If we say one every five years on average then that indicates that they had a fair bit of free time and wanted to thank the gods or that they made time available because the were in deep do-do and wanted to appease the gods.

The complex a Beaghmore is built over an old field system, which was already encroached upon by peat when the circles and rows were built. This is usually taken to be a sign of panic by the locals and an attempt to appease the gods. Of course this assumes that the builders of the circles were the farmers that once had fields there.

I personally think that it's more like a re-zoning of land by a later people. If peat had formed , even just a few inches, then the fields had been abandoned for quite some time.

Ireland and its mythology is full of the people who once lived here, before the writers of each myth and it is, to me at least, probable that the Beaghmore circles were erected to honour those that had left their mark on the land before the builders of the circles arrived.

Due to the amount of peat in Ireland it is mainly a pastoral farming society today. Crops just don't grow except in the SE. This was not always the case: Prior to the climate change agriculture was prolific. So here we have 'regressed' back to a system that was supposedly superceded by wheat farming. Parts of Scotland, Wales and the north of England have similar conditions, but there they are isolated to the high ground: in Ireland even the low ground is covered in raised bogs.

I find it hard to account for things like it still being traditional in some parts of Ireland to feed anyone who comes to your door BEFORE asking their name. This is done to show what a good host you are. If the visitor turns out to be from a rival family you can kill them afterwards (or shout "Get orf my land!" at them today). Customs such as these are the result of a mindset, and are obviously not genetic. The fact that so many groups of people can have so many different ways of thinking implies to me that even if there is a common root-psyche in us we have some degree of control over it.

We are but sheep and the strengths and the weaknesses of the shepherds become the strengths and weaknesses of us all.

H Hob
Hob Apr 21, 2004 12:53:20
Replying to FourWinds

<The fact that so many groups of people can have so many different ways of thinking implies to me that even if there is a common root-psyche in us we have some degree of control over it.>

I'm struggling to coherently express my thoughts here. One of the reasons why humans are different from most other animals (and we are, no value judgement intended), is that we adapt. The ability to adapt is genetically inherited. But the results of the adaptations are not. They are determined by the changes in environmental conditions that require adaptation in the first place. So when the environment alters (i.e. Ice ages ending etc.) humans can adapt their thinking about their behaviour in order to survive the altered environment. It doesn't happen quickly, and just as the illusion of gradual changes in the genome is losing suppport in favour of the idea that there are sudden quantum leaps every now and then, the idea that human behaviour patterns have evolved smoothly from animalistic lack of awareness, to a modern "Oooh aren't we the cleverest monkeys in the jungle"is, to my mind, tosh.
Instead, what we see the traces of when we consider human conciousness pre-history, is evidence of the same kind of unsmooth evolution.
The thing that lets us screw up our planet on such a grand scale is our ability to adapt our neuronal pathways to fit whichever environment we were brought up in. At a push we can change in our own lifetimes, but we won't always be too happy about it. The next generation however, whilst having more or less the same genetics as their parents, will consider ithe new conditions normal, becuase the genes that produce the human brain are such that they contain the capacity for plasticity. But the brain is not the mind, the map is not the territory etc... So we can't look just to objective evidence if we ever are to have a chance of understanding our place in the multiverse.

I guess what I'm trying to stumble towards here, is that what makes us a particularly strange species of primate, is that we can learn and adapt. Also, that we have learned that we can learn, and that we can alter our behaviour and adapt the environment as a result.

So, I'd say, there is a 'root psyche'. It's the hardwired parts of the brain that allow us to be flexible in response to our surroundings. And if there has been any major change since the last ice age, it's been that our environment has allowed us the leisure to realise that we do have some control over the way in which we behave. Hence the appearance of social norms, rituals, religions and taboos etc...

I have an irresistible urge to make light of this, but I won't do so too much, 'cos it's a bloody important subject. But I am aware that the above probably reads like irrelevant drivel.

You're all a bunch of freakin' headcases, and I love it!

My eternal respect to your synaptic firing patterns.