StoneGloves wrote:
What I meant by human sensibility is really 21st century liberal democracy and the behaviour we have laboriously evolved toward. And there wasn't much of that when the stones went up.
It's good to be careful when using the concept of evolution in terms of a "track" or "ladder" that takes us "toward" some place. I've some fascination with this idea (known as teleology), via Terence McKenna's ideas, but in evolutionary theory it's seen as a gross misconception. Darwin himself saw evolution as a bush rather than a ladder, with no predetermined "direction".
The perils of the "ladder" view are especially seen when we use it culturally, with hindsight, to paint ourselves as the inevitable, superior pinnacle, and other cultures (especially past or "primitive" ones) as defective versions of ourselves. It's good you've clarified what you meant but I always take issue with the idea...
There's a good argument for linear cultural evolution in looking at science and technology, and sure, in terms of brute manipulation of matter, our stuff beats the stone age hands-down. But without romanticising the ancients, there's still a big question mark over value-judgements that define us, now, as "properly human", and different cultures as "sub-human". It's not necessarily just a question of racism (though that's relevant). If we wipe ourselves our with nuclear weapons or a nano-virus, leaving a few tribes surviving for the next however many millennia in the Amazon, who's most succesfully "human"?
On this topic, there's been a lot of sometimes misinformed stuff in the media recently trying to demolish the idea that we're more violent than hunter-gatherers, and I think this essay in response to this is pretty enlightening (at the very least it gives some solid background to this famous phrase):
"The Savages are Truly Noble"
http://anthropik.com/2007/05/the-savages-are-truly-noble/
