I’ve been reading about an ancient culture of copper smelters that lived in what is now Southern Israel some 3000 years ago. Archaeologists excavating the site of an ancient copper mine have determined these people developed sophisticated smelting techniques, had domesticated animals and traded for food items that originated hundreds of miles away. But other than the information deciphered from the mine site the archaeologists know nothing of these people: no village sites or even single building structures have been found in the vicinity leading to the conclusion these people must have been nomadic.
Such information has me wondering how many other ancient cultures might have existed but are undiscovered; people who might have acquired knowledge, possibly had learned truths about planet Earth that hasn’t come down to us. Maybe these unknown people learned how to live in harmony with their environment, how to nurture and be nurtured. Maybe material acquisition wasn’t important to these ancient, enlightened people who worked together to forge healthy, satisfying autonomous existences, being of the land rather than seeing the earth as a resource to be exploited. This idea has me thinking the values and beliefs we associate with an ‘innate human nature’ may be other than the linear progression of civilization which is our heritage has led us to believe them to be.
It all makes me wonder if we might have become a kinder, gentler people had we followed a different evolutionary path.
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