TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY | Ancient Civilizations

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY

Ancient Civilizations

Centuries passed and man combined the villages into huge empires along the river valleys, Nile, Tigris -Euphrates, Indus , and the Egyptian among many more.

The Egyptian, Mesopotomian, the Chinese and the Indus valley civilizations or empires came into existence.

Man had to cling together, there had to be leaders and head priests to dictate man’s convictions AND man’s physical survival.

As mentioned earlier, men and women need a kind of Belief system, a way of life.

Force became common, and wars. Man did not know that he needs to live in common understanding and peace.

He was still half brute, half man.

Each civilization went through ups and downs, downs only due to internal or external scramble for power. Man developed a power lust, a blind collectivism, a deep doubt ruling him.

Name, power and prestige are kind of lower level needs. It is largely true, even today.

We will see that, as we go on.

That was the primordial nature of man. So all were alike, but some more flamboyant ruled, others who wanted and let people rule them.

Each civilization thus ended and then man took birth as man in a golden period – the Greek Civilization.

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY | Agricultural Revolution

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY

Agricultural Revolution

Then the first idea came on, he discovered agriculture and he stopped moving and men collected together in small villages and built shelters with whatever the technology they could then think of, houses made of wood and mud and thatched roofs.

Again decades on decades passed and each village formed a language, customs, a head, and even a priest.

The root reason is that man cannot live without certainty, some kind of beliefs, he has this need to know and thus accept that he is NOT in a mysterious world.

Nothing was known then, and he, even in that primitive stage, needed a view of life, an understanding of where he is and what he is.

The priest invented gods, and forces and rituals and man went on. But remember he was a man, he had a mind that could question and discover but it was too early. Life was surely largely tribal, mechanical and routine.

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY | Early Man

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY

Early Man

Man came into his biological existence, a man and woman like you and me, around 100000 years BACK….

He was a man to be sure, but he was blank, he had no one before him! He had to survive, make an existence as an entity from then on. That was the early men and women.

From here began his journey from a blank. Then he formed groups and I suspect he did so because of the survival value inherent in forming groups.

He had to eat, he did not know how to produce food, he had no idea remember, not even that plants give seeds and he can systematically carry out agriculture and secure his physical existence.

Decades passed like this, the early men lived as nomads, searching for food, literally going from one place to another to simply eat and live. To stop would be death, literally!!

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY | Roman Empire, Christianity and Dark Ages

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY
Roman Empire, Christianity and Dark Ages

Then the Greek civilization fell again due to warfare and the Roman empire came into existence.

Roman empire had the spirit of Greeks, and they were well known in part for their ability to govern.

But later the Romans became dictatorial and debauched.

Now was born, the seeds were laid , of a religion that would dominate the world for the next 2000 years.

Jesus was born, he talked enigmatically, about god explicitly, claimed to be the son of god, and told his followers to work for others. He denied the reality of this world, he spoke in metaphors, which his followers took literally and thus the church and ritualism was born. The Roman empire fell but Christianity was declared as the official religion before it fell.

Then followed the dark ages, nothing happened in those 1000 years, Christianity had taken over and held full political power. No real progress happened. It was like early man stage.

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY | The Greek Civilization

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY

The Greek Civilization

Three great thinkers came on the scene and philosophy was born naturally. Man finally questioned where he is , what he is, what is the right way to live alone and together, and what IS the world?

Thus was born Philosophy. This marked the birth of man, the ending, in principle, of dogmas, blindness and other forces ruling us.

Why? Because this was a real enquiry, and an actual desire to fully grasp the world, broadly.

Alas! The conclusions that were reached were still wrong because it was too early. The spirit of inquiry was right but the application of thinking was faulty.

Plato actually said that there was another reality as Philosophy and Mysticism was born in conscious terms.

Luckily his disciple Aristotle embraced this earth and man and posited a rational and natural philosophy and gave the fundamental rules of logic that are needed to think correctly and arrive at true knowledge. The concept of non contradiction that we take fro granted came into existence thanks to the then momentous contribution of Aristotle.

Thus inquiry began of what is this world in details. It goes on...even today...by a few.

Thus science was born but without full experimentation and rigorous observations. Thinking through logic was born but there was a confusion about how basically we must define truth.

Is it completely through what is or can we invent some truth of what might be just because we can imagine things?

The latter was part of the METHOD OF THINKING. In technical terms there was both induction and deduction and though science was born, it was not consciously , philosophically rooted in induction alone. But truth is derived from facts and then generalizations come. THIS insight would come later, as we will see.

Of course science did take a leap compared to before, at least man could know what he is and where he is!