Some History of Cities

The standard model of human prehistory goes something like this: Early humans were hunter-gatherers who organized into small nomadic or semi-nomadic groups. Then one day humans discovered agriculture and became stationary farmers. Farming communities needed fortifications in which to store their produce. These fortifications became cities, which gave rise to political administration, military technologies and (eventually) organized civilizations.

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Chinese spy balloon flying over U.S. ‘right now,’ Pentagon says

Source: The Washington Post via MSN.

Stories about this balloon popped up this morning like mushrooms after a spring rain all across the web sites I habitually visit. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Are we under attack? Is psychological manipulation involved? Should Stumble Joe have shot the thing out of the sky? Could he?

More basic: How do we know the balloon is Chinese? And, how do we know it is spying on us?

I’m not inclined to worry about it much, as I have no particular animosity for China. I just hope this story is not — literally — a trial balloon for new impending hostilities.

Did Ancient Cave Paintings Contain Secret Messages? An Amateur May Have Deciphered Them

Source: HistoryNet.

This story is a gobsmacker. The standard chronology for the origins of writing systems begins about 5,000 years ago, but now we have a strong hypothesis for the possibility that human writing began many thousands of years before then.

This discovery accords with my view that human beings have been what we are today for at least 200,000 years. That is: just as intelligent, possessing a comparable volume of practical knowledge and dealing with the same interpersonal and social issues as we do.

A big mystery for me, though, is why did people 50,000 years ago crawl on their naked bellies deep into cave systems to draw pictures on the walls? What in the world were those Upper Paleolithic Einsteins thinking?