Originally Posted By: larryinnewyork
In regards to the cave people, I sometimes think: ...... What made them happy ?
* A nice blue sky
* A good meal
* Companionship
Some of the same stuff we still like today.
Appears to be sitting around a camp fire, watching the celestial Television (starts), and getting stoned/drunk.
Originally Posted By: NYSteve
What's the book Shannow?
Also, have you seen the NOVA called the 'The Great Math Mystery'? Pretty good about whether math was discovered or invented.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html
Nope, but will look, it's all pretty cool stuff.
The book is "Starships" by Gordon White...not reading ot for all the woo woo stuff, but he pieces together a lot of data in what we did, when and where, like what the Earth would have looked like during the ice age, and why we therefore have limited archaeological evidence for a lot of civilisation in that period, because the flood plains and coastal areas are all now under many metres of water.
e.g.
http://www.justgottadive.com/dive_resour...s-easter-island
I'm about half way through, and the section is on the Vedas. e.g. Rig Veda is dated at 1,200 to 1,500BC, but it mentions certain rivers flowing (and waterwheels ???) and animals, that if you use those as evidence of what people were seeing at the time, puts them 3,500 years earlier.
https://lifedesignedforjoy.wordpress.com...iver-drying-up/
Point being is that if the vedas were describing with some accuracy what the climate was actually like 3,500 years prior to the commonly accepted date, is the most logical conclusion that they are made up stories from 1,500 BC, or are continuations of story from when people were actually there, making the knowledge timeline much, much longer.
Looking around, I found the above article on Pythagorus' Theorem, and in line with the "discovered" or "invented" issue, definitions as to whether use or detailed understanding made it a theorem.
I posted
Was Agriculture one of Humanities biggest mistakes
a little while back, and reading this book, we DID an awful lot as hunter gatherers that was only attributed previously to the stability that we developed when we were domesticated by grass and sheep.