Cocky Current Civilization

We watched The History Channel's 2 disc series, Ancient Discoveries.  I know that we are two, cute little nerds, but this was awesome!!  They talked about Greeks and Romans who made significant advances such as water timers and clocks, water factories, indoor plumbing, machines, automatic solar system models and calendars, mobile theater staging, modern medical instruments, surgery, and many other advancements that were made by citizens of these empires.  Throughout the film, they kept saying things like "He was ahead of his time."  I got really annoyed by these phrases!  How could a man be ahead of his time scientifically when others before him laid the ground work for what this man does?  Not only that, we know of contemporaries and others before and after were also making great advances.  Also, so many of the great libraries were burned and many of the great works were lost; how do we know that those we think of as ahead of their times were right in step with others and the knowledge available?

It just makes me so angry that we believe we are the modern man and so much more advanced than previous generations!  How arrogant!  There were so many great civilizations that eventually fell and with that fall much of their knowledge and advancement was lost.  Because periods of greatness were typically followed by ones of darkness, we assume that we are more advanced than previous societies.  Another problem with our viewpoint is that we look at societies from a biased point of view-what we consider advanced (computerized systems) and ethical.

I'm not arguing that we are or aren't living in the most advanced age.  I'm simply saying that we are cocky to believe that this is obviously the most advanced society!  Try to leave some room in your minds that others might have discovered things that we are just re-discovering or have yet to discover again.  Watch some documentaries about the history and technology of ancient societies, not just the Greeks and Romans.  You might find that you need to leave a lot more room in your mind for future revelations of these societies.