Homo prometheus

The human journey, emerging at least 2 million years ago with the appearance of Homo erectus and the mastery of fire, has become an inexplicable phenomenon in natural history, not least because it is the distant descendants of this species who are confronted with the ultimate consequences of its evolution. It took H. erectus, physically endowed hunters, at least another million years before signs of ritual burial appeared with Homo Heidelbergensis. Not until about 160,000 years-ago does evidence for incipient art emerge. While records of farming emerge 23,000 years ago, it is only 12,000 years ago that more extensive agriculture is recorded in Middle East river valleys. With new food resources and wealth the human mind turned from camp-fire rituals to the construction of monuments for the dead and to mass killings named “war”, which dominate the history of civilization. From wars motivated by a need for resources deadly conflicts under a myriad of false flags have become an end for itself, including the most bizarre forms of blood rituals and torture. Since the industrial age with the development of new weapons for industrial-scale killing, and since the splitting of the atom, “war” has become a form of mass suicide threatening to destroy civilization and much of nature, leading to the 7th mass extinction of species. It would appear, in the sense of the Yin and Yen, the species highest forms of art and science and horrendous atrocities are in some mysterious way intertwined.