Of painted caves and evolution...!

Thinking back upon civilization, man and evolution, the entire gamut of human and other life, leaves a sense of awe and at some level, even a suspension of belief in the grandeur of creation. For it all begets the question of time and its beginning. It begets questions on how we came to be, what we came to be and at some level, why we came to be! If we give that a skip, it still stares at you and forces you to step back, pause and wonder. For the questions are all around, in every little thing out there in nature, and possibly in every act of ours.

So, what is making me write about this? Well, I have been reading this book called "Secrets of the Past". Its a seriously old publication (somewhere from the 50's) from the Reader's Digest editors. It takes you through a tour from the beginning of time, at the creation of the earth and the stars, the awesome forces that makes up the universe including white-dwarfs and black holes and many such others. The sheer numbers, when it describes distances, temperatures and forces, is fathomless.

It then starts the journey of creation on earth, the tectonic plate’s shifts, the different eras, the first signs of life, the first great wild animals and life. It goes on to the beginning of the appearance of many, many millennia ago, of prehistoric man (prehistoric, because that’s the time when history was not written/recorded, but we are beginning to understand it from facts gathered through research and study of fossils and archaeology and whatever remains of our own earliest forms, from what they left in their wake) It takes you through this roller-coaster ride, where man, the hunter-gatherer, the fellow who lived in trees, finally, with the passing of aeons and aeons of years, begins to climb down those trees, begins to scan the vastness of the lands, learns, understands and survives, ever so slowly, through many more millennia's. It seizes your imagination, thinking of the enormity of our evolution!

It also talks of our far off ancestors, leaving a trail of their occupations, embedded in the ages long gone by, and in many different places too, scattered all over the world. The way they lived, what they ate, how they survived, what kept them going are the very many things, that makes the book extremely interesting to read. Oh, and so far, it’s just a quarter of the book!

Or of course, if you choose not to let your mind do the imagining, you can tune into National Geographic on tv :) but hey, it doesn’t even come close!

In any case, it probably isn’t just this book, but others too which might be equally interesting, if you like that kind of stuff...now let’s see, where was I, ah..the painted caves of the Tassili in the Sahara.. :)

Chao!