> Modern Homo sapiens sapiens is about 120,000 years old. But if
> you believe
> that man is only 6000 years old, then you believe that we went
> without the
> invention of writing for 1000 years. Why is it reasonable to believe this
> but not reasonable to believe we went without it for 115,000 years?
A thousand years without writing isn't comparable to 115,000 without
writing.
And, I don't believe that man went even a 1000 without writing. Even 5,000
years ago, there appears to have been a number of virtually unrelated and
very complex written languages. Maybe it took a thousand years before the
mass of writing became large enough for us to start noticing. Maybe there
was a big flood that destroyed most writing before 5,000 years ago. But,
the
problem is really not mine because I don't have to explain 115,000 without
writing, and then explain the relatively recent and sudden explosion of
writing
in different areas of the globe.
> If I remember correctly, the oldest examples of writing we know about are
> inventories, either for taxes or military purposes. In either case, we
> didn't need writing until we had fairly large cities. Lots of other
> inventions had to come first, like agriculture, for instance, which is
> not something that even a genius could develop quickly.
There is always a need for writing among people who have even a small desire
to
be civilized. They would want to record who their leaders are. They would
want to
send word, without depending on a messenger's memory. There are countless
reasons
why even a low technology people would want to put their language in
writing. And,
in any society (minus those societies were smart people get speared), there
will be
people with less practical reasons for wanting to write -- history, poetry,
etc.
> That's pretty close to what I believe, with the caveat that *learning* to
> write and create art does not take nearly as much intelligence as
> *inventing*
Do you have any reason to believe that homo sapiens of 100,000 years ago
(or even 10,000) were significantly less intelligent than modern man (other
than their inability to create historical evidence of their existence).
> See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/compare.html.
Aw, I'm reminded of Nebraska Man, which showed that some Evolutionists don't
know the difference between an apeman and a pig's tooth. Or, Piltdown man
which proved that most of the Evolutionist community has no clue what a
modern human skull and a modern ape jaw look like! As for the
fossils which some creationitss call both human and ape, given the poor
condition and limited material of some of them, it may be difficult to
determine exactly to what species they belong.
Evolutionists are funny creatures. A researcher could dig up a thousand
fossils, 999 of them would document the static nature of the fossil record,
and one fragment in such ondition that it can't be recognized and the
Evolutionist will jump up and down "HA, you can't recognize it because it's
transitional, Evolution must be true." Someone might see a ridge on an eye
socket of skull cap and jump to the conclusion that the fossil belongs to an
ape. That doesn't make it an ape or an apeman. Evolutionists might find
what vaguely looks like a needle in a haystack and declare that it's a
needlestack.