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| Dune daisy, Helianthus debilis |
When the surgeon disconnected my heart and lungs while icing my body to replace part of my aorta, varying structural changes occurred to my brain. Today, my cerebral wiring can cause me to wonder about things I was never before curious about. Earlier I was contemplating the transmission of information from one generation of plants to the next. Then I became side tracked.
So here's my take of the transmission of information through generations of Homo sapiens.
300,000 years ago Homo sapiens appeared on earth. For the first 295,000 years DNA was the primary transmitter of human information from generation to generation (netbooks hadn't been invented yet).
Then 10,000 years ago a second method of transmitting information through the ages appeared. Historians estimate Aboriginal groups began passing information from generation to next generations via oral traditions & story folklore.
Recently, a third primary human route of transmitting of information appeared. 5,500 years ago cuneiform writing developed in Mesopotamia and soon thereafter hieroglyphs in Egypt as a means of transmitting information through time.
Today, the information of humans is being passed on through to future generations via; DNA, oral histories and massive amounts of writing and written languages, including computer code, from which interestingly, scientists now estimate more data has been created over the past twenty years by humans than over the previous 280,000 years.
Three routes of human information transmission; one very old (DNA, based on nature), one quite young (oral, based on traditional folklore) and one newbie (written word, based on our inquiring curiosity).
Thursday night musings, fwiw….. that's a lot for me to think about.
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