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thoughts vs knowledge Among the disadvantages of a retirement, wondering into many new fields of interest, those you were always attracted to but tired by your professional work - and not having a basic knowledge of them - should be high on the list. Let me give you an example. When thinking on the beginning of large scale farming in Near East and Egypt, roughly 10 thousand years ago, I myself - before any reading on the subject - tried to relate this colossal event in human history to the climate change. The obvious "suspect" was the end of last glacial period, popularly known as the Ice Age, about 12.5 thousand years ago. Later, I found that idea in several respectable books and was proud of myself. |
Till recently, that is, when I found out my reasoning being of the mark. Namely, my reasoning went like this: if the permanent ice was as south as Central Europe then Near East and North Africa were temperate paradise, just calling for the plow and shovel. And then I saw the map of the last glacial vegetation (see a detail of the map below) showing that the areas of interest were either semi-deserts or deserts. So much for logical thinking without facts. Now I know much more about huge floods after the last glacial period (some five hundred of the world’s mythologies include accounts of flood) and the role of regular flooding of the big rivers, Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia and Nil in Egypt, ten thousand years ago as well as today. And I’m glad I didn’t popularize my "temperate paradise" hypothesis. |
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