Chapter Fourteen

Ancient Mediterranean Worlds

THE OLDEST ART: 

     Very little is known about man prior to 3,500 B.C..  Since there are no written records, we have to rely on whatever they left behind.  Almost all of what they made is lost, destroyed, or simply rotted away.  All that remains is stone implements, a few pieces of sculpture, some drawings or paintings on cave walls, and impressions in the ground made by building supports. 

     I am convinced by facts- not by conjecture, supposition, religious beliefs, or pseudo-science.  I maintain that we will never know much about these early people, although we are perfectly within our rights to try. I am convinced that the commonly held belief that all living creatures evolved naturally from raw elements is the biggest hoax ever foisted upon mankind. If you have a pond covered with scum, you cannot come back in a few billion years and find that Marilyn Monroe and a giraffe have emerged from it. Just like the recent guys from Georgia who claimed to have a bigfoot body, psuedo-scientists make claims about evidence that simply doesn't exist.  I challenge anyone to produce the evidence.  No one will, because it doesn't exist - not for bigfoot, neither for ape-man.

     The famous Mr. Leakey takes bone scraps found in scattered places and attempts to put them together with 90% of it being some kind of sculpture material, and tries, like the two guys from Georgia, to say that he has made some new discovery about how man evolved from an ape-like creature.  In fact, he has discovered the bones of monkeys, apes, and humans - nothing in between.

     In addition, the assertion that natural selection can account for modern humans and animals with their extremely complex systems of organs and nerves is patently absurd.  If someone - anyone, can give me a rational explanation of how the first living cell evolved, then I will believe. No one will, because no one can. My position is that humans have always been humans.  For this reason, I teach that the paintings done by cave visitors, although done many thousands of years ago, were done by people who were fully human.

         In our study of art history, we will necessarily have to study anthropology, archeology, religion, politics, and world history.  The development of art is entwined with all of these.  In many cases, all that we know about a people comes from the art they left behind.