I don’t Know

13.5 billion years have passed by since energy, time and space came into being, according to the Big Bang theory. Some 3-4 million years ago, on a planet called earth certain molecules combined to form particularly large and intricate structures called organisms. Slowly life began to flourish on earth. One of the most important revolutions that shaped the course of history on its revolutionary evolution is the Cognitive Revolution, which is dated back to 70,000 years.

As humans evolved, they turned out to be the only species with exceptionally big brains. While a mammal, which weighed 60 kilograms has an average brain size of 200 cubic centimeters, human brain weighed at an average of 600 cubic centimeters. Thank God, for the partiality shown to humans; otherwise every life species on earth would have developed their own space programs and war tactics. Truly, it is on the intellectual limitations of other things and beings that we humans build our glass mansions. 

As the cognitive revolution began, there developed seeds of own destruction too. We have proofs to believe that structured communication tactics also began during this period. Studies on communication between living beings have proved that animal communication is confined to the present, like ‘an eagle is flying above’ or ‘a snake is waiting near’. Only humans are able to say that there is a lion near the river. They only developed the capacity to speak about unknown things or things that never existed. You cannot fool a monkey off a banana by convincing it that it will get a hill of bananas after its death. It is from our capacity to think and speak on things beyond visibility, from where myths came into our lives. So came religions too, spreading fear all around. It is our capacity to think about things that did not exist that paves our way to inventions on a daily basis. 

The civilization of Atlantis was limited to an area, so was Moo that existed in Sahara. They were all completely wiped out from the surface of the earth; one reason was that they all crossed the limitations set to them as human beings. Unlike ancient civilizations that were limited to certain areas, we are an whole mass living in one global village and it seems that our end could be complete eviction from the surface of the earth, for we also are crossing the ‘optimum points’ set by the universe. My question is what would have been better - a life in the present or a life spread to unknown domains of past and future? My answer is ‘I don’t know’. 

Joseph Mattappally