Last night I finished listening to a series of lectures, Exploring the Roots of Religion, a non-sectarian archaeological perspective by Prof. John R Hale.
In a lecture on Rome, Prof. Hale said that sports was marked by religious fervor in the ancient world as much as it is today.
Made me think how little we've advanced in 2,000 years. We still gather to watch human beings knock the stuffing out of each other. At least nowadays we generally restrict it to broken bones and crushed skulls.
But we live on the edge of barbarity. (There are those alive today that can remember Auschwitz, Bataan, The Killing Fields, and other modern atrocities.) We are all at our centers products of the same evolutionary line, and our best efforts to distinguish ourselves from other peoples is often to kill them.
Started: 1/16/12
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