Eye-opening

As an inveterate channel surfer (alone, at least), I come across a huge number of shows that either pique my interest or not. Some of them are even thought provoking.

Somewhat in alignment with a recent post by apparentparadox , it was made even clearer to me that we humans wreak probably as much devastation on ecosystems unknowingly as we do with forethought.

I think it was a PBS show that had a segment on the peril of sea otters. They've been washing up dead on the shores of the west coast by the hundreds every year. With a lot of study, it was found that CATS were the cause of this. Cats, I thought? Hmmm... so I watched the show and read a couple of articles about it.

Then a couple of nights ago, I saw the Stonehenge update on National Geographic channel about the current theories of the site after some 2004-2005 excavations.  Also interesting, but it put me in mind that these people had the right idea.  Although many millions of dollars have been spent in the past couple of hundred years trying to find out what Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Durrington Walls and all the related discovered sites are about, these people left VERY little of themselves behind over a period of three or four thousand years to be able to tell what they were all about.  They weren't obsessed with leaving a tracable heritage behind (other than a cleverly engineered pile of rocks) for us.  Even the trash they left behind at their semi-annual festivals was biodegraded enough that it took a huge amount of study to find what that was all about.  Us?  We just leave behind tons of trash that will be able to be sorted through in 1000 years easily, lots of it extremely harmful.

Ugh.  It all brings me back to that question, "What have we done???"


 

Eye-opening

As an inveterate channel surfer (alone, at least), I come across a huge number of shows that either pique my interest or not. Some of them are even thought provoking.

Somewhat in alignment with a recent post by apparentparadox , it was made even clearer to me that we humans wreak probably as much devastation on ecosystems unknowingly as we do with forethought.

I think it was a PBS show that had a segment on the peril of sea otters. They've been washing up dead on the shores of the west coast by the hundreds every year. With a lot of study, it was found that CATS were the cause of this. Cats, I thought? Hmmm... so I watched the show and read a couple of articles about it.

Then a couple of nights ago, I saw the Stonehenge update on National Geographic channel about the current theories of the site after some 2004-2005 excavations.  Also interesting, but it put me in mind that these people had the right idea.  Although many millions of dollars have been spent in the past couple of hundred years trying to find out what Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Durrington Walls and all the related discovered sites are about, these people left VERY little of themselves behind over a period of three or four thousand years to be able to tell what they were all about.  They weren't obsessed with leaving a tracable heritage behind (other than a cleverly engineered pile of rocks) for us.  Even the trash they left behind at their semi-annual festivals was biodegraded enough that it took a huge amount of study to find what that was all about.  Us?  We just leave behind tons of trash that will be able to be sorted through in 1000 years easily, lots of it extremely harmful.

Ugh.  It all brings me back to that question, "What have we done???"