The eye developed hundreds of millions of years ago, and soon we saw the stars when we

surfaced in the sea. But until a few hundred thousand years ago, we saw the stars more as

we came onto the land, but the stars were left alone. But then we began to talk and to

reason and to ask about how things happened.

Children learned to ask theit parents about why the deer ran away when we hunted htem, and

how to catch them. Children learned that grown-ups knew everything,a nd grown-ups began to

get used to the awe children had of htem that they could explain so many things.

So a child asked a parent how the stars got there. The wise father had to make up an

explanation of that, too. He didn’t know, but he did not want to disappoint the child, so

he made a story.

As men grew older, they found that their children began to rule. But they kept the respect

of hte younger people by the power of what they knew. The old, slow female elephant had

long since kept the rule of the herd by knowing where water and food were and when. Man

exptended that many times.

Soon the old men began to dominate the group, despite their failing physical strength as

alpha males. Alphas there still were, men of strength and charisma. Butthere also the

shamen,men who knew the stars and the future and how to deal with sickness and misfortune.

Many kings were fools and their power was based on their ability to fighten otehrs, not on

their strength. Many shamen knew little useful but that did not matter, because they

convinced others that they did kow,a nd that was all that mattered.

The king and the priest were born a hundred thosand years ago or more. The king based his

power onthe BELIEF that he was the most intimidating. The priest based his power on the

BELIEF that he had knowledge and wisdom.

IN early beings with minds and reason, the truth helped, but the truth was not the faith.

In a rasoning animal, it is Faith that matters, not truth. The truth helps faith, the

truth is useful, but ony when the faith is put to a solid test, but that is seldom the case.

The king or the shamen who was able to obtain FAITH ruled. To his survival, to his rule,

the truth was only one factor, and not the most important one.

But neither king nor shamen can survive if the GROUP dies out. Simple truth was the key to

survival of the GROUP. So GROUPS based on FAITH died out. It was a wise man who adhered to

the faith of hte group. It was a wise and practical INDIVIDUAL who RULED by imposing FAITH.
But over the millennia, GROUPS based on faith and not on truth disappeared.

Faith is the practical man’s means of survival. Faith in anything but simple truth is DEATH

to the GROUP.

So in the valley that was to become the Black Sea, a group of men broke an old faith.

Down through the ages, the shamen had had men muttering prayers that the plants they needed

to eat would grow. They did all the things the shamen had learned in their eating of

sacred plants that put them in another world, and in which they believed , to make the

animals abundant and their hunting successful.

But in the Black Sea Valley before the Flood, the old faith was violated. Men began to

notice that plants grew where SEEDS weere planted, not JUST where the the prayers were said.
They prayed over the seeds,but they planted seeds rather than waiting to see what nature

would do.

They began to have a thsouand plants to eat where but a few had grown before.

They began to find that they could herd the food animals rather than just making

incantations that the animals woud come.

Among these Black Sea people over the millennia, some stood by the old faith. But they were

fewer and fewer, and those groups were driven out. Finally that valley was filled iwth an

abundance of people, a people more prosperous than any before, people who numbered in the

thousands where but a few incanting hunter-fatherers had lived before.

These people did not feast and then starve according to the luck the gods sent them. They

learned to store food. to salt meat. To all who heard of them, they lived in a paradise

later called Atlantis.

Then came the Flood. In a single day the sea broke through the ever-shrinking call that is

now the gap between Asia and Africa. The Black Sea was born. The bottom half of it is

still the salt sea.

A very few survived the sudden, totally unexpected catastrophe. The nearest high place was

Mount Ararat, where one of the fortunate groups which had been been afolat when the disaster

hit landed. It is still on the coast of the Black Sea.

There may be more than one Ark up there or near.

It is almost incredible that ANYONE survived a two hundred food high wall of water that came

across the valley at two hundred miles per hour without the slightest warning.

The land of truth was dead. But their few survivors and those who had been in contact with

them carried their truth with them. But the world was once again a land of shamen. The

truth mixed in with the shamen, and once again the slow, agonizing process of faith-based

societies dying and truth-based societies surviving was under way.

In each land truth made progress, but soon the Practical Men, the shamen, learned that

practical surivival INSIDE a society was a matter, not of truth, but of teaching people to

accept their faith. Kings and priests joined togehter to rule. The truth died in

stagnation.

All the weak egos who WANTED to be shaman-kings ACT and ACT like shamen and kinds. They shout and they posture and they point out how Pracitcal Men get ahead in the real world, THEIR real world, by incanting whatever sounded wise like a shaman or tough like aking.

In the old days the Practical Men beat drums.

Now they beat their chests. At least drums are an artifact of human beings.

Practical Men are a reversion to the gorillas.

Gorillas are a step down from chimpanzees. There is only a handful of them left, protected from the hungry black men by some white people.

The SOCIETY ruled by Practical Men always stagnates and dies. In the longer term, beating your chest is no substitute for using your brain.

A society ruled by simple truth, a rigid adherence to the simple truth, multiplies and grows.

But there is much more to tell. Some genes were more adapted to truth than to faith. And a

race that adopted a god who died on the worrd tree for simple truth, not for faith or wisdom,

came to rule the world.

But that is the next chapter.