How <\/b>did we, the members of the human race get where\nwe are now?<\/p>\n
We are in a dangerous situation:\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Our world is divided into entities we call \u2018countries,\u2019 that\nengage in activities called \u2018wars\u2019 as a matter of policy.\u00a0 Wars are organized and planned mass murder\nand destruction events.\u00a0 These\n\u2018countries\u2019 don\u2019t simply fall into these \u2018wars\u2019 by accident, they appoint or\nelect leaders to plan them well in advance; they extract fantastic sums of\nmoney from their people to pay for them.\u00a0\n(As of 2024, Governments are planning for the next generation of wars,\nwhich will use artificial intelligence and other technologies that don\u2019t even\nyet exist, to kill and destroy more thoroughly and effectively than we can\nnow.)\u00a0 To provide resources that the \u2018countries\u2019\ncan use in these organized destruction events, the entities called \u2018global\ncorporations\u2019 are raping the world, taking everything of value the best\ntechnology allows them to take, and spreading toxins that never existed before\ninto areas where they can never be cleaned.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
This can\u2019t continue forever.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
At some point, war will get out of hand.\u00a0 As you read this, numerous countries are\ndoing research to build weapons that they call \u2018doomsday weapons.\u2019\u00a0 They aren\u2019t doing this secretly:\u00a0 they actually issue press releases and\nopenly describe their research.\u00a0 In some\ncases, this involves what we may call \u2018second-tier military powers\u2019 whose\nleaders are claiming they need these devices because it is the only way they\ncan deter attacks by first-tier powers.\u00a0\nThey need to make absolutely sure that a conflict will result in\nmutually assured destruction (MAD) and the only way to do this involves\nbuilding giant devices that will make the world uninhabitable if used.\u00a0 First-tier powers, however, don\u2019t want to be\ncaught with a \u2018doomsday weapons gap.\u2019\u00a0\nThey need to keep up, and are building doomsday weapons also.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
If we are lucky and the struggles between the entities we\ncall \u2018countries\u2019 don\u2019t destroy us, we aren\u2019t out of the woods.\u00a0 Global corporations pose just as many\nthreats as the entities we call \u2018countries.\u2019\u00a0\nThese corporations have always<\/i>\nbeen dangerous.\u00a0 (We will see that\ncorporations go back much farther than most people realize; they try to keep a\nrelatively low profile in history so we don\u2019t know about them, but these\nentities are responsible for a great deal more damage and threats than most\npeople realize.)\u00a0\u00a0 But, without the\nhigh-tech tools they have now, corporations haven\u2019t really been capable of\nwiping out the entire planet or human race.\u00a0\nThis has changed.\u00a0 The\ndestruction now far exceeds the ability of the natural world to respond and\nrepair the damage.\u00a0 This leads to an\naccelerating downward spiral with very predictable consequences.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
War only poses risks<\/i>\nof destruction.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a possibility<\/i> that we may be very lucky\nand escape, perhaps for several more centuries.\u00a0 But if environmental damage continues to grow at current rates,\nthe end is not just possible, it is certain.<\/p>\n
How did this situation come to exist? <\/p>\n
What set of events set us on this path we are now on?<\/p>\n
This is vital information.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
In many ways, this is the most important question faced by\nthe human race today.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
If we want a better future\u2014or any kind of future at all\u2014we\nneed to understand exactly where we are in our path through time and how we got\nhere.\u00a0 We need to understand our\npast.\u00a0 We need to understand history.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The silly political histories that we are taught in school\nwill not help us understand these things.\u00a0\nThese histories are not objective and unbiased records of past events\nthat the human race as a whole can use to understand what is behind us so we\ncan work together to build a better future.\u00a0\nThe histories we were taught in school are biased and subjective.\u00a0 The worst problem, however, is that they\ndon\u2019t provide any foundation for understanding how the realities of the world\ncame to work as they do.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
You need to know the basics before the details make any\nsense.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t understand the big picture, learning the\ndetails is a waste of time.\u00a0 You have no\nidea how things fit together.\u00a0\u00a0\nMemorizing the names and dates of the wars between the countries of the\nworld (as all of us were required to do in school) does no good if you don\u2019t\nfirst understand what the term \u2018countries\u2019 means, how the entities called\n\u2018countries\u2019 came to exist on earth, and the reasons they came into conflict. <\/p>\n
You can\u2019t expect to understand why something is broken and\ndoesn\u2019t work right if you don\u2019t even know what it is.\u00a0 It would be like someone who has never heard of car engines and\ndoesn\u2019t know anything about cars at all except the them except the names<\/i> of certain car makes and dates\nthey were released trying to understand why his<\/i>\ncar no longer goes forward when he pushes down on the accelerator.\u00a0 You need to start understanding the basic\nelements, then work from there.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The histories we are taught in school don\u2019t start with the\nbeginning and explain how the key institutions of the world around us came to\nexist.\u00a0 You can\u2019t understand the things\nyou see around you if you accept everything important somehow magically\nappeared, operating at its inception the same way it operates now.\u00a0 You need to know about the background.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Fact Based History is about the way the world came to work\nas it does now.\u00a0 It explain show how the\nkey structures and institutions of our world today came to exist and then\nevolved into their current form.\u00a0 It is\ndesigned to be a useful<\/i> history, one\nthat we can use to understand why the problems of the world around us exist so\nthat we can have the tools we need to solve them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sometimes, when you are trying to understand a complex\nproblem, it helps to change your perspective and the way you look at it.\u00a0 Here on Earth in the 21st<\/sup>\ncentury, we only have a very limited view of Earth events and, given this\nperspective, is hard to really understand the reason things work as they\ndo.\u00a0 I want to ask you to change your\nperspective and look at the world as would someone not embroiled in the\nstruggles that are happening here and now:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n The TV show \u2018Star Trek\u2019 is about a group of explorers from\nvarious worlds who live in the distant future.\u00a0\nThey are traveling among the stars to study new life and new\ncivilizations.\u2019\u00a0 <\/p>\n From time to time, they come across a planet that organizes itself\nin an incredibly dangerous way, one that seems almost incomprehensible to the\nexplorers:\u00a0 The people on this world\ndivide their population into groups and its territory into divisions that are\nlike the Earth entities we call \u2018countries.\u2019\u00a0\nThese countries fight over things that don\u2019t really make any sense to\nthe explorers, like where the imaginary lines called \u2018borders\u2019 between the\ncountries will be located and which of the \u2018countries\u2019 has the right to govern\nand provide services for a certain group of people.\u00a0 The people on these worlds take these fights very seriously and\nuse whatever weapons they have at their disposal to gain advantages in these\nfights.\u00a0 As their technology advances,\ntheir weapons become more and more destructive.\u00a0 <\/p>\n These episodes generally start when the starship encounters\none of these worlds.\u00a0 The members of the\ncrew, who are very intelligent people, seem to have a hard time accepting what\nthey are seeing.\u00a0 The people seem<\/i> to be intelligent:\u00a0 they have technology that makes it clear\nthey can think on a conscious level.\u00a0\nThey can talk and make arguments that show that they are at least capable<\/i> of reason.\u00a0 But the system their people have built seems\ncrazy and clearly does not benefit the world or its people.\u00a0 The wars are fantastically expensive, both\nin terms of material wealth and human lives.\u00a0\nThis welth would be enough to allow everyone to live in great comfort,\nif it were used for this purpose.\u00a0 But\nthese people don\u2019t use it for this.\u00a0\nThey use their wealth to kill each other and destroy the world around\nthem.\u00a0 This not only impoverishes the\npeople, it places them at ever increasing risk of extinction.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n It just isn\u2019t logical.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n What do they get out of it?\u00a0\n<\/p>\n What is the advantage of setting up a system like this?\u00a0 <\/p>\n There doesn\u2019t seem to be any.\u00a0 <\/p>\n These systems only bring hardship, misery, death,\ndestruction, and eventual extinction.\u00a0\nIt hardly seems to be anything that intelligent<\/i>\nbeings would design and build.\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is a very simple reason that a system could exist on a world\nwith intelligent beings that does not meet the needs of those intelligent\nbeings:\u00a0 It was NOT designed\nintentionally, either by these beings themselves or by any other beings with\nintelligence.\u00a0 It came to exist through\nsome process other than intelligent design. <\/p>\n The crew members on the starship discuss this among\nthemselves.\u00a0 They are looking for\nsomething about this particular system, or these particular people, that made\nthem adopt this crazy, dangerous, and destructive system.\u00a0 They never come up with anything reasonable,\nat least not in any of the episodes like this I have seen.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, late in these shows (which are\nactually quite common:\u00a0 the audience can\nclearly relate to this plot) some people say something like:\u00a0 Well, it may seem strange, but a lot<\/i> of worlds seem to have these strange\nsocieties.\u00a0 The planet Vulcan, for\nexample (home world of Spock\u2019s father), and Klingon, had them; even the Earth\nhad them.\u00a0 <\/p>\n In the show, someone often says something like:\u00a0 \u2018yes, but they got over it.\u2019<\/p>\n They don\u2019t say how the people of these other words got over\nit.\u00a0 If we could go to their<\/i> history, to see how the people of\nthese other worlds got over it, we could understand how it was done and we\ncould do it ourselves.\u00a0 But, of course,\nthe story is fiction and fiction writers are allowed to skip over steps in\ntheir narrative to create a story.\u00a0 <\/p>\n What if we wanted to figure this out?\u00a0 <\/p>\n What if we wanted to figure out how a group of intelligent\nbeings that become aware at some point in their evolutoin, that they had a\nsystem like the one above (one that divides these beings into countries which\nthen fight over territory) and that this system couldn\u2019t meet their needs?\u00a0 What if they wanted to \u2018get over it?\u2019\u00a0 What steps would they take?<\/p>\n It seems logical to start with an analysis of the system\nthat they have inherited:\u00a0 How did it\ncome into existence?\u00a0\u00a0 If they want to\nfully understand the system, they may start as early as possible, going back,\nperhaps, to before their world even existed. They may trace the steps that led\nto a world, then life, then advanced life, then proto-humans, then true\nhumans.\u00a0 They may follow the changes in\nthe way the animals lived as they evolved, paying special attention to the past\nfew million years, which include the final stages in evolution.\u00a0 They will see that they have been on a path\nthrough time.\u00a0 They can trace the steps\nalong this path they have taken.\u00a0 This\nwill allow them to figure out where they are and understand what they have to\nwork with.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Then, they can plan for the future.\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This book is about the way the world came to operate as it\ndoes now.\u00a0 It starts with the very\nearliest events about which we have evidence:\u00a0\nthe beginning of the solar system.\u00a0\nIt proceeds to the era that you will recognize, because you are living\nin it now. \u00a0<\/p>\n We have tools that can help us understand all of these\nthings.\u00a0 For example, space-based\ntelescopes like the Web allow us to actually watch as planets are being\nformed:\u00a0 we can see how it happens.\u00a0\u00a0 We can determine when the earth formed\n(scientists have a very good idea when this happened) and when the first solid\n\u2018rocks\u2019 were formed in the hot liquid that collected to form this planet.\u00a0 We can locate fossils of the thing we call\n\u2018life\u2019 on earth and date them, to determine when they likely first came to exist\non this world.\u00a0 We can identify the\nearly life forms, find currently living life forms that look the same and\nappear to have the same function, then sequence their DNA to get a good idea of\nthe complexity level of these early beings.\u00a0\nWe can then go through the fossil record and date and sequence the\nseries of animals that existed in the past to trace a pattern of\nevolution.\u00a0 <\/p>\n We can then trace changes life forms to the first mammals,\nwhich came about 74 million years ago.\u00a0\nWe can follow them through the great extinction event of 65 million\nyears ago that wiped out the less adaptable animals and left mammals (our\nancestors) as the most advanced beings.\u00a0\nWe can trace mammal evolution to the pan genus, our most recent\nevolutionary ancestors that still survive, taking us back about 6.7 million\nyears.\u00a0 Since the pans still exist, we\ncan study the way their societies work. We will see very great similarities\nbetween the societies of the pans and the societies of humans.\u00a0\u00a0 (Many researchers have been accused of\naltering their observational data to make it appear that the societies of these\napes, the pans, are more like the societies of modern humans than they could\npossibly actually be.\u00a0 We will see that\nindependent analysis has shown that these similarities are very real and\nnothing was exaggerated.)\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n We can then go through the many links between the\ndescendants of the members of the pan genus that take us, eventually, to homo\nsapiens denisovan (denisovan man), homo sapiens neanderthalis (neanderthal\nman), and finally early people with the same species and subspecies names as\nmodern humans (homo sapiens sapiens).\u00a0\nWe can determine when, where, and how these evolving beings reached\nimportant milestones in their development, including the ability to engineer and\nmanufacture complex tools, the ability to use fire for lighting, cooking, and\nheating, and the ability make clothing, blankets, and tent coverings that would\nallow them to travel into areas with harsh climates.\u00a0 We can go through charts of brain cavity measurements and\ncomparative MRI scans to show what lobes developed over time and how they\ncorresponded to the improving mental abilities of these beings.\u00a0 <\/p>\n We can figure out how early humans lived.\u00a0 For most of history, people didn\u2019t really\nhave any idea how old artifacts they found really were.\u00a0 Recent tools have shown that their guesses\nwere often off by fantastic amounts:\u00a0\nartifacts that were thought to be a few hundred years old have been\nshown to be millions of years old, and artifacts that were thought to be\nmillions of years old have been shown to be fakes, created by pranksters a few\nweeks before they were \u2018discovered.\u2019\u00a0 <\/p>\n We have tools that allow us to reconstruct the past.\u00a0 We can determine migration patterns by\nsequencing DNA, both in modern populations and in ancient artifacts.\u00a0 We can analyze food residue found on ancient\ncooking implements to determine whether these were natural foods or had been\ncreated intentionally through cross breeding of domestic crops or domesticated\nanimals.\u00a0 This can allow us to determine\nthe level of technology of people who have been gone for hundreds of thousands\nof years.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n This book undertakes this kind of analysis, but it is not\nsimply for random knowledge.\u00a0 It focuses\non the specific events in our past that can help us understand the reason that\nthe societies we have in the world today exist, the way they came into\nexistence, and the way they evolved into their current form.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t random curiosity.\u00a0 It is about the path that we, living on this\ntiny blue speck of a world in this vast universe, came to be on; it is about\nthe place in this path we are now on and the forces that have pushed us down\nthis path to our current point in time.\u00a0\nIf we want to understand what may lie in front of us on this path, we\nhave to understand where we are on this path and how we got here.\u00a0 <\/p>\n We need to be objective and be willing to accept whatever we\nfind.\u00a0 We can\u2019t understand a way forward\nif we are so afraid we might find out something bad about ourselves that we are\ngoing to select only the bits of history that paint us (no matter how you\ndefine this term) in a good light, and pretend the rest of the evidence doesn\u2019t\neven exist.\u00a0 <\/p>\n We need to look at history as a scientist would,\nconcentrating on evidence and facts.\u00a0 <\/p>\n That is what this book is designed to do.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How did we, the members of the human race get where we are now? We are in a dangerous situation:\u00a0 Our world is divided into entities we call \u2018countries,\u2019 that engage in activities called \u2018wars\u2019 as a matter of policy.\u00a0 Wars are organized and planned mass murder and destruction events.\u00a0 These \u2018countries\u2019 don\u2019t simply fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5770","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5911,"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5770\/revisions\/5911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/factbasedhistory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In this book we will see that\nthat virtually infinite evidence points to the conclusion that there was no\nintelligent design process for humans or for human societies.\u00a0 Both of these things came to exist through a\nprocess of evolution. \u00a0If you go back in\nour genealogy far enough, you get to animals that didn\u2019t have the ability to\nreason, think, and plan on a conscious level.\u00a0\nThey were not stupid (apes are far more intelligent than most Earth\nanimals) but they didn\u2019t have our level of intelligence.\u00a0 They did, however, have organized ways of\nliving.\u00a0 They had social structures\n(alphas, for example were leaders and had first priority over sexual partners,\n\u2018homes\u2019 or \u2018nest sites,\u2019 grooming rights, and food).\u00a0 There were rules to these systems.\u00a0 They had \u2018ape societies.\u2019
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Over time, both the DNA and\nthe societies changed and adapted to the growing intelligence of the beings and\nthe changing realties of their lives.\u00a0 Their\n<\/i>DNA changed into our <\/i>DNA and their <\/i>societies changed into the\nsocieties that we have now.\u00a0 This\nhappened very, very slowly and there was no sudden or dramatic transition.\u00a0\u00a0 There was no point where the evolving\nbeings suddenly realized that\nthey were <\/i>evolving beings and that the societies they inherited from\ntheir animal ancestors no longer met their needs.\u00a0 (This point has not come yet. <\/i>I am hopeful we will get\nthere soon.)
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This may explain the reason\nthat worlds with intelligent beings can have societies that are not able to\nmeet the needs of those beings.\u00a0 We know\nthis can<\/i> happen, even without being\nable to travel among the stars ourselves, because the one planet that we know\nof that has intelligent beings, the Earth, has societies that clearly can\u2019t\nmeet our needs.\u00a0 <\/p>\nThe Importance of Understanding History<\/h2>\n