This Blog, DeconstructingTime, Is 12 Years Oldby Rick Doble
LEFT: Ancient Egyptian agricultureRIGHT: The Atomic Bomb, 1945Who could have imagined that the technology of agriculture, such as in ancient Egypt, would lead to the splitting of the atom thousands of years later?
LEFT: Ancient Egyptian agriculture
RIGHT: The Atomic Bomb, 1945
Who could have imagined that the technology of agriculture, such as in ancient Egypt, would lead to the splitting of the atom thousands of years later?
My blog about time enters its second decade with more than a thousand academic followers.
On December 23, 2012, twelve years ago, I posted my first article in this blog DeconstructingTime. I, Rick Doble, am the sole author.
My blog is about the human experience and the human understanding of time.
Now "DeconstructingTime" has over 125 in-depth blog-articles (approx. equivalent to 2000 pages).
When I started this blog it was clear to me that we humans had a unique understanding of time and a unique way of measuring time that no other animal on the planet possessed. So my basic question for this blog was, "How did this happen?"
The more I researched this question, the more I realized it must have taken millions of years, involved developing technologies, and happened in stages.
As researchers and archaeologists have learned more, it became clear that our developing technology required forethought, planning, imagination, preparation, and construction of various items such as increasingly sophisticated stone tools. And that all required a sense of time.
In these last twelve years, dozens of new findings and academic papers have supported my ideas. I often quote these in my articles. Here is one recent example.
This is a quote from an article two weeks ago about the new awareness that anthropologists are beginning to have about the development of a sense of time. The article statement that this tool-making showed "a sophisticated level of foresight and planning" also clearly indicated a sophisticated understanding of time. You cannot plan or have foresight if you don't have a basic sense of time.
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A Major Leap Forward in Technology Took Place 900,000 Years Ago
Bytessa Koumoundouros, Sciencealert.Com, 11 December 2024.
" 'The technological behavior observed at El Barranc de la Boella demonstrates significant technological advancements and anticipatory behavior,' write Lombao and team in their paper.
"Analysis revealed that the way the tools were knapped followed a shared sequence, implying the tool crafters were using a common template to achieve consistent results. These ancient humans were also producing larger tools than those seen previously, and tailoring these tools for specific purposes.
"Together these traits indicate "a sophisticated level of foresight and planning."
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This means that the way we humans have evolved and our developing sense of time has a lot to do with the technology we developed. So I have emphasized basket weaving because I believe it was possibly the other important technology besides stone tools in our evolution.
I believe the planning and construction of woven fiber items involved a sense of time both in the planning and the construction and may have even been a model for the geometric grid that the Babylonians devised to map the sky. This is a map we still use today.
The problem is that direct evidence of fiber items has decayed. Yet with modern dating and microscopic techniques, we may be able to construct a likely scenario.
My blog has covered the full timeline of human evolution from millions of years ago right up to the present day and then I have also made suggestions about the future.
But my blog articles cover many things such as culture, civilization, language, and academic studies along with technology.
If nothing else, I believe I have asked some good questions that had not been addressed in the past and suggested some answers that can be explored.
In the following blog post are fifteen examples of my best or most popular or most innovative articles that I have published over the years. This sampling of my blog starts with pre-human existence and continues in chronological order up to today.
BTW: I am particularly pleased with the reception I have gotten to my ideas. The blog has recorded almost 200,000 views (more than 197,000) and on the academic site Academia.edu where I repost my articles, I have almost 1200 followers (1190) and my articles are usually ranked in the top 1% - 2% of views.
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August 2014
ANIMAL SENSES COMPARED TO THE HUMAN SENSE OF TIME
A unique part of our human brain can 'sense' time.
Eyesight is probably the strongest human sense (left) with full color stereoscopic vision and a remarkable ability for edge detection. But other animals such as eagles (middle) have 3.6 times the human visual acuity. Some insects (right) have a compound eye with a fisheye view (180 degrees) of the world that can see objects in focus both near and far at the same time.
(images from commons.wikimedia.org)
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October 2019
PALEOLITHIC EVIDENCE FOR AN EARLY WEAVING TECHNOLOGY
Paleolithic Evidence Shows That Pre-Humans Could Have Learned Weaving From Weaverbirds (Ploceidae)
Weaverbirds and a finished nest.
Intricate, strong, complex nests that took days to build from natural fibers, may have been a model for early pre-humans. It showed how to make containers with a variety of fibers. Fossil evidence also shows that some pre-humans may have lived in close association with weaverbirds.
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August 2020
THE INVENTION OF RIGHT-ANGLE CONSTRUCTION
The Invention of Right-Angle (or Opposing) Construction in the Paleolithic Era
The discovery of right-angle construction was a technological breakthrough that applied to constructions that were both large and small, rigid and flexible, from seagoing ships to small containers.
October 2023
400K YEARS-OLD MAN-MADE RIGHT ANGLE STRUCTURE DISCOVERED
The Oldest Man-Made
Wooden Structure
Found in Zambia
&
The Ideas of Rick Doble
who predicted the use of right-angle structures
in the Lower Paleolithic three years ago
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September 2019
EVIDENCE FOR A BASKET WEAVING TECHNOLOGY IN THE PALEOLITHIC ERA
Woven-Fiber Technology in the Paleolithic Era
This is a photo of an entire Indigenous pre-Incan community in South America
(the Uru or Uros people)
made with woven-fiber technology: the boats, the houses, and the floating island.
(the Uru or Uros people)
made with woven-fiber technology: the boats, the houses, and the floating island.
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October 2018
HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN
AND THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING OF TIME
Dan Everett's How Language Began & Human Time Keeping
Our understanding of time is reflected in virtually all languages.
February 2017
HOW OUR CONCEPT OF TIME IS EMBEDDED & DERIVED FROM OUR LANGUAGE
These are members of the hunter-gatherer Piraha tribe in the Amazon today who live by the Immediacy Of Experience Principle according to Daniel Everett.
This means their concept of time is anchored in the near-present
and quite different from the concept of time in the modern world.
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June 2024
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE NEOLITHIC ERA
Incorrect Assumptions And Modern Biases Have Prevented A Full Understanding Of The Neolithic Era and
How It Has Led Directly To the Modern World
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July 2024
NEOLITHIC CONCEPTS OF TIME & NATURE
The Neolithic Mindset
A New Concept Of Time
A New Relation To The Natural Environment
The Neolithic concept of time changed society and it is the one that we live with today.
Diagram of the Newgrange passage and solstice light from the side.
(Irish Art History Section, Professional Development Service for Teachers, P.D.S.T., Ireland)
(Irish Art History Section, Professional Development Service for Teachers, P.D.S.T., Ireland)
The extremely precise winter solstice sunrise alignment at Newgrange Ireland, shows that some Neolithic societies were quite sophisticated. While not well understood today, the precision of the Newgrange structure was perhaps more advanced than that of Rome and Greece thousands of years later. But in addition, the Newgrange monument indicated a new concept of time -- long-term annual time that could be measured accurately.
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June 2021
MESOPOTAMIAN MISCONCEPTIONS:
Incorrect Assumptions and
Misinterpretation of Sumerian Technology
Woven-fiber technology was a key industry in the first civilizations but has not been recognized. These civilizations could not have functioned without it.
This is a fanciful, but perhaps not inaccurate, painting of a large ship made of reeds at the port of Eridu, considered to be the oldest city of the first civilization in Mesopotamia, about 5000-6000 years ago. The ship as pictured is not unrealistic and was constructed using bundled reeds, a large version of coiled basket weaving techniques.
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May 2015
HOW THE DISCREDITED GEOCENTRIC COSMOS WAS A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
OR
How Ptolemy's Geocentric Astronomy
Helped Build the Modern World
"The Prague astronomical clock [above] was installed in 1410...and is the oldest functioning Astronomical clock in the world." Quoted from:
This clock was built more than 300 years before the Copernican sun-centric idea was accepted. The clock was based on Ptolemy's astronomy in which the Sun and planets go around the Earth. This precise clock mechanism became the basis for the machine age.
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March 2021
REPLACE THE TERM 'BASKET WEAVING' WITH THE TERM 'WOVEN-FIBER TECHNOLOGY'
The current name 'Basket Weaving' is hindering research into the origins of basketry in the Paleolithic era
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March 2023
A SCIENCE MANIFESTO:
Why Is There No
University Department for
The Study of Time?
Time is the most used noun in the English language and probably other languages, yet there is no academic study of time.
A SCIENCE MANIFESTO:
Why Is There No
University Department for
The Study of Time?
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THE FUTURE
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January 2019
CATHEDRAL THINKING
Also, this blog provides a broad overview of my ideas.
Read the section on
"Cathedral Thinking" in this blog.
An Expanded Hypothesis About the Human-Experience-Of-Time An Expanded Hypothesis That Relates the History of the Human-Experience-Of-Time to Culture, Technology and Belief Systems in Addition to Language
Gaudi's Sagrada Família (Church of the Holy Family) in Barcelona Spain
which has taken more than a century to build and will not be completed until 2026.
The architect Antoni Gaudí knew when he planned it that it would never be completed in his lifetime. He died in 1926 and it would not be finished for another hundred years.
September 2023
CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL
A Major Reason Why We Don't Deal With Climate Change.
AFTERWORD
In a sense I am involved with my own personal Cathedral Thinking. I just turned 80 years old. I would love mainstream recognition for my thoughts and research but that is unlikely in my lifetime. Nevertheless, I feel secure that I have asked important questions and suggested plausible answers. I am certain that I have contributed to the continuing dialogue about time which explains many things and also suggests how human societies could cope with the future and climate change in particular.
The acceptance of some of my ideas could be game changers. For example, the acceptance of a woven-fiber technology that developed as stone tools developed would be one game changer. Proving that the Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange Ireland was more precise and accurate than Greek or Roman such instruments thousands of years later would be another one. Believing the reed industry was a major and critical part of Mesopotamian technology and the rise of civilization would be a third one. But whether any of these finds acceptance in my lifetime is unlikely.
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