The Ancient Mind

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
1

The ancient mind appears more intelligent and impossible to many present-day minds because it is actually more intelligent than most present-day minds.
The difference is, that the ancient mind was more intelligent in different areas than our present mind.

The present mind is forced to remember massive amounts of technical information, and by technical I am referring to the stream of numbers and words that populate our minds.
There are several pieces of information stored in our minds either only in word, number, or picture format and not direct observational format.
The ancient mind relied heavily on direct observational memory; far more than technical memory.

Because of this, the ancient mind also categorized memory into very large blocks of memory of the same event and all surrounding conditions of that event.
The present mind, being forced to remember such a large volume of information by comparison to what it used to attempt to hold, creates associative categories in the mind and then dissects any bit of information into it’s associative categories.

Meanwhile, the ancient mind, with it’s massive lump blocks of memory ran links from each block of memory that contained a thing in it that was also existent or related to some other thing in another large lump block of memory.

This is why the present mind recalls pieces of information, but not everything.
This is also why the ancient mind seems capable of holding very detailed pieces of information in their mind without using massive amounts of writings on paper for every person.

So, by comparison to long term memory, our present day brains are capable of holding far more information than the ancient mind, and do so far more efficiently for the volume we contain than the ancient mind would have been capable of doing.
In this respect, the modern mind is more intelligent.

However, the ancient mind had a much higher acumen than our modern mind.
It is for no other reason than survival.
Even today, we can see minds that are very similar to the ancient minds if we simply examine human minds that live in constantly traumatic environments where nothing is guaranteed.
The minds of this lifestyle, like the ancient lifestyle, is forced into concentrating on assessing as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible.

The ability to do this is the difference between living and dying.
Even when not under direct threat, the fact remains that the ancient mind was focused on making something out of what lays near in their usable area that can be made into something that pushes survival further away from not surviving; defensively, or offensively; brutally or peacefully.

I would venture to say that the ancient mind, and the minds like it that exist today, are capable of assessing a third more information than they were or are able to transfer into long-term memory.

However, as suggested above, the information that is retained is kept in very large blocks.
This is only possible because of the extremely high acumen.
It takes high acumen with a need for all information and types of information, and for that information to be detailed information to create this mind.
The diversity of the need is because everything in the memory is a possible tool for survival, but the ancient mind simply doesn’t know what will be needed information when.
There is no ability to selectively hold information that may one day suddenly be useful information for survival in a circumstantial environment that the mind could not imagine.

Because of this, the blocks of information are linked, as suggested, from one to the other by associative observations inside of each bock of memory, and as the high acumen reaches each block, it assesses everything in that block in one solid shot and identifies needed information from it.
Sometimes, this produces suddenly new associations between two blocks of information, and so forth.

So the reason that the ancient minds seemed brilliant considering their environment is because their brains are quite literally far more raw human super assessing for survival than any modern societally provided for brain today.
They could assess their options and materials far better than today’s mind is able to do.

The difference, as I said before, is that today’s mind is capable of holding far more pieces of information than the ancient mind.
This means that we can communicate our ideas to more people over longer periods of time, and are able to separate observations into extremely detailed categories of information in our minds.
The end result is highly analytical minds that are capable of producing high levels of thought and design.

However, every time a great society falls…the ancient mind will pick up the race and be the leading mind of survival once again.
It will once again, build and expand things and ideas far more amazing for it’s potential than anything, considering it’s environments, than we can or will be capable of imagining if we hadn’t found it ourselves.

Here are a couple figures to help express the difference:

ANCIENT MIND:
(Grey=new memory in progress)

MODERN MIND:
(Grey=new memory in progress)

2

The modern mind is trained how NOT to think. So the methods used are limited compared to the full range.

3

Our minds are trained the way those in power want them to be, to make maximum profit for their conglomerates - use or be used…

4

Wow…that’s a really depressive perspective man. :confused:

5

Sorry :confusion-shrug:

6

There is a lack of mystery in the modern mind.
Everything is rapidly categorized.
And if possible anomalies are explained away, as rapidly as possible.
So perception is more active and creative. (by creative I do not mean imaginative)

7

When you say ‘ancient’ what period are you thinking of?

8

“ancient” is a loose term that I am using.
It doesn’t actually tie to a time always.

It calls modern, and specifically western, minds to look back to the time periods before civilization was able to provide life, and it’s comfort, as a given.

Even Rome reached quite a ways into becoming more of a modern mind, but they quickly collapsed before their modern mind fully took over their ancient mind function.

“Ancient” refers to the concept that at the beginning of humanity, man was not guaranteed life or the comforts of life.
Life was a fight to keep.

The further from this style of life a group of humanity throughout it’s generations becomes, the closer to the modern mind the overall population of that group becomes.
The more the mind stops needing to assess massive amounts of “everything and anything” that could be useful to keep living, the more it starts to analyze and categorize information into small pieces of dissection as it now has the luxury of doing so.

Thought becomes a luxury and not a time-sensitive need.

9

OK. But some premodern groups had plenty of leisure time and some generally did pretty well. Some Native American groups were much better fed than their European counterparts, had more leisure time and actually gave children a childhood and spoiled them. did they have modern minds or ancient ones. I mean I do realize you are no doubt intentionally oversimplifying, but I responded, then reread your OP and realized that my version of the ancient mind was not the same as yours.

10

I suppose I should just relabel this to “Survival Mind” to make it easier, but it does just so happen that a large part of humanity in it’s early stages ran in survival mode as they went about their very impressive accomplishments.

However, to the question, I believe you are referencing the later native american mind and not the earlier native american mind.

The native american mind is especially interesting because it saw it’s survival as being part of the surrounding and not separated from it.
This is very, very unique.

The south american natives didn’t exclusively even hold this view and they lived relatively right next door.

The difference for the native american mind in it’s later years is that it found a way to express peace with the loss of life through accepting natural order about as raw and brutally honest as any recorded human culture has come close to.
That said, they were still predominantly using a “ancient” or “survival” mind.

They did not spend a large portion of their time thinking and only thinking.
They still had threats to their life.

They did, indeed, have luxury of life and they were near to a modern mind for their culture, I suspect, when the european man stepped on their turf.

However, you can see that they still had a close contact to their ancient survival mind in their reaction to stay alive and how they went about doing so.

Unfortunately, their tool ability was far too low; they might as well have been fighting aliens from outer space.
The materials and methods of using the materials that they had to work with for their tools for survival were far inferior materials than the europeans had.

This is like today when America wages battles in barely even third world locations.
The ability of these people to comprehend the materials of a cruise missile is just completely disproportionate.

In most of man’s history the offense and defense have been working on near even playing grounds of materials and methodical capability.
In the modern eras, however, the difference has separated depending on wealth of various lands.

As my wife says, the day the “earth” will end will be the day that man arrives at a tool that becomes a weapon that is far outside the ability of other men to accomplish or even imagine; realizes this; and uses it for gain of absolute power.

We have arrived at requirement #1 and 2 of her statement; we are debating #3.

Sorry…bit of a tangent.

11

Stumps, i dont know if anyone else brought this up, but you should read The Ancestral Mind by Gregg Jacobs, PhD.

12

Native Americans were blood thirsty savages who were the superiors to European’s in both warfare and skill associated with it. Bows were more efficient when used right.

Europeans won by having better continuous supplies AND by adopting Native American tactics of warfare, even incorporating them massively into military units.

Somethinbg like 94% of Native American tribes EVER studied could be called violent, the others were shattered and broken oftentimes living in isolation.

13

Strange that the Europeans gave up the bow for guns then. And my definition of savage would fit much better the European treatment of NAs then the reverse. While NAs were hardly hippies they tended NOT to engage in total war the way Europeans did.

14

SOME were superior in tactics, while others were completely taken over by trade tactics or simply brute force.
Not ALL tribes were warrior tribes.

Most were hunter tribes, and at the time that the Europeans came over many disagreements were taking place between hunter tribes and warrior tribes about how to move forward.

This somewhat indicates the shift in the minds; however, with the advent of the Europeans, the warrior tribes pretty much got their, “I TOLD you so!!”

That said, even among the often painted violent savage Indians, there were a number that followed the ideas of peaceful resolution…a good many of them were killed either by other Native Americans or by the Europeans.

15

The ancient probably lived a more humble life. Nature was fickle. And un atttentive mind caused the demise of its host.
Modern mind can miscalculate and maybe only suffer financilal set back.
I think the ancients remembered just as much inforamtion as the moderns. They knew leafs, animal evidence, wind direction and temperatures,star alignments , and many other aspects in the invironment that modern man has no need to notice or remember.

16

Well…technically, the bow was far superior in close range because it’s reload time was much, much faster and you could poison the tip.
Wounded was just as good as dead…many times, better; this was counted on by many warrior tribes.

But aside from this, it wasn’t about bows against guns materially; it was about transportation and communication.
The Europeans could move and communicate more efficiently than the Native American’s because they could use material in the Imperial and Industrial methods, which the Native American’s could not.

It’s a case of too little, too late.

17

They couldn’t remember as many different pieces of information, but what they could remember they could remember in greater detail.

The quantity is relatively the same, but the number of categories is far less in the ancient mind.
This is because the human mind only has so much capacity, and if you fill it with great detail, then you drop quantity of variation.

The difference, as I stated before, is the ability to retain incredible detail about what was remembered.

Find humans today that have been re-traumatized mentally over and over in regards to surviving, keeping alive, and you will find a similar type of mind.

The only difference is that we have far less of this lifestyle by ratio compared to the ancient world.

Hell, just study the mind of a Navy Seal that has been one for over a decade in active areas constantly and you will find a mind very similar to the ancient mind; just bent on killing, which a portion of minds were geared towards in the ancient world as well.
They will be able to process information VERY quickly, and remember great detail.

Start asking them a variety of questions from different categories, however, and they will slow down on answering and in some cases just piece an answer together as close as is possible based on the details they have collected.

This is because the mind has to stop and access all of the memories possible to search for related topics (the large chunks of memory instead of pieces of related memory to the quesiton) and make new connections to arrive at the answer.
More deduction is done than recitation when it comes to large varieties of answers.

This doesn’t mean they will be wrong; it means the method of arriving at the answer is very different than the modern mind.

18

The epidemic diseases of humans evolved from the epidemic diseases of animals with which Eurasian people came into close contact when they started to domesticate them 11,000 years ago. Eurasians were exposed to diseases like small pox and measles by their cattle, domestic camels, etc. Gradually, they evolved immune and genetic resistance to them. But Native Americans rarely domesticated large animals. Consequently, they didn’t evolve germs like these, or immunity to them. When Europeans arrived, they brought epidemic diseases with them. More Native Americans were killed by the Eurasian germs the Europeans brought with them than were killed in battle with Europeans. This thesis is well supported by Jared Diamond in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel”.

19

True, that as well…it’s just that this factor doesn’t weigh much in the examination between mind structures.

20

Perhaps that means the critical difference between the Native American and the European was not intellectual but rather an accident of biology.