'Tis The Season

No doubt about it. We humans - all life in fact - live by the light. The sun sustains us. And in the long nights of darkness, we turn to technology and light up our lives. Bright indoor lamps to read by, brilliant security lights on poles the better to illuminate the landscape just in case we care to see what's there or what is not.
There was a time in the not so distant past (50 thousand years) when such technology was not available and our ancestors sat in wonder of the night sky. We have evidence that their imagination and creativity were not idle. They tracked the stars and discovered planets and made stone edifices to mark the time when nights became shorter and days longer. It was a method of setting time for planting. When we were first humans we were farmers and animals begged for domestication and plants congregated for easy harvest. Our ancestors depended upon crops from which to gather grains for bread and fruits for alcohol. Our appetites drove our progress.
Our brains by that time developed as well as our vocal chords and we invented symbols and methods of scribing them for each generation to learn and build upon. Evidence indicates our brains have not progressed but technologies the brains, in league with our wonderful thumbs, devised knows no bounds. Each decade, nay each year, new discoveries are made and human understanding of ourselves is such a fantasy as to defy any concept of a creator beyond nature.
see trespassers or
We are a wonder of chemistry. As Dawkins reminds us, we are made of star stuff. It is no wonder that we feel a kinship with the sun. We are all of the same chemistry. How the atoms or molecules or whatever the basic life builders are, came together to become, over the billions of eons, humans is a constant puzzle to examine. And our imagination, creativity and restlessness will continue to see answers, not from the sun but from the simple essence of which it is.
Naomi Sherer