My reading of the Strayer text brought several questions to mind and revealed points for further consideration. In the context of the NDNU hallmarks this course will offer opportunities to integrate concepts from other courses offered there and taken by me including Ethics, Philosophy of Science, The Way of the World and Contemporary Environmental Issues (the last being taken contemporaneously).
I was struck immediately during the prologue with by a disconnect between the definitions of the ages of mankind as named in the book and as presented in the first week's lecture. The book identified three, the paleolithic, agricultural and modern industrial periods, leaving out any mention of ancient or classical, and while I read the term neolithic it was not writ large as a great chapter of man's history. I can accept this as evidence of the lack of consensus, and even appreciate it as I consider consensus as potentially dangerous in its own right. When dealing with the unknowable it seems prudent to keep all one's options open. The danger of ideological coloring seeping into analysis is captured perfectly by this quote from page 44, "What we may lose in objectivity, we gain in passionate involvement with the historical record.(!)" It may be reflective of my Scandinavian heritage or other stoic impulses but I don't think of the historical record as my lover needing my passionate involvement. That said, there is room for that interpretation too, even if I don't share it.
It is helpful to remember that that in whatever historical contexts we consider Man, men were and are still people who hungered and thirsted, loved and hated, built and destroyed, in short they were just as human as we are albeit with less technology at their disposal. They laughed and cried as we do. Cultural evolution suggests that they wanted better futures for their descendants. The hard-won lessons of the past were handed down - not with perfect linearity but with many fits, starts, and hiccups along the way.
As testaments to man's ingenuity it is hard to top the massive works of the neolithic/early civilizations. The level of engineering is comparable to contemporary projects even if the material science is more robust today. Either a leader or a zeitgeist was compelling enough to pool massive cooperative effort into pyramids, Stonehenge, mounds or other as yet undiscovered efforts. I recall a popular interpretation which held that only aliens with UFO's and other advanced technology could have pulled off such feats. While I tend to think of this viewpoint as selling man's creativity short, it is also understandable given the unknowable aspect of this history and is in line with keeping all possible solutions on the table. The alien story does have explanatory power even if it lacks other hallmarks of science like predictive power and an empirical pedigree.
The discussion of the rise of agriculture, tied to the rise in population, was reasonably balanced. Certainly the hunter/gatherer would have had moments of leisure but without a stable civic environment it is problematic to build a body of knowledge not directly connected to the hunt. It is in leisure that man can contemplate philosophy, ethics and a personal relationship with the Creator. The agricultural man could force slaves to do much of the menial work. The hunter would not want to arm his slave for the hunt as those weapons might be turned on him. So while slavery is a great evil, in the context of human evolution slavery afforded leisure time to the upper classes who compiled learning for posterity. History is full of examples of human populations exceeding the carrying capacities of their respective regions suggesting that a more thoughtful approach to population size is justified.
