Things We Seem to Have Gotten Wrong If we go back to our early history, we will find we had a lot of ideas about things which have been proven wrong. You can’t blame the ancients for that, since they had neither the tools or past data to rely on and test. It is amazing to me they got so much right in some areas like astronomy and they did it without a telescope. They also seemed to know more about medicine than one suspected. The Romans and their military hospitals are good examples of this, but even before them, many natural remedies were found. When a Native American was asked how their ancestors discovered so many medicines from plants, he said we tried things and people died till we found the correct plants. The study of Neanderthals had led us in the wrong direction for years. We originally thought they were muscular beasts who were all brawn but were much lower on intelligence. It was said they didn’t even have the power of speech. Recently much of these ideas have changed. Scientists figured out they could speak. Excavation of an area when Neanderthals lived before modern humans were here has proven they do make plans. They were thought to only hunt big games because they couldn’t figure out how to catch the small animals but the archaeological site proved this was nonsense. There were plenty of bones of both large and small animals even including fresh water turtles. There were also stone tools made by Neanderthals which fit the situations they were needed for. Some believe modern humans may have learned to make stone tools from Neanderthals before they disappeared since there was an overlap of the time they both existed. One last thing about Neanderthals, it seems they disappeared as modern humans became more numerous. For years astronomers said Saturn was the only ringed planet in our solar system. It is true that it is hard to miss those big rings which are easily seen with the aid of a telescope or powerful binoculars. What we didn’t notice was the fact Jupiter had very faint rings as did Uranus and Neptune. There are even a few moons with faint rings. Some people still think black holes suck things into them, like a vacuum cleaner, but immensely more powerful. Actually, there is nothing different about how gravity pulls things into it than any objects with gravity. The difference is in in the force of the gravity which is so powerful because the mass of the black hole is so great. In other words, it is thought that any object with that much mass would attract things with the equivalent force. The reason light can’t escape is it can’t reach the required escape velocity which is required to break out. When I think about the errors in judgement we made about certain things, smoking has to be on the top of the list. Almost everyone of my generation were smokers at one time or another. Smoking is now way down in this country, but there was a time when it was promoted as being good for your health. Doctors would do cigarette ads in the 1930s and 1940s. I remember seeing one ad which said smoking settled your stomach. Boy, we couldn’t have been more wrong. Dark energy is said to be an anti-gravity force providing a negative pressure that fills the universe and stretches the fabric of spacetime. For years we believed it existed but it was hard to prove. While new data has suggested there might be dark energy, it doesn’t seem to be stable or always there. We had believed it was constantly pushing things apart, but this no longer seems to be true. One of the things I thought I learned as a kid was the fact chameleons change color to hide in the background so you won’t notice them. In case you don’t know what a chameleon is, it is a small lizard the size of a gecko. Anyway, it is said this is not true, you could have fooled me. Supposedly the reason it changes color is to regulate its body temperature since it is cold blooded and to signal other chameleons. For many years we have been told we only use about 10% of our brains, but this has been proven false. So how much of our brain do we really use? Some say 100%, but others say that would trigger epilepsy. It is said we don’t use all of our brain at once, but do use all different parts of it over the course of a day. One of the things which is still being said is dogs see only in black and white. Experts tell us dogs can see certain colors, but not all. It is said they cannot see red or green. They can see blue and yellow. So, it turns out they see more like a color-blind person. We were also told dogs sweat from their tongue. Dogs also sweat from their paws. Let me talk about who discovered America. It certainly was not Christopher Columbus even though he gets most of the credit. In the Middle Ages the English had discovered the Grand Banks which extend from off the coast of Canada and the United States. It has been said the location was kept secret by the English fishermen who wanted to keep that great fishing area to themselves. Vikings are said to have come to North America before that and then there was evidence of ancient Chinese ships off the west coast of the United States when large, heavy rocks were found which had holes drilled in the top. These were used as anchors in ancient China for their ships. We don’t know how many other races could have come here. There are stories of the Knights Templer sailing to North America in the Middle Ages also.
|
