The ones who came before
I first heard the phrase "The ones who came before" in a game called Assassin's Creed. Since then, I had this idea stuck in my mind waiting to be explored. Why are we so fascinated by the concept of an ancient civilization? I am not talking about the recorded history. By 'the ones who came before', I mean a civilization that may or may not have been very similar to the humans who exist today. They may have been different psychologically or even biologically.
Every human being is unique in their own way. They have their own lives and inner worlds and no matter how hard we try, we can never see the world from their perspective. And yet, the more we know about them, the more we can relate with them. This is because, even though every one is different, their manifestation of desires and feelings happens the exact same way as everyone else. This is why every form of media is so successful. You may have not fought in a war but a good portrayal of a soldier or a civilian stuck in the conflict can evoke the feelings that that person may have had in that time. You may never go to space but you can relate to the awe an astronaut feels when s/he sees the earth for the first time as no larger than a football from the moon.
What I am trying to say is that because we know ourselves, by extension, we know everyone else. We can relate to the desires and feelings of every human in the past, present or future. We can even relate to fictional characters that never even existed in reality but lived only through the inks of their human authors.
This is where we see why we are so intrigued by an intelligent species of the past. Were they the same as us? Did they desire and feel the same way we do? What motivated them? What did they think about? Did they even think like us? Did their brains worked like ours did? Did they have capabilities we can not even imagine?
Even though these questions are applicable to any alien species of the past or the present, the curiosity we feel is different in one key sense. The one who came before were essentially our precursors. We are directly connected to them in some inconceivable way.
The questions don't end here though. If we as a future generation can wonder like this, will we ever be 'the ones who came before' to anyone in the future? Will they desire and feel the same way we do? Will they wonder the same about us? Did our precursors wondered this?
There is a kind of mystery that can never be truly solved and yet that very fact is what keeps it so interesting to everyone. We can imagine endlessly the scenarios that could be. This is, in a way, the fiction of our past. Like the library of Babel, there are infinite stories to be told and maybe one of them is the truth but we may never identify it to be one.
tags: #musings
links: