Author: Ted Holden Fairytales, ancient and modern, often have animals conversing with men

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Author: Ted Holden
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Fairytales, ancient and modern, often have animals conversing with men
in meaningful fashion.  We assume this is entirely fanciful, and that
there is no imaginable circumstance under which, say, a dog or cat might
impart any complex piece of information to a human.  Was this always so?
We would ASSUME present circumstances to hold good in all past ages,
but...

Consider the enigmatic book which Julian Jaynes of Princeton wrote in
the mid seventies, "The Origis of Consciousness and the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind".  Jaynes noted that in very ancient literature,
from the older sections of the Iliad and on back, we search in vain
for any sort of a reference to anything which we would call decision
making;  at every turn at which you or I would have to stop and think
about how to proceed, the men and women of the Iliad are guided by the
voices of gods and goddesses.  This appears universally true of earlier
literature as well, and there are positive references in the literature
of Assyria and other lands that there was a definite time at which this
guidence by outside forces broke down, and men first came to feel
deserted by the gods which had previously sustained them.

Jaynes notes that the Wernicke's area of the left brain, primarily
responsible for speech capabilities has an unused analog on the right
side, and a bridge crossover between them and that, when this right side
analog is stimulated electrically, as has been done with epileptic
patients, the patients in many cases claim to hear voices, as real as if
you or I were to be speaking to them.

Jaynes argues that the entire manner in which the human brain and mind
work today, is fundamentally different from the way in which they worked
just a few thousand years ago, and the evidence appears to entirely
support him.  And yet, the thesis he presents, that men were then guided
by auditory hallucinations which had somehow evolved to a functional
"group-think" kind of condition, is clearly unworkable.  A village
populated by 200 people all heading inner voices would amount to 200
Sons of Sam running around.  What then has Jaynes discovered?
 


Let us now return to fairytales and the question of animals
conversing.  We know today that a number of the higher animals are
basically bright enough to deal with language, but that most lack
the physical requirements for speech as we know it.  A number of
apes have been taught to use deaf signing conventions in the last
20 years or so as is common knowledge, and it seems fairly certain
that aquatic mammals communicate in complex ways, and a number of
birds (crows, jays etc.) have a rudimentary language which works
for THEM.  Nonetheless, for animals to communicate with humans in
any meaningful way, some other form of communication than our
present speech would be needed.

     It is interesting that ancients generally associated the age
when animals conversed with man with the antedeluvian time, the so-
called "Age of Cronos [Saturn]".  Consider the following fragment
of a conversation between Socrates and one named only as the
"stranger", from Plato's dialogue, The Statesman:


Soc:

     Certainly that is quite consistent with what has preceded; 
     but, tell me, was the life which you said existed in the rein
     of Cronos [Saturn] in that cycle of the world, or this?  For
     the change in the course of the stars and the sun must have
     occurred in both.

Str:

     I see that you enter into my meaning;--no, that blessed and
     spontaneous life does not belong to the present cycle of the
     world, but to the previous one, in which God superintended the
     whole revolution of the universe...  and I might tell you of
     ten thousand other blessings which belonged to that
     dispensation.  The reason why the life of man was, as
     tradition says, spontaneous, is as follows:  In those days God
     himself was their shepherd, and ruled over them, just as man,
     who is by comparison a divine being, still rules over the
     lower animals.Under him there were no forms of government or
     separate possession of women and children;  for all men rose
     again from the earth, having no memory of the past.  And,
     although they had nothing of this sort, the earth gave them
     fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs unbidden,
     and were not planted by the hand of man.  And they dwelt naked
     and mostly in the open air, for the temperature of their
     seasons was mild;  and they had no beds, but they lay on soft
     cushions of grass, which grew plentifully out of the earth. 
     Such was the life of man in the age of Cronos, Socrates;  the
     character of our present life, which is said to be under Zeus,
     you know from your own experience.  Can you, and will you
     determine which of them you deem the happier?

Soc:

     Impossible.

Str:

     Then shall I determine for you as well as I can?

Soc:

     By all means.

Str:

     Suppose that the nurslings of Cronos [the antedeluvians],
     having this boundless leisure, and the power of holding
     intercourse [conversation] not only with themselves but with
     the brute creation [animals], had used all these advantages
     with a view to philosophy, conversion with the brutes as well
     as with one another, and learning of every nature which was
     gifted with any special power, and was able to contribute some
     special experience to the store of wisdom, there would be no
     difficulty in deciding that they would be a thousand times
     happier than the men of our own day.  Or, again, if they had
     merely eaten and drunk until they were full, and told stories
     to one another and to the animals, such stories as are now
     attributed to them, in this case also I should imagine the
     answer would be easy.  But, until some satisfactory witness
     can be found for the love of that age for knowledge and
     discussion, we had better let the matter drop and give the
     reason why we have unearthed this tale, and then we shall be
     able to get on.  In the fullness of time, when the change was
     to take place, and the earth-born race had all perished, and
     every soul had completed its proper cycle of births and been
     sewn in the earth her appointed number of times, the pilot of
     the universe let the helm go and retired to his point of view; 
     and then fate and innate desire ruled the motion of the
     world...

     And the world turning round with a sudden shock, being
     impelled in an opposite direction from beginning to end, was
     shaken by a mighty earthquake, which wrought a new destruction
     of all manner of animals...

     While the world was aided by the pilot in nurturing the
     animals, the evil was small, and great the good which he
     produced, but after the separation, when the world was let go,
     at first all proceeded well enough;  but, as time went on,
     there was more and more forgetting, and the old discord again
     held sway and burst forth in full glory;  and, at last, small
     was the good, and great the admixture of evil, and there was
     danger of universal ruin to the world,  and to the things
     contained in him [the world]...

     And so, we have arrived at the real end of this discourse; for
     although there might be much to tell of the lower animals, and
     of the conditions out of which they changed and of the causes
     of the change, about men there is not much, and that little is
     more to the purpose.  Deprived of the care of God, who had
     possessed and tended them, they were left helpless and
     defenseless, and were torn in pieces by the beasts, who were
     naturally fierce and had now grown wild.

     And in the first ages, they were still without skill or
     resource;  the food which had once grown spontaneously had now
     failed, and as yet they knew not how to procure it, because
     they had never felt the pressure of necessity.  For all these
     reasons, they were in a great strait;  whereupon also the
     gifts spoken of in the old tradition were imparted to man by
     the gods, together with so much teaching and education as was
     indispensable;  fire was given to them by Prometheus...




     Interesting, no?  How universally the ancients regarded the
age just prior to the flood as such a near perfect state...  We
have a fairly clear statement that whatever condition had permitted
conversation between men and beats perished with or shortly after
the flood and this, one notes, is roughly the same time period which
Jaynes gives for the change in the nature of the working of the human
mind.
    

     Consider the following.  The ability which even chimps show in
the directions of language means that humans should have been
language-capable at a considerable time prior to our arrival into
our present state, our present three basic races.  Humans have
existed in roughly their present form for many years.  Given the
smooth and continuous evolution of both geological and biological
forms which contemporary science accepts, man's languages should all
show some relation.

If, as seems overwhelmingly likely, the white and black races are
very recent branches of the same family, their languages should show
strong relationships.  As far as anybody has ever shown, African and
European languages are totally unrelated.


Semitic and Indo-European languages should be strongly related, since
the peoples are not racially different.  The divide between Indo-European
and Semitic peoples cannot possibly be more than a few thousand years into
the past. This is an area in which standard explainations totally break
down.  There is no relationship between Indo-European and Semitic languages
at all.


What we actually observe is about what we would expect had communications
been of some other nature until some event roughly 5000 - 10000 years
in the past, at which time a need for our present form of speech arose
and groups living in proximity to one another developed separate languages.


Hence although even Russian is entirely similar in operation to our
Western languages, Indo-European, Asiatic, Semitic, and African
languages show no signs of similarity whatsoever.                 
   

Creationist literature notes:

       If man and languages "evolved", the earliest languages should be
       the simplest.  On the contrary, as one studies languages that are
       increasingly ancient, such as Latin (200 B.C.), Greek (800 B.C.),
       and Vedic Sanskrit (1500 B.C.), they become INCREASINGLY COMPLEX
       with respect to syntax, cases, genders, moods, voices, tenses,
       and verb forms.  The evidence indicates that languages do not
       Evolve, they DEvolve.

In fact, they have devolved from their new condition in the same way in
which an automobile shows wear and tear beginning after it leaves the
assembly line, starting from a very recent time.

Due to some set of circumstances of the antedeluvian world, in all
likelihood involving the greater electromagnetic nature of the world
during the age of Kronos, the world was then engulfed in a form of
telepathic communion shared not only by man but by higher creatures as
well.  Richard Heinberg ("Memories and Visions of Paradise", Tarcher
1989, cites a number of references similar to the selection from
Statesman:

  Frank Waters "Book of the Hopi", cites a Hopi Indian tradition having
  the first people "felt as one and understood eachother without
  talking".
 
  Aesop:  "...during the time of the Golden race [the age of Kronos] ...
  animals had articulate speech and knew the use of words...  Arthur
  Lovejoy & George Boas "Primativism and Related Ideas in antiquity,
  Johns Hopkins Press, 1935

  Empedocles:  "All were gentle and obediant to men, both animals and
  birds, and they glowed with kindly affection towards one another."


Heinberg cites a very strange disconnect in the book of Genesis.  God
speaking to Adam and the first andtedeluvians:

   Genesis 1:29 / 1:30 "And God said 'behold, I have given you every
   herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every
   tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yeilding seed; to you it
   shall be for meat.
  
   "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and
   to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I
   HAVE given every green herb for meat:  and it was so.

So that we have Genesis claiming that all living creatures were
vegetarians prior to the flood, and the division of languages, after
which creatures of varied sorts no longer understood nor could
communicate with eachother.

Then, we hear God speaking to Noah (and to man generally) after the
flood and the division of speech:

   Genesis 9:2 / 9:3 "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be
   upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon
   all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all of the fishes of the
   sea;  into your hand are they delivered.

   "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you;  even as the
   green herb have I given you all things."


This is a total 180 degree change in world-view.  This is the reality of
the so-called Fall of Man.

Yuppie science teaches us that phonetic alphabets arose only within the
last 5000 years or so because only then did man become bright enough to
figure the idea out, after having lived and spoken for many tens of
thousands of years prior.  There is a far better explanation.  Phonetic
alphabets arose after the RECENT rise of spoken speech.  This means that
Egyptian heiroglyphics as well as the Chinese style of writing hark back
to an age when our present form of speech did not exist or was little
used.  Given the realities of antedeluvian communication, the idea of a
phonetic alphabet should not have arisen.


     The basic answer to all of this, the only answer possible,
involves the phenomenon which we refer to as telepathy.  The answer
is that, during the prior age during which the electro-magnetic
nature of the world was far stronger than it is now, for which
there is ample geological and anthropological evidence, this
phenomenon, so rare in our own world, was the normal means of
conversation, both amongst men and amongst a number of higher
animals.  Then, shortly after the flood, came a day in which the
conditions which had allowed for this broke down:

Genesis 11,1:

     "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

Genesis 11,4:

     "And they said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower,
     whose top may reach unto heaven;  and let us make us a name,
     lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

Genesis 11,6:

     And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have
     all one language;  and this they begin to do:  and now nothing
     will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

Genesis 11,7:

     "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language,
     that they may not understand one another's speech