Primitive Man in A Modern World

[Music] in spite of a vast accumulation of knowledge in our modern sophisticated World there persists here and there a strange phenomenon in countries otherwise prospering and advancing in technology there are isolated groups of people living lives virtually Untouched by the progress and civilization all around them they use Simple tools handed down through the generations they feed animals mouth to mouth even nurse them at the breast they almost live as animals and it's revolting to us accustomed as we are to different standards of behavior the brutal binding of babies heads to flatten them to change their shape would be an unspeakable crime in our society as would the crude sharpening of teeth or the tattooing of infants faces and yet these things are are being done today for reasons incomprehensible to us nor do we understand open flirtation with disease in areas where diseases are epidemic by chewing the starchy roots of certain plants and spitting the ash into a vat a fermentation process is started which results in a contaminated but potent Brew these things are common in many parts of the world but why why these strange cultural phenomena in a day of scientific discovery and advancement to the scientist these things invite inquiry and explanation and we at the Moody Institute of science have journeyed to remote areas of the Earth by almost every available means to look for answers to study the so-called primitive peoples and to record evidence of their strange ways of life of their spiritual nightmares of lives dominated by witch doctors of lives that hang by a slender thread because of tribal and family feuds because of malnutrition because of disease and the more we have studied these people the more thoughtful we have become as to what to call them what would you call these people is this the noble savage this the idilic Pastoral scene would you call these people Primitives it's a popular concept has been since the 18th century but think of the implications calling these people Primitives implies that what they are we once were and what we are today these people given enough time will inevitably become it further implies they have been held back by some environmental Factor such as climate poverty disease in other words to call these people Primitives suggest they have been caught to one side in an Eddy and temporarily held back from the progress that is thought by many to always accompany the passage of time but is this true how will such a belief stand up under investigation well let's put it to the test in the jungles of southern Mexico in the chiapa state an area approximately the size of Massachusetts there is a tribe of people known as the lacandones the lock andon are regarded by some anthropologists as being among the most primitive peoples on Earth so we pose the question are these people starting their long upward climb toward civilization has their environment held them back fortunately information now is available concerning these people their language has been studied their Customs their physical characteristics and authorities are agreed that the lock andon are direct descendants of the once great and glorious Maya civilization they live now where their ancestors lived centuries ago they speak the same language their religion is obviously distorted and twisted but they still hold sacred the ruins of ancient Mayan cities they make pilgrimages to the few they know about to those in their immediate area but there was a time when hundreds of these cities were spread throughout Central America along with thousands of smaller Villages cities such as tial cities which were flourishing when Pompei was buried according to historians the great Maya civilization was forming between the years 1,000 BC and 300 ad then the culture lasted another 12200 years it spread across the Yucatan Peninsula it included areas now known as the Tabasco and chiapa States gu Mala British Honduras and parts of Honduras and El Salvador Mayan ruins have been discovered throughout this entire area but even at their best ruins are similar to the last pages of a history book they tell us nothing as to how it all began and they give us only a glimmer only a hint of the glory which once must have been the Mayans produced an architecture that ranks high in human achievement they understood well the use of the arch and centuries before Galileo studied the heavens the Mayans were making careful astronomical observations from observatories which closely resemble those of our own today in the ruins of Mayan cities we also find monuments of been recorded dates of important events and here we come to the startling realization that the Mayans had the concept of the zero long before the Middle Ages when it became known in Europe the Mayan zero had the appearance of an elongated o with two lines in the center in the Mayan math table the zero was used to express 20 rather than 10 dots were ones Bars were fives the number here is eight this is 13 this number 48,3 putting to good use their knowledge of astronomy and Mathematics the Mayans devised a calendar even more accurate than our own today yes the Mayans possessed a highly Advanced civilization but among the ruins there is also evidence of moral Decay these pictures Adorn the walls of an ancient Mayan temple at bonmac and here we find the of repeated story of disregard for the value of human life These are captives pleading for Mercy but they plead in vain the Mayan ruler tells them they must die Human Sacrifice Hearts were torn from people's bodies and offered still pulsating to the Mayan Gods Stone Gods such as chak M the Mayan God of rain Idols thought by the Mayans to have insatiable appetites for human blood in the final days of Mayan culture these became the faces of Doom people were slaughtered by the tens of thousands in the year 1527 when Cortez wrote into Yucatan he found a decadent Society with a handful of men Cortez conquered a vast number of people a nation that had crumbled from within and today as we study these last pages which tell us not only of achievement but also of corruption and Decay we can only imagine the orderliness of the society as it Rose to Greatness but we no longer Ponder the question is the lacandona Primitive we now know he's a decadent a Dropout of another day of a once proud people the evidence indicates the lock andone is on his way down not up and it's been a long tragic [Music] descent another tribe the chamulas living in the same general area as the lacandones are also descendants of the May once a year these people gather together for a festival they try to recapture moments of Glory from a dim and distant past but for some reason the glory never comes they seek for but never seem to find the Mayan greatness of another age drunkenness and the use of drugs were strictly forbidden at the height of the Mayan civilization these were serious offenses often punishable by Death the rulers knew that no restraint meant an unruly people a numbing of the senses meant a loss of any feeling of responsibility but today the chamula will tell you that such release is a good thing it helps him break free of his inhibitions to become appropriately involved in ceremonies such as the Mayan fire dance an ancient purification ceremony of which little is actually [Music] remember even less is remembered concerning architectural achievements agricultural prowess astronomical observations or mathematical computations so once again we question the philosophy of ever onward and upward because here again we find the remnants of a culture people at the bottom of a long descent but now let us leave the jungles of southern Mexico and fly across the equator into South America to the country of Peru to the land of the Andes Mountains here in this forbidding landscape of glaciated rock in Valley that rise to rarified Heights just below the mountaintops we find another group of so-called primitive people these are the ketas who for the most part are content to spend their lives in servitude caring for the possessions of others there are some 5 million of these people the majority of whom are addicted to the narcotic cocaine this is one drug about which there is no question it destroys the body and the mind it traps the user in a cycle which cannot be broken but there seems to be no desire on the part of the ketua to do anything but remain numb anesthetized to life so we ask again are these primitive people or could these too be decadents where the city of Cusco now stands in this same country of Peru the ancestors of the ketua established the center of an Empire which was to become Legend the realm of the Inca one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known it is said that this Valley once was a dazzling spectacle rooftops of gold reflected the sun and the thin Clear Mountain Air the city itself was connected to other parts of the Empire by a complex network of Roads one of which the Royal Road of the Inca was 3,250 Mi long longer than the Roman Road which ran from Scotland to Jerusalem all of this despite the fact there were no wheels no horses the common denominator was the hoof of the llama and the feet of the Indian and these account for much of the traffic even today in fact much of modern day Cusco is built on Inc and remains because the Inca built almost entirely of stone and with such Precision mortar was unnecessary even the massive Boulders of Saku Aman were so perfectly fitted together not so much as a thin knife blade can be forced between them this despite the many earthquakes that have twisted and heaved the ground beneath Saku Aman was a fortress designed by the builders to guard and control an important Mountain Pass leading to the city of Cusco and in the center of the Fortress is a stone Reservoir still collecting water as it did those hundreds of years ago additional evidence of engineering genius a water system that has lasted for centuries and is still intact we may think of brain surgery as a rather recent accomplishment but skulls have been found in ancient Peruvian burial grounds which yield astonishing evidence not only of brain surgery but of bone regeneration following surgery in other words successful brain surgery was realized even before the time of Christ trepanning was amazingly well-developed as a surgical technique allowing bone removal from the skull in a number of different ways the bronze instruments used were welld designed even by today's standards recently these ancient instruments were used by a South American surgeon the patient died some four years later from an unrelated disease then the skull was carefully examined it was found the operation had been successful as had been many operations performed with similar instruments thousands of years ago [Music] seashell trumpets echo through the mountains here as they must have during ancient religious festivals they remind us of the close of another era a mysterious chapter in the history of the Incas for this is the city of machap Picchu built by the Incas to serve as a fortress Sanctuary a Hideway on the top of a mountain because machup Picchu was to remain isolated from the rest of the world it was carefully planned to be self-sufficient Terrace Fields were built for the growing of needed food rain was plentiful Stone flumes carried spring water to every home in fact Machu Picchu was a city of stone stone that was quarried a considerable distance away up the yamba gorge and then somehow taken to the top of the mountain there it was generously used for building palaces temples gabled houses stairways and at least in those last days there were torture chambers and altars for human sacrifices Stone was also used for building parapets and Towers Towers from which to guard the city Towers from which to sound the [Music] [Laughter] [Music] alarm even though the Incas were almost certain to have had enemies it is doubtful the alarm sounded it often for machap Picchu because the location of the Fortress virtually guaranteed Security on three sides access was denied by sheer Cliffs plunging 2,000 ft down to the Amba River on the one remaining side there was a mountain but all this security merely destined machap Picchu to become a symbol of a Last Retreat because in spite of its intelligent organization and great military strength the Inca civilization was unable to guard itself from corruption within there was no security against lust for power among the rulers or hatred and violence among the people themselves and in the early 1500s a divided Kingdom collapsed falling into the hands of the Spanish all the realm that is except machap Picchu the Spanish never knew it existed a group of chosen women called the virgin of the sun lived out their lives here in utter seclusion after the Empire had fallen then for centuries the city remained as you see it silent and empty to be discovered by accident in the year 193 machap Pichu a mysterious Monument to architectural genius a building accomplishment never duplicated by another civilization so what of the ketua this descendant of such an accomplished people which way is he traveling again the evidence points to down not up what of other civilizations what of the Aztecs and their many accomplishments their calendar for example which with the use of the zero computed time back as far as 23 bilon milon days their highly developed aesthetic sense is evidenced by their sculpture work their intricate carvings where is the Aztec civilization today aside from the bits and pieces found in museums only ruins remain the same may be said of the toono the OLX the Mist cultures which rose and fell in America centuries before Columbus discovered the new world what of the Egyptians and their once highly Advanced civilization their United form of government their great genius for building what of ancient Greece the birthplace of democracy and what of the Roman Empire in spite of all the glory and the achievements something happened from within moral decay resulted from a change in what man was and what he did a departure from moral principles so necessary for a civilization's greatness is it possible for us to really get the message to grasp the warning inherent in these ruins or do we think we are much too intelligent to come to an end such as this that somehow our great cities and our wealth our our scientific knowhow our thriving economy our computerized existence that somehow all these things will save us from a chaotic end from the moral Decay that has here to for caused civilizations to crumble and collapse is this your thinking it may very well be but these accomplishments in technology have come about because man has recognized and complied with the physical laws of the universe what about the moral and spiritual realm in this area things seem to be going wrong everywhere we look there is widespread discontent riots are commonplace there is disrespect for Law and Order if we continue on our present course refusing to heed the warning so readable in the ruins of other cultures we may have to ask ask as we look at the so-called primitive peoples of the earth is this our future is it our turn next [Music]