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Were We the First Civilisation on Earth?

Our civilisation rose from a species that is the common ancestor of both us and a chimpanzee, and it lived just 6-8 million years ago. Once agriculture was developed, and we could set our minds to things other than hunting, it took only 10,000 years for us to make the world we see around us today. A total of just 8 million years separates a creature we typically recognise as being completely absent of sophisticated technology and culture, to having a high speed internet connection linking almost every home in the world. The history of life on Earth stretches back over 4 billion years. Is it possible that somewhere in that vast stretch of prehistory, there was another 10 million year period where some other life form developed a sophisticated civilisation such as ours? Were we the first to claim the refinements of higher culture? (arms not to scale) It is commonly held, and not without good reason, that homo sapiens are the architects of the first advanced civilisation that p
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Was Climate Change Inevitable

Was humankind's journey of scientific discovery always destined to cause climate change? There are 510 million square kilometres of land on Earth, and presently 7.9 billion people living on it. That's even counting polar regions and deserts where people can't live in large numbers easily. That's 0.65 square kilometres per person. Our distribution about the planets surface is already disrupting the pre-existing global ecosystem of the planet. Assuming that this ecosystem should be in equilibrium, humans are now responsible for changes in climate, animal populations, atmospheric gases and a host of other things we could go on listing. By the very acting of existing, we have done that. Much is discussed about the lack of environmental foresight of world governments and private corporations. The discussion usually goes along the lines of -years ago we could have done something about these things, and arrested the changes we were making to the environment, but never did. How
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What is Democracy?

Democracy. It’s a word often thrown about. An end that is used to justify, rationalise and ultimately convince people that an action is either right or wrong. But, what does democracy mean? How does democracy work? What is the mandate given to a democratically elected leader? As it happens, there is no one answer to each of these questions. Democracy is an idea. How that idea is implemented has varied greatly over the course of history, and indeed how the democratic process has been empowered and enacted has varied greatly with it. Last month, in the UK, a historic referendum took place. The people were told that they were being given the choice to make a decision whether the UK will remain in the EU, or leave. The voters turned out, 72% of them. The voting was in the favour of those who wished to leave, 52% to 48%. The Brexit (British Exit) campaigners stated that democracy has been enacted, and a democratic decision has been made. We are told that any sentiments that this
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Can a Paleo Diet Really be a Good Thing?

Recent times have seen a surge in popularity of the so called “Paleo Diets”. These dietary guidelines are based on the premise that the human race has not yet developed the necessary adaptations to refined grains, or indeed any form of agriculturally reared crops for them to be efficiently consumed as a food source. Advocates of these dietary regimes claim that consumption of such food items is linked to obesity and other diseases, and that only by reverting to pre-agricultural dietary regimes can we hope to avoid the diseases of the modern world.  I t is an interesting thought. Advocates argue that the human race has developed a digestive system over the course of 6 million years or so, from the last common ancestor we share with the great apes, and that the advent of agriculture is essentially a disruptive force. Agriculture, they hypothesise, has resulted in us depending upon a food source that we are not equipped to consume.  These arguments have two main criticisms
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Could We Have Got to Mars in 1985?

In 1961 John F Kennedy committed the United States to land a man on the moon, and return him safely before the decade was out. Five years earlier, on October 4th 1957, the Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite into space. The first powered and controlled flight by a human being had occurred just 54 years earlier on December 17th 1903. The human race had gone from a twelve second flight over the hills of Kitty Hawk to landing upon another world within a the span of a single lifetime. However, soon after the Apollo Moon landings political sentiment and support fell away from the space race. It's easy to look back and dismiss the next steps on our journey into space as being exponentially more difficult, or even impossible within that era. Leaders, political leaders, have said that landings on Mars were beyond our abilities, beyond our resources, and beyond their scope for the last 40 years. This is usually accepted as a matter of fact, given that these and similar
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