Constellations

By day attention went to survival, even after people started living together in small herds. But at night, yes one slept, but some had to be awake some of the time, perhaps the assigned guard person as the daily shift from hunter to hunted was effective, but men have always also, looked UP, at the sky. Hard to argue about, yet what other animal did this, looked up, especially when laterally, all was dark, but UP what a spectacle, every clear night. So much more incredible than the city skies we are used to. And so---out of reach, so mesmerizing, but not anything that had an immediate use. You could just gaze upward at the sky. Not for a purpose that was obvious, or could be handled. Just looking, with the body still. Probably soon men started to note changes. Every thing they knew had some relevance, a plant to avoid, or study for clues, or consume. Surely the spectacle above also had some relevance, some survival value, but what. The sky appeared unchanging in comparison with the daylight jungle, and yet, did a sense of change among the permanent, the falling star, become apparent? And yet the permanent also persisted among the changing. And to what end, in a world where all related to hunter or hunted, did this sky persist.

Perhaps there was an event, from the sky, some totally amazing, that may have left an impact crater we have or haven't found. Perhaps not, perhaps just the incredible glittering night, inviting study to an end that was not obvious, that had to be concentrated on, studied out. The patterns men described in the sky now seem arbitrary but these patterns we call constellations, we have not forgotten. Why have we not forgotten these old patterns? The ancient gods and cosmology is everywhere faded like a pressed flower, and yet all us know the names of the patterns traced out millenia ago.

One reason we have not forgotten -- is it is possible that the night sky, the patterns men talked about, are evidence of the ignition of, the invention of, human abstract thought.

Would this event, whenever, however it happened, the dawn of human thought, of mentation, would not this event be in the category of the Big Bang. And in looking up at the sky, and seeing, as we now understand, the light of past events,
could it not be that we also are seeing the beginning of human thought?