Two diagrams have contributed to my awareness of the One Earth and Multi Earth stories as I see them operate both in and out of the consciousness of our species today. I first saw a version of these diagrams when Juanita and I read aloud to one another Daniel Quinn’s book, Ishmael.
In that story Ishmael, a gorilla, teaches a person about a way of viewing the world that includes not just humans but gorillas and all species. As his adult student returns regularly to the gorilla’s cage for more lessons, Ishmael challenges his student’s understanding of history. As Juanita and I read, my own view of history also came under the microscope. I, too, had been schooled to equate the history of human civilization with all of “history.”
Even more narrowly, most of what was called “world history” in my schooling was, as I said earlier, no more than the significant, but limited, story of western civilization. As I learned it, whatever came before that “history” was simply lumped together as “prehistory.” Prehistory was inferior to history. So I came to understand that we humans are an advanced species, having ascended from prehistory into history by way of one long continuous storyline that leads to the shining present. It could be simply diagrammed as follows.
Prehistory ————————-> History (10,000 BCE) ———————>
Before getting to the second diagram, the one that rattled my worldview, how about you? What were you taught about the relative significance of prehistory and history? And did your “world history” include more than the history of western civilization? Hopefully, my schooling was the exception.