Books and Life - part 2

                                              

                                   When we shifted from Wellington to  Coonoor in 1973, went with my mother to have a look beforehand at the house we were supposed to occupy , and that was the 5th house in the first line of Harewood Quarters.  As mentioned previously  ( In the blog series of  Malairaniyin Madiyil ) that was the same line when we shifted from Coonoor to Ooty. We resided in the third house then. So, the aunty (Mone amma ), in the second house would have known me, because I remember  reading comics in her house at that time  for a long time. In their house, in the front veranda, there were many books, mainly Tamil comics, stewn around. For me, it was like a tressure.

                        Kalkandu was a book with so many small small informations and the author Thamizhvanan was my favourite one and he has written many many detective  novels . His logo of hat and eye glasses is famous in those days.   In one detective novel he tells an incident which happens in a foreign country,  that the villain will say that he will shoot a woman and even if the sound is heard outside people will think that it is a sound from neighbourhood television.  When there were no television boxes available, this news was new. Children used to read small small booklets of animal, king,giant, prince and many other stories, costing 30 paise only.  Muthu comics, muthu mini comics & other comic books were also famous.  And buying cinema song booklets and singing!

                                     As I mentioned in part -1 of this topic  Tamil weeky Kumudham was the favourite one, followed by  Anandha vikatan  and others.   One great children book I loved is Ambuli Mama. In this book, the pictures drawn were at a different level. During younger periods and when getting to hands as many books as now was not the story, you could keep on watching the pictures for quite a long time - the minute details. I read recently that the artist who drew those fine pictures passed away at an older age.

                                 Now, about a book. Not exactly about a book. I am writing few sentences, quotes and excerpts from the book  written by a Jewish writer Yual Noah Harari .  This book is first published in Hebrew in 2011, in English in 2014. Published in more than 30 languages. The author is a Ph D in History from Oxford University. ( S s-    I am very much sad about the Palestine Israel conflict . Read a lot about the history of the land and about the history of the people.  Knowing about the Arab history from Biblical time, about the Jewish prophets - in fact Islam accepts all prophets, there is much a greater connection between the major religions of the world.  Ok, that is not for the discussion here - ,   about the 2nd world war  and things that happened after that.  But, I think I can very well quote from a book written by a jew,  that too a non- religious scientifically conferred human history. )  Just read them  ( sentences, quotes and excerpts ) and I have a strong thinking that you will like to read the book if you get a chance , if you have not read it already.

                               Sapiens

                 A Brief  History of Humankind

          From the book :-

                       There were humans long before there was history.

                   The most important thing to know about the prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.

                The earth of a hundred millennia ago was  walked by at least six different species of man. .... ..... .... ..... .......  As we will shortly see, we Sapiens have good reasons to repress the memory of our siblings.

            Like a government diverting money from defence to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons.  It's hardly a forgone conclusion that this is a good strategy for survival on the savannah. A chimpanzee can't win an argument with a Homo sapiens, but the ape can rip the man apart like a rag doll.

               and only in the last 100,000 years- with the rise of Homo sapiens - that man jumped to the top of the food chain.

          A significant step on the way to the top was the domestication of fire.

          But, if the Neanderthals, Denisovans and other human species didn't merge with Sapiens, why did they vanish?

         Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group.

   In fact, in the first recorded encounter between Sapiens and Neanderthals, the Neanderthals won .

        Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution. 

           To understand our nature, history and psychology, we must get inside the heads of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. For nearly the entire history of our species, Sapiens lived as foragers.

        .... ... and understand our sexuality, society and politics, we need to learn something about the living conditions of our ancestors, to examine how Sapiens lived between the cognitive revolution of 70,000 years ago, and the start of the Agricultural revolution about 12,000 years ago.

      Finally, there's the thorny question of the role of war in forager societies.

          ... ... they shaped the world around us to a much larger degree than most people realise.

         The wandering bands of storytelling Sapiens were the most important and most destructive force the animal kingdom had ever produced.

     Every other mammal that went to sea - seals, sea cows, dolphins - had to evolve for aeons to develop specialised organs and a hydrodynamic body. The Sapiens in Indonesia, descendants of apes who lived on the African savannah, became Pacific seafarers without growing flippers and without having to wait for their noses to migrate to the top of their heads as whales did. Instead, they built boats and learned how to stear them.

        Various human species had been prowling and evolving in Afro-Asia for 2 million years. ... ... ... The big beasts of Africa and Asia learned to avoid humans , so when the new mega-predator - Homo sapiens- appeared on the Afro-Asian scene, the large animals already knew to keep their distance from creatures that looked like it. In contrast, the Australian giants had no time to learn to run away. 

      

               

                        

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