Posted by cav on October 29, 2004 at 21:03:50:
In Reply to: local legends... posted by giveawayboy on October 29, 2004 at 11:05:13:
: :I'm refering to the line in the article about how the local people have had legends of the small people about 3 feet tall that live on the island.
: And, most folks cultures have this belief that there are or were people smaller in size than ourselves walking about. I think our mistake in being confronted by such cultures, say in Native American or Icelandic contexts, is to file little people under the heading 'supernatural' without even considering all the variations from 'supernatural' to 'natural' and the relations between them.
I've often thought that many legends that we call supernatural may be based in reality and only take on the magic quality after years of telling. Things like dragons, little people, unicorns, even elves...in the real context-as in the legends that Tolkien based his descriptions on, could all be possible in a biological respect. Giant squids and sea monsters were proven to exist, as well as moas.
And recently, imprints were found that prove that lesser tyranosaurs (not rex) had feathers. This has caused biologists to change the opinion of all Tyranosaurs. Apparently they were not cold blooded, and even rex probably had feathers until it got too large to support them, like elephants shedding body hair...it traps too much heat in large warm blooded animals in warm climates.
As a Christian and a scientist, this is interesting to me, because it closes the whole evolutionary debate a little. If truth is really truth, then all facts will add up when given the whole picture. So there should be no debate on how humans came to be if we understand the whole picture. In scientific circles, the issue isn't whether species change over time...that is proven, but whether they can change from one class or order across the spectrum of life. As in: can a single celled organism evolve into lizards, and then birds, and then mammals. By proving that some "giant lizards" were actually birds in the Age of Lizards, we must rethink the chain of events.