When I was a boy, eight planets – including the one upon which we all live – were known to exist, and only one was known to harbor life. Since that time, a few more, thousands to be a bit more accurate, have been discovered; and in their myriad, marvelous diversity, there may in fact be at least a few that have, do, or one day will also be home to other life forms.
What did our ancestors who were unfamiliar with the origins of the fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures make of them? Did they recognize such things as belemnites, brachiopods, bits of vertebral columns, and other curious, stone objects extracted from the ground as the remains of creatures from long ago? If so, were such creatures factual or fantastic? And in any case, what useful qualities – or even extraordinary, perhaps even magical, powers – did they assume these mysterious objects might posses?
“From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature an animal that lives in a polis, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it […]” – Aristotle, “Politics” […]
When I find myself in times of trouble
And Mother Mary is ignoring me,
I go seeking words of wisdom
In an anthology.