You can't know

More and more, brilliant people are coming to the conclusion that the past has a much more different existence than was known a mere 20 years ago.  The television show America Unearthed begins every show by mentioning "the history we were all taught in schools is wrong."  It cites many runes and artifacts as its evidence.  Ancient Aliens is also a program that poses the question of whether ancient humans were able to build the monuments we find with the tools that are known to have existed.  Recently, Planet Egypt raised the question of how many of the artifacts discovered over the years can really be made with the tools the Egyptians left behind.

Of particular interest in the most recent program was a core sample that seems to have been discarded after drilling it out of granite, the hardest rock known.  The only known drilling material we know that the Egyptians had is copper.  But cutting granite with copper is impossible.  So, how was it done?  No one knows.  The striations on the granite indicate that the amount of pressure put on the drill to form the number of striations appearing is more than is possible with today's drills.

I love mysteries like this one.  They show me that we don't really know what the past was like.  We see backwards into time so dimly that it is almost not worth the time to speculate.  Some day we will perhaps know, but not today.  Time continues to hold its secrets despite our best efforts.  And that is the gospel truth.  The only way to have a clear picture is to have lived through something ourselves.

I think about that sometimes when it comes to events in my life.  For those who were there, it's an open book, but for those who weren't, everything is hidden from public view.  For those who knew me at one time and now look at my life and say they can't believe this event or that happened, then I say, "Stand back, look and respect, or look and disbelieve, but you can't know the real events since you were not there."  That's a good thing, just like it is for society as we peer back into the ancient past.