Our ancestors were the smartest...

I have discussed about religions and scientific mindset. There I have talked about Christian Europeans questioning their religion and the knowledge on which it was based. The people who ventured into this prohibited land of infinite knowledge, not infrequently, were the men of the same religion. A really fascinating aspect of western civilization.

If we observe the development of Indian philosophy, an unwritten code was that the Vedas, Upanishats can not be questioned. There could be only interpretations of these early works. Birth and Nirvana of the knowledge was complete in those works. In Shankara’s own words, these early scripts contain everything that a person has to know and they can’t be questioned. Ofcourse, there were people who didn’t accept the Vedas. But these Nastiks were not part of Astik schools of thought. Interaction between these two groups was just an interaction between two different religions with both staunchly believing what their ancestors had told them.

Europeans didn’t think so. There were so many religious men, who fervently believed in the Christian god but not the words in the Books about him or his deeds. To their inquisitive mind the knowledge of the books looked inadequate and flawed. They went to the nature with their observations and experimentations and heralded a new era of secular scientific knowledge.

What was wrong with Indians? Physical threat by the uncompromising society held them back? Europe was merciless in this regard. Or Indians of the middle ages were really dumb in comparison with their ancestors?

It was no wonder that Europeans developed theory of Evolution. For the people who thought they were mentally more evolved than their ancestors it was natural to come up something like evolution. But Indians were devolved people, in their opinion, from human beings to animals. They continued to think so.

Update 21-Mar-2005:

A coincidence. I came across this book on Human devolution via this blog. There are so many people even among Europeans who still think our ancestors were the smartest. Ofcourse the smartest among these people have come up with Intelligent Design concept to uphold the greatness of their biblical ancestors.