No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.
Interpretation
Mary Leakey emphasizes the unique richness of knowledge that ancient art can provide compared to physical remains.
In this quote, Mary Leakey highlights the invaluable insights offered by ancient paintings, suggesting that they convey deeper understandings of human experience and culture that are not easily gleaned from the mere study of artifacts like stone and bone. This underscores the significance of art as a window into the lives, thoughts, and emotions of our ancestors, revealing more about our history than just physical remnants ever could.
In practice
During a lecture on anthropology, I might use this quote to illustrate the significance of visual culture.
There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist-musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn... No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely
I dug things up. I was curious. I liked to draw what I found.
She stops, pauses, turns to the left to glance at some possible threat or irregularity, and then continues to the north. This motion, so intensely human, transcends time.
Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.
If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world.
Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.
The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.
Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
Disease is not something personal and special, but only a manifestation of life under modified conditions, operating according to the same laws as apply to the living body at all times, from the first moment until death.
If we had the fundamental laws of nature tomorrow, we still wouldn't understand consciousness. We wouldn't even understand turbulence.
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