Searching the web for information about ancient civilizations, I came on a very interesting description of what is known as Burnt City...in the south of present-day Iran. This city is thought to have been an eastern leg of the Mesopotamian culture about 5000 years ago. Artifacts of extraordinary beauty and skill have been found. But what impressed me above all...there were no weapons in this community! These people lived in peace...among themselves...and presumably with their neighbors.
Here's the big question: What did they know that we haven't yet figured out? Conquest, greed, rivalry, domination remain ever-present in our 21st c. so-called civilization.
Right here on our own continent, Anazasi peoples also lived peacefully with one another...And the Hopis continued to do so.
D.H.Lawrence, that wild, old bird, wrote many years ago about the advisability of Americans
to be conscious of what he called the spirit of Native Americans that still lies barely above the ground we have claimed...to haunt us, not only with guilt, but with recognition of what we can learn from the people whose land we stole.
