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Article: A Stone Age mirror
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- January 22, 1995
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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In an era obsessed by progress and technology, superficial
spirits strain to anticipate the future. They assume it is possible
to divine what will be, and they cultivate the illusion that the
present can be lived as a prologue to a knowable future.
Students of the past are usually less rash than idolators of the
future. The mysteries of archeology and history humble those
disposed to acknowledge what they don't know or cannot know. Their
premise is that a tentative understanding of the past -- a
comprehension that is always in flux -- might induce no change in
contemporaries other than an altered sense of who they are.
The recent discovery in France of cave paintings from the
paleolithic ...