What was your introduction to Evolution and Archeology?

As I have said in other posts, I first ran into real fossils when I was about 10 or maybe less. We'd go down to the Calvert Cliffs and spend the say playing in the water and collecting the sharks teeth and clams from the cliff walls. Later I got shipped off to an Episcopal Church school. There, Evolution was a major topic as was history. One of the Masters (teaching English and History at the time) was Bud Young. During summers he would work on various digs around the world and so could give us some secondhand experience about what archeology was really all about. He had worked at Sardis in Turkey and after he left St Paul's (the year I graduated. He always claimed he didn't want to have to go through that twice) he returned to Harvard where he had graduated and continued his research.Long after he had gone back to Harvard we stayed in touch. Those were wild days, the whole Vietnam era bit and there was lots of controversy even at Harvard. And Mr. Young was in the midst of it all. But he still had time for his former students and we always knew that if we showed up on his doorstep we could always find conversation, challenge, a drink and a smoke. He constantly pushed us farther. He would never let us accept anything from Authority. Try to defend your position with quotes and he would tear you limb from limb. "Think", he'd say. "Work it out yourself. Use your eyes AND your brain."But what about the rest of you? What events and people most influenced you?[Note: this is probably best in Misc or maybe coffee house. Don't know which]

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

1. I was cramming for a anatomy /physiology exam on the structures of the human eye one very early morning. I was way overloaded on caffine and way under my sleep quota. I distinctly remember comming to a almost trance like state...everything made sense to me all at once. Every thought I had made absolute sense. It is all about energy. Everything that exist does so because of energy. atoms, elements, cells, organized organisms all are collections energy being transfered and stored and manifested in the universe as the cosmic currency. I was enlightened and swimming with information. Then I woke up. The very next semester I enrolled in a physical antropolgy class in the hopes to get a better insight on human development.
2. I was in 2nd grade and visited Mammuth cave in Kentucky, at a very early age I became interested in fossils.
3. The discovery channel. need I say more? You either change the channel or your locked.

Television ..The Discovery Channel. I was however not allowed to watch these things. They might "corrupt my mind" ... I guess they did lol...This message has been edited by DC85, 06-09-2004 05:49 PM

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I have to admit that Television played a big part in sparking my interest in biology and in particular, anatomy. There was this new show that first appeared when I was about 12 or so. It was designed to catch the attention of young men and women just entering their teens and turn their attention towards anatomy. It was called The Mickey Mouse Club and certain succeeded.

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But what about the rest of you? What events and people most influenced you?

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In Search OfI loved that show and miss it to this day!!Also, my father always gave me science books as gifts. I still have them all: geology books, astronomy books, anthropology and archeology books, and my most favorite, "The World's Greatest Mysteries," (or something along those lines) where I read about the pyramids, the Tunguska impact, Atlantis, the discovery of Troy, Easter Island, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, the Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayans, Incas, the Nazca lines, and lots more.Growing up, we also spent a lot of time outdoors hiking and camping as well as gold panning. And I remember watching a lot of science shows on TV. I still remember watching The Cosmos - my dad was a huge fan of Carl Sagan.Not one of my friends in school had parents who gave them 'intellectual' books as gifts. I guess I owe my father a lot for leading me in the direction of science. I plan to do the same thing with my son.This message has been edited by roxrkool, 06-10-2004 12:12 AM

Great. And I hope your kids too learn to love the challenge and wonder.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

i believe i had my first fossil had around 6 or 7.i had my first experience gluing together a fossil shortly afterwards because kids at school are never careful with show-and-tell items, no matter how valuable.

I'll never forget Mr. Rosenberry. I went to a private school from 7th-10th grade. Mr. Rosenberry was an English teacher. He was born into wealth and never picked up his paychecks...another teacher joked about how the school secretary would complain and say "what am I supposed to do with these?" as she showed a stack of unclaimed checks by Walter. He tried to teach me the same impressive command of the English Language that he had cultivated through discipline and resolve, but I was too much of a rebellious little sot to listen to him until I was much older.My final memories are of him taking me to lunch and encouraging me in my volunteer work. If I would have asked, he would have given me money for my volunteering, but I never felt it was proper to ask him for anything.Walter was a truly memorable teacher and friend. Edited by Phat, : spelling

Archeology: back in the 4th grade 1957-58.Evolution: a small bit back in junior high but did not get the full effect until college.

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Somebody has been dredging up old threads I first heard of evolution in high school, where a substitute teacher mentioned it as a controversy. It sounded interesting, and was consistent with a lot of evidence. I left it as interesting and uncertain.My Zoology class as an undergraduate covered more. Again, interesting, but I wasn't majoring in biology so I didn't have to make a decision. I left it as interesting, plausible, but unsettled.It was when I read the Watson book (on Watson/Crick work), that I recognized how well everything fitted together. At that point, I considered evolution no longer controversial. However, I still find the neo-Darwinist account to be implausible - my experience as a mathematician tells me that the statistical filtering of neoDarwinism is too weak to account for the results it claims. I don't see this as a problem for evolution, since neodarwinism does seriously oversimplify the biology. There is enough going on biologically to fully account for evolution.Archeology, I first heard about in Church. And I was long dubious as to whether it was a real science. More recently, I have learned that there are archeologists who are not driven by religious motivations, and thus there is an objective scientific/historical component.

I remember being very young, probably between 4-6 years old, asking my mum where the first people came from. She explained in basic terms how men were descended from primates, to which I answered- "Ok, so men came from monkeys. Did god make women?"
She didn't say people decended from primates My dad did a geology degree so there had been fossils around the house since long before I was born. Guess that explains a fair bit

Unlike you lucky bastards, I grew up in a christian fundamentalist family and attended christian private school until high school. I had my first real biology class in 10th grade. There, I disrupted the class and argued with the teacher day after day because *gasp* she was teaching us about the theory of evolution. Man, was I delusional.I still had no clear idea what a fossil was by the time I entered college. I had this vague idea that fossils were just rocks that looked like things. Never really paid attention to them until much later.Anyway, as time went by, magic made less and less sense while evolution made more and more sense. So, second year in college I signed up for an evolutionary biology class and enjoyed it greatly. Molecular biology opened my mind more to the natural world. The more I read and studied these evil science stuff, the more I realized how small the gaps of magic were shrinking to. And then the rest was history.I was always a history buff. Instead of reading fiction novels like other people, I was reading history books. Anyway, despite the fact that one of my favorite subjects in history was the ancient world, I can't tell you anything about archeology. I can tell you about the various famous wars in the mediterranian during the hellenistic period, including but not limited to the peloponnesian wars and how they ultimately led to Sparta's demise as a civilization. I can tell you about the spring and autumn period in china and how it evolved into the 7 warring kingdoms (I can even tell you why it's called the spring and autumn period and who named it that way). I can tell you about the unification of India. I can tell you how Ancient Egypt split into the upper and lower kingdoms and how they were later reunified. And believe it or not, archeology never came up.Strange as it sounds, I still don't know jack about archeology.PS - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it suppose to be archaeology?

Both are correct.I grew up frequenting the university offices and labs where my dad taught biology and did research, and going on field trips to test out places he wanted to take his students. My hobby interest is archeology, but I can't remember when that started.Enjoy.

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I don't recall when I was introduced to evolution or archeology, but I vividly recall my introduction to the process of scientific investigation.In fifth grade I had a science teacher named Mr. Ulseth. One day in class, he read us the Jack London story To Build a Fire. He presented it to us, not as a work of fiction, but as a device to show how scientific investigation can proceed. He proposed that the story was true, and took us through it paragraph by paragraph and discussed how someone could reconstruct the events in the story after the fact. It was absolutely fascinating and something that stuck with me ever since. In fact, the exercise was so vivid in my mind that I began to wonder whether it really happened or I'd made it up.A few years ago, my school had a reunion/open house and invited anyone who had ever attended or taught at the school to stop by. As it so happened, when I dropped in Mr. Ulseth was there as well. He had long since retired, but he confirmed that he did indeed dissect the London story exactly as I remembered it. I thanked him for inspiring in me an interest in science.If anyone here is ever in a position to teach youngsters about science, I highly recommend Mr. Ulseth's approach. It takes a bit of imagination to come up with a way to reconstruct everything from the story, but the effect this exercise can have on children is remarkable. At least it was for me.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat