Snake oil came first. By a likely ~ +50k years

I find it interesting re the the path into professionalism.

We had this separate oddity, the thinking man, exploring, being different, being separated out, and so on. People always bringing that shaman the difficult questions. Not specifically looked up to, maybe even feared in some cases, but considered the ’designated expert’. The very first pro trial witness brought to the court.

One might consider that this was the pattern that emerged.

And that the shaman was exploring ways to expand the mind, to find the new, to be that new and so on.

Meter, memory, measurement, observation, record, all of that flowed from the shaman. Astrology and human observation, recognition of patterns in people, the weather, the world.

Then came numbers, geometry and so on. That the scientific method came from that odd person out in the tribe. Medicine, etc. And the drugs, the poultices, quite likely.

And the problem of the shaman always being right when sometimes he is wrong, but it is not recognized by the tribe. This is a standard human problem, or scenario.. that exists to this day. Trust in science, when science gets it wrong. The overall intent driven by desires that generally contain integrity, helps correct things, eventually.

The hero’s tale, re Joseph Campbell, the ingraining of this into the scenario of the shaman and connections of such in the group. That the hero’s tale is tied to being scared by the predator in the bushes and is a basic fear and relief story, where the hero has to win, to be able to record the tale.

This becomes instinct, over hundreds of thousands of years, which is why the hero’s tale exists deep inside all of us. Natural selection shapes the physical neural aspects of baseline psychology. (this would be pre shaman, most likely, but not spoken, not recorded until the shaman comes along)
The origins of class, separation, entitlement, religion, torsional and twisting stresses of the emergent culture and society, etc.

You can’t remove the shaman and then see a modern world, period. IMO.

It would be something else, we don’t see and would not know how to recognize, it would be alien to us. Humanity would be of a different shape, and possibly by quite a bit. It might not have happened at all.

No driving force or system of note, record, and collation, the library itself... to cause and be expansion of consciousness and world view. The shaman as living book of history and world, and so on.

We are wired to strive for order, to keep the group coherent, and to get upset when our autonomous pattern of existence is threatened. We are forced, under duress... to bring our temporary ’high energy use’ system on line :the evolving complex brain.

To find the solution that helps us complete the hero’s tale of escaping the jaws of death. the shaman can cut both ways, to offer comforts (defined rigor of religion), or offer up scary tales, scary answers. The shaman as the psychical embodiment of the pressures that are evolution itself.

That science, this evolution of the shaman, can try to offer comforts (defined rigors of religion, ie engineering--the literal embodiment of the desire to not be eaten by the animal), or the dangers and issues of difference, which is the new ’to be explored’ in science.....the use and taxing of the intellect. The intellect... which exists solely for that purpose. Literally.

The shaman as the embodiment of group focus and intent, and of course, more....what we see as complexities in life today, arises from those earliest scenarios. Things we rarely put voice to. Autonomous aspects.

I think those are all possible explanations for the development of knowledge but I also think there are serious gaps in the historical record to assume that was a de facto scenario across all cultures and situations. Of course, some of that depends on how broadly 'shaman' is defined.

I think an equally good argument could be made that in some cultures, or even sub-cultures, shamanism has kept them in the dark rather than extracting them from it. 

Of course 'science' can do the same thing.

If one really follows through with what goes on, in these modern extrapolations of the old and origins, we find some interesting things.

It’s a bit of a logic leap or a very long set of dominoes to analyses..but..what it comes down to is that People like Geoff, are the ones doing all the heavy lifting in the directions of new. Like the shaman.

And Geoff will get all the lighting strikes of derision thrown at him and derives none to little of any benefit from fallout.

And the silence on the now, of some, will become their benefit in the future, when they utilize the cleared grounds that people like Geoff have done all the heavy lifting on.

A well known example is Alan Turing. Jack Parsons was an oddity to say the least, but modern space exploration can’t and wouldn’t exist without him.

Thousands of examples of the same exist in the record. It’s almost the norm. I’m trying to be polite. It is the norm itself.

" “When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." --Jonathan Swift.

Let’s be clear, I’m not calling Geoff genius, nor am I calling him a bozo, re the Sagan quote. ( “But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” -Carl Sagan)

It is discernment the capacity for such, that can make distinctions... and realize that there is no need for vitriol. It takes some minimal talent to exist in comfort, not strong emotions injected into reason. As that..is not reason. When you see the vitriol, you generally see some limit of an intellect being announced to all. That..in the end, the physical body rules the mental equation.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/genius

This thread follows the pattern. Professional help advised.