Crossing the Rubicon

Photo by Szymon Michalczyk on Unsplash

Why does it matter what the land or people were like before now? Because firstly, we forget what things looked like so, so quickly, and this is like forgetting what a face looks like before it’s bloody, bruised and bleeding. It’s important to recall what health looks like. Secondly, we all know the old adage about failing to learn from history. How societies evolved is taken as a given: it’s conquest all the way. But that’s simply not the way it was, or has to be. There have been many, many societies in which people have met, and learned and lived with incomers without the old guard being annihilated. In fact, annihilation is the exception. The same is true of ideas. A new idea, like Galileo’s about the earth circling the sun, needn’t mean sun worship dies. In fact, sun salutations are my go to way to greet the day. However, Lanzarote provokes many questions on this front. Not least because the moon goddess, Tanit, is their most celebrated goddess. Note: goddess, not god. And that implies that the Phoenicians, the pioneers when it came to exploration of the seas, were here. Is it believable that the local people had no means or expertise in the art of seafaring, given their early contact with and possible colonisation by this tribe of ocean-faring expertise?