A Hit or a Myth?

A blog post with little metal detecting content …

Human beings wouldn’t be human if they didn’t question the world about them. Many thousands of years ago, men must have looked out of their caves and wondered about what they saw. What made the lightning flash? Where did the wind come from?

Man wondered about himself, too. Why did he get sick sometimes and eventually die? Who first taught him to use fire?

There must have been any number of questions but there were no answers. These were the days before science, before men had learned to experiment in order to determine the how’s and why’s of the universe. So what he did was to invent what seemed to be the most logical answers. Every group of human beings made up such stories . . . and foremost in excellence were the ancient Greeks. They were a lively, imaginative people with great literary talents and they made up the most fascinating tales that they called ‘mythos’, a Greek word that simply means ‘tale’ or ‘story’. The myth!

Here’s an example. Let’s begin, as the Greeks did, with the beginning . . . they imagined that the universe was composed of completely mixed and confused matter. Nothing had shape or form; raw material out of which nothing had yet been made. They called this raw material Chaos. And, of course, we still use the word today to express anything that is in confusion and disorder, even if it’s just my wife’s description of my study with all its contents scattered about.

When things with form and shape were created out of Chaos the result was Cosmos, the Greek word meaning ‘order’ and ‘good arrangement’. We often refer to the universe as the ‘cosmos’.

These words come into play in other ways, too. I have two sisters and when I lived at home it was sometimes difficult to use the bathroom – especially if they were going out on a date. Since cosmos means good arrangement, the powder, lipstick, mascara and other means of putting a face into better arrangement are called ‘cosmetics’ – one of the derivatives of the word – and, sure enough, having seen them enter the bathroom in total chaos, used the make-up and exited, they had certainly formed Cosmos out of a Chaos.

So, all very interesting, but a load of Greek to me, I hear you say – what has all this to do with metal detecting? Nothing, really … just fancied writing about something different! 

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My mate Dave challenged me to relate this post to metal detecting …

“When I used to go detecting, most of my muddy finds were placed in my pouch for closer inspection later. This can be regarded as a state of utter CHAOS.
At home I removed the crud, gently cleaned and made an ID if possible. With some of the better finds I framed and presented to the farmer. What I did in effect, was to create COSMOS from the untidy mess I had in the first place.

With the Coronavirus still creating CHAOS all around the world, we haven’t yet reached stability ( COSMOS ). Although liberties are slowly being restored for some, wrinklies with medical problems are considered ‘vulnerable’ and remain sheltered until the end of the month. Will we ever return to our previous state of COSMOS? I doubt it!

JW