4 ms·
The point is that they didn't even know what electricity was. If they saw a spark they wouldn't think, "Oh, high voltage", but rather "Must be supernatural, or
by topmonk 9y ago
The point is that they didn't even know what electricity was. If they saw a spark they wouldn't think, "Oh, high voltage", but rather "Must be supernatural, or a holy light"
- matte_black 9y agoExactly this. Today we don’t think much about electricity, we take it for granted but at least know it’s dangerous.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoSee my reply to topmonk.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoAncient people were not as stupid as you think. They knew that lightning was dangerous. More to the point, they knew that fire was dangerous--ball lightning resembles a floating orb of sun-bright fire, and any human will instinctively avoid such a thing. Historical phenomena later believed to be ball lightning were usually described at the time as "balls of fire." https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ball_lightning https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ball_lightning
- matte_black 9y agoI don’t think Ancient people were stupid, they just didn’t have access to certain knowledge yet.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoYou're imagining that because they didn't know why something was happening, they were incapable of reacting to it in any rational way. You don't need a working theory of electricity to know that fire and lightning are dangerous.