>   Two million years is a
>very long time and they have almost nothing to show for it. Their neolithic
>progeny accomplished more in 10 thousand years than they did in the 2
>million prior!

Is it so hard for you to imagine that you don't have to acomplish something
to be happy . just being and and aware of being by itself is selffulfilling.
Lot of us drived to do something could or are benefiting a lot from few
minutes of meditation every day.
It remind me of an accompt of some white person who spend a long time
studying the pygmees . they were spending a great amount of time just
sitting without saying a word. He got so bored that he almost had a nervous
breakdown, he could not stand it

>Why did they never find time to invent written language?

This same person asked them at one point why they were not talking during
one of  those sitting time. They laugh and assure him that they have been
communicating all the time .
It might strech little bit your understanding of what communication is
really about , but telepathy have been observed in a number of" primitive "
tribes . Animals too have a way of knowing that doesn't necessitate talking
or writing . I have raised horses free range and i can assure you that a
herd can respond to a sign of danger as one body without any "talking"
If you can read " the man who talk to horses" he say that wild mustangs are
and have to be silent in their communication but  domesticated horses
isolated in their boxes become very very talkative.

just observing a flock of birds how they move as one body in the sky or
school of fishes illustrate clearly that there is other means of
communicating over  than  talking or even less meaningfull , writing.( thru
that post for example you miss a lot on my intonations of voices , my
intentions etc... i am a bad writer too )
This all discussion show me how things are all seen  backward.
I wrote a post in the past about my experience of sleeping on hard ground in
India ( i was used to camping on a thin foam, but there it was bare packed
soil) and how it change my perception of  what confort.is
same kind of experience with cold when i spent 3 months in winter in the
rocky mountains skiing , i was not making fire at night because it was, as
a result , making me cold..
 without any source of heat i was producing my  own  heat way more
efficiently to the point  that when i had to enter a store to buy a new 10
day to 15 days supply of food , i could not stand the heat ( and supermarket
are often cold because of the freezers)

> Why did they never
>find time to invent complex musical intruments and write complex
> symphonies?

when one is depriving oneself from the music of nature or the peacefullness
of silence , one will go to great effort to create a substitute.

>Why did they never find time to learn to build complex homes?

Again when you feel at home in Nature what is the point of creating  an
isolated  insulated box . Every summer i slept in a tipi for 6 months when i
had the room for it  ( before i moved in the forest). i can report how i was
feeling very  weird to sleep  again for the winter in this insulated plastic
bag that was my house . i was feeling so deprived of so many connections
 sounds,  vibrations, smells and more subtil sensations).

If you ask me why i was coming back in the house for the winter i can tell
you that a tipi is not a dwelling suitable for the pacific north west
climate ( very wet ), the natives here lived in cedar houses, and my wife
doesn't have the same relationship with the wild elements that i have.

>I promise I will scream if anyone here suggests or implies that primitive
>people preferred to remain primitive because of some silly new-age
>philosophy that caused them to believe it would better to live forever in
>caves while subsisting on leaves and bugs and raw squirrel meat.

screaming is good to release the tensions created by the modern commodities.
go ahead !
They sure were too dumb to find better way of living  on their own ,they had
to learn it ( the hard way) from the neolithic colonisators.
The native peoples here and elsewhere are still not  completly relieved from
their crude existence ( their modern caves are  not so nice than the average
canadian home).
jean-claude