Whatever one might say about human nature, since the Stone Age our ancestors have journeyed through a lot of changes in mindset and ways of doing things. Change is what history is about. We don't think the way our ancestors did. And our thoughts and thought processes differ from that of humans during the Middle Ages, the 16th through the 19th century -- even the 20th century.

In many ways we are like other creatures. We have held on to biological attributes necessary to survive. But we humans are also creative. Our ancestors invented stories about how the world around them worked. We humans invented new ideas, and we have had more of an ability to mess with our environment beyond digging holes and building nests.

In the beginning, our ancestors understood the world around them even less than we do today. Like children today they asked fundamental questions, and the answers they devised and put into stories were limited by their ability to understand it. They were able to understand the animals they hunted and which plants poisoned them, and they could identify characteristics of members of their clan or tribe.

From earliest times, people saw events as the work of agents with a human-like will. The sun moved, they believed, because it had a will. The sun, they believed was a god. They invented stories about creation and some within their small societies took up trying to communicate with spirits and to influence the spirits.

Our ancestors got by moving from camp to camp, hunting game and harvesting food that grew wild. When one society came upon another their was fright and distrust. They considered their own little society as "the people," but strangers were viewed as different. There were no scientifically established categories that differentiated between humans and beasts, and strangers that they met they feared might be demonic beasts -- the beginning of inter-societal relations (before there were international relations).

Sometimes violence broke out between societies that came upon one another -- hit-and-run operations rather than conquests. Early societies were run largely by warriors.

People began herding, and gardening grew into farming with hunting to supplement the food supply. The new ways of getting by were accompanied by new attitudes, new gods and new insecurities. There were now fertility gods that had to be begged and pleased. And gods became more than helpers. Gods were seen as holding back in displeasure and as punishing. Gods were authorities. With the larger population that came with more food there were famines when flooding or droughts came and harvests failed. There were rituals to please the gods, such as scapegoating. And there were sacrifices, the sending of gifts to the gods in the form of spirits -- spirits sent to the Great Spirit -- in other words, human sacrifice, a common practice in ancient times after people left hunting and gathering as a way of life.

The sharing of food diminished, and land was divided among individuals. Some were more successful at farming and dominated larger pieces of land. They became the aristocrats. And to protect themselves from the poor they formed authoritarian cliques and supported armed men to defend their wealth and person.

There were livestock and crops to steal. Conquest replaced raids and other temporary clashes between peoples. The conquered could be turned into slaves -- as the Spartans did to the Helots. And capturing a person during war could bring a profit by selling him into slavery.

Conquest produced authoritarian rulers with domains called empires. The conquerors -- emperors -- ruled in the name of their gods, said to be the driving force and the actual victors of war. Gods had changed from friendly providers to war gods. And views of god and attendant rituals -- religions -- were changing in other ways. Gods were becoming personal as well as tribal.

The oldest religion of the religions of civilization, was among those that changed. Hinduism became hierarchical. Then its focus on animal sacrifice diminished. It became philosophical with the Upanishads, and some other Hindus turned to a more simple behavior-based spirituality. And Buddhism arose out of Hinduism's failures.

The Greeks worshipped gods of the poets Homer and Hesiod, and a diffusion of religious ideas traveled with trading. Zoroastrianism arose among the Persians and became associated with the Persian empire. The Persian ruler Cyrus II freed Hebrew priests held captive by the Chaldeans at Babylon, and the Persians permitted the captives to return to Jerusalem -- a part of Persia's new empire -- where the Yahweh worshipping Hebrew priests established Judaism.

The Jews remained friendly with the Zoroastrian overlords. Judaism was authoritarian and apparently influenced by Zoroastrianism, and like much of the rest of what had become civilization it was subject to divisions and conflict. The uniformity of belief that had existed in small tribal societies had given way to diverse influences.

There was a notion common to different cultures about the the cleansing properties of emersions in water -- in ancient Egypt long before John the Baptist. And transformations in the character of religious personages had been taking place long before the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis acquired a new status as a healing goddess.

Judaism was monotheistic and so too was its offshoot, Christianity, which developed within the Roman Empire.

The great religions described as monotheist transformed the gods of ancient polytheists into angels, demons, and personages with supernatural powers. Ancient Hebrews are today described as having had statues of the wife of Jehovah -- a goddess -- and they had Satan and other angels. Pagans brought with them into Christianity gods that took the form of angels and personages of magic. In ancient Rome, what mattered from the Christian point of view was to whom people prayed, and those who had prayed to pagan gods for rain and for bestowing fertility upon women began praying to Christian saints. Many peasants who had venerated a pagan female guardian of grain had transferred that veneration to a new guardian and creator of their grain: Mary, the mother of Jesus.

It was an age of empire -- of rule by force. Empires didn't last as long as religions. Empires often disintegrated after being weakened by conflicts within ruling families -- largely over succession of power following a ruler's death. Sometimes disputes over succession led to civil wars. And subject peoples were inclined to take advantage of weakness at the empire's center to break away. And contributing to the fall of empires was the fact that empires were not nations. Often, with good reason, emperors distrusted their conquered subjects, and they did not have the support from within their empire to counter military intrusions. The Roman Empire disintegrated with its inability to adequately organize a defense against armies from outside its borders.

Wars between the remnant of the Roman Empire, centered at Constantinople, and the great Persian Empire weakened both. A new empire expanded against them: Islam arose from a monotheistic tradition and borrowed from Judaism and Christianity, and, as did Jews and Christians, Muslims believed in spirits such as angels and demons -- which they called Jinns. And although its founder, the Prophet Muhammad, looked to Islamic brotherhood for political stability, Islam was also subject to divisions and conflicts. Uniformity of thought was not an enduring capability among the civilized.

Muslims considered territorial expansion as a part of Islam. They warred for booty and they joined the wars for authority over territory that plagued the Middle Ages and the early centuries of modern times.

Meanwhile, science was developing, and empires were developing into nation-states. States warred against each other and made treaties. In Europe, people fought wars over differences of religious belief, until it was finally realized, among the Dutch and English at any rate, that diversity had to be tolerated.

Science depended on more tolerance and the freedom to question. What came to be known as the Enlightenment was a change from dogmatism to a freedom to question. Science benefited from innovations in technology, and changes in technology, including the telescope and microscope, benefited science. These changed societies, including new relationships among people. More power went to commercial tradesmen. The middle classes grew in size, wealth and influence. A culture of capitalism arose. Biblical admonitions about wealth and money lending were ignored as never before. In this new age of questioning, new ideas developed regarding political freedom. The political power of the aristocracy -- which had been land based -- diminished, and the aristocracy began melding through intermarriage with people whose wealth came from trade.

People with the power of wealth did not want to remain subject to the whims of those aristocrats who were authoritarian monarchs. These were the inheritors of old military conquests, cultural and political tradition and opportune marriages from which they had fraudulently proclaimed superiority. And they claimed their right to rule as agents God -- the divine right of kings. England's influential philosopher, John Locke, defied this tradition, rejecting the Divine Right of Kings. He went secular politically and favored rule as a social contract.

Much of what was in the U.S. Constitution, including its Bill of Rights, was borrowed from ideas that arose in the mother country England. It was part of the age of questioning -- the Enlightenment -- rather than an age of authority. People were changing history by changing their institutions.

The institution of slavery remained, but the Founding Fathers did not expect those who came after them to stop thinking and questioning. They left open opportunities to change the Constitution through amendments.

In the new age of questioning, people learned of micro-organisms, and micro-organisms replaced evil spirits as agents of malevolence. In this age of science some would conclude that the earth was much older than the Book of Genesis claimed, and, with this, some accepted the idea of human evolution. Some others stayed with the belief that Genesis was the word of God. Eventually, into the 21st century, they might accept gene mutations as applied to micro-organisms, flies and such but not to a development across millions of years that gave rise to those we call human beings.

Not only was science taking questions of physical health from religious considerations -- as had the ancient Greek, Hippocrates -- unlike during Middle Ages, leading composers were writing symphonies and sonatas rather than just ecclesiastic music. Rather than just building churches and religious monuments, architects were being commissioned to build museums, libraries and other public buildings. Secular newspapers were becoming more influential. Works of literary fiction were uncovering personalities and the character of people rather than praising the Lord. Back in the 1500s, more than just expecting people to go to church, Christian communities had been compelling church attendance, and people were expelled from their community for non-conformity in religious belief. But by 1789 there was in Europe and the United States the enforcement of rights apart from the powers of religious authorities.

In the late 1800s, European powers in competition with each other were expanding their rule across the seas. And from Vienna an old fashioned monarch, Franz Joseph, was fighting to maintain his authority over Czechs, Hungarians, some Italians, Serbs and others. Conflicts over who should rule where remained. Humanity was in general intelligent but intelligent people could do stupid things as individuals and collectively. The collective stupidity going into the twentieth century was in following the tradition of ruling over people who did not accept that rule -- imperialism. It was a stupidity made more powerful by technology. It appeared in 1914 in Emperor Franz Joseph's conflict with Orthodox Serbs, who wanted to be free of foreign, Roman Catholic rule, and this led to the most devastating of wars to that time.

The Germans entered World War I viewing their effort as primarily a defense against an attack by Russia and Russia's ally, France. The inability of people to meld their interpretations into an agreement played a terrible havoc on the world: the British and French portrayed Germany as the aggressor. And there was the power of mass opinion. People like Germany's monarch, Wilhelm II, wanted an early negotiated settlement but gave in to mass opinion. In 1917, as the war continued, mass opinion deprived Tsar II his power. Power fell instead to an organized block that appealed to mass discontent: the Bolsheviks, led by V.I. Lenin.

The small-mindedness of the nations that won the Great War resulted in an inequitable settlement of the war that was signed at Versailles. Pope Benedict XV described the settlement as a "consecration of hatred" and a "perpetuation of war." The horror of World War I had diminished enthusiasm for war. The belief that war was spiritually uplifting -- believed by the late Teddy Roosevelt -- was greatly diminished. A pacifism and anti-militarism developed among those on the winning side that would, ironically, contribute to the coming of another war. Resentment of Versailles and economic depression among the defeated Germans resulted in election victories for a body of Germans dedicated to the overthrow of the Versailles Treaty.

The intention of those who forced the Versailles Treaty on the Germans was justice, but the imperialism of the so-called victors -- the same belief in empire that contributed to the creation of World War I -- continued to make mischief in the world. In Asia, the Japanese continued a brutal rule over the Koreans. The Japanese attempted to dominate the Chinese. They sought to push the Western powers out of Asia and to put themselves at the head of a campaign that they called "Asia for the Asians." The Japanese allied themselves with another imperial power: fascist Italy. And these two aggressive powers allied themselves with a newly fascist and revanchist Germany. Many if not most Germans dreaded another war, but they were obedient and seduced into supporting war by their leader's successes. Here was another national hero, der fuehrer, like Napoleon, taking his nation and the world into the pit.

Winning the war took more than talented military men, good engineers and the will of leaders who thought their nation possessed superior genes. Germany and Japan lost their wars because their adversaries had more manufacturing capacity and manpower than they.

Various nations opposed to Hitler's aggressions joined together in what was called the United Nations, led by the major victorious powers. The U.N. Charter declared against wars of aggression and against wars that violated international agreements. It declared against genocide, enslavement and deportations. Articles 42 and 43 authorized the use of armed force to maintain international peace and security. Articles 55 and 56 required that "all members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action" to promote "universal respect for, and observance and protection of, all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."

President Roosevelt wanted the U.N. to be able to put a force in action on a moments notice in order to enforce the ideals expressed in the Charter. But member nations failed to agree to the creation of such a force. The U.N. was destined to be an advocate of international law but something less than a world parliament with the power to govern. Member nations did not want to surrender sovereignty to a world parliament. The most influential member nations -- on the ruling Security Council -- created the veto for fellow Security Council members.

Conflicts between empire and nationalism lived on, complicated by hostilities between the Soviet Union, a new Communist China, and the capitalist West led by the United States. Stalin wanted safety for his brand of socialism and for his rule. He had labeled Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union as a capitalist assault. After the war he still believed that socialism and capitalism were in a life and death struggle, that capitalism would crash again, sometime in the 1960s, and fight back with assault on the Soviet Union. The U.S. and its allies stood up against Stalin in Berlin, and Stalin backed down. The United Nations and the Korean War put a check on Stalin's ally -- and creation -- North Korea.

Communist leaders who followed Stalin continued to fear U.S. intentions to destroy their socialist way of life, but they wanted "peaceful co-existence" -- interpreted by some anti-Communists as a distraction from recognition of a communist attempt at world conquest.

Anti-Communists, meanwhile, were viewing the old conflict between empire and nationalism as basically a struggle between "freedom" and communism. They were correct in their view of the leadership in North Vietnam against French colonialism as more than just nationalists. They were in fact Communists, but they were also fighting for freedom from foreign intrusions. The Vietnamese who followed the French in power in Saigon also claimed to be nationalists. Many of them, including Saigon's military, had a history of being on the side of French colonialism, and they were viewed by many Vietnamese as on the side of a foreign force trying to control events in Vietnam: the United States. In the civil war in Vietnam that side won that benefited most from peasant sentiments against the old landlords that the Saigon regime had supported and that benefited most from nationalist sentiments.

China remained as a power led by Communists. Cuba was also politically communist. Some Muslim countries had suppressed or executed many of their Communists for no reason other than what they believed -- with little complaint from libertarians in the United States. Americans had little awareness of it.

Capitalism combined with a degree of welfare benefits lived on. The economies of the capitalist nations were changing. In the U.S. bread trucks no longer drove through neighborhoods. Milk was no longer put at people's front doors. Mom and pop hardware stores were being replaced by national franchises. Restaurant franchises were also growing. One-stop mega-stores were replacing the small stores on Main Street. And there was the computer revolution and new companies that were champions of innovation.

The Soviet Union disintegrated. Some believed that Communists would never surrender power without being overpowered militarily. But it didn't work that way. A leader had come to power in the Soviet Union who remained a dedicated Communist and wanted his nation's economy to function better. In the Soviet Union, attempts at economic reform had failed, and Gorbachev tried mass incentives called perestroika and glasnost. Goodwill, he believed, was necessary in making the economy work better. Gorbachev believed in democracy -- self-rule and choice. Marxism, after all, was supposed to be about freedom and democracy (for working people). In December, 1988, Gorbachev announced in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that by 1991 he intended to pull Soviet tanks and troops out of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Peoples in these places were encouraged. Communist rule there and in Poland collapsed. And it collapsed in Albania, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Going into the 21st century no one was bad-mouthing democracy as some had in the 1920s and 1930s. And it was widely recognized that those economies worked best that dispersed a lot of economic decision-making from the confines of a centralized bureaucracy -- more free market economics. Communist China had opened itself to the world of international investing -- what Mao Zedung had called the capitalist road. And they did well with it while hanging a lot of state-run enterprises.

Another change was reflected in the word "empire" having become a dirty word for almost all of the world. Blood was still shed in border disputes, and some were confusing empire with hegemony. But colonialism was dead. There were those who had acquired power and positions who enjoyed its benefits and were interested in continuing their privileges however much it was a violation of democracy. But there was more of a sense of community among nations than there had been in the 1920s and 1930s. In general, nations wanted to get along with their neighbors for the sake of commerce if for no other reason.

There were also those who could be called rogue rulers. There was the war between Iran and Iraq and a variety of conflicts that led to military skirmishes. And the Middle Ages returned in 1979 with revolution in Iran.

The world had changed in other ways. In 1945 there was something like two billion people in the world. In 2010 that number was approaching seven billion. There had been many discoveries in medicine and advances in agricultural science. For awhile an agricultural revolution produced food faster than population growth, but it didn't last. The world has returned to the old conflict between that availability of food and population size -- a conflict between nature and a right to life -- while, among some of the world's more affluent, people are eating too much.

Speaking of distribution of wealth, since World War II the world has changed a lot in the more industrialized countries in a distribution of opportunity. Children from families whose history was laboring and modest income have new opportunities in education and employment. There is a new upward mobility. Favorable positions are no longer the preserve of an elite class. Such was not always the case, however, in nations that are not as yet economically developed and mature democracies.

Modern communications have diminished confusions about how much races differ from each other. The variety that exists among peoples of a race or ethnic group have greater recognition. In other words, there was more of an inclination to judge people as individuals and a belief in equal opportunity. The belief that humanity is in a Darwinistic racial struggle has largely ended with World War II, along with the belief in a Darwinistic national struggle and the viewing of non-Germanic Europeans as dangerous Asiatics.

But what there is in an new egalitarianism has not help with the greater demand and impact that more people are having on the environment. A new competition for land and resources such as water has developed. The leap in population growth has created a crowding that leaves places of physical beauty more for those of who can buy what has become more expensive real estate. In places, the poor found themselves in crowded slums or boring and drab urban grids with a dearth of trees and space.

Societies remain diverse in opinion. Consensus came to end when small and isolated isolated tribal societies melded into am interacting world. Mature democracies allow the free expression of diverse ideas and and religious worship -- the latter so long as that worship does not include practices that violate established secular laws. The authoritarian societies of biblical times have not prevailed. Individuals are no longer murdered as scapegoats to pay for the sins of the community. There are few who think as people did in the Middle Ages and wanted to burn alive those who do not think as they do.

The fight against terrorists rather than wars between states has become the drama of today's world, alongside disasters created by earthquakes, too much rain and not enough rain.

There is also the intellectual conflict between believers in the supernatural and non-believers, or naturalists, that took off in the 1800s. The argument has changed somewhat in the last century. Among the believers in the supernatural are those called "creationists" who cannot accept what they call accident in the natural world, and they want to combine science and the supernatural. Non-believers see science as putting together working hypotheses, and they see science and themselves as working for comprehension that is short of complete knowledge about interconnections in the natural world. They are more modest than the supernaturalists by recognizing their inability to grasp the whole of reality.

This brings us to today as a point in a span of thousands of years of change. The society we live in is dominated by a particular cultural tradition or, perhaps, consists of a variety of cultural traditions. Some of these traditions have a longer history that others, but all of them have undergone change across a long span of time, and today we differ in the extent that we choose to abide by our tradition of choice. Change is disturbing, but it continues as we wrestle with circumstance and ideas and as we make choices.