What does the underlined sentence imply?
Clearly, danced rituals did not seem like a waste of energy to prehistoric peoples. They took the time to fashion masks and costumes; they joyfully burned calories in the execution of the dance; they preferred to record these scenes over any other group activity. Thus anthropologist Victor Turner's attribution of danced ritual to an occasional, marginal, or liminal status seems especially unjustified in the prehistoric case — and more representative of the production-oriented mentality of our own industrial age than of prehistoric priorities. Surely these people knew hardship and were often threatened by food shortages, disease, and wild animals. But ritual of a danced and possibly ecstatic nature, was central to their lives. Perhaps only because our own lives, so much easier in many ways, are also so constrained by the imperative to work, we have to wonder why.
Hi
This text is from the book I study. I don't understand what the last sentence implies, Why the writer says "we have to wonder why" in the end? What does the writer want us to wonder?
Thank you very much.
Top answer
It means this. Perhaps only because our own lives, so much easier in many ways, are also so constrained by the imperative to work, we have to wonder why ritual of a danced and possibly ecstatic nature, was central to their lives.
- It means this.
- Perhaps only because our own lives, so much easier in many ways, are also so constrained by the imperative to work, we have to wonder why ritual of a danced and possibly ecstatic nature, was central to their lives.
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It means this.
Perhaps only because our own lives, so much easier in many ways, are also so constrained by the imperative to work, we have to wonder why ritual of a danced and possibly ecstatic nature, was central to their lives.
0The point here is that today - although our lives are much easier than prehistoric people's due to modern conveniences - our waking hours are nevertheless exhaustingly consumed by grinding 9-5 jobs, leaving us no time for ecstatic, celebratory dances. Yet, prehistoric peoples, with their lives constantly in danger from wild animals and other hardships we can't even begin to imagine, had time
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