Global communication, pre-internet

Long before the Internet – before telephones or telegraph or radio – global communication took place.

I recently watched ”Cosmos,” a 30-some-year-old series on the mysteries of the natural world. One of the episodes visited the world of whales. I learned that decades — centuries — ago, whales were able to communicate at distances up to 15,000 kilometers via deep channels in the ocean. I had to look up kilometer because I had the measles the week my class learned measurements and measurements have been a mystery to me ever since. My dictionary says a kilometer is .621 mile. So 15,000 kilometers is…well, my calculator is across the room, but I think 15,000 kilometers can be rounded off to “a long way.”

In other words, whales could manage the equivalent of global texting when humans still needed paper, ink and weeks on a boat. Over the last couple of decades, humankind has finally developed expensive technology that can do what whales are capable of naturally.

By the 1970s when “Cosmos” came out, damage to our oceans had reduced the deep channels by which whales communicated; at that time, those the whales’ long-distance capability had been whittled down to a few hundred kilometers. 

I wonder if whales can communicate with each other at all today.

If they’d been graced with earth’s most marvelous brainpower, would whales or lions or elephants or camels risk destroying their world? Are we really as smart as we think?

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