It's like dinosaurs. We can put them back together perfectly, bone for bone, but we don't know what they smelled like, what kind of sounds they made, or how big they really looked standing in the grass under all those fossil fern trees. Even the sunlight must have been different, and the wind. What can bones tell you about a kind of wind that doesn't blow anymore?
In "The Folk of the Air," Peter S. Beagle conveys the idea that while we can reconstruct ancient creatures, such as dinosaurs, with remarkable accuracy, there remain significant gaps in our understanding of their true existence. The statement highlights that knowing their physical structure is not enough; the sensory experiences and environmental context in which they lived are lost to us.
This metaphor emphasizes the limitations of skeletal remains when it comes to grasping the full reality of a species that has long vanished. The quote suggests that even elements like sound, scent, and other atmospheric conditions are unattainable, indicating that our understanding of the past is inevitably incomplete.
