Sentence cohesion: A dominant fact controlling our ancestors' thoughts and lives

[Linwings16]

Hi, can anyone helps me with this one paragrah? I need to analyze and re-write it with proper cohesion. The second paragrah is the one I wrote. Can anyone tell me a better way to re-write it? Thank you .

A dominant fact controlling our ancestors’ thoughts and lives was the vastness of the earth. The world was wide indeed in all earlier ages than ours, and no more than a tiny fraction of its immensity could ever be seen by any man. Infinity was a few hundred miles—a thousand at the most. In the virtual certainty that they would never meet again, only a lifetime ago, emigrating children were waved goodbye to by their parents.

A dominant fact controlling our ancestors’ thoughts and lives was the vastness of the earth. The earth was believed to be so wide that only a tiny fraction of its immensity could ever be seen by anyone. They used to believe a few hundred miles was an infinite distance. This misconception often caused the parents of emigrating children to believe they would never meet again.

[Mister Micawber]

Let me take your paragraph to demonstrate improved cohesion:

The vastness of the earth controlled our ancestors’ thoughts and lives: they believed that only a tiny fraction of its immensity could ever be seen, that a few hundred miles was an infinite distance, and that they and their emigrating children would never meet again.
_________________
Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's

[Linwings16]

Thank you very much. Mr. Micawber.
Here is another one that I am not sure about the cohesion. could you please tell me what is the better way to re-write it?

Being part of the very structure of space and time, the ultimate speed limit is the velocity of light. It will not handicap us too severely, within the narrow confines of the solar system, once we have accepted the delays of communication which it involves. These will amount to 20 hours -at the worst- the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto, the outermost planet.

Arthur Clarke- “We’ll Never Conquer Space”

My sentence: The velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit. This limit will not be a serious handicap in our solar system, once we accept the resulting communication delays. The longest delay will be 20 hours, which is the time is takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto.

[Mister Micawber]

Let's work from the original this time. My first example above was extreme. You do not want to lose all the adjectives and phrases which give colour and character to the writing; you need instead to focus on tying the structure of the paragraph together with conjunctions and subordinated modifiers :

Being part of the very structure of space and time, the ultimate speed limit is the velocity of light. It will not handicap us too severely, within the narrow confines of the solar system, once we have accepted the delays of communication which it involves. These will amount to 20 hours -at the worst- the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto, the outermost planet.

Part of the very structure of space and time, the ultimate speed limit is the velocity of light, which will be no great handicap within the narrow confines of the solar system, once we have accepted the delays in communication, amounting to 20 hours at the worst- the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of the outermost satellite, Pluto.
_________________
Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's