How did humans be around for 200,000 years and only got technology recently?

[andnowweknow]

Carbon isotopes can be found in remote places like Siberia that have almost no industrial activity, it's present in every land mass on earth.

correct

 

[andnowweknow]

I am not saying you are wrong but just that this topic requires further thought on my part. I have a hard time thinking there would be NO evidence of out civilization detectable by a society as advanced or more advance than we are but like I said- just need to think about it some more.

I have to think a cell phone would get found preserved in mud or a satellite would fall to the earth or be found in orbit or something.... It is a really neat thing to think about that is for sure.

@GalegoREB has pointed out the evidence that would be around from something that happened exactly like us. My issue with his point is that it wouldn't be noted as human with no other point of reference other than we know humans existed.

This isn't a criticism, but you need to look into how atmosphere would deal with a cell phone. Nothing resembling the cell phone proper would exist after a few centuries outdoors in a desert let alone a wet environment. With metals you have to take into account repurposing by other people and for the stuff that isn't repurposed it is eaten quickly by the environment.

There is probably a lot of stuff today that was built by a human population we don't currently recognize, it's identifying it as such that is the problem. We attribute what we see to what we know with corroborating evidence truly existed.

 

[Prefect]

Progress isn't linear
For the vast majority of that time, groups were isolated from each other
Hard to build an airplane when you're being chased by a tiger
Earth is only 6k years old

You had me until you said the earth is only 6k years old.

Progress in my opinion hinges oddly on very distict advancements. This is going to sound cheesy but all those key achievements in the Civ games were big deals. Pottery, glassmaking, printing press, alphabets, algebra, calculus, public education, antibiotics, sterilization , vaccinations. Hell, advancements just in medicine have doubled to trippled people's lifespans. Advancements and agriculture have reduced the time people need to work for food tremendously. We ate living in an age were most people in the first world have only wants, not needs. That said, most people in the world still have very poor standards of living. Around half the world population resides in China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. The rural parts of those counties are over 100 years behind the rest of the world.

 

[ralphc1]

It's definitely a developed understanding of 3D/Spatial reasoning -- without question, but uses the technological implements of the day. It's not like he had a laser to do the alignment.

Look at this way, Michelangelo lived 550 yrs ago and sculpted the David out of one piece of stone. Not only is no one know able to do it, they wouldn't even attempt it. They make knock offs of the David in Tuscany today with a team of sculptors who do nothing but sculpt parts of the David all day, every day. They make it in pieces and use lasers as guides and then assemble it. When asked whether they could sculpt it from one piece of stone the modern day sculptors just laugh. Just because Michelangelo was able to sculpt the David 550 yrs ago doesn't mean renaissance Italy had advanced technology (other than plumbing, and simple machines).

There have been many sculptors before and since Michelangelo who have made statues every bit as good as The David. Sculptures were made in wax then cast in terra cotta. Some used a framework placed around the model and a corresponding larger size around the larger block to measure from. Some use a boom fastened to the top of the model and a string and plumb bob to measure from. We have different methods to measure these days. Where ancients might use a piece of string on the model and wrap that back on itself four times if the finl piece is four times as large.

Here is a video of a modern sculptor who makes a model in clay then copies it in stone using very little modern technology.

 

[ralphc1]

It's like animals in a zoo. Most animals live longer in zoos than they do in the wild but I have a strong feeling that any chimp, gorilla, or elephant would take life in the jungle, mountain, and savannah even with the dangers that come with that life.

Humans weren't meant to carry water buckets and hoe fields and pick weeds for 12 hours a day under the hot sun. A hunter gatherer spending their day roaming around picking berries, mushrooms, catching a rabbit or something, and occasionally fighting with a neighboring clan would be much happier. Hunter gatherers that have been studied in the 19th and 20th centuries had almost zero suicides and all report to be extremely happy despite having almost no possessions. Which makes perfect sense because they are living lives in tune with the way the human body was designed for.

The human body wasn't designed for anything. If it was, it's a piss poor design. The spine is better suited to walking on all four limbs like apes. A broken tooth can kill us.

 

[franklinstower]

@GalegoREB has pointed out the evidence that would be around from something that happened exactly like us. My issue with his point is that it wouldn't be noted as human with no other point of reference other than we know humans existed.

This isn't a criticism, but you need to look into how atmosphere would deal with a cell phone. Nothing resembling the cell phone proper would exist after a few centuries outdoors in a desert let alone a wet environment. With metals you have to take into account repurposing by other people and for the stuff that isn't repurposed it is eaten quickly by the environment.

There is probably a lot of stuff today that was built by a human population we don't currently recognize, it's identifying it as such that is the problem. We attribute what we see to what we know with corroborating evidence truly existed.

I cant accept that nothing remaining would be recognizable by humans as human or at least as built by someone. A cell phone or a rubber duck frozen in ice and then found is not going to be thought of as a natural phenomenon. Obviously.

 

[ralphc1]

The Trilithon and the Stone of the Pregnant Woman are at the absolute max ends of our largest, most sophisticated crane technology for weight. And the Romans "did it with pulleys and counterweights...and manpower. I almost feel ashamed that this is the answer we get when it stresses our technology today, which everyone agrees is vastly advanced compared to that of ancient Rome.

They would be nowhere near the the absolute ends of our crane technology. he Trilithon stones are estimated to be 350 tons. The Stone of the Pregnant Woman is estimated at 1,000 tons. There are any number of cranes capable of lifting it.

 

[andnowweknow]

They would be nowhere near the the absolute ends of our crane technology. he Trilithon stones are estimated to be 350 tons. The Stone of the Pregnant Woman is estimated at 1,000 tons. There are any number of cranes capable of lifting it.

Ok...

But "the Romans did it" is the problem.

Also, our cranes aren't designed with the proper rigging apparatus for lifting giant handleless stones.

 

[ShinkanPo]

People are actually stupid imagine how stupid people are back then.

 

[Phr3121]

Doesnt that guy argue that sedentary civilization always beats a nomadic one and that a people with a more fertile land will also win?

Yes, I believe so.

 

[French Canadian]

Yes, I believe so.

How does that account for things like the Greeks that lives in inhospitable lands founding a great civilization and eventually conquering places of great agricultural power ? And nomads like the Mongolians ?
In fact, there as been a completely opposite interpretation of history, namely that a State is formed when nomad invaders stop raiding and install taxes instead. Such interpetations are easily made by cherry-picking facts throughout history. History is non-linear.
I get what the author of Guns wanted to do though, it is noble. He wanted to have a purely environmental interpretation of history : not having to say "x people got there because they were suporior", just say "x people got there because they were at the right place".

 

[Phr3121]

How does that account for things like the Greeks that lives in inhospitable lands founding a great civilization and eventually conquering places of great agricultural power?

I don't think Greece is an inhospitable place.

I get what the author of Guns wanted to do though, it is noble. He wanted to have a purely environmental interpretation of history: not having to say "x people got there because they were suporior", just say "x people got there because they were at the right place".

Well, you have to take into account the 'guns', 'germs', and 'steel' portion of the writing. It is not a perfect theory. Canada, Brazil, , Russia, and China fall outside the boundaries on the map. I don't know that it is so much environmental as other factors. I would add oil, and railroad to the equation. Steel brought about guns and warfare. Germs killed off a good chunk of humans and strengthened the gene pool. Survival of the fittest - selective breeding.

 

[skysolo]

This is mind blowing to me. So supposedly we were around for 200,000 years and the most advanced stuff we invented was farming, bows and arrows, a wheel, swords, and shields?

Technology is not just electronics.

The first wheel is technology. Being able to make fire from sticks is technology. Putting a sharp rock on a stick is technology.

 

[Fungoose]

I am not saying you are wrong but just that this topic requires further thought on my part. I have a hard time thinking there would be NO evidence of out civilization detectable by a society as advanced or more advance than we are but like I said- just need to think about it some more.

I have to think a cell phone would get found preserved in mud or a satellite would fall to the earth or be found in orbit or something.... It is a really neat thing to think about that is for sure.

If you think about it it would only take finding one thing that requires high tech to prove the existence of our civilization. I find it very hard to believe that NOTHING would ever be found.

We occasionally find stuff that we can’t really explain. Ancient battery systems, structures that aren’t congruent with technology of the time they were supposedly built, sandaled footprints dated well before human were thought to exist, etc.

 

[Seano]

We haven't been white for 200,000 years.

 

[Loiosh]

 

[Jimmy Jazz]

People are actually stupid imagine how stupid people are back then.

 

[andnowweknow]

I cant accept that nothing remaining would be recognizable by humans as human or at least as built by someone. A cell phone or a rubber duck frozen in ice and then found is not going to be thought of as a natural phenomenon. Obviously.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

 

[French Canadian]

I don't think Greece is an inhospitable place.



Well, you have to take into account the 'guns', 'germs', and 'steel' portion of the writing. It is not a perfect theory. Canada, Brazil, , Russia, and China fall outside the boundaries on the map. I don't know that it is so much environmental as other factors. I would add oil, and railroad to the equation. Steel brought about guns and warfare. Germs killed off a good chunk of humans and strengthened the gene pool. Survival of the fittest - selective breeding.

For creating an empire Greece is not so good - Macedonia either. Full of mountains and land is not as fertile as in the Levant - which they conquered. For example, Athens at to colonize other regions for their cereal supply. They had no way of doing enough production for themselves. Pretty early on, on a lot of places in Greece there was stenochoria.

 

[franklinstower]

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

That scripture has absolutely nothing to do with my post, not even tangentially... let alone that fact that it has nothing to do with anyone's post in this thread. There is no theologian anywhere that thinks Ecclesiastes is making any statements AT ALL about technological advancement. Instead is is a somewhat fatalistic philosophy on the futility of human endevour...