I find the process of civilisation fascinating. As far as we know modern man, homo sapiens arrived on the planet, 200, 000 years ago. He evolved out of homo erectus.
Then we have the old stone age for some 190,000 years of the 200,000 years that we have have existed. Yes for most of our time on this planet we have been chipping flints, not blogging. Every now and then we would come up with a better shaped flint and shout eureka. I guess we were like the tribes in the Amazon. Really advanced animals, not much more. Can you imagine, people like us put up with that type of existence for eons.
Then 10,000 years ago something extraordinary happened the neolithic age arrived. Maybe our latest flints were so good we killed off all the game, and maybe we were eating better and bred faster. Or maybe we just got clever. Anyway this was the tipping point. Mankind learnt farming, could keep sheep and grow wheat. Suddenly we are talking about the cradle of civilisation, Mesopotamia. Egypt and China followed shortly after. Villages came along and then 5000 years ago came towns.We discovered metal working, bronze then iron. Writing was 7000 years ago, legal systems, architecture, urban planning, aqueducts and by the time you get to the Greeks 2500 years ago people were doing such abstract things as measuring the circumference of the earth and creating works of art that have never been bettered. Wow what a rush after all those years of stagnation in just 7500 years we had done civilisation. Then for 1500 years we stagnated again, even went backwards. Finally another 500 year rush and here we are blogging.
I just find it stupendous. Who could have ever predicted that on this planet with roaming dinosaurs, jumping insects suddenly human civilisation would crop up. I guess at the cosmic level we are just like a large ants’ nest, but it doesn’t feel like that.
What I can’t get out of my system is what the hell were we doing in that first 190, 000 years. Yes that is 95 times the time elapsed between the birth of christ and today.Why did we just sit back and chip stones and run after mamouths when we had the intellectual capacity to be an Einstein? Or maybe we didn’t.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Too late to fully digest this, Madeoforleans but à demain!
Things really started to look up in France with the introduction of Gauloises cigarettes.
I could just say ‘that’s Darwinian evolution for you’, but I guess you have no appreciation of how difficult it was for mankind to pull the ‘bootstrap’, or self-starting trick. Those 190,000 years weren’t wasted, they were slowly building the foundation for modern knowledge. Two steps forward, one step back, until we reached take-off momentum a couple of hundred years ago and then pulled up into a steep climb 50 years ago.
We’ll keep climbing now, unless the twin evils of religion and bellicosity drag us back down the track. At the moment it unfortunately looks like superstition and hatred are on the rise – and you are a perfect example of those retrograde tendencies.
Bearsy,
I do hope that superb comment was directed at the author of this post and not me? 🙂
Diolch yn fawr, Tocino bach – oes! 😀
Fascinating post Richard, this question has been on my mind a lot. Not only what did we do for 190000 years, but how could we have developed at such a rapid rate and left the indigenous cultures that lived on this Planet behind? We all came from the same stock, so how come our arrogance at dominating the groups, you call them advanced animals in your post, and destroying their knowledge?
I don’t know much about anthropologie, but even if I may sound stupid saying this, to me it looks as if we are a machines cloned on ancient man. And with lots of design fault.
Bearsy
Put into perspective, our take off momentum feels like rocket fuel to a diesel engine. If I look at natural life on this planet, I believe nothing has developed at a rate this fast and survived.
RoO: Your history is a little shaky here… there seems to be some doubt that Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens evolved from Homo Erectus. Whatever, they were two distinct species, although they both ‘came out of Africa’.
The first was around from about 200,000 years ago and became extinct roughly 30,000 years ago. Contrary to popular believe they were not grunting morons.
The latter, us, have been around since about 150,000 years ago and seem to be in the process of eating the planet to its extinction as well as our own – which seems to be to be bordering on the moronic…
There are two schools of thought, one that Sapiens wiped Neanderthal out, and the other that we interbred. DNA analysis of Neanderthal is in its infancy and so far there has been nothing to indicate that modern man carries any Neanderthal genes, but some skeletons have been found that show features of both species.
Technological breakthroughs in the art of making stone, bone and wood tools were plenty. You only have to look at the early crude tools and compare them with the later ones to see that they were continually being refined. The biggest problem with spreading technological advances was, of course, the lack of a communication highway… it’s only when people can share ideas that new ones can spread.
Now, it’s my theory that all technological advances can be attributed to the women of the species – and the reason that it all took so long is that the male of the species was resistant to change…
It has been shown that in ‘hunter gatherer’ societies most nutrition came from ‘gathering’, which was generally women’s work. I reckon that women got a bit fed up with (a) sharing their caves with all sorts of beasties (whether they were edible or not) and (b) walking any distance to water. Thus began the process which women call ‘finding a solution to a problem’, and which men term ‘nagging’. Mrs Cavewoman suggested that there had to be an easier way of providing shelter than finding a cave, and wouldn’t it be nice if it was a bit nearer that stream over there. Being around a thousand years behind in communication skills, Mr Caveman could do little more than grunt that it was good enough for his father, grandfather, etc, but eventually gave in made the first shelters.
Next, Mrs Shelterwoman noticed that plants would grow if she dropped some of the seeds she had gathered, and suggested “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had that area over there dug up?” That probably took a fair bit of time, while Mr. Shelterman mumbled something about collecting food had been good enough for his mother and grandmother….
Fed up with smelly skins as clothes, which got rather hot in warmer climes, Mrs Farmer worked out how to weave…
I have no doubt that sewerage was a woman’s idea….
I think you get my drift…
Now I realise that this is only Boadicea’s theory of how innovations in technology occurred and I know that I’m unlikely to win many supporters for my ideas… but I’m happy with it as a working hypothesis 🙂
Rainer – it’s the ability to share ideas, the freedom to imagine new ideas and the tools to create new ideas that has pushed the rapid change…
Boa. #7. Sounds reasonable to me.
Thanks for the comments.I’ve seen 200,000 for homo sapiens. but even if it is 150000 it still means that we spent 140,000 making amazingly little progress.Can you see a shakespeare sitting around being able to speak but not bothering to put anything in writing? Or an Einstein happy with a slightly more aerodynamic flint head?
It is not intelligence that marks the difference between Homo sapiens of 100,000 years ago – it is knowledge, which is, as you very well know, is like a wall – without the foundations one can not build.
A Shakespeare of 100,000 years ago could not have told / written even the tale of “The Three Little Pigs” – there was no hay, there were no bricks and there weren’t even three little domesticated pigs…
It was a Homo Sapiens ‘Einstein’ who created a better aerodynamic flint head, a needle, found how to make fire, etc … Just because we see them as ‘simple, basic ‘ items does not detract from the vital importance of their discovery nor for what they were – essential stages in how to take the next step in technological advances.
Richard, your comment about Shakespeare of 100, 000 years ago put me in mind of these few stanzas from Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard. The poet is fantasising about all the wasted geniuses that could be lying under the tombstones:
‘But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.’
Boa you are giving the conventioanl wisdom. I am challenging it. If I sat around for ten years I would come up with more than a better flint head. Cats and dogs are quickly tamed. Why does it take 150,000 years to go from a cat and a dog to a pig? No there is sometghing else which explains that Neolithic leap. I believe it is evolution of a Homo sapiens bis.
Thanks Claire. One of the very few poets that gives me a thrill. One is never original is one?
Wipe your mind clear of every single piece of knowledge that you take for granted – and I doubt you’d even manage to make a decent flint knife …
Let’s also face the fact that some Homo Sapiens hadn’t managed to invent the wheel by the end of the 1700s.
Boa it is the number of generations and time span. OK so for a couple of thousand years things stagnate. But then they get going again. In general in human activity if they are going to change they change after a while. Eventually giving more time just doesn’t do it. The progress would happen after a few generations, people would clue on. I don’t see that the cumulation of knowledge was significant. Why did it take generation upon generatin to get from one flint head to another. Why did nobody paint or create one until 30 000 years ago? As I said the taming of animals is really simple and almost happens automatically, the sheep stick around looking for food without you doing anything at all.
“Correction, Why did nobody paint or create works of art until 30,000 years ago. Cration of art is an instinct you are born with it.
Richard: glad you like it. I love poets because they take ideas that everyone has, and put them into a kind of beautiful music.
If I sat around for ten years I would come up with more than a better flint head.
Bet you a thousand euros you can’t. Put up or shut up.
‘Can you imagine, people like us put up with that type of existence for eons.’
Why not?
Morons then and morons now!
Moronic and inaccurate post, suggest you join the Church of Latterday Saints, right up your street.
Thanks Christine for your comment. Of course everything we say is inaccurate. It was deliberateley a very top down overview to bring more clearly the significance of the Neolithic age into focus.
Morons, yes there are heaps in the UK and the US, less here fortunately.
‘Fewer’ here, not less.
Boa
You are my Queen, Mam. Of cause I did not think of the difference in intelligence between the genders. Even in the Biblical story Eve was the one taking the initiative, while Adam was, well, he was Adam anyway.
Mrs Osborne never disappoints when it comes to higher learning.
If my “stupid” theory rings true, you Christina, would certainly be a Terminator model. 🙂
Bravo yes ou are right there are fewer here.