Accepted theory or timeline of human development

Bruce Pascoe - A real history of Aboriginal Australians, the first agriculturalists.

a reply to: Xtrozero



" But it seems they had lathes... "


The Egyptians Supposedly had Lathes that could at LEST Revolve at OVER 100 Revolutions a SECOND in Order to Mill Hard Granite , Andesite , or Marble ? What was the Bit Constructed of ? Copper or Bronze ? You See , your Argument Falls Short of being even a Bit Plausible . Got Straws meinherr ?

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit

The Egyptians Supposedly had Lathes that could at LEST Revolve at OVER 100 Revolutions a SECOND in Order to Mill Hard Granite , Andesite , or Marble ? What was the Bit Constructed of ? Copper or Bronze ? You See , your Argument Falls Short of being even a Bit Plausible . Got Straws meinherr ?

They didn't use a bit, so maybe you should research it and find out.

originally posted by: Jackfish28
Does anyone on here really buy it. I thought it was probably bull# when I was high school.

Humans are 100,000 years old but lived in caves and like animals until like 6000 years ago then developed civilization magically at same time when they discovered how to farm.

Really ????

(Sigh) You gotta keep up. This is old, near-Biblical thinking. I was taught humans are at least 1 million years old AT LEAST FIFTY YEARS AGO. I majored in anthropology and have kept up. No one has claimed 100,000 years ago for several generations now, especially as genetics has kept up with actual "stones & bones" archaeology. Of course, if you want to a church school you may have been taught differently.

Now, the question of when hunter gatherers turned to agriculture and then to cities is a lot more complex. People such as Graham Hancock have suggested there was a preceding civilization and have shown places where ruins exist. Schoch has shown that the pyramids and the sphinx are far older than Egyptologists will admit. Gobleki Tepe is a thing. It is becoming increasingly obvious and KNOWN TO ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION that there may very well have been a "civilization" that left us about 12,000 BCE, perhaps as a result of a sea level rise during the Younger Dryas period. This not hidden knowledge and is covered in hundreds of books. No one is keeping the information from you.

But we have not found ancient cell phones or space ships. That would indicate that the civilization that did exist was probably a near-Renaissance era civilization without a lot of advanced technology. You will of course point to all the precise stone work done in the past and that's great. Where is the machinery? No body can find it. So maybe they had anti-gravity? Well, maybe they did, but at this point you go off into a speculative frenzy without proving anything.

So yeah, there was probably a civilization prior to 6,000 years ago, however, there were still lots of hunter gatherers 6,000 years ago as well. That you have just discovered this says more about your education than the state-of-the-art in the field. There is so much information in this area that it is not worth arguing. It's all been said before. Go read some books.

Any time you see a date of an object, organism, or civilization listed in any science blog, check to see how they discovered that date. You'll be shocked that most of the time they are simply guessing from extrapolations. They prey on people not being able to do their due diligence and double check these "facts" that they are often times just making up.

It blew my mind when I first poked this house of cards

originally posted by: Xtrozero

The problem is that we needed a stable food source to increase the population and we needed communication to share knowledge to build on. In the past much of that knowledge sharing was only done during wars were one group takes what another group has. It worked to a point but was slow process, but even with that we saw civilization grow. As we moved into the 1300, 1400, 1500 centuries things started to change and populations grew and communication got better.

The idea of a small group of humans developing in to some advance civilization is pretty much fantasy because for a very long time we lacked in those two critical things needed.

I think this is exactly where the thinking is totally off. As far off as can possibly be.

In the age of mammoths, food wasn't a problem. Not in any possible sense.

But instead of needing like 80 or 90% of your population to do menial work all day in the fields, so the remaining 10 or 20% could specialize in doing intellectual tasks (and figuring out ways to keep the 80-90% from being mad they have to do boring work all day).

Instead of that, your whole 100% could participate in intellectual tasks if they wanted. Because one good mammoth kill would feed everyone for a month.
Society was less adversarial because 10-20% weren't trying to screw the remaining 80-90.


And, being the geniuses that they were, they realized it made sense to leave most of the world to nature, and only build a few settlements in strategic places. Not to have more kids than they could educate. They would have invested a great deal more education in each child.

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit

Ah , and you are SO Sure of that meinherr ? I mean , Really ? Your So SURE ? ..........

We see it... Our knowledge growth has only really happen once the population grew and communication between areas became more common.

I do believe that high level geniuses have played a critical roll in human advancement throughout our existence. It is those people that could pull new ideas and concept out of thin air, things others really have a had time understanding, if ever... So in a very short period of time an isolated civilization would see a big jump within the life span of a super genius, but then many times that knowledge would erode over time and then lost until rediscovered once again. Once communication became more common that lost factor was reduced and everyone benefited from what ever the super genius created.


Today there is about 30 known super geniuses on the planet, if we doubled that to account for maybe ones no one really knows about for whatever reason we are talking about 1 per 100 million of people. Having 8 billion people means a good number of super genius and a much larger number of very smart people that can also understand what the super geniuses do, but not smart enough to also create from nothing.

Looking at the human population throughout history.... Sometime during the ice age we got very small in numbers maybe a few 10k or so, we know this due to how close our DNA is from one another.

10,000 BC about 2.5 million people on the planet.

2000 BC there was about 70 million people so maybe 1 or 2 super geniuses floating around, maybe one was in Egypt...

1 AD about 180 million...

1100 to 1500 AD we are talking 350 to 450 million, so now we are looking at a handful and by 1500 communication was greatly increased from previous centuries.

After the 1500s everything exploded...population growth, communications etc, and we saw another massive growth with the invention of the computer.

Just think about what 1880 was like with the dawn of electricity and horse and buggy compared to 1980...

Or 1980 compared to 2021...

Now going back to your small group that could have been super advance...how does that play into anything we know about as how humans have evolved? You would really need to stretch things into a fantasy world and still in the end there is nothing to show that anything remotely happened past raw stone, wood, other raw materials...

True, but agriculture strongly selects for stupidity.

A highly intelligent person can't do mindless menial work all day long and keep their sanity. They would die, and I am sure many did.


Agriculture wasn't an advancement. It was simply the only way to survive in a barren world. It's likely that the people who first practiced it had known how for thousands of years, but had never had a reason to do it.

a reply to: Xtrozero





" They didn't use a bit, so maybe you should research it and find out."

Then what did the Dynastic Egyptians Use to Machine Stone Jars then Zahi > ?

a reply to: Zanti Misfit
anarkia333data.center...

Harte

a reply to: Harte




" For example, the Dynastic sarcophagi made from single
blocks of hard stone were drilled out with copper tubes, similar to the initial
hollowing techniques in use for the hard stone Predynastic vessels.
Several important areas of ancient technology remain shrouded . "


Copper Tubes using Moist Quartz Sand as a Lubricant Could not Bore Completely Through and Andesite or Granite Block in Any Reasonable Amount of Time . Egyptologists are Kidding themselves there ........

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit

Copper Tubes using Moist Quartz Sand as a Lubricant Could not Bore Completely Through and Andesite or Granite Block in Any Reasonable Amount of Time . Egyptologists are Kidding themselves there ........

They didn't particularly like granite that was about 2 inches per a full 24 hours to cut. They used more Mohs 3/4 stones. Lime stone is the core stone of their Pyramids as example.

You are basing your whole argument on just one assumption that they could not cut granite and it is easy to find modern experiments (with pictures) cutting granite with a flat blade saw and using wet sand. The reason that the sand is able to cut the granite is because it contains silicon quartz, which is harder than granite. They were master stone workers and so they knew exactly what could cut what, or chip what. For the big granite obelisk they actually used dolerite hammer-balls
to pound and pulverize the granite downward in order to free the sides of the block. None of this is speculation as there are 100s of used dolerite hammer-balls in every granite quarry.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

I think this is exactly where the thinking is totally off. As far off as can possibly be.

It didn't matter that they had a lot of food...the world population was very small and spread-out into small groups with zero communication between groups. Zero transfer of any knowledge learned. We didn't see an expansion of the population until after the food source was stabilized better.

But instead of needing like 80 or 90% of your population to do menial work all day in the fields, so the remaining 10 or 20% could specialize in doing intellectual tasks (and figuring out ways to keep the 80-90% from being mad they have to do boring work all day).

Hunter/gather life was not as easy as you think... They spent much of their day doing it, and bringing down something like a mammoth brought great peril too. Humans were not the apex predator they are today, far from it back then.

And, being the geniuses that they were, they realized it made sense to leave most of the world to nature, and only build a few settlements in strategic places. Not to have more kids than they could educate. They would have invested a great deal more education in each child.

Like American Indians??...lol They were not like this at all either... You are speculating on something with zero substance of any kind, so pretty much a fairy tale. They were not geniuses either...Also what education did they teach?

True, but agriculture strongly selects for stupidity.
A highly intelligent person can't do mindless menial work all day long and keep their sanity. They would die, and I am sure many did.

It brought more freedom to think... Open up more free hours in a day... Created year round food stability... There just isn't anything to suggest what you are saying is even remotely true. Why didn't they develop writing 100k years ago as example... were is the 100k year-old stone tablets with writing on them or the 100k year-old metal tools. Seems smart people would want metal tools at least to hunt...

originally posted by: Xtrozero
Also what education did they teach?

Lots. The Properties of hundreds of plants. Which plants could be eaten, how to process them to render them digestible or portable. Which plants had medicinal and healing properties. The source of the minerals that they needed to thrive, and again how to process them for appropriate usage.

Settled agriculture greatly contracted the way in which we used our brains and consequently how we perceived our environment.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
It brought more freedom to think... Open up more free hours in a day... Created year round food stability... There just isn't anything to suggest what you are saying is even remotely true. Why didn't they develop writing 100k years ago as example... were is the 100k year-old stone tablets with writing on them or the 100k year-old metal tools. Seems smart people would want metal tools at least to hunt...

The evidence and research suggests the opposite. Settlement and farming meant less time to think as well as feel for most. It didn't consistently provide year round stability and where it did the nutritional value of that food, and the associated processing, actual shortened the human life span considerably for most but the introduction of a milk diet does seem to have counteracted that by increasing fertility.

Nomadic groups on the other hand were much healthier and it seems happier too, living considerably longer lives than their settled contemporaries. They were responsible for producing great art in everything that they produced rather than the static, self-aggrandising facsimiles produced by royal and noble patronage. What would they need writing for? Their art communicates everything that they wanted to express in permanence. What did the inventors of writing need writing for? That's really the question you should think about.

Gradual change in increments. Nothing was "all of a sudden," or overnight.

A LOT can happen in as little as 100 years. Our current industrial age, for instance..

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
a reply to: Harte




" For example, the Dynastic sarcophagi made from single
blocks of hard stone were drilled out with copper tubes, similar to the initial
hollowing techniques in use for the hard stone Predynastic vessels.
Several important areas of ancient technology remain shrouded . "


Copper Tubes using Moist Quartz Sand as a Lubricant Could not Bore Completely Through and Andesite or Granite Block in Any Reasonable Amount of Time . Egyptologists are Kidding themselves there ........

The book includes the results of experiments showing how utterly wrong you are.
You are kidding yourself here.

Harte

a reply to: Harte

Interesting to note about wear...."time" may not require much quantity.

I worked on opening/operating a restored hotel built in 1930 (completed in 1930). It operated in West Texas (we aren't talking NYC foot traffic) until approximately 1979, then reopened after being closed and mostly abandoned in the 2010 range. While abandoned, there were people who went into the building. Not a lot....the occasional vagrant or daredevil kid. There are 3 basements, the lowest has been flooded since the building opened. The second was flooded sometime in the 50's (and pumped empty prior to reopening so machines could be wired in, etc). The primary basement was flooded shortly after the property closed.

All that set up to talk about the terrazzo staircase leading into the basement from the lobby...it is heavily worn and slumped from foot traffic. We are talking almost 4 decades of cowboys in cowboy boots and gritty west texas sand and soil (iron rich soil) going up and down the stairs for whatever was going on down there back then (id bet on something related to the organized boot legging crime in the area at the time). Its not quite as strongly worn as you'd see in the Piza Tower...but given its only really 4 decades of real use, maybe 5 if you think it was usable in the late 70's (there is no lore circulating about it, so i assume it wasn't used for much beyond storage in the first basement level), the amount of wear is very surprising. You can see 2 pits on each step where the footfalls would be. Terrazzo tile is cement with heavy aggregate like limestone or other gravel.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout

Lots. The Properties of hundreds of plants. Which plants could be eaten, how to process them to render them digestible or portable. Which plants had medicinal and healing properties. The source of the minerals that they needed to thrive, and again how to process them for appropriate usage.

OK I agree, same with knowing how to work stone, but it was learned person to person...That is why places like guilds formed. I'm not sure your point here since of course they would have knowledge at basic levels like willow bark, now if you suggested they could cure cancer, as example, that would be different. This isn't some loss advancement from humans who were very advanced in the past...

Settled agriculture greatly contracted the way in which we used our brains and consequently how we perceived our environment.

Seems to be working for us today doesn't it? Just think about how simple farming and domesticating animals started about 8000 to 10,000 BC, but it wasn't until 5000BC we can say it really started to mature, so think about how far we have come in the last 6000 or 7000 years compared to the previous 200,000.

The evidence and research suggests the opposite. Settlement and farming meant less time to think as well as feel for most. It didn't consistently provide year round stability and where it did the nutritional value of that food, and the associated processing, actual shortened the human life span considerably for most but the introduction of a milk diet does seem to have counteracted that by increasing fertility.

I would agree around 1000AD to 1400AD food most likely wasn't that good in some places like EU, so we can say EU sucked, but Africa/America was still relied heavily on hunter/gatherer though they did have some farming in places. Asia was much different than EU and they thrived quite well. When you say shorten life spans what are you talking about? About 30,000 years ago humans were lucky to hit 30...Even until 1800 40 was an average... So what exactly are you suggesting?

Nomadic groups on the other hand were much healthier and it seems happier too, living considerably longer lives than their settled contemporaries. They were responsible for producing great art in everything that they produced rather than the static, self-aggrandising facsimiles produced by royal and noble patronage. What would they need writing for? Their art communicates everything that they wanted to express in permanence. What did the inventors of writing need writing for? That's really the question you should think about.

To store knowledge... Hard to say they were much healthier...That is why we get cancer, and things stop working like producing testosterone after the age of 40 since people didn't live long enough throughout our history to have babies past that to expand evolution into later years we see today.

a reply to: Xtrozero

The domestication of animals and plants is what gave rise to humanities penchant for science and controlling its environment. Which is one of our key traits.

Without expounding on hunter gatherers being capable of amassing the type of capital needed to split the atom, it can be safely said that even considering a desire to split an atom, and what it could do for us, would not have been possible prior to humans learning that they can intimately control the environment around them. I suspect the Tower of Babyl story may have roots in the notion of humanity and the hubris that would arise from realizing you can alter the life forms around you to suit your needs.

I think what is actually remarkable of the utter utility of the human physiology. How it will fare once off planet remains to be seen....but there is little that this planet has thrown at us, or that we have thrown at ourselves, that we have not conquered, mastered, or overcome. We could have spent an entire existence as a species being the apex predator on planet Earth. In any environment on Earth.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan

Without expounding on hunter gatherers being capable of amassing the type of capital needed to split the atom, it can be safely said that even considering a desire to split an atom, and what it could do for us, would not have been possible prior to humans learning that they can intimately control the environment around them. I suspect the Tower of Babyl story may have roots in the notion of humanity and the hubris that would arise from realizing you can alter the life forms around you to suit your needs.

I agree, KilgoreTrout also suggests that the communistic life style of the Hunter/Gatherer provided more free time to think "Settlement and farming meant less time to think..." And he and a few others sees the upper 10% as the evil ones that has held humanity back, but how do you create time to think if everyone is working the same for survival.

The reality has been that some people worked for others who themselves didn't need to so they had a ton of free time to think. Even religion has played a huge role into the advancement of the human race. Very hard to reach self actualization if you are stuck in a broken record of basic needs.

Higher level thoughts of someone like Newton didn't put food on the table, and he most likely didn't work a day in his life in providing the basics to live, so someone had to do it for him, as example.

a reply to: Xtrozero

We should not confuse agrarianism with what we have today. An agrarian society had slightly less free time than a hunter gatherer, but there were no periods of starvation, and the work (and risk) was spread out a little more thinly across the entire year, rather than confined mostly to a few risky hunts.

What we have today is not that. Today, we have an industrial society. Agrarianism props it up so that people are free from needing to hunt/gather for food, or tend their own farms. That frees people up for other endeavors. At first, in the industrial age, that would mean 100 hours a week in a damp coal mine or something. We learned to be slightly kinder to ourselves and shortened the work week, etc. So today we work 40 hours a week.

What happened was a promise of a better life was given in exchange for our labor. We have much, much less free time than we would have had at any other time in our past. In return, we get what society has managed to build. Or, at least we get access to it. To some the trade off is fair. To some...it is not.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan

What happened was a promise of a better life was given in exchange for our labor. We have much, much less free time than we would have had at any other time in our past. In return, we get what society has managed to build. Or, at least we get access to it. To some the trade off is fair. To some...it is not.

Today we work the least amount of time for our basic needs than any other time in our history. Being Omnivores we spent more of our time gathering than hunting. In the past many labored their whole lives in back crushing work, but the pay off was for others not to work...good or bad who knows, but it worked to consistently push our civilization forward.

Also think about other basic needs that we spent all our waking moments working on. One of the key points is we were not able grow any sizable grouping of people. We followed the herds in small numbers or fought off others to protect our area.... If we look at the Mayans who had about 40 cities and close to 2 million people at their height we see how humans were able to do more once we were able to form bigger groups or civilizations.

Has anyone done a real comparison as to the life of people lets say 2020 compared to 1980, then 1980 compared to 1920, then 1920 compared to 1850, then 1950 to 1600, 1600 to 1300, 1300 to 900, 900 to 400, 400 to 500BC, 500BC to 2000BC 2000BC to 5000BC 5000 BC to 10,000BC?

I think many would be surprised the farther back you go the more time in the day you were doing real manual labor just to survive.