What held us back, technologically, for so long??

Originally posted by Plugin

Just a thought.
Lets say people where just animals for millions and millions of years.

We still are.

oops wrong thread.

clicky: v

has-religion-interfered-wi th-the-advancement-of-humankind-more-than-it-has-contributed-to-it

evolutionary-metaphysics.net/advancing_technology.html



im gonna have to say that electricity has been the biggest kickstart of modern human technology, but we may have discovered it much earlier in human history if we had not been stunted by religious oppression.
if tesla had been doing his experiments just a hundred or more years before his time he may have been burned for being a witch. or locked up for life, or have his tongue cut for being a heretic.

that may have happened to someone working with electric current in the past. we will never know.

religion fears what it does not understand

reply to post by BrokenCircles


Yes in a sence, but we don't live as just other animals today.

Originally posted by Legion2024
600 years of hunting witches, Imagine where we would be now if those 600 years were more productive.

edit on 14-3-2012 by Legion2024 because: (no reason given)

Not to mention the many things we would know if the Mayan and Inca scrolls were not burned as being "Pagan." And what of all of the writings seized by the Roman Church and hidden away forever?
Religion is for control of a people, and for brainwashing people, and for the dumbing down of generations.

reply to post by LaughingatHumanity

First we must realize we are not as advanced as we believe ourselves to be, history would seem to point at man having been advanced before only to lose it's knowledge to the depths of the ages after catastrophe man made or natural.

You are so right there, LaughingatHumanity, humanity in general are children. I sometimes wonder if they will ever wake up. Like kids in a school yard, complete with the school yard politics and school yard fights and squabbles.

reply to post by chr0naut


Humans have really only been around 200,000 years.. our ancestors for 3 million, but people with the same capacities for speech and intelligence 200,000.

From year 1 to 190,000 we lived in hunter gatherer tribes spreading across all corners of the world.

10,000 years ago one of those cultures began using extensive agricultural practices which introduced the concept of surplus. You could now grow more food than you needed which did two things. A) it allowed population to grow larger. More food=More people. B) It enabled less people to grow more food which freed up others to become craft people, artists, scientists, etc.

Before long this culture began to expand. More people require more land and in the next 9900 or so years this culture comes to dominate the planet. They convert virtually everyone on this planet to their way of life. Which is essentially work for food, distract yourself from work and reproduce.

100 or so years ago this culture discovered Oil. Oil is the cheapest and easiest form of energy we know of and it enabled rapid growth in both technology and population. It is the SOLE reason for our rapid advancement in the last 100 years and it will be one of the reasons we destroy ourselves if we don't overcome our addiction to it.

reply to post by spaceg0at


Ancient egyptians likely had rudimentary forms of electricity.

I believe people have evolved through cycles like a pyramid where power is aggregated between a few who then destroy the world (not themselves) to control the evolution of earth and mankind in perpetuation.

OR

We have been told a lie in our history about technology of previous civilizations.

OR

both

Originally posted by Buddha1098
reply to post by spaceg0at

 

Ancient egyptians likely had rudimentary forms of electricity.

they also didnt have the church to telling them they were evil and cutting their heads off for being in league with satan.

if they did have electricity the record would have been destroyed ages ago by a religious power that didnt want people to know about such inventions. keep them dumb and afraid of god. we have no room for learning

the myans may have had electricity and microwave ovens for all we know .
the catholic church destroyed all their records and knowledge.... becuase it was evil


how many times over history were inventors or great thinkers silenced by just the catholic church alone?

we will never know..

shame on you if you still support this murderous machine today

Originally posted by Plugin
Just a thought.
Lets say people where just animals for millions and millions of years.
Then at some point, somehow, we got a consious or something that changed us? Or lets say, we didn't even had a language for millions of years? Maybe our progress started after we had a real language and even more important, a written language.
And that's not that old...

If not, it's basicly not possible that we stayed the same for millions of years, without any change really.

edit on 15-3-2012 by Plugin because: (no reason given)

They even think that Neanderthals had some sort of language now.
And they also seems to have used tools and left cave paintings.

And who says animals are not conscious??

Originally posted by zerotime
Religion held us back. And I'm not bashing religion just stating a fact. Religion is still fighting science tooth and nail on any modern advances.

edit on 14-3-2012 by zerotime because: (no reason given)

Yep, the villager says to the priest 'we need a well' the priest says, 'do not worry, god will provide'

reply to post by spaceg0at


You said electricity was what drove us forward. I said the Egyptians had electricity (likely). They never came to dominate the globe like we have. So electricity doesn't equal the unprecedented growth we have had in the last 100 years.

The Egyptians were highly advanced scientifically, and they had a dominant cultural religion. Religion has nothing what so ever to do with scientific advancement.

I have no Idea what the Roman Catholic church has to do with anything... You brought it up not me.

reply to post by Buddha1098


No idea why your making the unfounded suggestion the Egyptians had electricity. Care to back that up with something?

J M Roberts "History of the World" (at your local library) says in the intro that human cultural capital had accumulated over millenia. That was the soil that grew the technological revolution. Also there are more people alive and available to think about things than ever before.

Technological advance will stop when the means, time to think and disposable wealth, or the incentives, wealth and increased ability, go away.

reply to post by nightbringr


The Bagdhad Battery, Egyptian Heiroglyphs that depict Arc Lights, and the fact that no evidence of flaming torches are found inside the great pyramid.

It's not conclusive. Which is why I said likely.

Originally posted by stAtrill

Originally posted by chr0naut

Originally posted by CaptChaos
Advances have been actively held back and suppressed for almost a hundred years. We are being actively suppressed NOW.

I defy anyone to think of something truly new that has been invented since WW2. Even ONE thing, that is not just a refinement of existing tech.

Here's a few:

The science of genetics and recombinant DNA.
Spintronics,
Graphene, Fullerines and other allotropes of Carbon.
Magnetic monopoles,
Superconductivity, and its associated discoveries.
String theory, M theory and Brane theories,
Theoretical dark energy,
Hawking Radiation,
Memory Alloys,
Metamaterials and negative refractive index,
Space Travel,
Kevlar,
Graphite Polymers,
Lasers and Masers,
Nanotechnology,
Neuro-chemistry,

... as you imagine, I could easily go on for ages.

The overwhelming majority of that list are not inventions, just about every single one is either a discovery or an innovation. Some of them haven't even been observed, and some of them are now being shown to be erroneous. In the interest of being thorough, I will demonstrate this for you:

The science of genetics and recombinant DNA. - Discovery.
Spintronics, -Discovery. Nothing useful has come from this yet.
Graphene, Fullerines and other allotropes of Carbon. -Discovery, by definition.
Magnetic monopoles, -Again, discovery. Existed in nature beforehand (if this is shown to be true)
Superconductivity, and its associated discoveries. -You said it yourself.
String theory, M theory and Brane theories, -these are theories, not inventions. Nothing useful has been produced from them yet.
Theoretical dark energy, -Again, not an invention, and useless.
Hawking Radiation, -theory, useless
Memory Alloys, -innovation, they have been refining this one for the last 4 decades at least
Metamaterials and negative refractive index, -discovery. Existed in nature.
Space Travel, -Not an invention theory, or discovery. Shouldn't be on this list at all
Kevlar, -innovation. They had been iteratively improving plastic strength
Graphite Polymers, -Again, an innovation.
Lasers and Masers, -This may be the only invention on this whole list.
Nanotechnology, -Another discovery. Nothing useful has come of this yet
Neuro-chemistry, -This is still in the theoretical stages. Nothing useful blah blah blah....

Out of that whole list, Lasers may be the only real discovery. So no, you couldn't go on for ages. Lasers are quite possibly the only true invention that we have had. There may be a few more, but they have likely been lost to time.

See THIS. This right here is what is holding us back right now. The idea that something is only useful if it makes profit. Did traveling to the moon create profit? No but should we have gone there? Of course. Why? To Gain Knowledge and understanding. That's the problem today , everybody is too caught up in the rat race chasing cheese to chase knowledge and intelligence leading to the dumbing down of our species.

Originally posted by mackey1224uk

Originally posted by chr0naut

Originally posted by zerotime
Religion held us back. And I'm not bashing religion just stating a fact. Religion is still fighting science tooth and nail on any modern advances.

edit on 14-3-2012 by zerotime because: (no reason given)

I don't think there is less religion today. It has just moved around.

And many of the scientists, philosophers & technicians who ushered in this "age of knowledge" were, themselves, highly religious.

Perhaps it is a particular facet of religion which held us back but is now absent.

It is interesting to note that the Reformation preceded the change fairly closely (though, perhaps, not close enough to be a factor).

It was a nice try but I think that answer is too general and not actually historically justifiable.

Are you serious!
Have you ever heard of the word BLASPHEMY. Well, it was used by the Hierarchy in RELIGION, and it was very useful for hundreds of years. (Religion was to blame) along with all the scaremongering that science was the devil's work. They beat, burnt, drowned and even tortured people for being smart or something the dumb-asses in religion, didnt understand.
Us "common folk" werent allowed the knowledge of the so-called gods.

The dictionary definition of the word "blasphemy" is specifically about denigrating God. Even "heresy" is the holding of religious beliefs that are corruptions of the accepted religious beliefs. Generally, the knowledge gained through Science is in the secular realm and was generally not opposed by the Church, except where it led to concepts at direct opposition to dogma.

Historically, there have been very few instances of actual conflict. Please read this link on Wikipedia for an expansion of this theme.

While I am not entirely knocking your post (and those of others who have offered religion as an explanation), I don't feel that it provides sufficient 'force' as an argument, especially where we look for actual historical instances.

Please understand that I am not saying that there were no conflicts, there definitely were. But those that we do know about were too few and far between to have caused such a ubiquitous limitation.

Originally posted by bjarneorn
reply to post by chr0naut

 

The answer to your question is about as simple, as the question is.

The answer is Verner von Braun.

The more complex answer is 9/11.

The relation between the two is, that people want to believe the official story of 9/11 and accept the protection of the few. In this concept, there has been stagnation in science ... because if you want security, it means that all changes must be stopped. So, people lived for thousands of years, wanting God to protect them from evil ... from change.

Verner von Braun, is who made NASA. He is the man who launched the vehicle into space, and made NASA what it is. When he died, NASA more or less died with him. Today NASA is nothing more than a bunch of jerks who are making a lot of nonsense, to tell us all that we are living in a stable world, instead of pressing for change and forward motion.

For a brief time, the Verner von Brauns of this world, had a chance of brillianse. As they did, over two thousand years ago ... but as it says in the legend.

Do not fret ... as it was before, so shall it be again.

Von Braun was amongst a group of advanced thinkers that arose at about the same time and were part of the increase in knowledge but by the time he was contributing, the move was already significantly underway.

Similarly the 9/11 events happened in 2001 and are far too late to attribute as the cause for the increase in knowledge.

Originally posted by Plugin
It doesn't really make sense; ''why''.
Only sense for me is the amount of people, somehow this line was flat for millions of years then since about the year ''0'', we see fast progress and the amount of people on earth. (except of course some ancient civilizations which have shown some advancements but vanished).

edit on 15-3-2012 by Plugin because: (no reason given)

Now my own theory is that kinda like with peak oil, we may have a peak human, which means at some point, the line which has gone upwards very fast in a very short time, may go down as well as fast at some point. This because it's not sustainable.

edit on 15-3-2012 by Plugin because: (no reason given)

Although there is a similarity in the shape of the graphs (exponential growth) the change in population happened millennia before the change in the growth of knowledge.