alt Hacker NewsIt's wild to think how long very human-like beings and modern humans existed before the technological revolution really took off. Hundreds of thousands of years of existing on the technological level of stone tools, spears, cloth made out of hides, and fire. Then at some unknown point probably in the last 100,000 years, the bow and arrow. Then about 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, which probably unlocked much of the subsequent technological progress by enabling more food security and larger populations.
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>the technological level of stone tools, spears, cloth made out of hides, and fire.
Don't forget, there are pockets of our species living at this level to this very day (uncontacted tribes)!
There seems a bit of an acceleration ~ 50-100k years from evolving brains similar to modern ones to agriculture, ~8k year from there to writing, ~4k to the printing press, ~400 till computers, ~40 till the web and so on. Each of those has kind of speeded intellectual progress and AI will probably be another speeding up.
Can't imagine having to live with anxiety of just staying alive. Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks.
You would never feel like you have time to just, be. Instead you're focused on getting your next meal, and finding a place to sleep.
It only took a few ice-ages to force us to get smart about how we organize and then here we are.
I think rope, twine, and weaving needs to be recognized as significant technical development. That has little record but would have been combined with wood for simple machines.
There is a good post on this topic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFqG58s4NE3EE68Lq/why-did-ev...
> Then at some unknown point probably in the last 100,000 years, the bow and arrow.
The atlatl was undoubtedly earlier, and a bigger advance. It essentially doubled a hunter's arm length, and thus impelled speed - with force proportional to the square of speed. An atlatl can put a dart straight through an enemy's gut, or easily pierce a deer's hide.
Also nukes. We've got the whole place rigged to blow in case a few of us just doesn't feel like it anymore.
> Then about 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, which probably unlocked much of the subsequent technological progress by enabling more food security and larger populations.
It definitely did. Also note that agriculture was invented in multiple places over time. Unfortunately, the Native Americans did not invent it quickly enough, so they had far less time for technological development before Europeans arrived. At which point, it was too late.
I think it is also interesting to realize that we have had a huge population boom since the last 50 years or so, thus currently, the entire world population alive makes up roughly 8% of the entire population of the world since the existence of Homo Sapiens. In summary, if you were to be randomly born as a human, you would most likely be born in the latter centuries, rather than the early ones, since the sheer amount being born recently than many years ago is so much more.
https://www.sifrun.com/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-ea...