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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5025208 No.5025208 [Reply] [Original]

Why is it that humans existed for nearly 2 million years as hunter-gatherers, but every single major advancement from agriculture to computers has happened within just the last 10,000 years?

How did we manage to remain completely stagnant for 2 million years and then suddenly advance so much in such a short time?

Could it be possible that humanity had periods of advancement and the building of civilizations during those 2 million years but evidence of their existence has been lost to time?

>> No.5025211

>One thing builds on another.
>See above
>No

>> No.5025216

Uncontacted tribes have existed for as long as we have and they're still as stupid and primitive as ever.

>> No.5025227

>>5025208
So you were expecting human technological advancement to follow some linear function? I'd be more surprised if it did, those patterns only look "normal" because we get them so often in beginners math, not because they're common in the real world.

>> No.5025232

Knowledge and technological development are exponential - everything is built on everything that came before.

>> No.5025244

>>5025216
>Still stupid and primitive

Hurr look at his bow, look at how he hunts for food durr his religon stpid we sure are superior!!

>> No.5025252

>>5025216

>stupid

their lives are a lot more eventful than ours, you can be sure of that.

>> No.5025258

It's not really stagnant.

What you call "progress" and "advancement" are just biased names for "change". That is, from the perspective of a modern man surrounded by technology, primitive life is frightening and terrible and makes us think "how could they be like that and not be building rockets and conquering the world in a few generations?".

But it's completely different. You should see it from a whole new perspective. You have to measure their quality of life by their own point of view to see what attitudes would be made necessary at the given time. That is, the more you read about it, the more it will make sense for them NOT to build that "advanced civilization" you are talking about.

It's not linear, straightforward and certainly it is not an arrow pointed to a better world, just to a different world with other priorities. It's cultural above all else, our needs, our technology and how we spend our time and do our things.

All in all, development of technology and complex structures in society (which is not a good or a bad thing in themselves) emerged from actual needs. War, one people overcoming the other and having to prepare oneself for the next, abstract notions like money and organized religion (as opposed to tribal mysticism which is very different) that forced social standards to crystalize in bigger and bigger communities, all of that pushed us into where we stand right now. We became expansive and spread these new priorities where it was uncalled for.

>> No.5025253

>>5025244
We are you relativistic idiot, go masturbate with you post-modernist friends somewhere else.

>>>/lit/

>> No.5025260

>>5025244
>Implying uncontacted tribes know any math/ science/ geography/ sophisticated culture

I don't know about you, but I'm glad I was born into the real world.

>> No.5025272

Here's a better question. What did those first settled people do to invent agriculture? How do you even come up with the idea if everyone forever has always hunted or found food? How did they sustain themselves while they waited for the food to grow?

>> No.5025281

>>5025272
Some dude probably had a near death experience and started talking to plant spirits.

>> No.5025315

Are there still any areas of the world where you can live with the hunter gatherer people or have they all been forcefully westernized or exist in some kind of artificially maintained "WALK NEAR THIS AREA AND WE SHOOT YOU" bubble by anthropologists that don't want anyone talking to the uncontacted people?

>> No.5025393

>>5025272

Seeds from foraged food were thrown out, and nomads who came back to certain foraging locations season after season saw that the seeds had taken root. That or the plants evolved mutually with humans, making them easier to farm. Maybe both.

>> No.5025408

>>5025315
They're still out there. They exist in really remote places. I've seen a number of documentaries on them. There were a bunch so remote that people had to raft down a river a long ass way to get there in Ethiopia I believe. Some of the tribes a long the way had AKs though, but everything else was as it would be. Apparently, they trade 3 cows for an AK. Lot of the tribes were really friendly, a couple weren't. Mostly nude. Each tribe seemed to have it's own niche as far as food was concerned. Some didn't really even seem to know how to fish and refused to eat them despite being on a river full of them, while a ways further there was a dude spear fishing.

All of the people on the expedition ended up getting malaria despite taking whatever precautions people usually take.

>> No.5025453

It was probably a major shift in climate.
We're currently in an ice age, but an interglacial, which is a short period during an ice-age during which the climate warms to almost normal temperatures.
To quote wikipedia, "he current Holocene interglacial has persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago.".
This should give you a sense of how vulnerable and at the mercy of nature we are!

>> No.5025465

>>5025315
there are pygmies that come from the andamans, which are a part of the Indian nation, but Indian citizens aren't allowed contact with them.

>> No.5025467

>>5025315
There's one in SouthEast Asia where the natives are just absolutely vicious and attack any non-natives they see on sight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people

http://www.cracked.com/article_19976_6-isolated-groups-who-had-no-idea-that-civilization-existed.htm
l

>> No.5025479
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5025479

>>5025467
Sounds like we need to introduce them to a little term called "Manifest Destiny"

>> No.5025492
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5025492

>>5025479
Yeah, they could really use 30mm of "Democracy"

>> No.5025526

There is a huge bioligical difference between us and humans 2 million years ago.

I personal count humans as being around 200,000 years as before that we wernt really all that human.

>> No.5026320

hi

>> No.5026322

>>5025208
Because the little things like language and symbolic thought took a long time to develop. Also 2 million i just wrong.

>> No.5026334

>>5025208
It seems culture needed to progress, in order for intelligence to progress.

It near blows my balls off thinking about the progress over the last 200~ so years.

In 1822, we had trains... And in 1960, we sent a man to the moon.

>> No.5026359

>>5026334
>In 1822, we had trains... And in 1960, we sent a man to the moon.
And in 2012... we... uh... Have airplanes?
>sadface

>> No.5026361

>>5026359
We have gigantic particle smashers and internets

>> No.5026368

>>5025208
>Why is it that humans existed for nearly 2 million years as hunter-gatherers, but every single major advancement from agriculture to computers has happened within just the last 10,000 years?

Exponential growth, knowledge and technology compound on themselves to make even larger increases in knowledge and technology occur.

>> No.5027302
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5027302

>>5026359
>"And in 1960, we sent a man to the moon."

pic related

>> No.5027327

>>5025208
Global warming happened at a time when the man ape had a sufficiently evolved brain. When humans no longer had to struggle to get food they could focus on advancement. Last time it got really warm the renaissance happened.

>> No.5027333

Well a lot of innovation requires people to be sitting relatively still their entire lives. Collaboration on the scale we see today would never happen in a nomadic society. Agriculture brought about human settlement into cities. Also you have way less free time in a hunting gathering culture not many people have changed the world while starving to death (inb4 Gandhi)

>> No.5027339

>>5026359
We have the entire human genome accounted for, a worldwide communication network that is always on and accessible from pocket sized devices with touch screens, street legal cars that can travel in excess of 260 mph, brain surgery can be performed remotely with robotics, prosthetics that move with nerve impulses, corporations are now building spacecraft (some of which have already been used)... need I go on?

>> No.5027352

>>5027333
The hunter gatherers spent most of their day just laying about though. Apparently they did it so much that our biology isn't evolved to withstand the pressure of a normal work week.

>> No.5027358

>>5026359

We printed a heart with a fucking inket printer

>> No.5027360

>>5027352
If we aren't evolved for that now, we will be soon. Think about all the people with double jobs and shit and 20 thousand kids.

>> No.5027384

>>5027360
Except it doesn't kill people (very quickly) and they seem to be able to reproduce just fine so the random mutation that would give humans the ability would not favor an inividual in terms of reproduction and it probably wouldn't be that widespread.

>> No.5027415

Ctrl + f'd for sapien, no results. Fuck this thread.

OP, because hominids are, overall, stupid apes, and modern humans are homo sapiens, who're only as old as the past 50,000 or so years.