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Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

arstechnica.com

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Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#81

Post by pi-e-sigma »

defrost wrote: post #16
matt3210 wrote: post #9

Who first decided to melt the rocks and get the iron?

Somebody watching lava flows, slag, and wondering if they can recreate that heat. Metal work also started with softer easier to melt metals from much purer near surface veins and worked outwards toward harder less pure more deeply buried metals.

I think metal work started with gold. It naturally occurs in a 'ready for use' form of nuggets. You don't need to melt anything and nuggets are very soft and easy to form into any desirable shape. Most likely it's initial use was the jewelry because shiny!

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#82

Post by [deleted] »

cal85 wrote: post #61
readyman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being able to communicate near-instantly across large distances was possibly the single biggest limiting factor for the size of empires in agrarian societies Seemingly, yes, but this hasn't been proven quite yet. The American empire appears to be losing dominance since the proliferation of the internet, for example. However, the American empire certainly gained tremendous power from broadcasted electronic mediums.

This would only be relevant if the American empire were losing dominance to rivals that didn’t also have computing and networking etc.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#83

Post by londons_explore »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #71

Let me suggest a nonsensical idea just for fun: let's found a scientific institute (staffed with volunteers and funded with donations, obviously) purposefully limited to conduct all their tasks (actual science, administrative chores, living) with stone age tools only. Or perhaps also with medieval and whatever they manage to build themselves using such. It would be very curious to see what modern, educated, exclusive…

The primitive technology YouTube channel is pretty much this.

He doesn't use any equipment, materials or tools he hasn't made himself from the earth.

And, after many years of effort, he has managed to make some (not great quality) iron. He has also made bricks, pottery, a fan and buildings.

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#84

Post by londons_explore »

readyman wrote: post #58
Qwertious wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how that list doesn't include the state, coinage, or farming. Or animal domestication. Or smelting iron. Or steam engines and machine tools. Computers are basically irrelevant but networking would be huge - being able to communicate near-instantly across large distances was possibly the single biggest limiting factor for the size of empires in agrarian societies (other than food).

> being able to communicate near-instantly across large distances was possibly the single biggest limiting factor for the size of empires in agrarian societies Seemingly, yes, but this hasn't been proven quite yet. The American empire appears to be losing dominance since the proliferation of the internet, for example. However, the American empire certainly gained tremendous power from broadcasted electronic mediums.

I would argue that convincingly unfaked communication is more important than fast communication.

America gained cultural power over the world by making most of the worlds films. But if those films took a year to arrive in Turkmenistan, it wouldn't diminish the power of that culture over the people.

However, if rather than a film arriving, it was a guy on horseback who had heard legend of someone who had once seen an American film, then it would probably have little impact.

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#85

Post by eesmith »

Aardwolf wrote: post #65

If an archeologist from the far future finds these, they'll be utterly confused

The archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a room in the Ur temple complex containing items which were far older than the ~530 BCE expected. They were organized and labeled in three different languages, leading Woolley to conclude they were an archeological museum now referred to as Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#86

Post by WalterBright »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #75
WalterBright wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make use of telegraphy, one would need to know how to read & write. The most useful inventions in history: 1. reading & writing 2. paper 3. printing press 4. computers & networking Note that they're all about preserving and sharing information.

Yeah, those fire, pots and crops where so useless compared to those. And the wheel? Na, it's not that important.

Those items could very well have been invented multiple times, because the how-to information was lost again and again.

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#87

Post by Detrytus »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #80
tdudhhu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 3000 BC? Isn't it true that if we applied today's knowledge it could also be built millions of years ago? I can understand it means something like: it could be built with tools and materials they had 3000 BC, but isn't it also true that knowledge was able to create different tools and different materials?

I think the parent meant that it could be built by 'modern' people, homo sapiens sapiens, with the same intelligence as people living today

Homo sapiens "with the same intelligence as people living today" existed for at least 160,000 years, possibly 300,000...

Some even go as far as argue that invention of agriculture actually made us dumber, because we did not have to fight for our survival as much as before.

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#88

Post by defrost »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #81
defrost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody watching lava flows, slag, and wondering if they can recreate that heat. Metal work also started with softer easier to melt metals from much purer near surface veins and worked outwards toward harder less pure more deeply buried metals.

I think metal work started with gold. It naturally occurs in a 'ready for use' form of nuggets. You don't need to melt anything and nuggets are very soft and easy to form into any desirable shape. Most likely it's initial use was the jewelry because shiny!

Significant metal working and mining appears to have started at least 7,000 BCE with copper and lead - both (once) appear in surface | near surface deposits that can be chased back and are relatively easy to smash out and cold work when (near) 'pure'.

Ready to work gold nuggets are what they are and are rarer to find.

Metal work evolved with mining, chasing surface veins back, and this started in a significant way for first lead|copper, then tin, then other metals.

There's a recognised pre Bronze "Copper Age", then Bronze, then Iron.

Gold is shiny, beyond that it has a limited utility until the age of electronics; it's a bit soft for weapons or armour, a bit rare for sealing pipes, a bit non reactive for easy chemisty^H Alchemy, etc.

Lot's of fun for decorations.

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#89

Post by eszed »

defrost wrote: post #49
eszed wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the iPhone using hunter gatherers? Not snark: I want to know more about them.

Papua New Guinea, Northern Australia communities, also cattle herders in Africa. That covers pure traditional hunter-gather | slash and burn agrarian | herding, etc as traditional lifestyles that are still mostly practiced in mostly traditional forms by some parts of communities but also supplemented with tourism, children going to school to learn law and other skills, FiFo mine work, etc. https://www.bbc.com/news/ma…

Thanks for the story and the video. They're both interesting, but had no tech-specific information. If anyone has anything like that, I'd be interested in seeing it.

I had read a bit about Masaai keeping track of each other and their herds with mobile phones. Thank you for reminding me about that.

Re: Scientists built their own Stone Age tools to figure out how they were used

#90

Post by Qwertious »

WalterBright wrote: post #79
Qwertious wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how that list doesn't include the state, coinage, or farming. Or animal domestication. Or smelting iron. Or steam engines and machine tools. Computers are basically irrelevant but networking would be huge - being able to communicate near-instantly across large distances was possibly the single biggest limiting factor for the size of empires in agrarian societies (other than food).

The emergence of the state probably could not have happened without writing. Steam engines and machine tools could not have happened without the printing press. Networking (telegraph) was the predecessor technology of computers.

>The emergence of the state probably could not have happened without writing.

Empirically speaking the opposite is more likely - writing emerged from state accountants keeping records of grain etc. Writing was independently invented by several states across the globe, in fact.

>Steam engines and machine tools could not have happened without the printing press.

Why's that?

This is a very hard subject to discuss, because steam engines and the industrial revolution (I mean precisely the shift from an agrarian economy to a mineral economy, i.e. the switch to using non-living energy sources) happened exactly once, in the UK, and spread worldwide from there. It's hard to extrapolate from a dataset of one.

However, from what I understand of the industrial revolution, it didn't strictly require the printing press - the core driver was of needing to extract coal from a deep coal mine that was flooded; because the coal mine produced a bunch of low-grade coal that was disposed of onsite by burning it (because it was too crappy to be worth the transport costs of selling it) the efficiency of the steam engine didn't matter because the fuel was free.

There were a bunch of implicit requirements (the obvious one being the demand for coal) that are extensively debated, and while we could speculate the printing press was helpful in some way, I don't see any reason why a printing press would be a hard-requirement.

>Networking (telegraph) was the predecessor technology of computers.

The Antikythera mechanism predates the telegraph by millennia. Computing was orthogonal to networking for the majority of its history.

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