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Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

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Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#21

Post by INTPenis »

card_zero wrote: post #10
INTPenis wrote: post #8

With just wood and rope they could probably accomplish amazing things. I'm convinced on a personal level that stone age people had cranes to lift boulders with.

Stone age when? 40,000 years ago or 4,000 years ago? Göbekli Tepe is from a mere 11,000 years ago. I mean cranes for ziggurats, sure. Cranes for megaliths I dunno about. Maybe you just got a lot of beefy men to push the giant rock into an upright position, maybe brute force was the point. Giving them simple machines is a slippery slope (which is itself a more plausible paleolithic/neolithic technology) to a kind of p…

When we start erecting megaliths, that's when I believe we had basic counterweight cranes.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#22

Post by Ekaros »

cubefox wrote: post #5
Honali wrote: post #3

We tend to picture prehistoric technology as a progression of increasingly clever stone tools because stone is what survives, but rope may have been closer to infrastructure

Stone age peoples still existed until fairly recently in Africa and Australia, so stone age technology isn't prehistoric at all. What's prehistoric is stone age technology from other parts of the world.

Being from later developed part of Europe that is Finland. It is fun to consider that Iron age ended in 1000-1300 CE... So whole "ages" thing is really location dependent...

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#23

Post by defrost »

INTPenis wrote: post #21
card_zero wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stone age when? 40,000 years ago or 4,000 years ago? Göbekli Tepe is from a mere 11,000 years ago. I mean cranes for ziggurats, sure. Cranes for megaliths I dunno about. Maybe you just got a lot of beefy men to push the giant rock into an upright position, maybe brute force was the point. Giving them simple machines is a slippery slope (which is itself a more plausible paleolithic/neolithic technology) to a kind of p…

When we start erecting megaliths, that's when I believe we had basic counterweight cranes.

Well before those (pun intended) there were many variations on counter weighted water lifters - from source (well, or lower channel) to buckets or to irrigation channels.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#24

Post by greggsy »

Terr_ wrote: post #6

There are certain bodies of human knowledge and practice which aren't usually referred to as "technologies", and I think that leads us to underestimate their complexity and importance. In particular, I'm thinking of textiles and agriculture. It's no coincidence that both were prime targets of industrial mechanization, occupying a huge proportion of all human labor.

Language. writing and maths are the main ones that come to mind for me.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#25

Post by hdgvhicv »

greggsy wrote: post #24
Terr_ wrote: post #6

There are certain bodies of human knowledge and practice which aren't usually referred to as "technologies", and I think that leads us to underestimate their complexity and importance. In particular, I'm thinking of textiles and agriculture. It's no coincidence that both were prime targets of industrial mechanization, occupying a huge proportion of all human labor.

Language. writing and maths are the main ones that come to mind for me.

Writing and maths are certainly technologies to discover in Civilization.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#26

Post by alexpotato »

Knots and lashings were one of those things that "just made sense" to me as a child/teenager. So much so that even though I never took pioneering merit badge as a Boy Scout, people who were taking it had me double check their project knots before they were submitted for final evaluation.

Had a similar experience with SQL e.g. I finished a 3 hour exam in I've always wondered if the "3d modeling" aspect of both skills overlapped and why this was easy for me (I once tested very highly in mental 3d rotation skills on an aptitude test so maybe?)

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#27

Post by schrectacular »

noosphr wrote: post #18
plufz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be a scholar in gender studies to wonder why textile has been a bit overlooked when looking back at human development.

By who? The cotton gin and spinning jenny are front and center in any history of the early industrial revolution.

The development of dyes was the genesis of the chemical industry, but no one really talks about that.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#28

Post by gosub100 »

plufz wrote: post #7
Terr_ wrote: post #6

There are certain bodies of human knowledge and practice which aren't usually referred to as "technologies", and I think that leads us to underestimate their complexity and importance. In particular, I'm thinking of textiles and agriculture. It's no coincidence that both were prime targets of industrial mechanization, occupying a huge proportion of all human labor.

You don’t have to be a scholar in gender studies to wonder why textile has been a bit overlooked when looking back at human development.

You don't have to be a materials science Ph.D to know that stone and metal last a bit longer than cloth.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#29

Post by _def »

alexpotato wrote: post #26

Knots and lashings were one of those things that "just made sense" to me as a child/teenager. So much so that even though I never took pioneering merit badge as a Boy Scout, people who were taking it had me double check their project knots before they were submitted for final evaluation. Had a similar experience with SQL e.g. I finished a 3 hour exam in I've always wondered if the "3d modeling" aspect of both skills…

Thanks for putting words to the concept, "mental 3d rotation skills" describes exactly what I feel I lack to a degree where it noticable impacts other fields, I assume.

Re: Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

#30

Post by bluGill »

noosphr wrote: post #18
plufz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be a scholar in gender studies to wonder why textile has been a bit overlooked when looking back at human development.

By who? The cotton gin and spinning jenny are front and center in any history of the early industrial revolution.

That a technology to develop the spinning wheel should have been around a lot sooner, but it seems to have not appeared until relatively late in the history. Now yes, we are talking probably a thousand years before, but the idea is simple enough that you would think that the ancients who knew all the different pieces such as the lathe could have made that work.

Spinning Jenny? Yeah, that's complex enough that it couldn't have appeared much sooner. I'm not sure if the cotton gin would have been possible sooner or not.

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