171–180 of 277 posts
The thing I’m continually surprised by is the usage of obsidian by nearly every ancient-ish civilization. The usage of bow & arrow predates farming, insane.
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>concrete and cement production are quite bad. Modern concrete construction uses iron rebar liberally. That means every concrete structure built today will crack and crumble in a few hundred years at most, as the iron absorbs oxygen, it swells from the rust. Which is a shame, roman concrete buildings without rebar will still be standing 1000s of years from now.
Roman construction was also much less efficient because they had no material (besides wood) capable of carrying load in tension. Rebar allows us to make cheap practical structures that are impossible with just concrete - roman style or not.
I bet we could do fairly well. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. We've learned a lot about how to form exceptionally long lasting cement. We just choose not to do it that way, most of the time.
Ok, since I moved to the US from Europe a few years ago my perception of wood has changed a lot, especially for construction. Seeing this reinforces my view. Wood lasts for fucking ever under the proper conditions. Old construction in Europe often only had the beams made of wood, and I always thought that was orders of magnitude more durable than wooden houses, like thousands of years vs decades. I don’t think that’s…
It's not totally a "decision" on the part of the Americans to use a lot of wood in construction. It's just that America has tons of space, including space useful for growing Douglas Fir and Southern Yellow Pine, which then can be turned in to 2x4s and other construction lumber. Most of Europe long ago exhausted easily accessible natural forest resources, and where it's not densely populated tends to prefer using land…
The part that I don't quite know how to make sense of is why Canadian producers seem to have a near monopoly on sandpaper products.
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> sounds all very unsubstantiated. Speculation it seems to me What part of the study strikes you as unsubstantiated?
Every part is unsubstantiated. For starters, for the vast majority of H. Sapiens existence on earth--from 300,000 years ago to about 45,000 years ago, we shared the world with 4 or 5 other hominids that we know about. (Neanderthal, Denisoven, H. Luzonensis, H. Floresiensis, and still perhaps a few H. Erectus, and no doubt even more we haven't found yet.) That's 250,000 years of coexistence. We know that we sheboinked…
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Tools predate homo sapiens (which emerged about 300 kYA) by millions of years. The first stone industry - Oldowan - is at least two million years old and might be as old as three million. They predate what we call “archaic humans” by a long time. Even this evidence of woodworking is largely unremarkable. We’ve got phytolith [1] and microwear [2] studies showing unambiguous evidence of woodworking going back at least…
> Tools predate homo sapiens (which emerged about 300 kYA) I’m going to use a charged word because Jane Goodall used it. Goodall asserted that humans and chimpanzees (and wolves) are unique among animals in that we have a genocidal tendency [1]. When a group attacks us (or has “land and resources” we want) we don’t just chase them off. We exterminate them. We expend great resources to track them down to ensure they c…
Not only are we the only species to reach this kind of technology but among humans the first group to reach space was the Nazis. Today the innovation in that area seems driven by militaristic states and by people who seem ideologically adjacent. In other words it’s driven by very aggressive territorial members of one of the most aggressive territorial species.
We can’t generalize from one example of evolution, but if this is indicative of a common pattern then there might be some scary MFs out there. Our radio signals have been spreading for a while, so for all we know something is on its way to cleanse the universe of all forms of life that offend its god (or whatever its genocidal rationalizations is).
If this is true then we die. There is zero chance of resisting something with the technology to travel the stars and perhaps a million years or more head start on us. It’d be like an Apache attack helicopter versus a termite mound.
I had this thought when I saw the ideological turn (or mask removal) of certain people in the space industry. I found it metaphysically disturbing. Again… if there is other advanced life and if this is the pattern of how you evolve to become spacefaring, then we are doomed.
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That's kinda ridiculous to think we're not animals anymore, our nature is to use intellect for survival (and though we know we can reduce suffering further we choose not to).
It is a mind bender, yes. Your argument, written here and As far as I understand it at the moment, goes along with the other argument that everything is a simulation, or that everything that we do is preordained based upon physics. All mindbenders. I want to believe that I have the ability to make an educated decision when faced e.g. with impulses to suppress or oppress others, I do know that I can consider ramificat…
I see what you mean by being able to consider the worth of harming something for your own gain. But doesn't this apply to all animals? If a bear was hungry I'm sure they would happily eat you, but they would probably think twice if they weren't. Same for early humans, it's just we have our technologies (which our intellectual nature has enabled) now to prop us up and not have to really think about survival.
The main thing I'm curious to hear your thoughts on is what are we if not animals? Gods? That's surely completely relative, like an anteater to an ant.
> The finding, along with the discovery of a 500,000-year-old hammer made of bone, indicates that our human ancestors were making tools even earlier than archaeologists *thought*. I am tired of this. No. Archeologist only claim what they have discovered. They don't speculate because they work based on evidences. Journalists should better. This wording sounds like archeologists were wrong. That only fuel the narrative…
430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools, or even homo sapiens to have existed. ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and links!
The big secret: certain pools of ancient humans have been smart for alot longer than modern evolutionary theory wants to admit
Dumbed down understanding of mine: evolutionary theory predicts that graph goes from (0.1; 0) to (very high; in a million years). X axis: years, Y axis: progress or evolution. The only difference such discoveries make is to further refine the slope of the graph. Was the development linear or exponential? How fast did it progress? Obviously, in the past 500 years we didn't change as humans but our technological progress accelerated beyond belief.