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A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

#81

Post by antisthenes »

grecy wrote: post #79
narrator wrote: post #4

Primitive Technology is really interesting. This guy is super good at it : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA He's trying to get iron smelted right now, but that's really hard. It seems the problem the Lykovs ran into was that their metal items rusted after a while and they couldn't repair them. It's really hard to live without pots, and knives.

I live in the Yukon - when we are out Moose hunting in the fall we often wonder if we could survive the winter if we flipped our canoe with nothing more than we have with us. Every time this article comes up, I have two questions I've never found a satisfactory answer to: 1. How did they light fires? 2. How did they cook and boil water? From experience pots and pans fail after much less than 40 years.

For 1. I'd assume they kept the fire going, since the need to cook and boil food was constant.

I've read somewhere as a kid that prehistoric people who discovered fire kept it going round the clock since it was more convenient to always have a light source and warmth on demand and wood is generally plentiful enough.

Re: A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

#82

Post by grecy »

antisthenes wrote: post #81
grecy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Yukon - when we are out Moose hunting in the fall we often wonder if we could survive the winter if we flipped our canoe with nothing more than we have with us. Every time this article comes up, I have two questions I've never found a satisfactory answer to: 1. How did they light fires? 2. How did they cook and boil water? From experience pots and pans fail after much less than 40 years.

For 1. I'd assume they kept the fire going, since the need to cook and boil food was constant. I've read somewhere as a kid that prehistoric people who discovered fire kept it going round the clock since it was more convenient to always have a light source and warmth on demand and wood is generally plentiful enough.

I'm assuming that too, but man, keeping a fire going all summer would be a lot of effort!

Re: A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

#84

Post by aleksei »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69
duaneb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on. I'm not sure what you're imagining pre-history to be like, but humans are generally the top of every food chain. It's also very rarely worth it to attack another human without desired resources. The big risk in Eurasia would be wolves, who would have to be very hungry. Non-pack animals usually are a threat w…

Before agriculture they didn't have this security, and spent most of their time foraging anyways. It is no coincidence that technology evolves much faster after the beginning of agriculture.

Technology evolved roughly 10 000 years after agriculture, only after society was at the point that you had relatively leisurely people that didn't have to till and keep watch all day. I wouldn't say agriculture kickstarted technological evolution, except for allowing for towns and larger tribes to form in the first place.

Re: A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

#85

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aleksei wrote: post #84
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before agriculture they didn't have this security, and spent most of their time foraging anyways. It is no coincidence that technology evolves much faster after the beginning of agriculture.

Technology evolved roughly 10 000 years after agriculture, only after society was at the point that you had relatively leisurely people that didn't have to till and keep watch all day. I wouldn't say agriculture kickstarted technological evolution, except for allowing for towns and larger tribes to form in the first place.

Agriculture is only around 10,000 years old (give or take, at least one tribe on the planet hasn't invented it yet). This is like saying nothing invented in the meantime since now (written language, most of math) is "technology"?
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