Why has the progress of human civilization been hindered until just recently.?

Question

The world was a very different place 70,000 years ago. There were no cities, towns, or farms. Back then people depended on their environment to survive. Their food, tools, and shelter were all made from things found in nature. For a long time, people were nomadic. In time, however some people began to stay in one place because they developed agriculture. and about 10,000 years ago right after the last ice age towns and farming developed. Now my question is this, they were the same species as us; "Modern Humans" with the same capacity of knowledge as us, not neanderthals. Why on earth did it take so many years for progress to happen, and why does it seem a bit suspicious that it has only been within the past 100 or 200 years that we have become "advanced" with computers cars and skyscrapers, and what on earth happened those 60,000 years. Do you think that there were other advanced civilizations just like us that were wiped out and science has not uncovered?


Discuss intellegently

Answer 1

It hasn't. It only appears to have done so. Progress has always grown exponetially. An interesting feature of exponential growth curves (see link) is that if you pick ANY point in time, it looks as if most of the growth has occured just recently. That's why, someone living 2000 years ago, at the height of the Roman Empire, would have been asking exaclty the same question you are asking now.

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

Answer 2

Technological progress (which is the only sort your question refers to) proceeded slowly for all that time because theere was no methodology to it. Any advances depended on some craftsman happening on a better idea--and passing that idea on (which might not happen if keepiing the idea secret was to his advantage).

The change that began about 300(not 200) years ago was the direct of the development of the scientific method--which made organized and sustained research and development of both science and technology possible. This was aided to some degree in the short term by the emergence of capitalism, which createdincentives for innovation--but the key was the ability to organize and sustain the production of scientific and technological knowledge.

The various tales of "lost advanced civilizations" can be entertaining--but there is no evidence whatsoever to support them. They are just that--stories that can be fun--but not taken seriously.

Answer 3

Knowledge creates knowledge. The more of it you have, the more of it you can create. This is particularly relevant with the growth of computers and the internet. We are able to analyze information like never before. A single person can sit at a computer and access the largest store of information in the history of the world. Then, they can take that information and analyze it in a million different ways with the computer they used to find it. This results in an explosion of innovation. However, even prior to computers this was happening. As people create things, they find ways to use pieces of that technology elsewhere. This creates an exponential growth. Two pieces of knowledge create four, four creates 16, and so on.

I would also assert that industrialization and greater efficiency of production have also helped. We can make things faster, and with less use of human capital. This being the case, a job that once took five people now takes only one. This means that those other four people have time to undertake more innovative endeavors, thus creating the opportunity for more knowledge creation.

Finally, Industrialization has also given us more free time. We don't have to spend our days hunting for food and fighting off wild animals. We go to the grocery store for food and go home to solid-walled homes that repel would-be predators. Thus, we simply have more time for endeavors that are innovative and productive. Basically, we don't have to spend all of our time surviving anymore, and this means we can spend more time creating.

Answer 4

section a million: Is faith hindering human progression? now no longer all faith. Fundamentalism and literalism is, indoors the adventure that it promotes scientific loss of information (or a minimum of seems to). info? Ken Ham's creationist museum...choose I say better? section 2: What diverse motivations as top resolving heat concerns like abortion or stem cellular learn do atheist activists have for starting to be a member of political strikes? could desire to now no longer inform you, yet i'm now no longer an atheist, and that i do now no longer connect political strikes via utilising certainty of religion. I efficient does now no longer assume to speak for any atheist...i'm efficient that they had be fairly peeved approximately it.

Answer 5

"If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." - Sir Isaac Newton.

We have more knowledge because writing passed on knowledge from previous generations.

We have more inventions because we have more people to create new ideas. We have more people because of better food, which is the result of generations of selective breeding, followed by a few generations of scientific study.

Answer 6

You don't realize that early cultures celebrated inventions /discovery's like fire or the wheel.
as much as we enjoy the computers we have now.
Its all progress.