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I think it is nearsighted to say that "humankind progressed very slowly" when we can't even figure out all of the wonders accomplished by our ancestors and to t

I think it is nearsighted to say that "humankind progressed very slowly" when we can't even figure out all of the wonders accomplished by our ancestors and to the precision of the way they built so many of structures that still exist today without our "modern tools" and knowledge. There were no books that survived to tell us of all the lost knowledge uncovered before us. The reason why I think our society is laying the foundation for future progress is the Internet. All knowledge aggregated and never lost in one central place. We have to still discover what was lost thousands of years before us. What could be "new" to us may have been already known common knowledge in the past? And who knows the many lost civilizations that could have been just as technically knowledgeable before us.

cjjuice 9y ago
Also the collective goals of humankind have changed. We can't measure past civilization "progress" on our metrics of progress today. They weren't trying to "progress" in the ways we are progressing today.
abritinthebay 9y ago
> when we can't even figure out all of the wonders accomplished by our ancestors and to the precision of the way they built so many of structures that still exist today Err, source? There are a few surprising examples of advanced stuff (Damascus Steel for example) but almost always they are due to taking advantage of luck/sources (like Damascus Steel) rather than inherent skill or design that was "lost". Have any examples in mind?
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Societal loss of skill is well attested; Mycenaean fortresses were so impressive to the post-dark-age Greeks that they assumed the fortresses had been built by cyclopes rather than men. (Also, the Mycenaeans kept written records; their writing system was lost and the classical Greeks had to develop a new one.) And the Australians who colonised Tasmania soon lost most of the technology they'd brought with them. Whether we today can understand how to build massive stone fortresses or make bows and arrows is a somewhat different question.
khedoros1 9y ago
We never know what will happen in the future. Imagine if "something" happened, and no computers were built for 50 years. The Internet relies on a constant stream of replacement hardware. The information is geographically scattered and at least partially redundantly stored, but the hardware it's stored in is all pretty fragile.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> There were no books that survived to tell us of all the lost knowledge uncovered before us. Not always true. We do have surviving technical documents (reports from governors to kings) dealing with water management in Mesopotamia. Unfortunately, the specialized vocabulary in those documents is untranslatable because we don't already know the details of Mesopotamian water engineering.

cjjuice 9y ago

Also the collective goals of humankind have changed. We can't measure past civilization "progress" on our metrics of progress today. They weren't trying to "progress" in the ways we are progressing today.

abritinthebay 9y ago

> when we can't even figure out all of the wonders accomplished by our ancestors and to the precision of the way they built so many of structures that still exist today Err, source? There are a few surprising examples of advanced stuff (Damascus Steel for example) but almost always they are due to taking advantage of luck/sources (like Damascus Steel) rather than inherent skill or design that was "lost". Have any examples in mind?

thaumasiotes 9y ago
Societal loss of skill is well attested; Mycenaean fortresses were so impressive to the post-dark-age Greeks that they assumed the fortresses had been built by cyclopes rather than men. (Also, the Mycenaeans kept written records; their writing system was lost and the classical Greeks had to develop a new one.) And the Australians who colonised Tasmania soon lost most of the technology they'd brought with them. Whether we today can understand how to build massive stone fortresses or make bows and arrows is a somewhat different question.

khedoros1 9y ago

We never know what will happen in the future. Imagine if "something" happened, and no computers were built for 50 years. The Internet relies on a constant stream of replacement hardware. The information is geographically scattered and at least partially redundantly stored, but the hardware it's stored in is all pretty fragile.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> There were no books that survived to tell us of all the lost knowledge uncovered before us. Not always true. We do have surviving technical documents (reports from governors to kings) dealing with water management in Mesopotamia. Unfortunately, the specialized vocabulary in those documents is untranslatable because we don't already know the details of Mesopotamian water engineering.