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How much of an impediment to technological progress would not have being able to tame fire have been? You probably don't need the warmth underwater, but cookin

How much of an impediment to technological progress would not have being able to tame fire have been? You probably don't need the warmth underwater, but cooking facilitates nutrient absorption ("exodigestion"?), wards off predators, post-sunset light, and (later) smithing, smelting, steam power etc.

jlawson 8y ago
I think the lack of thrown weapons would be more basic than fire. Maybe even held weapons for striking enemies. You can't swing a club underwater due to water resistance, and spears are hard to use well because you don't have feet planted to transmit the force, so you just go backwards if you try to stab something. Not to mention the lack of trees and branches with straight poles. Meanwhile stone tools and weapons are too heavy to carry. You'll sink. In fact every tool would either sink or float, and incur huge drag. Which makes tool use much harder overall.
- insulanus 8y ago
  You could fire projectiles, like a blow gun. A poison-tipped dart could be made to work underwater.
  - jlawson 8y ago
    Dart will stop within a few centimeters due to water resistance (unless it is very long and dense, like a metal harpoon, but you can't make such a thing). Poison will dissolve and drift away within moments of applying to a projectile. Nothing to make the tube out of. You don't have lungs (water respiration doesn't work this way in any creature I know of), so you can't "blow" anything.
    - pandaman 8y ago
      >You don't have lungs (water respiration doesn't work this way in any creature I know of), so you can't "blow" anything. You might have heard about mantle, an organ that distinguishes mollusks. Many of them use it to circulate water around the gills and some are so good with it that they can create a water jet and shoot it with such a force that they swim in the opposite direction.
    - hyperpallium 8y ago
      spearguns work
Baeocystin 8y ago
Probably significant. If I were to make a SWAG, though, it would be the hard limits of dissolved oxygen on maximum metabolic output that would be the biggest showstopper. There is very little oxygen available in even the most oxygenated water compared to our atmosphere, and without a powerful oxidizing agent available to provide the chemical oomph required, there is only so much resource-hungry brain a gill-breather can support, no matter how useful the neural material would otherwise be.
danans 8y ago
> How much of an impediment to technological progress would not have being able to tame fire have been? A real world example of this is the isolated tribe of North Sentinel Island (who recently killed an American Christian missionary who smuggled himself there to prosyletize). As best we can tell, they appear to not have learned to harnessing fire to this day. EDIT: although the first anthropologist to contact the Sentinelese claims otherwise: https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/surprised-the-sentinelese-killed-someone-first-anthropologist-to-enter-north-sentinel-island/articleshow/66787948.cms https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/surpris...

jlawson 8y ago

I think the lack of thrown weapons would be more basic than fire. Maybe even held weapons for striking enemies. You can't swing a club underwater due to water resistance, and spears are hard to use well because you don't have feet planted to transmit the force, so you just go backwards if you try to stab something. Not to mention the lack of trees and branches with straight poles. Meanwhile stone tools and weapons are too heavy to carry. You'll sink. In fact every tool would either sink or float, and incur huge drag. Which makes tool use much harder overall.

insulanus 8y ago
You could fire projectiles, like a blow gun. A poison-tipped dart could be made to work underwater.
- jlawson 8y ago
  Dart will stop within a few centimeters due to water resistance (unless it is very long and dense, like a metal harpoon, but you can't make such a thing). Poison will dissolve and drift away within moments of applying to a projectile. Nothing to make the tube out of. You don't have lungs (water respiration doesn't work this way in any creature I know of), so you can't "blow" anything.
  - pandaman 8y ago
    >You don't have lungs (water respiration doesn't work this way in any creature I know of), so you can't "blow" anything. You might have heard about mantle, an organ that distinguishes mollusks. Many of them use it to circulate water around the gills and some are so good with it that they can create a water jet and shoot it with such a force that they swim in the opposite direction.
  - hyperpallium 8y ago
    spearguns work

Baeocystin 8y ago

Probably significant. If I were to make a SWAG, though, it would be the hard limits of dissolved oxygen on maximum metabolic output that would be the biggest showstopper. There is very little oxygen available in even the most oxygenated water compared to our atmosphere, and without a powerful oxidizing agent available to provide the chemical oomph required, there is only so much resource-hungry brain a gill-breather can support, no matter how useful the neural material would otherwise be.

danans 8y ago

> How much of an impediment to technological progress would not have being able to tame fire have been? A real world example of this is the isolated tribe of North Sentinel Island (who recently killed an American Christian missionary who smuggled himself there to prosyletize). As best we can tell, they appear to not have learned to harnessing fire to this day. EDIT: although the first anthropologist to contact the Sentinelese claims otherwise: https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/surprised-the-sentinelese-killed-someone-first-anthropologist-to-enter-north-sentinel-island/articleshow/66787948.cms https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/surpris...