>Pretty fast if you start the clock at Copernicus, not so fast if you start it 200,000 years ago when our first ancestors had the brains to figure it out. Unti

>Pretty fast if you start the clock at Copernicus, not so fast if you start it 200,000 years ago when our first ancestors had the brains to figure it out. Until the invention of writing, all knowledge was conveyed via oral traditions. As such, the work of Copernicus and Newton would have been impossible for the humans of 10-15,000 years ago, since both required both recorded knowledge and thinking about planetary bodies as well as centuries of recorded planetary movements. Without the benefit of recorded history of science, technology and the natural world, those folks would never have been able to accomplish their good works, as Newton himself (as well as many others prior to him) put forward[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g...