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> Take stone tool making -- an art that goes back beyond our species, to the homo genus itself, as a universal hominid skill. Now mostly lost to us. That's kind

> Take stone tool making -- an art that goes back beyond our species, to the homo genus itself, as a universal hominid skill. Now mostly lost to us. That's kind of sad. It's not sad! We have much better ways to make tools these days. It's like lamenting the lost art of (incredibly tediously) drawing out circuit boards or drafting blueprints by hand. Will people of the future be sad about having lost the art of finding things to do while a progressive JPEG (porn) loaded over a dialup connection?

nyolfen 4y ago
i don't think what is sad about 'losing' this is the straightforward utility of creating stone tools, but rather no longer possessing this article of culture which was previously shared by all humans for all time, something that connected them and their experiences, their understanding of the world and a point of reference for their sense of meaning -- learning to fashion a handaxe from your father, sister etc was probably something that literally all humans shared memories of. we are utterly alienated from them in many ways, hardly the same species
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Exactly this. Consider the "hand axe" -- a multipurpose stone tool made contiguously by basically almost all bipedal hominids (if not more) for a million and a half (or more!) years. Homo erectus, neanderthals, sapiens, etc. Then abruptly lost around the Paleolithic to Neolithic transition really. Apart from a few anthropologists who've studied to try to recreate the technique. It essentially "defined" what it is to be human for over a million years, and we can't do it anymore. I'm not saying it's a useful skill, only that this is a piece of cultural memory lost and that's kind of sad. It's not like hand-etching circuit boards, which is nothing more than a transitory technique to accomplish a goal until we found a new way. Stone tool making (and language) is what distinguished us from every other species on the planet, and was one of the central activities that people did with their time for hours on end, and is probably one of the key things that got us to "sharpen" our problem-solving brains and develop the other skills we rely on now.

nyolfen 4y ago

i don't think what is sad about 'losing' this is the straightforward utility of creating stone tools, but rather no longer possessing this article of culture which was previously shared by all humans for all time, something that connected them and their experiences, their understanding of the world and a point of reference for their sense of meaning -- learning to fashion a handaxe from your father, sister etc was probably something that literally all humans shared memories of. we are utterly alienated from them in many ways, hardly the same species

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Exactly this. Consider the "hand axe" -- a multipurpose stone tool made contiguously by basically almost all bipedal hominids (if not more) for a million and a half (or more!) years. Homo erectus, neanderthals, sapiens, etc. Then abruptly lost around the Paleolithic to Neolithic transition really. Apart from a few anthropologists who've studied to try to recreate the technique. It essentially "defined" what it is to be human for over a million years, and we can't do it anymore. I'm not saying it's a useful skill, only that this is a piece of cultural memory lost and that's kind of sad. It's not like hand-etching circuit boards, which is nothing more than a transitory technique to accomplish a goal until we found a new way. Stone tool making (and language) is what distinguished us from every other species on the planet, and was one of the central activities that people did with their time for hours on end, and is probably one of the key things that got us to "sharpen" our problem-solving brains and develop the other skills we rely on now.