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All good points. But the notion that our intelligence potential has remained static for at least 50k years and we hadn’t figured out how to cooperate and plant

All good points. But the notion that our intelligence potential has remained static for at least 50k years and we hadn’t figured out how to cooperate and plant seeds until relatively recently is difficult to swallow.

luma 3y ago
You're working with the assumption that settling in large groups, creating a "state", and tending to agriculture represents progress for the people involved. I'd recommend checking out Scott's "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" for an alternative look at those assumptions. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States...
- owlstuffing 3y ago
  Right. “The earliest states” is the issue, thanks for the reference, I’ll check it out.
thechao 3y ago
Undomesticated precursors of grain crops are literally no better than foraging. The domestication of grain crops is probably a necessary precondition to our type of civilization. And, more importantly, we don't see hominid densities — especially with widespread, state-level populations — until the post grain domestication events. That doesn't mean large scale hominid concentrations couldn't exist without domesticated grains (there's at least a few grainfree riverine cities), but they are exceptional.
wolverine876 3y ago
> the notion that our intelligence potential has remained static for at least 50k years and we hadn’t figured out how to cooperate and plant seeds until relatively recently is difficult to swallow. I wonder the same things, but we can see the fact that development varies greatly among humans with the same intelligence potential. Today there are isolated societies with neolithic technology, and they have the same brains that people commenting on HN have. Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? (One explanation comes from experiencing contemporary technological development - many things are obvious in hindsight.)
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  > Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? The Greeks did not invent the alphabet.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Yeah according to wikipedia there was a phonetic alphabet invented in Egypt which was used by workers and slaves who didn't understand the complexities of hieroglyphics. The Greeks would later borrow this alphabet, using the same letters and placing them in the same order, adding vowels to better suit their own language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      The definition of an alphabet is that it includes vowels. Sans vowels it's an abjad - named for the first four letters of the Arabic abjad, alif, bā', jīm, dāl, just like 'alphabet' is named for the first two letters of the Greek one. Arabic and Hebrew are modern abjads. There is also another form, an abugida, where each character typically represents a paired consonent and vowel sounds; Devanagari, which I believe is used to write Hindi, is an abudiga. And of course there are yet more forms.
      - CogitoCogito 3y ago
        The jump from the Phoenician abjad to the Greek alphabet was very minor. It was almost guaranteed. Phoenicians didn’t _need_ to write down vowels due to the structure of their language. When the Greeks adapted the Phoenician abjad (they certainly didn’t invent their own) they made some changes to make it work with their language. This happened again and again throughout history. Languages always made changes to alphabets when adapting them from other languages. But yes if you argue semantically that the alphabet is the object that the Greeks first put together then yes they did it first. But they certainly only made extremely minor changes compared to what came before. As an aside, “alphabet” is quite clearly named for the first two letters in the Phoenician abjad. Though the Greeks did take the same names for their first two letters as well.
fasterik 3y ago
I don't think it's that surprising if you consider culture as just another process of evolution. It took billions of years of single cells swimming around before the transition to multicellular organisms. It took millions of years of hominids living in tribes and making stone tools before the transition to building rockets and semiconductors.

luma 3y ago

You're working with the assumption that settling in large groups, creating a "state", and tending to agriculture represents progress for the people involved. I'd recommend checking out Scott's "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" for an alternative look at those assumptions. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States...

owlstuffing 3y ago
Right. “The earliest states” is the issue, thanks for the reference, I’ll check it out.

thechao 3y ago

Undomesticated precursors of grain crops are literally no better than foraging. The domestication of grain crops is probably a necessary precondition to our type of civilization. And, more importantly, we don't see hominid densities — especially with widespread, state-level populations — until the post grain domestication events. That doesn't mean large scale hominid concentrations couldn't exist without domesticated grains (there's at least a few grainfree riverine cities), but they are exceptional.

wolverine876 3y ago

> the notion that our intelligence potential has remained static for at least 50k years and we hadn’t figured out how to cooperate and plant seeds until relatively recently is difficult to swallow. I wonder the same things, but we can see the fact that development varies greatly among humans with the same intelligence potential. Today there are isolated societies with neolithic technology, and they have the same brains that people commenting on HN have. Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? (One explanation comes from experiencing contemporary technological development - many things are obvious in hindsight.)

CogitoCogito 3y ago
> Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? The Greeks did not invent the alphabet.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Yeah according to wikipedia there was a phonetic alphabet invented in Egypt which was used by workers and slaves who didn't understand the complexities of hieroglyphics. The Greeks would later borrow this alphabet, using the same letters and placing them in the same order, adding vowels to better suit their own language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    The definition of an alphabet is that it includes vowels. Sans vowels it's an abjad - named for the first four letters of the Arabic abjad, alif, bā', jīm, dāl, just like 'alphabet' is named for the first two letters of the Greek one. Arabic and Hebrew are modern abjads. There is also another form, an abugida, where each character typically represents a paired consonent and vowel sounds; Devanagari, which I believe is used to write Hindi, is an abudiga. And of course there are yet more forms.
    - CogitoCogito 3y ago
      The jump from the Phoenician abjad to the Greek alphabet was very minor. It was almost guaranteed. Phoenicians didn’t _need_ to write down vowels due to the structure of their language. When the Greeks adapted the Phoenician abjad (they certainly didn’t invent their own) they made some changes to make it work with their language. This happened again and again throughout history. Languages always made changes to alphabets when adapting them from other languages. But yes if you argue semantically that the alphabet is the object that the Greeks first put together then yes they did it first. But they certainly only made extremely minor changes compared to what came before. As an aside, “alphabet” is quite clearly named for the first two letters in the Phoenician abjad. Though the Greeks did take the same names for their first two letters as well.

fasterik 3y ago

I don't think it's that surprising if you consider culture as just another process of evolution. It took billions of years of single cells swimming around before the transition to multicellular organisms. It took millions of years of hominids living in tribes and making stone tools before the transition to building rockets and semiconductors.