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It's wild to think how long very human-like beings and modern humans existed before the technological revolution really took off. Hundreds of thousands of years
by hax0ron3 7mo ago
It's wild to think how long very human-like beings and modern humans existed before the technological revolution really took off. Hundreds of thousands of years of existing on the technological level of stone tools, spears, cloth made out of hides, and fire. Then at some unknown point probably in the last 100,000 years, the bow and arrow. Then about 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, which probably unlocked much of the subsequent technological progress by enabling more food security and larger populations.
- tyre 7mo ago> Then about 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, which probably unlocked much of the subsequent technological progress by enabling more food security and larger populations. It definitely did. Also note that agriculture was invented in multiple places over time. Unfortunately, the Native Americans did not invent it quickly enough, so they had far less time for technological development before Europeans arrived. At which point, it was too late.
- delta_p_delta_x 7mo ago> Unfortunately, the Native Americans did not invent it quickly enough This is false. Most native Americans throughout both continents—especially those in Mesoamerica—were powerful civilisations in their own right with plenty of agricultural history. What finished many of them off was a lack of resistance to smallpox, which was brought over by the first explorers/colonists.
- AJMaxwell 7mo agoThe lack of animals to domesticate meant fewer zoonotic diseases in Native American populations, so they were ill equipped when those diseases appeared. IIRC, there was a massive plague in North America a decade or so before Columbus arrived.
- alsetmusic 7mo agoSo a lack of animal husbandry is the same as lower technology and a lack of farming.
- Auracle 7mo agoI never understand the “lack of animals to domesticate” angle. They did domesticate animals, such as the llama and alpaca. More could have been domesticated and presumably would have been if the had more time to advance. It’s a shame giant sloths were killed off…
- t-3 7mo agoCattle, oxen, horses, camels, mules, donkeys, etc. The animals that are capable of heavy labor at or exceeding human level weren't present in the Americas. Llama and alpaca are more useful for fiber and meat than labor. Buffalo might possibly be useful but they are too big, wide-ranging, and aggressive to be easily tamed and bred.
- eru 7mo agoRemember chicken and pigs, too. Not useful for labour, but good sources of high value nutrition, and can be fed of scraps or whatever they find around the house and garden. In Europe, pigs like eating acorns, which are otherwise fairly useless to humans.
- pfdietz 7mo agoIn North America, deer eat acorns, but apparently are not suitable for domestication.
- t-3 7mo agoFarming the white-tailed deer native to the Americas has become somewhat common in the old world and reindeer have also been domesticated as beasts of burden across northern Eurasia. AAIU, the body structure of white-tailed deer isn't very suitable for labor, they can jump very high, and are not particularly gregarious or easy to keep in herds. The North American caribou (reindeer) population only inhabits the far north and is seasonally nomadic, migrating over very long distances. Other, larger, native species like moose are usually considered too big and too aggressive to tame.
- hax0ron3 7mo agoThat played a large role, but they were also pretty far behind Europe in military technology so I am almost certain they would have been conquered anyway. It would have just taken longer. I'm no expert in the matter, but from what I've read it seems to me that the Mesoamerican civilizations in 1492 were probably at about the military level that the Eurasian civilizations had already reached in the first millenium BC.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoIt’s impossible to tell. If it had taken decades or a century longer because their numbers were higher, they might have had time to start up their own production of technology.
- surgical_fire 7mo agoAround 90% of the people died of plagues. It's really impossible to speculate how things would have progressed without those plagues. Or worse, if Native Americans were full of plagues that the conquistadors would bring back to Europe to cull 90% of Eurasia.
- OkayPhysicist 7mo agoThere's some speculation that Syphilis may have been a new world plague. The first major outbreak was a couple of years after Columbus returned, but figuring out when the first ever case was has proven more difficult.
- hax0ron3 7mo agoI agree that if the disease luck had gone the other way and a large fraction of Europe had died of disease then it's possible the Native Americans would have remained unconquered. If the disease factor was just taken out of the equation completely, I think the Native Americans would have been conquered, simply because of the great European advantage in technology. But the conquest would have looked more like England's colonization of India, and many more of the native cultures would probably have had a chance to evolve and assimilate modern technology, like India's cultures did, rather than just going extinct.
- riffraff 7mo agoIn things like the battle of Cajamarca the Incan lost a battle against the Spanish with 8000 warriors against 150. All the 150 survived. Disease was important but there was a large technological and cultural gap too (e.g. the Incan didn't fight at night!).
- tehnub 7mo agoI just read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca It seems like the Incans were overconfident and didn't expect a surprise attack (didn't have their weapons, only a small retinue around the rule in ceremonial garb instead of armor), and then the 8000 warriors were outside and didn't even attempt to fight the Spaniards because they were so demoralized.
- riffraff 7mo agoWell, yeah, and if you keep reading about it, the whole rest of the campaign has the same tenure. Spain conquered and held the whole Incan empire with 168 men, also fomenting smaller factions and internal feuds etc. The scale of this is absolutely insane.
- vasco 7mo agoAround the same time, 460 men in 6 ships destroyed 30000 men in 400 ships taking over Ormuz. Portugal and Spain were just incredibly OP during that time period. And the people in Ormuz were more advanced than the natives in US. And they still got absolutely destroyed.
- avadodin 7mo ago> the Incan didn't fight at night! To be fair to the Inca, I didn't expect the night–vision–equipped Spanish Inquisition, either.
- circlefavshape 7mo agoYou're missing a zero. It was EIGHTY thousand, not 8000.
- junofan 7mo agoThere’s some more recent scholarship than Guns, Germs, and Steel. See Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600 [1]. The truth is maybe a bit more complicated. We had doctors volunteering to visit tribes who recorded what they observed firsthand. Personally, given the evidence at hand, I think it’s likely the populations on this continent were caught in large boom/bust cycles, and we happened upon them right at a bust cycle. It’s definitely up for debate. There’s also modern work on smallpox using genetic clocks etc to consider. [1]: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674013056 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674013056
- alsetmusic 7mo ago> we happened upon them That's the thinking. It's not that people arrived. It's not that ancestors landed. It's that European's happened. This was unavoidable. The rest of the world was deficient for not being ready.
- alsetmusic 7mo agoStupid people may not be able to read sarcasm. I figured HN would have enough internet literacy, but maybe not.
- zirgs 7mo agoYeah, someone would have started to cross the oceans eventually. Europeans happened to do that first.
- jandrewrogers 7mo agoThere was a hemorrhagic fever in ~1545 an ~1576 that killed tens of millions of people. This is well-documented. The exact nature of this hemorrhagic fever is a major open question in the history of North America, and the natives attested its existence before the Europeans arrived AFAIK. We know about hantavirus in the southwestern US and Mexico but that seems unlikely to be the source based on its epidemiology. This is one of the most interesting scientific questions about North America, the possibility of a latent hemorrhagic virus that has heretofore not been isolated due to a few hundred years of dormancy. Smallpox definitely added to the problem, especially in more northern parts of the Americas, but there is substantial evidence of brutal culling by a disease we can’t explain in the southern parts of North America.
- mock-possum 7mo ago> There was a hemorrhagic fever in ~1545 an ~1576 that killed tens of millions of people I haven’t heard of this - do you have any material to recommend on the subject?
- mkl 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Retric 7mo ago1545 is well after European contact and close enough that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence. 1519–1521: Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire. 1532–1533: Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca Empire. Further low 10’s of millions of deaths on its own really doesn’t explain the 90% population drop across several hundred years here. Smallpox killed between 65% to 95% of Native American populations but it was far from alone. We’re talking devastating plague after plague for generations which canceled out the tendency for populations to rebound when competition is low. Something like 200+ million deaths on the conservative side over a few hundred years not just one or two devastating but short lived outbreaks.
- ywvcbk 7mo agoThey didn't invent it quickly enough i.e. they generally lagged behind Eurasian civilizations by several thousand years so by 1500 they were approximately still stuck in the bronze age or so.
- t-3 7mo agoAmerican agriculture was very advanced for the time and the crops and ideas developed transformed food and agriculture throughout the rest of the world. What was lacking were beasts of burden and metallurgy and resistance to smallpox.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoIsn’t there indications that even large parts of the Amazon is in actuality planted?
- eru 7mo agoWell, if you give a charitable interpretation to the grandfather comment, they didn't say that they didn't invent agriculture in North America. Just that they were a bit slower to get started.
- mr_toad 7mo ago> What finished many of them off was a lack of resistance to smallpox, which was brought over by the first explorers/colonists. They lacked herds of domesticated animals, which not only held them back agriculturally, but were also the source of diseases like smallpox.
- melagonster 7mo agoThe Inca Empire had crazy plant breeding techniques.
- poisonarena 7mo agothey also didn't even invent the wheel
- ViscountPenguin 7mo agoThe wheel isn't that useful if you live on terrible terrain and have nothing to drive it with.
- poisonarena 7mo agollamas and alpacas
- t-3 7mo agoNot great beasts of burden. Barely better than dog with travois, arguably worse than having an extra human to carry things.
- ViscountPenguin 7mo agoLlamas were used for some logistics, but they're not the most sturdy, modern Llamas can carry around ~40kg but I'm unsure if it would've been higher or lower with the breeds they used back then. Either way, better than nothing, but definitely no horse.
- Auracle 7mo agoI live on a hilly plot and use a wheelbarrow or cart all the time in the summer.
- Aefiam 7mo agothey did invent the wheel, they just didnt use it for transportion.
- alsetmusic 7mo ago[flagged]
- hax0ron3 7mo agoIt's just objectively true that the Native Americans were far behind Europe in military technology and many other technologies in 1492. The person you're replying to never implied that the Natives were stupid savages.
- alsetmusic 7mo ago> The person you're replying to never implied that the Natives were stupid savages. They did. Natives didn't have agriculture: > It definitely did. Also note that agriculture was invented in multiple places over time. Unfortunately, the Native Americans did not invent it quickly enough, so they had far less time for technological development before Europeans arrived. At which point, it was too late. The unfortunate thing is that those dumb Natives didn't learn to grow things. Something that had been observed for thousands of years.
- hax0ron3 7mo agoHe wasn't claiming that the Native Americans didn't have agriculture, he was claiming that Native Americans didn't develop large-scale agriculture as early in history as Eurasians did, and as a result had less time to develop the kinds of technologies that are enabled by having large-scale agriculture.
- kelnos 7mo agoCommenter upthread said they "did not invent it quickly enough", as you quoted, which is not the same thing as "did not invent it". They just meant that the Native Americans invented it later than the Europeans did, such that the natives had less time to develop advanced (military) technology.
- alsetmusic 7mo agoDo you really think that a process that was discovered repeatedly throughout the world was thousands of years behind on one side? Edit: We're talking ~10k years difference.
- MyHonestOpinon 7mo agoThe Americas were always going to be behind Euro Asia due to the shape of the continents. Going North-South you get big changes in climate and thus agricultural techniques and plants. Civilizations in the Americas could have spent thousands of years in a grow and bust cycle and never reach a similar level of development as the old continent.
- hax0ron3 7mo agoThe East-West thing probably does confer an advantage, but it might be overstated. I'm not sure that the difference in required agricultural techniques between Mesopotamia and Europe was actually any smaller than the difference in required agricultural techniques between Mesoamerica and North America.
- surgical_fire 7mo agoEr, Aztecs and Incans definitely had agriculture. They actually had highly complex societies. What they mostly lacked were antibodies against the numerous diseases brought by the Europeans. Measles, Mumps, Cholera, Tuberculosis, and so on.
- jstanley 7mo agoThey had agriculture, yes, but they hadn't had it long enough to bootstrap an advanced civilisation before the Europeans arrived. If they had, perhaps Europe would have been conquered by South Americans instead of the other way around.
- AngryData 7mo agoWhat do you mean they didn't have an advanced civilization? They had city densities above the best in Europe and their gold work put European goldsmiths to shame. They had the abacus, pain medications, aqueducts, armor, dams, beer, gold plating along with sintering soldering and lost wax casting, roads, the concept of zero in mathematics, advanced astronomy, plumbing, the suspension bridge, multiple unique writing systems, and tons of food preservation techniques. That is a far cry from some dudes tieing rocks to sticks.
- vessenes 7mo agoFriend, this is just not true. Thousands of years of large sophisticated governments and civilizations in what is now Mexico and farther south. Its reductive to the point of being completely wrong to think of the Americas in this way. Teotihuacan shows excellent astronomy, civil engineering, and a very large implied economy built so long ago the name of the people group is not recorded. Did Europe rock the Americas, hard? Yes. Was it because they were more advanced? In wartime tech, and psyops, yes. The rest? I would be cautious.
- Fricken 7mo agoAlso nukes. We've got the whole place rigged to blow in case a few of us just doesn't feel like it anymore.
- bryanrasmussen 7mo agoYeah when you read it in Dune "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing". sounds super cool and badass and like totally brilliant strategy but in real life not so much. Although I expect this strategy will be employed soon https://medium.com/luminasticity/predicting-the-worst-and-stupidest-dd79b60a7b05 https://medium.com/luminasticity/predicting-the-worst-and-st...
- firecall 7mo agoWe are all just evolving on vibes at this point ;-)
- eru 7mo agoNuclear war would be a major inconvenience, but it wouldn't nearly destroy the world.
- mcv 7mo agoUnless it's a very limited nuclear war, it would probably destroy the world as we know it, but that's a vague and flexible concept. It would likely destroy countries, societies, our way of life. Many people would die, but humanity would survive. Some countries might survive. If the war takes place on the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere might be much less affected.
- eru 7mo agoI agree. My much more limited point was that we don't actually have enough nukes to glass the planet; but I could probably have made that more explicitly.
- TheOtherHobbes 7mo ago
- dainank 7mo agoI think it is also interesting to realize that we have had a huge population boom since the last 50 years or so, thus currently, the entire world population alive makes up roughly 8% of the entire population of the world since the existence of Homo Sapiens. In summary, if you were to be randomly born as a human, you would most likely be born in the latter centuries, rather than the early ones, since the sheer amount being born recently than many years ago is so much more. https://www.sifrun.com/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/ https://www.sifrun.com/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-ea...
- jarjoura 7mo agoCan't imagine having to live with anxiety of just staying alive. Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks. You would never feel like you have time to just, be. Instead you're focused on getting your next meal, and finding a place to sleep. It only took a few ice-ages to force us to get smart about how we organize and then here we are.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoWelcome to Gaza I guess.
- lostlogin 7mo agoI immediately thought or Iran. It’s neat what we do to each other…
- solids 7mo agoHaving one clear short term goal after another may sound to freedom for some people.
- seanalltogether 7mo agoI think about this a lot. How much anxiety do most people feel from the millions of options that are available to them daily, or young adults that are told they can be anything they want, but clam up and choose to do nothing instead.
- krapp 7mo agoMost people don't have millions of options available to them daily, at least not in any meaningful sense. Anxiety and choice paralysis is very much a first world privilege.
- Schmerika 7mo ago> Can't imagine having to live with anxiety of just staying alive. Spoken like someone who easily affords both rent and food. > Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks. Not really, no. Sometimes, sure. Not all the time. A lot of food was more abundant, and a lot of modern diseases weren't an issue. Animal attacks were probably a 'constant threat' - but not likely a daily, monthly, or even yearly occurrence. > You would never feel like you have time to just, be. Anthropologists are in pretty wide agreement that the nature of life back then was like 3–5 hours/day spent on food gathering, with the rest spent socializing, resting, storytelling. All with 100% organic food, all manner of delicious animals since hunted to extinction, cozy hides and grasses to sleep and lounge in and wear, water completely untainted by microplastics or agricultural pesticides etc. We even have bone flutes that are 50-60k years old. Pentatonic tuning!
- roncesvalles 7mo ago>the technological level of stone tools, spears, cloth made out of hides, and fire. Don't forget, there are pockets of our species living at this level to this very day (uncontacted tribes)!
- jstanley 7mo agoThere is a good post on this topic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFqG58s4NE3EE68Lq/why-did-everything-take-so-long https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFqG58s4NE3EE68Lq/why-did-ev...
- LinuxAmbulance 7mo ago"Good" is a bit of a stretch, as it asks a few short questions, but doesn't answer them in any useful fashion.
- jstanley 7mo agoSorry, you'll want https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yxTP9FckrwoMjxPc4/why-everything-might-have-taken-so-long https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yxTP9FckrwoMjxPc4/why-everyt... as well
- detourdog 7mo agoI think rope, twine, and weaving needs to be recognized as significant technical development. That has little record but would have been combined with wood for simple machines.
- IAmBroom 7mo ago> Then at some unknown point probably in the last 100,000 years, the bow and arrow. The atlatl was undoubtedly earlier, and a bigger advance. It essentially doubled a hunter's arm length, and thus impelled speed - with force proportional to the square of speed. An atlatl can put a dart straight through an enemy's gut, or easily pierce a deer's hide.
- tim333 7mo agoThere seems a bit of an acceleration ~ 50-100k years from evolving brains similar to modern ones to agriculture, ~8k year from there to writing, ~4k to the printing press, ~400 till computers, ~40 till the web and so on. Each of those has kind of speeded intellectual progress and AI will probably be another speeding up.
- aaroninsf 7mo agoA fun way to look at this is that the "long head" (ramp) of the singularity began some hundreds of thousands of years ago. We're just living in teh exciting bit. Many tens of millions if you want to start with the emergence of primates, etc.
- lelanthran 7mo ago> Each of those has kind of speeded intellectual progress and AI will probably be another speeding up. Maybe. I can imagine a dystopian Idiocracy type future where everyone is the "ideas guy".