Hacker News Reader

Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

If you're interested in cavepersons, there's a very good podcast called "Our Prehistory". It really expanded my mind. My image of people up to 10,000 years ago was basically like a Gary Larson cartoon – Oog hit thing with rock! I was completely wrong; people had amazingly sophisticated technology even by the mesolithic, they just didn't have metal but they were doing crazy stuff with stone, bone and wood.

View on HN

It is a bias that many people with only a passing interest in history sadly have: that the more far back you go the dumber/less sophisticated people were.

The more you look at historical evidence the more you see that, quite logically, people were very much like us. Complaining about the same stuff ("kids these days...") and so on. Sure a 12th century European farmer would probably struggle with a bit with a smartphone (same as many of our grandparents), but had likely a huge understanding of what plant required what environment to thrive, their growth cycles, what was edible and how to safely prepare it, how to do manual labor while keeping your clothes impeccable etc.

"We come mentally of age when we discover that the great minds of the past, whom we have patronized, are not less intelligent than we are because they happen to be dead."

-- Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

And I'm sure they also did crazy useful complex things with rope, strings, fibers, textiles and skins.

And while rope, etc. last far longer after death than (as ethologists lament) behaviours, they last nowhere near as long as metal items.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com