OK.. fix me if I'm wrong here.

I found this puzzling fact. Someone please enlighten me.

Our civilization started about 6000 years ago, with the Egyptians, Messopotamians, Indians, and Chinese as our pioneers. I'm going to say maybe they started 10,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens is estimated to be 200,000 years old. The oldest fossil found today is 130,000 years old.

So why did it take us 120,000 years to get out of the caves and actually develop civilizations, while it took us only 6,000 years to advance from the Rosetta stone to space flight?

Information for you.

Hello my friend - suggest you look closely at the link.

If you need more help just ask me.

Good luck hope you find your answers.

Because the wheat did not evolve until 10,000 years ago, making human populations settling down adn throwing off the old hunter/gather lifestyle impossible until then.

maybe there were other great civilizations that were lost... maybe the last ice age was a catastropic event that sent mankind back to a more primitive phase of which we are just recovering again in the past 6000 years?

i think writing is a major advancement that has gone hand in hand with what we define as civilization, but if you look at ancient history you will find that humans communicated in a totally different manner in that time, mostly through pictures and things that were made only for temporary or ritual usage. the real proof of our intelligence even in such ancient times is that men crafted things that have survived- be it tools or their rudimentary artistic endeavors. the oldest sculpture of a pregnant woman is around 12-15k years old (im guessing here as its been awhile since i studied ancient art history) and to carve such an item of stone requires quite a bit of planning and attention to detail. i invite you to try and carve the same item even with modern tools and see if you can get anywhere close, lol. i would say we have lost quite a bit of the architectural knowledge even of the near ancient peoples (Romans, Greeks, Egyptians) in today's world, so why wouldn't it be possible for ancient man to have the same loss of certain knowledge in his time? maybe writing existed in the ancient world, but was lost due to some occurance and only regained again much later? i doubt that even with modern equipment we could produce some of the magnificient buildings of the ancient world and the even more amazing fact is that much of them were crafted by hand. we have lost that ability but we don't seem especially concerned about it. far more talented philosophers existed in the ancient world than exist today- again, we dont seem especially concerned with this loss either. my point is that knowledge is perpetually gained and lost in the history of mankind. even as recently as the Dark Ages there are prime examples of civilized men slipping back to more primitive roots and only being brought back out again by intervention of a superior civilization(of MEN, not aliens).

Civilization evolved. Humans did not simply all agree one day to start farming. Nor did learning how to produce fire suddenly become common knowledge.

I'll start with Farming as most Archaeologists believe that that is the real turning point in human evolution, when we stopped being nomadic hunter/gathers.

It would be easy for someone to find a patch of berries lets say. They notice that the berries are paticularly juicy. So they try to help them grow, removing other plants in the area, setting up barriers to keep other animals out, etc. Being nomadic the group moves on, but comes back to the same area a year or more later. This paticular patch of berries has grown even bigger. It's attended by a couple of people this year.

Several years later the patch of berries has been quite productive, and grown very large. But now a drought hits. So humans start bringing water to it. Several years later, someone else comes up with the idea of digging a trench from the local river to the patch of berries so that they don't have to work so hard during droughts.

Later, someone else tries the same with a different plant They probally already know that mixing pounded grains with water and leaving it out in the sun produces bread. But suddenly they can grow large amounts of grain, make enough food in one day to last a couple of days.

Eventually shelter is built nearby. If it's built good enough, it can be used and perhaps enlarged the next year. Over the years their stays become longer, more food is produced and eventually they'll start storing the excess food.

It's going to be a slow transition, but eventually the people who were relying on a herd of certain animals as their primary source of food, now rely on their farming skills, and only hunt the animals when thier migration takes them near the farms.

Eventually somebody is going to want to try and grow something else, having gotten tired of the same food all the time, and within a generation or two you might have a variety of foods being grown. After all, people have different tastes, they're going to grow or attempt to grow what they like to eat.

It's possible that this setup happened millions of times before it finally permantly took. There are so many natural disasters that could wipe out the work of several generations. Even then it's going to be trial and error for years. Eventually people figured out how to weather the disasters, build up a stock of food big enough that a single person could specialize in something else, such as basket weaving or pottery.

That person trades his products for food from others. Then perhaps he trades to the village a couple of miles away.

This is highly simplified, but humans learn in small steps. Look at a baby, it first learns how to hold things, then it learns to roll over, crawl, walk, and eventually talk. Civilzation just had to do the same, and no doubt had it's set backs. But you need to realize that Civilization and technology grows expotentially. Each generation builds on the knowledge of the last. Sometimes knowledge is lost and needs to be regained, the so called Dark Ages are a good example of that.

Look at the Internet in the last ten years for a good, recent example of how technology has changed Civilization in a short period of time. The first Internet was created in the late 60's to hook military computers together. Twenty years later every major military computer and University/College was hooked up to it to share research information. In the early 90's a simple redesign of current technology caused the Internet to be useful to home users too. In 1995, there were 5 million people on the Internet. The next year, 10million, in 97', something like 30million, by 2000, 100 Million people. Now just about everybody is on the Internet - and we're here sharing useful information.

Because it took that long for the first cro-magnium to purposely( meaning it took several eatings to figure out it was the plant that expanded his/her thoughts) indulge in a budding plant called marijuana which invoked him/her to contemplate the marginal concepts accepted by the social order of the day. In doing so the indulger discovered that tools could be cross referenced and made better and so on to this day!

If it weren't for marijuana we'd still be living in caves

Thats not an opinion. Thats the truth. You've got plenty of remote veiwers in this site. They ought to know!

Which brings me to ask. How and Why I was designated an " alien" with two or three bars?

Well thank you LITTLE IRISH VAMPIRE !

Well back in early years of humans, when we where hunter/gathering people, It would have been more difficult to get new stuff to all the people, because they keep moving around, and say only a few would get to know about ne stuff while on the move. On the other-hand when they settled down to do farming...etc, new information and technology could be passed round more easily because they have a relatively fixed location. And thus future info can be given/told to them quicker then previously.

Also what was the predicessor of wheat? was/is it yummy?

I agree with most of what was said here.
People evolved. Slowly, but constantly.
At one "point" (if you can call several millanias a "point"), some group of people stopped being nomads, and started growing wheat and other vegie and fruits.
The same question could be asked: "Homo Sapiens is 120,000 years old, and only for the last 2 centuries or so he created industry?".
Humanity's development was slow for most of it's existance. Only in the last 150 years technology develops that fast.

It must be remembered also that significant advances are not made by the species as a whole, but rather by a few standout individuals who come along only once or twice a generation.

Not every person on the planet could take a few spare parts, and make a radio or telephone out of it, with no manual, no training, and nothing but an idea in their head as to how it might go together (as the folks who invented it needed to do). Not everyone on the planet can make up their own scientific theories, and find origonal ways to investigate and prove them in practice.

In fact, our society has been built, in the last few hundred years, by only a few hundred people. It's no surprise that our advance has been so sudden, given it's only been with the changing beliefs of the last few centuries that such geniuses were able to flourish, and actually create things.

True, most people are stupid How's that for controversy

I wouldn't say stupid...average intelligence is only stupid if you're compairing it to that of the movers and the shakers but the average person is gullible and ignorant, and certainly doesn't have the potential to be another Isaac Newton

We should note that not all civilizations depend on wheat. We have also rice and corn available. Also we have a lot of muslim scientists during the dark age of christianity. It is just in the recent days that science is baned from islam. Also renaissance movement is not a result of atheism, it is the other way arround.

I think Sera has a good point here. For civilization to evolve, we need enough geniuses to communicate, and it requires certain population size. In the stone age, it took many geniuses to create the same invention, like the alphabet, because they couldn't share their ideas.

not to strong in this area, but i enjoy reading ur posts.. its a good topic starter i think.. but ill continue to read up on what you guys say!!!

You don't add much to a topic do you?



The oldest fossil founds is said to be 160,00 years old. It is a subspecie called Homo sapiens idaltu.