[fpo]

Why should it have? Progress is always incremental. Even before civilization there were minute steps towards organization from just pure hunter-gatherer days.

Just because the neolithic period started 12-15k years ago doesn't mean somebody woke up one day with a modern brain smart enough to plant things.

[abtinf]

It took an Einstein of the time to figure out things could even be planted. It is a monumental achievement.

[simonh]

I don’t want to denigrate the achievements of those involved, but it probably didn’t go from seeing seeding plant to, a ha, planting crops. It likely consisted of a long series of very much smaller incremental steps.

1. Hunter gatherers collect seeds, but drop some near their temporary settlement.

2. The next time they stay in the area, they notice food plants growing where they dropped the seeds, so they don’t have to travel as far to collect them.

3. They start deliberately spreading seeds so there will be even more there next time.

4. They start clearing land to make more space to spread the seeds on.

5. The quantity of seeds they can gather at the site meets or exceeds their needs, so now they don’t need to travel to gather enough and can settle down.

Throughout the process they discover little tricks, like scratching the ground before scattering their seeds, or which kind of ground is best to clear and sow, which seeds grow best, etc, etc. This could take many generations but once the process starts under the right conditions with the right seeds in the right area it snowballs.

[n4r9]

Writing is also a far greater (/ less likely) achievement than many people realise. You need a language, enough social structure to create a demand for written instructions/messages beyond simple pictures, and an Einstein-level linguistic genius to figure out how to break down and codify language utterances in a way that can readily be learnt and understood by the general population.

Some languages such as Guniyandi have only recently undergone this conversion [0], in fact there are likely thousands of languages still without writetn forms [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gooniyandi

[1] https://www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/how-many-languages...

[iguy]

But writing didn't (IIRC) start with writing down speech. It started with accountancy, with recoding taxes payed and owed. So it arises with agricultural states, it's part of what lets a king rule so many peasants that merely having his brothers remember who owes how much doesn't work anymore.

Figuring out that it could be used to write sentences took a few millennia after that. And only after that came enough simplification for people other than palace/temple employees to learn it.

[n4r9]

Interesting. I looked this up and there's a Wikipedia page listing the earliest written accounts [0]. Looks like joint earliest are Egyptian hieroglyphs in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen [1] and ancient Sumerian tablets [2]-[3]. It seems like a lot of early writing was also concerned with religion although a lot of the slightly later writing did cover economic and administrative records.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_first_wri...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth-Peribsen

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_of_Shuruppak

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesh_temple_hymn

[iguy]

These seem to define writing to mean only things with which you can write sentences, which is fair enough, but excludes earlier use of symbols for counting (of taxes!). I have in mind things like [1], or this from [2]:

"The original Sumerian writing system derives from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing by using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing were gradually replaced around 2700–2500 BC by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at first only for logograms, but developed to include phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. About 2600 BC, cuneiform began to represent syllables of the Sumerian language."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_sys...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Proto-writi...

[n4r9]

Ah, yes I failed to pick up on that distinction in your last post. Now I almost want to add "sophisticated trade system" to the list of written language prerequisites.

[WalterBright]

> Writing is also a far greater (/ less likely) achievement than many people realise.

The monumental inventions are:

1. writing

2. paper

3. printing press

4. computers

5. internet

because they are ways to store and disseminate knowledge.

[bad_user]

Spoken language is also used to spread knowledge from the wise to the young.

This is sometimes called culture.

[WalterBright]

Spoken language evolved, it wasn't invented.

[dragontamer]

> It took an Einstein of the time to figure out things could even be planted. It is a monumental achievement.

Not just that. But someone had to invent:

* Pottery (Lets store food, instead of looking for it all the time)

* Writing

* Cities (Hey, lets all settle here and come back here for some reason)

* Law

* Basic tools: Rope, Hammer, Wedge, Knife. Metallurgy.

If we were trapped in a hunter-gatherer society, even with our advanced brains today... it would take a very smart person to invent a city and/or writing. And you'd need the support of the entire hunter-gatherer society to bring you food and resources to fund the inventions.

Cities invent the aristocracy, a group of people who are dedicated to advancement of culture and technology. Agriculture and Pottery provide a way for transportation and storage of resources (food especially), supporting the aristocracy.

At which point, true inventions can begin. You can't invent new tools if you're too busy hunting for food every day of your life.

[WalterBright]

> You can't invent new tools if you're too busy hunting for food every day of your life.

Even the spear-thrower, followed by the bow and arrow, took a loooooong time to invent.

[dragontamer]

IIRC, many Europeans were throwing Axes in the Dark Ages, just ~1500 years ago.

Even if the bow was invented, creating good fetching and requiring the mass production of fragile arrows makes it a poor weapon in the Dark ages.

You pretty much have to invent mass production + commodities, standardizing the arrowhead before Bows become superior to spear and/or axe throwing. Once "any" arrow can work on "any" bow, you are golden. But this commodity idea is very difficult to come up with.

Shoot an arrow into a deer, and the arrow is ruined. You need to build a new arrow. Throw a javelin or Axe into a deer, and you can use the same Javelin / Axe on the next deer as well.

[WalterBright]

Not buying it :-)

1. arrows are reusable. I've dabbled in archery.

2. arrows are a distance weapon. You can take out prey or enemy at a distance. Throwing an axe is very short range.

3. throwing an axe means you get one shot. Then you're weaponless.

4. throwing a metal axe is much more effective than a stone axe. I seriously doubt throwing a stone axe is very effective - you'd be better off just throwing a rock.

[dragontamer]

> 3. throwing an axe means you get one shot. Then you're weaponless.

Romans carried 2 Pilum, a shortsword, and a shield. You had two shots, after which you rushed in with your swords.

Yeah, Longbowmen are obviously superior. But if you have 10,000 Longbowmen with 60 arrows per man, you require a production-capacity of 60,000 arrows per battle. That's a lot of goose feathers, even if you're recycling a significant chunk of arrows.

Note that the modern arrow has fletching for accuracy. Ancient arrows didn't have fletching: no spin, no accuracy.

Before the middle ages, mass production of arrows in this capacity was basically impossible. The British innovation to war wasn't so much the Longbow (there were plenty of archers before the British...), it was the invention of commodity mass produced arrows... which supported the Longbowman as a major unit of warfare.

Even the Roman Legionaries used Pilum (aka: Javelins) as their ranged weapon of choice. Bows existed (see the Sagittarii), but were an auxiliary (and often non-Roman) force.

------------

Slingers (!!) were still used in Roman times. Now a Sling... THAT is an ideal ancient weapon. A trained slinger can kill a Lion or Bear, and you only had to find rocks to throw. Mass production of sling-bullets (really, just a shaped rock) is easy, even with an army marching to a distant location.

Slingers used rocks, clay, and even lead bullets throughout history. They were effectively the longbowmen before the British learned to mass produce arrows.

In fact, the ancient world believed that Slings had greater range and accuracy than bows. Since fletching won't be invented for another 1000+ years, ancient arrows had very limited range and accuracy.

[everdrive]

> 3. throwing an axe means you get one shot. Then you're weaponless.

What if you had two axes!