undefined | Better HN

0 pointsidiocrat2y ago0 comments

A thought experiment.

It has been said that if a modern "average" human were transported back in time, it would be difficult for that person to build anything useful, because of the lack of material manufacturing (c.f. "Toaster from Scratch" and "Primitive Technology" channels) and lack of specific knowledge.

So goes my thought experiment. If I were transported 100,000 years back, I would big-scale industrialize the production of soap blocks and then build soap distribution networks over wast lands (the King of Soap). Soap is quite easy to produce with wood ash.

I would also mass-scale press-print porno comics (using wooden plate carvings).

I think these two what defines civilization and will give me a chance for not being killed as a practitioner of witchcraft.

0 comments

lynguist2y ago

1. Try selling soap blocks and porno comics to an Amazon tribe or Australian native. Do they have "sell"? Do they need soap blocks? Do they need porno comics? It’s very narrow how you paint it.

2. Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago. You can’t go further back and expect to be understood.

3. Humans keep changing. The domestication of the dog ca. 28000-26000 years ago also changed the human brain by turning the dog into our wild senses.

4. Humans self-domesticated themselves the past 6000 years. Human brains show the same changes that domesticated cows have versus wild cattle species. Have you noticed that you can stay in a room with 50 strangers and not attack or sexually assault anyone? This same change led to the development of civilizations.

5. Your thought experiment only really makes sense if you go the furthest, say 12000 years back. Trade might not make sense to humans before.

6. Humans still keep changing.

7. Culture is more diverse than you think. By far more diverse. Just an example: Among human tribes across the globe 40% practice kissing, 60% never kiss. Your concepts will not translate.

syllogism2y ago

> Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago.

Citation for that? There's clear evolutionary selection for language capabilities a long time before that isn't here?

getoffmycase2y ago

I question a lot of the info in comment. Specifically the “humans domesticated themselves 6000years ago.” We had characteristics of “domesticating ourselves” long before 6000 years ago. Non-pronounced canines, reduced sexual dimorphism between males and females, are all hallmarks of a transition from a mating system that was “tournament based” (one male wins all the females) to a more pair-bonded species, although it’s a spectrum and humans have behavior related to both.

This was probably co-evolving with the cost of raising a human child. Which we didn’t just magically start doing 6000 years.

Classic example of the bullshit asymmetry principle, where it took me two paragraphs of text to reasonably dispute a one sentence off hand, inaccurate comment

1 more reply

alganet2y ago

Porno? Pretty sure your comics would be interpreted as "fertility symbols" by future archaeologists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine

f6v2y ago

Or you’d just cut your toe on an rock and die (with no medical care).

alganet2y ago

Soap actually increases his chance of survival in this scenario. Clean wound == less chance of infection.

Explaining what soap does and why people should value it would be the real challenge. Communication in general would need to be built from scratch. No english, no latin languages, no modern gestures like thumbs up and hand shakes, no common ground.

Depending on the era, I would bet on agriculture and fermentation as my empire-building tech. Wine first, then bread which is a little bit harder. Maybe spices also, I heard some pretty large empires were built on the power of funny flavors.

brabel2y ago

It's kind of funny that you think you would be able to produce wine 100,000 years ago. Do you know what grapes used to look like back then? Well, they were absolutely not the giant balls of sweetness we see today :D. They became that after thousands of years of selection by humans. Which first had to "invent" agriculture, which was not easy and it's still quite unclear whether the earliest civilizations that adopted it were better off until they actually became capable of creating large city-states which could then go on to dominate all their neighbours and started accumulating power.

So, 100,000 years ago you would need to convince people to join you in this crazy agriculture thing without any metal tools.... without domesticated animals either, by the way... as that would still be thousands of years in the future...

Finally, just taking a large amount of food and leaving it for a long time to ferment somewhere well protected, while everyone around is hungry, would be a huge challenge already. You might need to protect it both from people and from very large wild animals that had not gone extinct yet and would love to take that food from you (and likely use you as food also).

1 more reply

syllogism2y ago

Sexual control and restriction is a pretty widespread feature of premodern cultures. I think you should stick to the soap. The porno is probably trouble.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

lynguist2y ago

1. Try selling soap blocks and porno comics to an Amazon tribe or Australian native. Do they have "sell"? Do they need soap blocks? Do they need porno comics? It’s very narrow how you paint it.

2. Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago. You can’t go further back and expect to be understood.

3. Humans keep changing. The domestication of the dog ca. 28000-26000 years ago also changed the human brain by turning the dog into our wild senses.

5. Your thought experiment only really makes sense if you go the furthest, say 12000 years back. Trade might not make sense to humans before.

6. Humans still keep changing.

7. Culture is more diverse than you think. By far more diverse. Just an example: Among human tribes across the globe 40% practice kissing, 60% never kiss. Your concepts will not translate.

syllogism2y ago

> Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago.

Citation for that? There's clear evolutionary selection for language capabilities a long time before that isn't here?

getoffmycase2y ago

This was probably co-evolving with the cost of raising a human child. Which we didn’t just magically start doing 6000 years.

Classic example of the bullshit asymmetry principle, where it took me two paragraphs of text to reasonably dispute a one sentence off hand, inaccurate comment

1 more reply

alganet2y ago

Porno? Pretty sure your comics would be interpreted as "fertility symbols" by future archaeologists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine

f6v2y ago

Or you’d just cut your toe on an rock and die (with no medical care).

alganet2y ago

Soap actually increases his chance of survival in this scenario. Clean wound == less chance of infection.

brabel2y ago

1 more reply

syllogism2y ago

Sexual control and restriction is a pretty widespread feature of premodern cultures. I think you should stick to the soap. The porno is probably trouble.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse