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There's nothing obvious about civilization. Under slightly different conditions, it could have never arised, or could have gotten stuck into a perpetual local minimum until extinction (e.g. no agriculture & cities, or no writing, or no ironworking...)
Think about humanity in the early Neolithic -- thousands of different cultures minding their own business in their own corner of the world. Remarkably, each seminal technology (e.g. agriculture, writing, copper) was only invented independently at most 2-3 times, often just once
These technologies are very much non obvious. And they tend to all depend on each other. It could easily have turned out very differently. There is nothing inevitable or deterministic about technological progress, independently of human cognitive abilities.
That sounds interesting! I dont know much on the subject, could tell us a couple examples of what was invented only once? l'll read up/follow the thread from there. Dont know where to begin for now. Thanks!
Except civilization arose independently in areas of the world that had no contact with each other, including: Mesopotamia (Sumer, 3,500 BC) Indus River Valley (Harrapa 3,300 BC) Peru (Norte Chico, 3,500 BC) If it arises multiple times independently, it’s something innate in us.
So is there something inevitable/deterministic about human technological progress?
This is as much to do with time as it is to do with space. Inventions diffuse and once you encounter it you can't independently invent it. It is a property of the species and the planet I suppose
This raises an interesting question: Could there be any important seminal technologies that we could have invented then but we still haven't invented? Obviously hard to imagine what those could be, but we could get some surprises in that vein if we meet an alien civilisation.
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