Human evolution/development

[cityontheup]

I was just wondering how throughout history humans have developed. The thing that confuses me is looking back at Ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome etc. they built amazing structures roads, baths, sewers etc. but then you jump forward a thousand years or so in the dark ages say, you had mud roads and filth and disease. So it looks like we regressed? I had this conversation with I guy and he put it down to the increase of religion and frowning on any luxuries or signs of wealth. I would like to get your ideas on this.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

You don’t think the ancients had disease?
Furthermore the “dark ages” refer to the decline in Western Europe after the Roman Empire fell.
The East was not affected by it, indeed flourished.

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

I was just wondering how throughout history humans have developed. The thing that confuses me is looking back at Ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome etc. they built amazing structures roads, baths, sewers etc. but then you jump forward a thousand years or so in the dark ages say, you had mud roads and filth and disease. So it looks like we regressed? I had this conversation with I guy and he put it down to the increase of religion and frowning on any luxuries or signs of wealth. I would like to get your ideas on this.

Those ancient civilisations ate themselves. They imploded. When they did we lost all of that knowledge of how to run civilization.

I always thought that anyway.

 

[mexico1970]

Decent watch from this fella.

 

[KS55]

Think of civilisation like the rags. Flourishing one minute then regressing for a hundred years at least.

 

[cityontheup]

Mods can you merge the two threads I created please

 

[Phil1]

All those great cities were built on the pain and misery of the slave trade in order for the 1% to live in luxury.
Not sure there’s been too much regression…

 

[cityontheup]

Those ancient civilisations ate themselves. They imploded. When they did we lost all of that knowledge of how to run civilization.

I always thought that anyway.

I’m no great historian so my ages may be off, but in the Tudor age the roads were mud and sewage was just thrown in the street, unless that was a different age all together

 

[inbetween]

I was just wondering how throughout history humans have developed. The thing that confuses me is looking back at Ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome etc. they built amazing structures roads, baths, sewers etc. but then you jump forward a thousand years or so in the dark ages say, you had mud roads and filth and disease. So it looks like we regressed? I had this conversation with I guy and he put it down to the increase of religion and frowning on any luxuries or signs of wealth. I would like to get your ideas on this.

The most impressive technological human advances have come from us learning to communicate and transfer knowledge better. There's a reason why there's a direct correlation between the explosion of technology and for example the invention of writing, books, telephones, computers and now the internet.

I can learn to do something today by googling it, we have instant access to all the knowledge that we will ever need, that was impossible even 50 years ago. For example, somebody might invent a useful tool but if they didn't share that invention and how it's made then otherwise it's lost forever once that person dies.

Ancient Rome may have been gleaming but travel 50 miles into central Italy and it would of been a very different story. Lack of resources and poverty is indeed one reason but nobody poor in those days was wishing that the Romans would come over and install a sewage system, they likely didn't know that such a thing existed. It's only thanks to learning about how diseases are caused that it came to make a lot of sense to install a common sewage system.

Knowledge has also been weaponised through technological wars (better tanks and bombs usually win) and it's still viewed like that today thanks to intellectual property, trade secrets, military secrets etc.

I highly recommend the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, it's not about technology exactly but it's a great read about how humans have been shaped over the years. It's mental that our brains and evolutionary status is no different compared to 5000 years ago. The only differentiating factor is we've learnt how to store and transfer knowledge.

 

[cityontheup]

It's the timescales that are confusing you.

Human beings have been anatomically modern for about 200,000 years. That means if you took 30 random humans from 200,000 years ago, gave them a shave and a shower, clothed them in an expensive suit and sat them around the cabinet table in 10 Downing Street, nobody would see any difference.

As a species we've been behaviourly modern for about 80,000 years. Which means we had language, pair bonded and had the ability to solve complex problems by thinking abstractly, etc.

At that point we stepped out of Africa and colonised nearly everywhere on the planet (Antarctica being the exception).

The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Agriculture and 'civilisations' ensued. Empires came and went. Progress ebbed and flowed.

One definition of the dark ages is from the fall of the western Roman Empire in AD 476 to the fall of Constantinople (the Byzantine or eastern Roman empire) in AD 1450.

About 300 years ago the industrial revolution began, and in 1894 Mancester City Football Club came into existence.

Human evolution and recent human history operate on entirely different timescales.

That still doesn’t explain why for example, the romans gave us a start regarding roads, sewers, bathe etc. but then we just turned our backs on it?