Originally posted by JamesG
I'm sorry... I still just can't swollow that a slow development of 2 million years led to a leap in civiliztion roughly 8,000 years ago that still
yet slowly developed untill it made a giant leap in technology in just the past 80 years alone... There is absolutley no logic to it.
This means for the past 1,999,920 years, we've been sitting with our thumbs up our butts... Where do you see the logic in that? It just makes
no sense whatsoever...
Here's the logic: Way back then, overpopulation was not a world problem...When a tribe got too big for the local population, some bands broke off &
went to find new hunting grounds.
Under those conditions, they probably thought that food was bountiful & the primitive tools they *did* have made it ridiculously easy to get. If
modern day hunter-gathrer societies are any indication, they probably only "worked" 4-5 hours each day & spent the rest of the time in rituals or
creative loafing.
Under such conditions, don't you think that it's possible that they might have actually *discouraged* progress?
Still, changes never stop in nature & those primitives found that their brains were getting larger & their bodies becoming more "refined" in
structure...
...Hence, progress resumed as more modern forms of man evolved & began thinking of more ways to make their lives even easier.
As FM stated, the Ice Age changed the climate...Floods became common...As the weather warmed, hot winds blighted the lands. They were *forced* to
invent new ways of getting food.
Originally posted by JamesG
In your own word's....
No offense, but there's some things you need to consider here -- the first of which is that during an ice age, the overall temperature of the planet
cools by only 8 degrees or so.
You're comparing your *local* average temperatures with overall *global* average temperatures...That's an entirely different animal there...
Originally posted by JamesG Rainfall patterns would change, but we'd just move in irrigation systems as needed.
You're missing the fact that the only irrigation systems they *had* during the beginnings of civilization was *rivers & streams*...Hardly portable
enough to "move in". Even then, they were only able to dig irrigation *ditches*...Again, a very labor-intensive way to irrigate was all they had.
Originally posted by JamesG
There was no need to develop agriculture, considered to be a very important thing that led to civilization. Yet we did. Why? And what do all these
myth's say? They say they were taught to be civilized.
When the change in climate brought famine to the land, those primitives couldn't rely upon "gathering" as part of their food supply any more. Also,
as the land became blighted, so too did the hunters' prey begin to die out. The hardiest plants (wheat, barely...The "grass-plants) to survive were
the ones that they figured out how to cultivate & grow. Needing to rely now upon agriculture, new ways to catch fish & lay traps for game (by spinning
natural fibers into cording), they realized that they were now "stuck" to a general location in order to continue providing food...This led to the
creation of permanent (more or less) *buildings* for people to live in.
The rest, as they say, is history...
In case you're wondering, the foregoing history lesson was brought to you by the generations of archeologists who dug up & examined the remains left
over from those earliest times...
[Edited on 11-11-2002 by MidnightDStroyer]