> why can't we just admit that we don't know what ancient civilizations were capable of, rather than assuming they were incapable of simple tasks?
A quirk of humans CS Lewis calls "Chronological Snobbery" - that what we know and generate now is obviously superior to what they knew and generated then - because if they were so smart like we were, they'd have invented the stuff we did.
It falls apart with the slightest interaction with actual history (even the known bits - Roman cement and aquaducts are obvious examples that stick out), but since we don't really teach history, and that which we do teach is a bit "religion of progress" biased ("From the caves, to the stars, through us, always onward and upward!" - again, doesn't match reality, but nobody seems to care).
The gizmos we have now are mostly a function of the energy resources we've cracked open in the past few hundred years, which were related to some quirks of a small island to the west of the European continent a few hundred years back, and so on back through time.
Human nature hasn't changed for much of recorded history, and neither has human intelligence. It's been used in different ways in different times, for different goals, but if anything, we've spent the past 30+ years finding ways to destroy the human ability to focus in pursuit of profits - look at any modern smartphone app. Great profit, for someone else, because it destroys your attention. Oral epics and such are just a different focus from what we currently value, which is mostly "How can I capture and process behavioral surplus to generate prediction products to sell advertisements?" (to paraphrase Zuboff).
Never underestimate what a bored machinist can accomplish in their spare time.
> Never underestimate what a bored machinist can accomplish in their spare time.
Put a bit broader, never underestimate what people can achieve and figure out in their spare time. I mean as a child I would build dams and channels out of stones and dirt at the beach or near rivers while on vacation, without any formal education or knowledge about waterworks. I can see how this play would end up in things like irrigation systems, aqueducts and sewage systems over time, if I were to live in a place or a time where those things were not present.
It's probably been the same with tools and art for tens of thousands of years. When people are not struggling for survival, they will experiment.
A quirk of humans CS Lewis calls "Chronological Snobbery" - that what we know and generate now is obviously superior to what they knew and generated then - because if they were so smart like we were, they'd have invented the stuff we did.
It falls apart with the slightest interaction with actual history (even the known bits - Roman cement and aquaducts are obvious examples that stick out), but since we don't really teach history, and that which we do teach is a bit "religion of progress" biased ("From the caves, to the stars, through us, always onward and upward!" - again, doesn't match reality, but nobody seems to care).
The gizmos we have now are mostly a function of the energy resources we've cracked open in the past few hundred years, which were related to some quirks of a small island to the west of the European continent a few hundred years back, and so on back through time.
Human nature hasn't changed for much of recorded history, and neither has human intelligence. It's been used in different ways in different times, for different goals, but if anything, we've spent the past 30+ years finding ways to destroy the human ability to focus in pursuit of profits - look at any modern smartphone app. Great profit, for someone else, because it destroys your attention. Oral epics and such are just a different focus from what we currently value, which is mostly "How can I capture and process behavioral surplus to generate prediction products to sell advertisements?" (to paraphrase Zuboff).
Never underestimate what a bored machinist can accomplish in their spare time.