and part 2
I should do some research to see when this video was first made; some of the cartoons suggest it was made awhile ago!
Much is rightly made of the great world sea voyages of the 1500s. A million years or so earlier, a pre-homo Sapien bepedal primate species made great voyages from Africa to Europe and Asia. They used technology to conquer environments that they otherwise could not have. No other life on Earth had ever laid claim to such an accomplishment. Whether Homo Erectus evolved into Homo Sapiens or not(the fact that first Homo Erectus expanded into Europe and then Asia and then Homo Sapiens also originated in Africa and expanded out is more interesting) is not important imo. Homo Erectus never knew it's own accomplishment.
Let me stress the fact that no other species could do what Homo Erectus did a little bit more. Most life on Earth is adapted specifically to a given environment. Their behavior is based on the patterns of nature. They only replicate at certain times of the year and time of day. They're practically made to be food for other life at a given set time. There's insects that get infected by viruses to go to tips of plants and either get eaten there then, or they get transformed into a plant. Homo Erectus is the first general animal that works to make nature fit its agenda and not the other way around.
Back to the fact that Homo Erectus never really knew its own accomplishment. Homo Sapiens over a hundred years ago first started digging up this history . . . to know its own history. At least some of Homo Sapiens find it interesting. There's many Homo Sapiens who have ideas that says we should not try to think about these things. Those who don't like the idea of evolution probably don't understand why they themselves don't like the idea. They just grow told to like certain things and hate other things. I've addressed these issues from the very beginning of my blog(see my Gospel of Truth). The fact that they don't like evolution suggests they like static no more thinking lets call it 'philosophy.'
As Alvin Toffler in his Future Shock points out, each technology presents new problems which require new solutions. Once a species becomes technologically dependent, they are led on a road to technological progress. One could ask why didn't Homo Erectus or even Homo Sapiens for hundreds of thousands of years not make the technological progress of the last three hundred years(one could push it back thousands of years)? One answer I find is how archaeologists have found that cultures had often gone from agriculture to hunter-gatherors at different times. They maintains their knowledge of hunter gathering skills even while doing some agriculture. They didn't trust the agriculture(perhaps rightly so!). Sometimes it was just easier to rely on mother nature(just like kids who don't want to move away from the parents that provide them with everything they need). Likewise, some don't want to do science because some 'philosophies' say "believe in me and your in." This easy entrance to the club makes it easy to get what you need.
Something I've been thinking about but havn't wanted to reread is Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave" and "Powershift"( i just finished reading Van Der Waerden's "A History of Algebra from Al Kowarizmi to Emmy Noether" . . . a book that is not easy to get your hands on; the cheapest you can currently get it is for two hundred dollars! Some are trying to sell it for seven hundred dollars! I just went to a university library and copied it all out!). Basically, I'd much rather study mathematics right now. Still, related to the progress of mankind because of its technological dependence is Alvin's idea of the third wave. He basically talks of agriculturalism as first wave civilization, industrialism(basically mechanical technologized agriculturalism) is the second wave civilization, and now there's a third wave Alvin says is the information age. Alvin says it started around 1950 also! Some would say Feynman/Drexler's nanotechnology idea has put Alvin Toffler's ideas on the back burner. Others would say Alvin Toffler's idea of the information age is more general than the nanotech revolution; that it encompasses it. I kind of agree with the later. Space colonization would also replace industrialization as much as nanomanufacturing. Alvin Toffler's 'Powershift' shows some more interesting analyses of this 'information age.'
Powershift shows that there's three levers of power - violence, money, and knowledge. He tries to associate violence with hunter/gatherors and agriculturalism(the fact that he lumps them both as violence primary power structure cultures suggests this can only be approximate), industrialism with money power, and this future(still!) third wave civilization with knowledge power. Alvin Toffler shows a certain amount of historical evidence(which once again, I really don't feel like rereading and going into details right now); so, there's some truth to it. But, the idea that the third wave is going to be more rational and peaceful because it's going to be based on knowledge is more hopefull than anything else. I would argue(and have at leas said so) that only by going out to space will the knowledge power lever dominate.
Alvin Toffler further points out about 'powershift' that knowledge is the ultimate substitute. Money and violence have material limits that knowledge doesn't. Even in a world of daimondoid nano-manufacturing and quantum computing to reach the limits of physics knowledge, mathematics is infinit; the more you generate, the more efficient things become. Once could argue that because of our technological dependence, that those who don't want to think can't do anything about it. Some want to confine all of humanity on earth to prevent 'Star Wars' in a nanotechnological future. Well, I suppose it doesn't matter whether we go out to space(if you have thousand of cultures going in thousands of different directions, how is some dictator and conqueror going to conquer them all?) or not, the knowledge power lever may indeed take hold! Once could argue we'll be o.k either way.
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As soon as I posted this, I find an article showing that Australopithacines had evolved from being dependent on the pattern of nature in what they ate to being able to eat anything(lucy).
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-ancient-human-ancestor-australopithecus-sediba.html
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