At this point, we can leave the world of assumptions.  What I am about to present is accepted by today’s scientific community.  Let’s open the discussion on how humanity learns and progresses.

About 200,000 years ago, a minor evolutionary event changed our future.  Humans gained the ability of speech.  Speech started our rise to technological advancements.  In order to understand how this works, we need to look at just how we, as a species, gain advanced technologies.

First, let’s define this strange phase, advanced technologies.  The meaning used in this context is any advancement; it includes the advent of harnessing fire or simple machines such as the lever or wheel.  In addition to the discovery, sharing of the new found knowledge is important to continued use.

Now we explore an area without assumptions.  This is an area of study that is generally accepted as fact (I am part of those that believe the following).  This area to look at is; how we advance as a society.

Throughout the history of humanity, the rare advancement is a new discovery.  The bulk majority of technological advancements are improvements or refinements on previous work and knowledge.  The advent of fire was a chance discovery.  The use (and replication) of fire was learned and later passed on through teaching and communication.  Human flight was perfected though observation and experimentation.  Even the first powered flight was a refinement of ideas proposed hundreds of years earlier (the Wright Brothers took works by Galileo and refined his concepts).  Even today with our rapid advancements, the new discoveries are refinements of past ideas and concepts.  All of this is made possible by our ability to communicate.

When humans gained the ability to form words, they were able to perpetuate ideas and prior knowledge.  The ideas were improved until we have the technology of today.  Looking at the advancements of only the past 100 to 200 years raises the obvious question, why now and why so much so fast?

The answer to ‘why so much’ is based on our increased communication.  With the internet to share ideas and information, we have made great and rapid advancements.  Little more than 50 years ago, most new work was written down and exchanged by sharing actual paper documents.  In today’s intellectual environment, work and ideas can be shared instantly over the electronic information grid.  With the open source of the internet, more people can share ideas and comments than ever before.  All of this leads to greater and faster advancements.

The question of ‘why now’ is not as easy to answer.  With all of the unanswered questions of historical monuments throughout world, was there some great technological knowledge in the very distant past?  Are we reinventing lost technologies?  With 200,000 years of history, how much could have been lost to time?



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    With all of the unanswered questions throughout the history of man, there must be answers even if the thinking is outside the 'box' of the main stream.

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