why did the stone age last so long?

[KenBrace]

There's no problem. Technology advances exponentially throughout history. It only accelerated even more as the scientific method got more refined.

This is very true. The scientific method is extremely powerful. Technology boomed once it was refined and used on a global scale.

 

[AV1611VET]

This is very true. The scientific method is extremely powerful. Technology boomed once it was refined and used on a global scale.

2

 

[DogmaHunter]

That IS the problem.

Making progress, learning new things,... is a problem?
How about that...

Take a look of the population curve. Do you see a problem? OK, you don't.

I actually do. But I fail to see how it relates to progress.

Progress makes people healthier and live longer, yes. Larger populations are a logical result. So, are you advocating of putting a ban on meds or something or...?

That is because you have seen very few such kind of curves.

Right, right. I'm completely uninformed and I don't know anything about anything...

A kid sees a tiger and thinks it is only a big cat.

Thanks for the insult.

You may resume your anti-science, anti-progress, anti-learning preaching now.

 

[[serious]]

Consider that we saw a similar exponential growth in transportation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_transportation_technology

 

[juvenissun]

Making progress, learning new things,... is a problem?
How about that...
I actually do. But I fail to see how it relates to progress.
Progress makes people healthier and live longer, yes. Larger populations are a logical result. So, are you advocating of putting a ban on meds or something or...?
Right, right. I'm completely uninformed and I don't know anything about anything...
Thanks for the insult.
You may resume your anti-science, anti-progress, anti-learning preaching now.

Sorry, I forgot what the arguments are about.

 

[bhsmte]

why did the stone age last so long?

why did the stone age last so long?

3,800,000 years from the start of the stone age to the start of the bronze age.

only 6000 years from the start of the bronze age to the start of the space age.

Yuri Gagarin​

The Flintstones' probably had a lot to do with it.

 

[pat34lee]

How did you determine that there were no primitive early languages?

Look at the alphabets and languages over time. The earliest ones are the most complex. Rather than evolving over time, languages degrade. English is a prime example.

 

[pat34lee]

There are proto languages, but they are not primitive. The primitive roots are far too ancient to leave any traces.

Proto Indo European (PIE) is a very important and very well attested ancient precursor of most European and Indian languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

From that link:

"Since PIE was spoken by a prehistoric society, no genuine sample texts are available, but since the 19th century, modern scholars have made various attempts to compose example texts for purposes of illustration. These texts are educated guesses at best; Calvert Watkins in 1969 observed that in spite of its 150 years' history, comparative linguistics is not in the position to reconstruct a single well-formed sentence in PIE."

It sounds like this proto-language is purely hypothetical.

My point is that you don't find early man going 'oh-oh-ooh'. Only complete spoken and written languages, whether cuneiform, pictograph or other letter symbols. All with highly complex rules of grammar.

 

[Catherineanne]

From that link:

"Since PIE was spoken by a prehistoric society, no genuine sample texts are available, but since the 19th century, modern scholars have made various attempts to compose example texts for purposes of illustration. These texts are educated guesses at best; Calvert Watkins in 1969 observed that in spite of its 150 years' history, comparative linguistics is not in the position to reconstruct a single well-formed sentence in PIE."

It sounds like this proto-language is purely hypothetical.

No, it is not hypothetical at all; there is ample evidence for its existence. Not being able to recreate it does not mean it did not exist.

But you carry on thinking as you do if you prefer; it doesn't bother me.

 

[Catherineanne]

Look at the alphabets and languages over time. The earliest ones are the most complex. Rather than evolving over time, languages degrade. English is a prime example.

No, they don't degrade; linguists would not use that kind of wording. Languages evolve, they don't degrade.

New Modern English is the most complex language that has ever existed, simply by sheer volume of vocabulary; it has far more words through loans than any other language. No degredation at all.

 

[SteveB28]

Look at the alphabets and languages over time. The earliest ones are the most complex. Rather than evolving over time, languages degrade. English is a prime example.

I'm afraid you have no idea about the development of language.

English is, at essence, a Germanic language. However, it has been deepened considerably through the annexation of much of French and Latin. It also still contains much of the primitive language of the Britons as well. It is the most complex language on the planet. Please do some research before you make such deplorably ignorant statements.

 

[Loudmouth]

Look at the alphabets and languages over time. The earliest ones are the most complex. Rather than evolving over time, languages degrade. English is a prime example.

What about the unwritten languages that preceded them?

 

[[serious]]

Look at the alphabets and languages over time. The earliest ones are the most complex. Rather than evolving over time, languages degrade. English is a prime example.

Source? To me it seems like more a matter of phonetic, vs character based writing independent of language age. We have examples such as the Latin alphabet adding G, Y, and Z which demonstrates that an alphabet can become larger (what i assume you mean by complexity). We've taken this already expanded alphabet and added J and various punctuation. Japanese has certainly become more complex with time, integrating multiple writing systems into common use, and recently adding even latin characters as well.

Of course, I can also think of examples going the other way. The unification of the Chinese and German languages for example. Of course, both of those are examples of what were arguably separate languages being consolidated into a single language which ended up being more complex than any single contributing dialect.

 

[pat34lee]

No, they don't degrade; linguists would not use that kind of wording. Languages evolve, they don't degrade.

New Modern English is the most complex language that has ever existed, simply by sheer volume of vocabulary; it has far more words through loans than any other language. No degredation at all.

Why does English have so many words? Because they have been simplified to the point that it takes several words or a sentence to give the same meaning of a single word in many languages. We have also lost most of our gender specific words.

 

[SteveB28]

Why does English have so many words? Because they have been simplified to the point that it takes several words or a sentence to give the same meaning of a single word in many languages. We have also lost most of our gender specific words.

Do you have some examples for each of those fanciful claims?

 

[[serious]]

Why does English have so many words? Because they have been simplified to the point that it takes several words or a sentence to give the same meaning of a single word in many languages. We have also lost most of our gender specific words.

I don't follow. Having a lot of words allows for shades of meaning which would be absent without the wealth of synonyms available. If we take only the 1000 most common words, we may still be able to explain a saturn 5 rocket, but it's going to take a longer sentence to communicate what we are trying to get across.

i think you may be confusing the extra language needed to communicate the shades of meaning in one language into another with some sort of inherent property of those languages rather than a function of the translation itself.

 

[Chicken Little]

why did the stone age last so long?

why did the stone age last so long?

3,800,000 years from the start of the stone age to the start of the bronze age.

only 6000 years from the start of the bronze age to the start of the space age.

Yuri Gagarin​

maybe because they are either profoundly ignorant of real history or they are complete and total liars with a agenda to control people concepts of time. .

like this http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/h...rded-worlds-first-eclipse-5355-years-ago.html
here they are trying to tell us that some stone age guys built a cairn to record one eclipse. just an eclipse.


that isn't an Eclipse it is their records like the Pictish Rhyniestones and North America's Serpent Mound and thousands more petroglyphs . It is of a comet hitting the moon and the moon hitting the earth. look at the moon and see the fingerprint of a awesome God who can move continents under our feet.

That is why you would build a cairn to record and remember events that should never be forgotten and aren't . and it was only about 3200 years ago and it sent our part of the world into the stone age , a never before known stone age.
the
stone age is a recent consequence of cataclysmic events they can't or won't get their head around .
We were the ones who built the Old world and supplied it , then this event left behind thousands they call Indo-Europeans and pretend that the Indo-Europeans( sea people) collapsed all known societies in the bronze age events which followed that cataclysm and dropped sea levels more than 1000 ft .
saying people caused all that destruction is just scientism making the caboose push their train. .
and as long as they lie and continue to lie , they can continue to crucify real time and real history with their profound Ignorance and special magic time machines.
Their goal is not to tell real history but to control it.

 

[pat34lee]

Do you have some examples for each of those fanciful claims?

Degeneration of English:
http://www.blessedquietness.com/journal/resource/degener.htm

Degeneration of languages in general:
http://www.0095.info/en/index_thesesen_95onesentencethesesagainste_thedegenerationofhumanlangua.html

"Nouns
Old English nouns had grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), singular and plural number, and were also classified as "strong" or "weak" according to the distinctness of their inflectional endings (some other classifications involve the stems that the nouns carried in Germanic and whether the noun was affected by front mutation). All of these classifications called for specific inflectional endings in each of the cases used in Old English: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative"
http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/fajardo/teaching/eng520/oldeng.htm

 

[pat34lee]

I don't follow. Having a lot of words allows for shades of meaning which would be absent without the wealth of synonyms available. If we take only the 1000 most common words, we may still be able to explain a saturn 5 rocket, but it's going to take a longer sentence to communicate what we are trying to get across.

i think you may be confusing the extra language needed to communicate the shades of meaning in one language into another with some sort of inherent property of those languages rather than a function of the translation itself.

The extra words needed to express a coherent thought are directly due to the simplification or degradation of the language.

Look at a simple term, love. How many types of love does that one word express? Several. Now, if you had a more precise language, such as Greek, you could have philia, eros, agape and storge.

Now think of all the ways 'you' is used. English used to be specific. Ye, you, your, thee, thou, thine.

 

[[serious]]

The extra words needed to express a coherent thought are directly due to the simplification or degradation of the language.

Look at a simple term, love. How many types of love does that one word express? Several. Now, if you had a more precise language, such as Greek, you could have philia, eros, agape and storge.

Now think of all the ways 'you' is used. English used to be specific. Ye, you, your, thee, thou, thine.

You seem to be trying to argue it both ways. On one hand, you are saying that the large number of words in English in general is a sign of simplicity, but then you turn around and claim that dropping certain forms of "you " make it simpler still. Would the addition of more "you" words make it more complex?
Y'all
Yous guys
You-uns