Technology

Technology has advanced so rapidly because it's built piggy-back style. Learn one cool thing, and then that leads to another cool thing that comes as a result of the first. It's like a snowball effect.

Just taking a stab. Dunno if that's actually true or not, but it sounds good.

Lying.

But to be more detailed, and do correct me if I get something wrong:
Slow but steady increase in tool making skills and knowledge.
Slow but steady breeding of husbandry animals.
Slow but steady breeding/improving of vegetation and landscapes where the roamers returned periodically.
=>
Allowing for settlements to form, alternatively larger roaming populations.
Better access to food. Allowing the bodies to develop better.
=>
Larger populations.
Less work necessary for daily necessities, allowing more time for other things. Improving tools, weapons, art or socializing.
=>
Continue improving-spiral.
Improved language.
=>
Continue improving-spiral.
Improved ability to lie.
Improved ability to empathize (to deal with other lying bastards). (Not empathize as in pitying, but empathize as in emulating their position)
=>
Continue improving-spiral.
Improved ability to create hypotheticals.
=>
Continue improving-spiral.
Improved abstract thinking.
=>
Continue improving-spiral.
Math.

No need to go further
Other than to mention that the task of socializing is a crazy brain developer. It's a motivation as well as a mean and it's one of the most taxing abilities we utilize (when it comes to our brains). We communicate on very many levels and many of them not necessarily consciously.

I think I'll be able to elaborate more on this, but do keep in mind:
Disclaimer: This is simply my puzzling together bits and pieces from documentaries and books seen/read over several years. This may be severely lacking or worse, even blatantly wrong, but I think it makes sense and since I won't do any work in the field it's sufficient for me.

Communication.

An animal might learn something interesting, but it can't really share it with other animals or teach it to its children. One of the big advantages of mankind is that it can teach, and after it has developed a writing system, people can even share their knowledge long after they themselves are dead.

During the middle ages, science stagnated, not because of religion, but because of a lack of communication. People weren't learned enough to share their knowledge, and they had no medium for it. The churches kept the ancient knowledge locked up, which was a good thing, so it got preserved, but also a bad thing, because it wasn't built upon.

Come the renessaince and people start to queston old ideas and build on old ideas again, calling back to antiquity. Then Guttenberg came along and created the printing press, enabling people to share their knowledge extremely efficiently.

And today, a scientific finding can be shared at the speed of light, and called up, from nearly any place with small man-made devices. So of course, as the speed of communication picks up, so does the speed of innovation.

Nithavela said:

Communication.

An animal might learn something interesting, but it can't really share it with other animals or teach it to its children. One of the big advantages of mankind is that it can teach, and after it has developed a writing system, people can even share their knowledge long after they themselves are dead.

During the middle ages, science stagnated, not because of religion, but because of a lack of communication. People weren't learned enough to share their knowledge, and they had no medium for it. The churches kept the ancient knowledge locked up, which was a good thing, so it got preserved, but also a bad thing, because it wasn't built upon.

Come the renessaince and people start to queston old ideas and build on old ideas again, calling back to antiquity. Then Guttenberg came along and created the printing press, enabling people to share their knowledge extremely efficiently.

And today, a scientific finding can be shared at the speed of light, and called up, from nearly any place with small man-made devices. So of course, as the speed of communication picks up, so does the speed of innovation.

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This is very much the explanation for the latest development. The printing press was insanely effective when it came to mass communicate ideas and everything after is very much due to that.

Technology and innovation grow at exponential rates, not linear.

Bear in mind that even today, there are still people who live a stone age existence but have the same intelligence as the advanced world.

In answer to your question the answer as I understand it is the exponential effect of three factors;

1. Communication and in particular recorded information.
Without any communication any individual or community would have to work everything out from scratch, with verbal communication a limited amount of knowledge can be passed down from ancestors, written communication would allow large amounts of communication to be passed down, but with efficient printing however, vast amounts of information can be passed not only to members of one society but to all societies.

2. Discoveries.
One discovery often paves the way for others which in turn open the door to more and so on. The discovery of iron allowed for basic objects, the production of steel for more complex mechanics and coupled with the discovery of fine engineering techniques allowed the idea of an internal combustion engine for instance to become achievable.
"

3. Time and opportunity.
With better communication of these discoveries resulting in increasingly efficient economies there came about a wealthy class of people who, free from the time consuming duties of the masses, were able to devote their time and energies to the furtherment of science and technology which lead to more discoveries communicated to more people making more efficient economies which gave more time and money to more people to make more advancements to be communicated to... you get my point.

These people were as Newton put it "standing on the shoulders of giants" or "discovering truth by building on previous discoveries" - Bernard of Chartres

J0hnSm1th said:

I agree about the exponential nature of learning+communication. However it is strange that it took so long to get started.

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J0hnSm1th said:

I have a question for the atheists/agnostics. Its more philosophical than scientific. Science would tell us that our ancestors from 100000 years ago had marginally less intellect than today. Given that, why would it be only the last 5000 years that technology picked up speed? 95000 years of hunter gathering seems like an awfully long preamble. People could have discovered fire, tools, agriculture, and simple engineering long ago, yet didn't.

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Nitpicking: Our ancestors started using crude stone tools more than 2 million years ago, and more sophisticated stone tools (ones requiring considerable technique to manufacture) over a million years ago. Use of fire goes back hundreds of thousands of years.

J0hnSm1th said:

I agree about the exponential nature of learning+communication. However it is strange that it took so long to get started.

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Why would it have gone faster?

I agree about the exponential nature of learning+communication. However it is strange that it took so long to get started. John


Not really, humans moved out of Africa some 60,000 years ago, the first change from hunter gatherer to settled farming around 12 thousand years ago, the first writing 8000 years ago the bronze age 6000 years ago the Iron age 3000 years ago, the printing press 700 years ago, the agricultural revolution in what is now the "west" a few hundred years ago, the industrial revolution 200 years ago.
Due to environmental reasons, some societies have never moved from a stone age culture . The nature of an exponential increase necessitates a relatively slow start.

I am neither an atheist nor agnostic.

J0hnSm1th said:

I have a question for the atheists/agnostics. Its more philosophical than scientific. Science would tell us that our ancestors from 100000 years ago had marginally less intellect than today.

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Maybe they had more. Nobody has travelled back in time to give them an IQ test.

People could have discovered fire, tools, agriculture, and simple engineering long ago, yet didn't.

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They could have done, but they didn't. They emegence of agriculture and early technology would have depended upon a combination of happy accidents and necessity, or at least an advantage in doing things a different way.

Similarly, its curious that the Earth has had with animals with some intelligence and the manual dexterity to manipulate their environment for many millions of years. Yet it was only humans that developed technology. Use of technology is a survival advantage, but only one of many. So why now and not back then?

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We are the only species which is physiologically equipped for sophisticated language. Therefore we are the only species which can manipulate abstract concepts. Therefore we are the only species able to develop technology.

To be fair, we don't exactly know how much engineering really was done during the stone age. For all we know, people had at least some usefull tools we would classify as engineered, like lever mechanics, but only the stone tools survived. It wasn't all people living in caves and banging rocks together saying ugh, those people had houses and manufactured clothes out of woven cloth. They were able to create jewelery. I'd say that those are pretty marvelous inventions. I know that I wouldn't be able to come up with that from scratch, while ecking out a meagre existence from farming.

Also, there's a good chance that there were a few geniusses back then, too. Stone Age leonardo da vinchis, so to speak, with a brilliant mind. Thing is, they had little opportunity excercising that mind when they had to work the farm every day to not starve, and when they did create something grand, they had no means to have that knowledge spread before dying out to some disease or a raiding other tribe.

Nithavela said:

To be fair, we don't exactly know how much engineering really was done during the stone age. For all we know, people had at least some usefull tools we would classify as engineered, like lever mechanics, but only the stone tools survived. It wasn't all people living in caves and banging rocks together saying ugh, those people had houses and manufactured clothes out of woven cloth. They were able to create jewelery. I'd say that those are pretty marvelous inventions. I know that I wouldn't be able to come up with that from scratch, while ecking out a meagre existence from farming.

Also, there's a good chance that there were a few geniusses back then, too. Stone Age leonardo da vinchis, so to speak, with a brilliant mind. Thing is, they had little opportunity excercising that mind when they had to work the farm every day to not starve, and when they did create something grand, they had no means to have that knowledge spread before dying out to some disease or a raiding other tribe.

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Stonehenge is the best example that springs to mind (that still survives). It's an extraordinary feat of engineering, logistics and architecture and also tells us something about their religious beliefs.

Not only about their religious belief, but also about their skills in astronomy.

Really, I bet that if a time machine COULD be invented and people would travel back into this time period, they would be amazed by the stuff those people already could do. Chances are, they had some skills that we today have long forgotten.

Flint knapping, for example, is a really hard skill to learn. There were places full of knapping residue, far more than any tribe could house, which even speaks for a real industry and trade networks.

J0hnSm1th said:

I have a question for the atheists/agnostics. Its more philosophical than scientific. Science would tell us that our ancestors from 100000 years ago had marginally less intellect than today.

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Just the opposite.
Nothing supports your O.P.

J0hnSm1th said:

I agree about the exponential nature of learning+communication. However it is strange that it took so long to get started.

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Aside from the exponential nature of learning, I think the most important aspect of "why did it take so long" is: available time and resources for research and experimentation.

In a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer society, they can only own as much as they can carry. There is very little planning for long term survival. Most, if not everything, is about having food today, next week and / or at best, for the winter.

While in such living conditions, there is also a slow increase of knowledge concerning the fabrication of practical and rudimentary tools, there is no time or room to "think outside the box" and test a few creative ideas, or try to answer a few difficult questions.

Chimpansees instinctively exhibit such behaviour in psychological experiments. They ARE a lot more intelligent then people tend to think. You can learn them things about tool use and such that they will pick-up on and use. But if what you are learning them can't be linked directly to rather immediate results (getting food for example), they lose interest quite rapidly.

Once people started settling down and discovering the basic principles of agriculture, something unprecedented happened: people started to own more then they can carry. The idea of "private and public owned property" surfaced. Now, keeping track of your inventory becomes important. What's a good way of doing that? Marks. Symbols. Writing.

Now that people start to work the land, they quickly gain new knowledge and experience about that.

As they become better at it, crops become better and more food is available.
More "easy" food = less resources and time required for hunting and gathering.

With more time on their hands, people have more time to use building their house, gaining experience and knowledge in construction as well as to simply study things out of curiosity.

Also, now that they are settled in one spot, they also have the opportunity to work for weeks, months on something. This allowed for "bigger projects", which again is easy to see how it would gain them new knowledge and experience. Learn by doing.

Fascinating subject though.

lesliedellow said:

We are the only species which is physiologically equipped for sophisticated language. Therefore we are the only species which can manipulate abstract concepts. Therefore we are the only species able to develop technology.

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I don't think mental capacities, like being able to construct abstract models in your head to analyse a certain situation or something, are dependend on having the ability to speak.

To develop technology though, one would have a need to communicate knowledge one way or the other, that is correct. I just don't agree that speech is the only way to do that, albeit perhaps the most efficient way.