How stupid were our ancestors?

Where To

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

IM0

you win the internet

Temptamperu

They created god. so they must of been somewhat intelligent, you couldn't pull that of nowadays.

horgan_p

They were smart enough to figure out how to get milk from a cow. Mightn't have been what they were trying to do, but happy accident all the same.

Winston Payne

Just imagine how stupid we'll look in ten thousand years. Oh, my face is reddening already at the crushing shame of it.

im invisible

Shur they had giants standing on their shoulders back then, its amazing they got anything done at all

Ficheall

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

If you were to wake up tomorrow and find yourself a few thousand years in the past - what could you do with your extra "intelligence"?

yore

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

You didn't lick it off a stone now did you?

Where To

Ficheall wrote: »

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

If you were to wake up tomorrow and find yourself a few thousand years in the past - what could you do with your extra "intelligence"?

Id invent the shoelace

WolfgangWeisen

Where To wrote: »

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

Oh, you're smart, are you?

I didn't pick up on that from your post, I must confess.

2 stroke

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

The generation before you invented the technology you use today, what will your generation invent?

Ficheall

Where To wrote: »

Id invent the shoelace

How? And what would you do with it?

Chuck Stone

Thick fucks.

If I had a time masheen I'd go back and wipe 'em out.

Every last one of 'em.

Yitzhak Rabin

I reckon most of our bogstandard descendants were quite thick. Work eat sleep types.

However there were definitely a few leonardos throughout our existence. The ones who orchestrated newgrange, the pyramids, the Mayan astrological calendar etc. Also they didn't have the benefits of the giants shoulders like we do.

AgileMyth

horgan_p wrote: »

They were smart enough to figure out how to get milk from a cow. Mightn't have been what they were trying to do, but happy accident all the same.

I can understand why people tried cow's milk, but what mad bastard first decided to reach into a beehive and eat the sticky stuff?

milehip1

2 stroke wrote: »

The generation before you invented the technology you use today, what will your generation invent?

Super-AIDS?

Ficheall

yekahS wrote: »

I reckon most of our bogstandard descendants will be quite thick. Work eat sleep types.

FYP

IrishAm

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

What piece of technology have you invented?

Where To

Ficheall wrote: »

Where To wrote: »

Id invent the shoelace

How? And what would you do with it?

I'd make them from the wool of Angora goats, then I would invent roofed sandals to put them on

Where To

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

You are amazing! Tell me more cleverz!

Temptamperu

yekahS wrote: »

I reckon most of our bogstandard descendants were quite thick. Work eat sleep types.

Like most people nowadays.

Where To

IrishAm wrote: »

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

What piece of technology have you invented?

Angora sandal-shoes

Where To

budgese wrote: »

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

You are amazing! Tell me more cleverz!

Well when you think about it, we can do things that our parents could only dream of, like fly to Australia or watch porn in our own house.

Imagine what the next generation will be able to do.

stoneill

Where To wrote: »

Well when you think about it, we can do things that our parents could only dream of, like fly to Australia or watch porn in our own house.

Imagine what the next generation will be able to do.

Fly in their own house and watch porn from Australia?

Dr. Jonathan Crane

So you think the people who came before us were stupid.. But you want to go back in time and steal their inventions?

Sindri

Dems was thick froms the inbreedings










lucky sexy bastards

Biggins

Temptamperu wrote: »

They created god. so they must of been somewhat intelligent, you couldn't pull that of nowadays.

Dunno - Ron L Hubbard got a few nuts going with bodies and bombs dumped into volcano's and Xenu is all coming to save the planet Earth people from the inner invading aliens! :pac:

...But get your money out because this latest god only comes at a not so cheap price per level of awareness!

Sindri

Biggins wrote: »

Dunno - Ron L Hubbard got a few nuts going with bodies and bombs dumped into volcano's and Xenu is all coming to save the planet Earth people from the inner invading aliens! :pac:

...But get your money out because this latest god only comes at a not so cheap price per level of awareness!

How do you get away with typing that? Or are they watching us now....? ¬_¬

Biggins

Sindri wrote: »

How do you get away with typing that? Or are they watching us now....? ¬_¬

They fear me 'cos I'm from the planet Zanussi to clean their act up! :cool:

RobbingBandit

You leave the great xenu out of this or I'll sue you in England...

es-cee

Where To wrote: »

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

neither, we just live in a different age to them, you twonk.

Stiffler2

The question is are we really as smart as we think we are.
Our ancestors knew how to work the land and appreciate nature and work with it.

We destroy everthing and move on and soon earth will be destroyed because of this


that is all

DonnaHay

There are clues everywhere all around us. But the puzzle maker is clever

Wibbs

Stiffler2 wrote: »

The question is are we really as smart as we think we are.
Our ancestors knew how to work the land and appreciate nature and work with it.

We destroy everthing and move on and soon earth will be destroyed because of this

Eh not quite. Modern humans came out of Africa and spread throughout the world and you can track them by animal extinctions and environmental change as they go. Then we came up with farming and this really took off.

We just love the notion of the noble savage in Europe. Have done for many centuries. Today it's just gussied up in more PC environmental tones. Hunter gatherers, those that people reckon are "in touch with nature etc" can be just as destructive as people living in the modern world. It's just not as obvious. Take New Zealand and the Maori. New Zealand was one of the last large places on earth humans got to. Not so long ago either. When the Normans came here, NZ was still uninhabited. it was around 1300 before he first humans made it. They found an isolated land of diverse wildlife, found nowhere else(especially birds). Their population was quite small for a long time, but even so they wiped out all the moa bird species and many others. NZ had been covered with forest when they arrived, but by the time Europeans show up over half had been cleared by burning.

Look at another environment in microcosm; Easter island. Again a place quite recently colonised. It was covered in forest and many animals etc. By the time Europeans arrived it was a treeless largely barren landscape with a tiny population. They had destroyed their environment to the point where their very existence was threatened.

Stiffler2

Wibbs wrote: »

Eh not quite. Modern humans came out of Africa and spread throughout the world and you can track them by animal extinctions and environmental change as they go. Then we came up with farming and this really took off.

We just love the notion of the noble savage in Europe. Have done for many centuries. Today it's just gussied up in more PC environmental tones. Hunter gatherers, those that people reckon are "in touch with nature etc" can be just as destructive as people living in the modern world. It's just not as obvious. Take New Zealand and the Maori. New Zealand was one of the last large places on earth humans got to. Not so long ago either. When the Normans came here, NZ was still uninhabited. it was around 1300 before he first humans made it. They found an isolated land of diverse wildlife, found nowhere else(especially birds). Their population was quite small for a long time, but even so they wiped out all the moa bird species and many others. NZ had been covered with forest when they arrived, but by the time Europeans show up over half had been cleared by burning.

Look at another environment in microcosm; Easter island. Again a place quite recently colonised. It was covered in forest and many animals etc. By the time Europeans arrived it was a treeless largely barren landscape with a tiny population. They had destroyed their environment to the point where their very existence was threatened.

Grand point but I was talking about ancestors from 10,000 years ago like the OP said, not the last 2 thousand years.

Wibbs

Stiffler2 wrote: »

Grand point but I was talking about ancestors from 10,000 years ago like the OP said, not the last 2 thousand years.

The examples I gave would be the same type of culture of the ones 10,000 years ago. Hunter gatherers and fishermen with a side order of subsistence farming. A culture with deep roots in our history. Many such cultures survive down to this day.

OK go back 10,000 years. Hell lets rev up the Tardis and go back even further 50-60,000 years and look at Australia. It was a very different land back then. We humans show up and again major extinctions occur and large scale burning of forest to drive prey animals out. The ultimate "noble savage" to the hippie European mind is often the Australian Aborigine, with their dreamtime and respect for the land. All good, but in many ways they were forced to start respecting the land as they had such an impact on it early on that they would have died out in the harsher environment they were left with. Look to the Americas. Again when the first humans show up animals start disappearing.

Basically one of the major markers of modern humans is our impact on the environments we move into and we have been doing this for the last 80,000 years(at least) since we became fully modern. By contrast our close cousins the Neandertals existed in Eurasia for well over 200,000 years and had little impact on the local environment by comparison. No local extinctions and the like.

Baneblade

take away electricity for a few weeks and we would be knocked back to the stone age. modern society just cant function without it, how many people could grow or catch their own food?
we might be more technologically advanced but we are more dependant on that technology for are day to day survival
I would not say are ancestors were stupid they just had a different set of knowledge and skillsets that their circumstances demanded. If they were stupid we would not be where we are today

Kosseegan

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

What have YOU invented? Is anyone who doesn't invent something stupid?

Wibbs

On the topic of the thread? Mostly a bit thick with the odd sunny spell of intelligence and imagination. Just like people today. The big difference today and since the invention of writing and especially printing, is that even the biggest dribbler today is exposed to the knowledge of greater minds. That rising tide lifts all boats.

Back in say the late stone age you can see the beginnings of this. More and more it looks like Neandertals were as resourceful as modern humans. They may have even had more cultural traits before us more widely spread(body adornment etc). The difference was their population was always quite small. One bloke or blokess could have a serious brainwave but it wouldn't always transmit because of isolation so the new idea could easily die with him or her. Our higher population seems to have forced us into more contact and more trade and trading of ideas which then leads to more people having the idea, which means the idea survives (and is often improved). Open source was invented a loooong time ago.

If Joe of 3 Rockfall Cave invents and builds a bow and arrow and gives the idea to all his tribe, everyone carrying a bow and arrow looks nearly as clever as he does and a lot cleverererrerer to someone without a bow and arrow. Today we're all carrying many different and way cooler bows and arrows, but we're not necessarily more intelligent.

Stupify

All the information we have today has been passed on from previous generations.

The ability we have to pass on complex information from one generation to the next is what makes us dominant on this planet.

Wibbs

Stupify wrote: »

The ability we have to pass on complex information from one generation to the next is what makes us dominant on this planet.

Yea and a real funny thing started to happen around 40,000 years ago. We looked the same, we acted the same, we were the same as 50,000 years ago, but for some reason we started to live longer on average. From an upper limit of say 40 to more like 60. We started to be grandmothers and grandfathers. Long enough to pass on info etc. Previously a lot fewer would have made that milestone.

xflyer

Well our ancestors were clever enough to survive long enough in a very hostile world so that they could reproduce and provide enough resources to enable their children to survive and so on until the present day to the point where we can look smugly back on them and wonder why it took them so long to invent the wheel.

Now we live in this part world where even the weakest and laziest live well and produce even more weak lazy people. This is not conducive to our long term survival.

While I'm no green radical, you don't have to be one to see that our current use of the Earth's resources is not sustainable in the long term, maybe not in the medium term. There could be a major reset sometime in the future. Back to a time when it's survival of the fittest again. Not a pleasant prospect.

Where To

Kosseegan wrote: »

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

What have YOU invented? Is anyone who doesn't invent something stupid?

I invented this thread, something my grandfather couldn't have done, the poor stupid bugger

plasmaguy

I'm convinced the Ancient Greeks, well the best of them, were more intelligent than most people today. They had a very logical approach to everything.

G.K.

I've studied Ancient Greece, a hell of a lot of them were just as dumb.

But saying the intellectuals of a society are more clever than our everyday person is pointless.

Wibbs

xflyer wrote: »

There could be a major reset sometime in the future. Back to a time when it's survival of the fittest again. Not a pleasant prospect.

It depends on what we define as fittest though too. Without the many thousands of stereotypical asthmatic nerds out there that wouldn't last pissing time in the stone age I wouldn't be typing this. Even so in the stone age "unfit" people were often valued if the evidence is anything to go by. Neandertals were tough fcukers. They'd make a cage fighter look like 7 stone weakling, yet they looked after the less fit among their group. One guy died at a very old age(may have been into his 60's). He had a withered arm lost in youth at the elbow, he was crippled with arthritis and hadn't a tooth in his head for at least 5-10 years(which meant someone would have had to chew his food for him). He was considered valuable to his people, though would have been as much practical use as a chocolate teapot for most of his life. One defining thing about humans is how far we'll go to to ensure the survival of the "unfittest".

plasmaguy

G.K. wrote: »

I've studied Ancient Greece, a hell of a lot of them were just as dumb.

But saying the intellectuals of a society are more clever than our everyday person is pointless.

Yeh, where? In University?

Have you ever heard the quote that Western Civilisation is a mere footnote to Socrates' life? (and no not the Brazillian Socrates!).

plasmaguy

G.K. wrote: »

I've studied Ancient Greece, a hell of a lot of them were just as dumb.

But saying the intellectuals of a society are more clever than our everyday person is pointless.

In any case, it's all of a silly argument this thread. There's idiots in ever society including our own and there are geniuses in ever society.

The point I would make is Ancient Greece had a population of no more than 1 million people, yet were responsible for many vital inventions and innovations, such as in democracy and philosophy, the creation of universities, the idea of a republic, laws of physics, maths.

The Ancient Greeks knew the world revolved around the sun, and the world was round, and were able to judge the size and distance of planets with relative accuracy. The average middle aged person didn't know any of these things.

Just some examples of how the Ancient Greeks knew more than people living in the middle ages.

Finally, the reason we are so smart today goes directly back to the Ancient Greeks and the renaissance which started with the discovery of many ancient greek texts and also the reprinting of these using the printing press.

Without the Ancient Greeks and rediscovery of their writings, we'd still be living in the dark ages.

ejmaztec

plasmaguy wrote: »

I'm convinced the Ancient Greeks, well the best of them, were more intelligent than most people today. They had a very logical approach to everything.

It's a great shame the logic seems to have skipped all the Greek generations since it was last used.:(

plasmaguy

Even in Ancient Greece, there was a sort of federal system as the city states decided it was better to pool their resources when it came to defending Greece, and so paid taxes/tribute to Athens who had a good navy and could protect trade and the like. A lot of Greeks weren't happy with that though and were suspicious of Athens.

Ancient Greek history and Greece in general is a fascinating subject.

Nothingbetter2d

Where To wrote: »

It took them ten thousand years to invent basics like the wheel, the lightbulb, and the bra.

When I was young having a penpal in France or somewhere was a big deal. Now I can speak to the world from the comfort of my own bed instantaneously.

Were our forefathers (and mothers) really thick or are we really smart?

to be fair to them they didn't have schools in which to teach their kids, nor did they have printing presses to mass produce books either. most of them didn't live long due to rampant diseases, malnutrition, and frequent wars.

however in the event of a global disaster its we the modern humans that would find it alot harder to survive than our ancient ancestors. our weakend immune systems and bloated guts combined with our over dependence on electricity would see a much higher % per head die off within a few years of such an event than our cavemen ancestors would.