you’re given a choice to re-write the history of humanity. are we better off as we are now or would it be better if we evolved to live in the seas? how far can technology advance in the waters?
eta: title should read as “How far can technology advance if we had evolved to be creatures of the seas, without lungs to breathe on land?”
Being in the sea means no fire, so chemistry is out, as is pottery, glassmaking, and so much more.
So basically, technological progress would be a non-starter.
so not at all? there are no mermaid cities that aren’t magic?
Consider that the only usable metal will be gold - nothing else will be found in pure form. There’s no need for clothes underwater, so people never learn to weave or sew. And you can’t kill a large creature without attracting sharks. Unless you’re bigger and nastier than a shark like an orca. Notice how most marine predators swallow whole? Building structures would mean excluding light, and there’s precious little of that underwater, especially in fertile seas. Even working stone is more difficult as you have to generate much more force because you’re pushing water instead of air out of the way.
Whales have taken it about as far as it can go.
My first thought was that if Tursiops truncatus hasn’t developed technology by now then the aquahuman species posited in the OP probably would not have either.
However, even without fire, we could craft coral and bones into tools. This would leave us with a paleolithic level of tech. Maybe.
I suggest that evolutionary pressures would eventually allow the aquapeople to develop telepathic powers that could be used to control the fish.
That’s pretty much the only way we could survive.
Interesting question.
Assuming these creatures would evolve hands (why they would I don’t know since they would hurt streamlining) they could make stone tools as already mentioned, they could weave seaweed, and they could pile up rocks.
If technology did evolve, it would be more biological, since the intelligent seafarers might be able to breed fish and sea mammals for their uses, such as protecting them from sharks.
One possibility would b that they can create the basic components for their technology from their own bodies. Extruding hard materials (like coral polyps do, but under conscious direction), and/or something like webbing. With shaped hard material and strong fibers you have a good basis for creating simple technology. With that to build on they might be able to advance farther.
Of course this requires them to be lucky enough to have evolved such abilities, but that’s not much different than us being lucky enough to have come from ancestors with hands. If we’d evolved from a handless species I doubt we could have created much technology either.
Look at squid and octopi. Having manipulative limbs underwater has worked fine for them.
I’ve run across high-technology sea-dweller cultures in fiction. The origins of their technology is usually either glossed over or it’s given to them by outsiders/their creators.
how about if we expand the question to include aliens? any plausible scenarios where technology can thrive underwater?
Humans being what they are, I’m pretty sure we would try to find ways to explore dry land.
Well, you still have to account for this:
There was an old sci-fi story where the visiting earthman sparked a huge technological revolution on a water-world, by teaching them how to make glue. They could create “plywood” of a sort from pressed seaweed, and make other useful objects.
It wouldn’t lead to an Industrial Age, but it could bump the tech level very substantially.
Sea-dwelling “humans” would first have to develop intelligence before they could develop any kind of technology. So the real question here, in my opinion, is whether or not we would have developed intelligence. The only reason we have done so on land is that we are physically so poorly suited to survive in our environment. The mammals of the sea do not face this particular problem, and so being super-smart (relative to other mammals) is not necessary for survival as a species. Therefore they have not become smart enough to develop technology.
Intelligence does not evolve in a species that is already perfectly well-equipped to survive in its environment. There is no need for it.