# Skill that human kind has lost
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 16, 2017, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381 "2017-07-16T09:42:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Nansbread1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nansbread1)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/1 "2017-07-16T09:42:27Z")
Is there any skill that humans have completely lost with no possibility of ever re-learning?
Not to include extinct languages.
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### Author:  [@Bayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bayaker)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/2 "2017-07-16T10:02:41Z")
No one has known how to make Greek Fire since sometime before the fall of Constantinople.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/3 "2017-07-16T10:10:08Z")
Or maybe we have, but we gave it a different name.
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### Author:  [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/4 "2017-07-16T10:18:46Z")
I’m sure there are countless specific crafts and recipes that have been lost to time. Any indigenous tribe living in the rainforest, has a huge amount of knowledge about their environment and how to get by in it.
We’ve only recently been able to analyse roman concrete and figure out how it was made. _[Mystery of 2,000-year-old Roman concrete solved by scientists | The Independent | The Independent](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/roman-concrete-mystery-solved-scientists-a7824011.html)_
Then there are skills which would be useless to a modern human. Mammoth hunting for example.
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### Author:  [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/5 "2017-07-16T10:35:42Z")
> [@Nansbread1](#):
>
> Is there any skill that humans have completely lost with **no possibility of ever re-learning?**
No matter what skills might have been lost, there is probably nothing that could not be re-learned or re-discovered.
But one specific skill which (I think) remains unknown is how the medieval cathedral builders made the stained glass windows.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/6 "2017-07-16T12:12:27Z")
There are two different kinds of “we don’t know how they did it”. The first is “we can’t think of any way to do this”, and that’s incredibly rare. I don’t know of any specific examples of it, though there might be a few.
The second is “We can think of lots of ways to do this, but we don’t know which of them they used”. This is quite common, but it certainly doesn’t mean that the ancients were smarter than us. We probably have stumbled on the method they used, but just don’t know it.
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### Author:  [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/7 "2017-07-16T12:43:54Z")
But there’s many ways to a skin a cat … in the past humans may have copied animals or other natural occurences more than trial and error and consultation with other humans.
How to kill a mammoth with a spear. Well we can understand that there are ways, but who is actually demonstrating a skill in that ?? We still have spear throwers , but rarely is someone killing a large beast with a spear.
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### Author:  [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/8 "2017-07-16T12:50:25Z")
Pyramid-building using technology and methods available 4000 years ago, as well as quarrying and transport of the stones. There are theories, but no definitive answers, and no one is willing now to try a full-scale replica of the process.
Open-ocean navigation using whatever methods the Polynesians used (a combination of constellations, currents, observations of animals, who knows what else). They were able to repeatedly return to islands thru-out the Polynesian triangle, which is in the middle of a vast ocean.
The Easter Island (Rapa Nui) heads (moai) also have many theories surrounding their construction and transport, but no one knows for sure how they did it. Altho, if someone put enough time and effort into it, it may be possible to recreate the techniques.
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### Author:  [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/9 "2017-07-16T12:54:36Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> The second is “We can think of lots of ways to do this, but we don’t know which of them they used”. This is quite common, but it certainly doesn’t mean that the ancients were smarter than us. We probably have stumbled on the method they used, but just don’t know it.
Wootz steel is probably in this category. We don’t know what was the original method for making it, but modern methods can produce very similar results.
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### Author:  [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/10 "2017-07-16T13:36:29Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> Or maybe we have, but we gave it a different name.
Doubtful because the general characteristics are pretty well known and anyone duplicating them in the past 1,200 years would have bragged, “Hey! I’ve reinvented Greek fire!” rather than, “Look at this nifty, horrible weapon I’ve invented.” On its [Greek fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire#Manufacture) page, wiki mentions,
> [@wiki](#):
>
> …Greek fire is best understood as a complete weapon system of many components, all of which were needed to operate together to render it effective. This comprised not only the formula of its composition, but also the specialized dromon ships that carried it into battle, the device used to prepare the substance by heating and pressurizing it, the _siphōn_ projecting it, and the special training of the _siphōnarioi_ who used it. Knowledge of the whole system was highly compartmentalised, with operators and technicians aware of the secrets of only one component, ensuring that no enemy could gain knowledge of it in its entirety. This accounts for the fact that when the Bulgarians took Mesembria and Debeltos in 814, they captured 36 _siphōns_ and even quantities of the substance itself, but were unable to make any use of them.
I’m thinking that research has been limited in personnel, time, and money but even if some rich guy bankrolls a team to look into it, we might never know all of the details. After all, trebuchets are pretty well known, but The Grey Company, a group of Australian medieval reenactors with several of them, mentions the [frustration](http://members.iinet.net.au/~rmine/triggers.html) of duplicating a historically accurate treb trigger.
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### Author:  [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/11 "2017-07-16T13:44:00Z")
> [@snowthx](#):
>
> Open-ocean navigation using whatever methods the Polynesians used (a combination of constellations, currents, observations of animals, who knows what else). They were able to repeatedly return to islands thru-out the Polynesian triangle, which is in the middle of a vast ocean.
Actually, that one isn’t quite true. The traditional techniques were **almost** lost, but were recovered and put back into use just in time. As a matter of fact, a group of people from Hawaii just completed a trip around the world using Polynesian navigation methods.
[http://www.hokulea.com/worldwide-voyage/](http://www.hokulea.com/worldwide-voyage/)
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/12 "2017-07-16T13:47:08Z")
> [@Isilder](#):
>
> How to kill a mammoth with a spear.
Or even better, how to most safely and quickly kill a glyptodont or giant ground sloth–we still have things pretty similar to the mammoth around to try killing. Not so for the other two.
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### Author:  [@wintertime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wintertime)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/13 "2017-07-16T14:30:55Z")
I’d answer “yes” four times to your query:
1. We cannot purposely re-learn or reproduce anything our ancestors knew or did that we don’t know anything about. Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t re-learn or re-invent the skill, but, for us, it’d appear to be a new one.
2. If a resource within our environment is not present any longer, we can’t reproduce its result. We might reproduce its function but not the thing itself, not perfectly.
3. If the skill/result/product is of a nature that a reduction to its components is not sufficient knowledge to reproduce it, we’d need the recipe/schematic/manual/etc. to do so. If that doesn’t exist any longer, we are out of luck.
4. We might also nowadays lack the ability to re-learn or reproduce a skill, either because the circumstances have changed (society, environment), or we have done so, as a species. Depending on your definition of human, we could include other branches of the genus homo (who likely had abilities that we don’t share) or only the ancestor of _Homo sapiens sapiens_, and that is _Homo sapiens idaltu_.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/14 "2017-07-16T14:35:40Z")
Making a humble apology …
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/15 "2017-07-16T15:27:20Z")
> [@snowthx](#):
>
> The Easter Island (Rapa Nui) heads (moai) also have many theories surrounding their construction and transport, but no one knows for sure how they did it. Altho, if someone put enough time and effort into it, it may be possible to recreate the techniques.
At least one anthropologist did it, Thor Heyerdahl, ca. 1955. He demonstrated that given enough manpower and minimal tools, the heavy statues could be moved across the plain on their backs and erected. He used the principle described by a local man, “Mayor” Pedro Atan, supposedly a distant descendant of the tribe that originally carved and erected them. Heyerdahl’s experiment is described and well-illustrated in his 1958 book, [Aku-Aku.](https://www.amazon.com/AKU-AKU-Secret-Easter-Thor-Heyerdahl/dp/0528818104/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500218400&sr=1-10&keywords=thor+heyerdahl)
Of course, we don’t know if that is the way used by the original islanders, but it certainly could have been the method. It doesn’t require any supernatural force or exotic tools, just care, manpower, and patience.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/16 "2017-07-16T15:33:58Z")
> [@wintertime](#):
>
> We might also nowadays lack the ability to re-learn or reproduce a skill, either because the circumstances have changed (society, environment), or we have done so, as a species. Depending on your definition of human, we could include other branches of the genus homo (who likely had abilities that we don’t share) or only the ancestor of _Homo sapiens sapiens_, and that is _Homo sapiens idaltu_.
And of course we now know not to think of our evolutionary past as a path from one single species or population to another. It is quite likely that all those species of _Homo_ were, to some extent, our ancestors. One recent anthropologist put it, I think, very astutely by saying something like: It’s best to think of those fossils (of _Homo_) as representing a population of interbreeding groups that eventually left us only with “us”.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/17 "2017-07-16T15:37:00Z")
> [@Musicat](#):
>
> At least one anthropologist did it, Thor Heyerdahl, ca. 1955. He demonstrated that given enough manpower and minimal tools, the heavy statues could be moved across the plain on their backs and erected.
They could also have been [walked](https://www.google.com/search?q=walking+moai&oq=walking+moai). (A method I once used to move a chest freezer several hundred feet–without the ropes, of course.)
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### Author:  [@wintertime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wintertime)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/18 "2017-07-16T16:09:14Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> And of course we now know not to think of our evolutionary past as a path from one single species or population to another. It is quite likely that all those species of _Homo_ were, to some extent, our ancestors.
Oh yes, it’s not just reasonable to expect that our ancestors screwed each other - or one another (to each his own) - wherever they met, we know [they did](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ancient-neanderthal-dna-still-influences-our-genes-today-180962285/) …
Nomenclature shows differences that might not have been apparent to the species of our genus that lived along-side one another or they might not have mattered or made the other one even more attractive. They were … human, after all.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/19 "2017-07-16T16:11:10Z")
Grasping tree branches with our opposable big toes.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skill-that-human-kind-has-lost/791381/20 "2017-07-16T20:01:44Z")
Cursive handwriting may be well on the way.
> [@snowthx](#):
>
> Pyramid-building using technology and methods available 4000 years ago, as well as quarrying and transport of the stones. There are theories, but no definitive answers, and no one is willing now to try a full-scale replica of the process.
Candidate for Ken Ham’s next big project!
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