So I was thinking about early humans and what caused the jump from wilderness living to more sophisticated living. Textiles must have played a vital role. It is hard to take advantage of doing anything if you have to carry all your stuff in your hands. Being able to tie stuff together would be a major advantage. You could carry a lot more stuff. I think that having long hair may have contributed to the development of textiles. Braiding hair might have led to braiding other fibers. Dreadlocks cut off may have become the first cord, or may have given someone the idea to add fibers together. Having hair like we do could have been nearly as useful as standing upright.
Anyone have any other WAGs about how things happened way back then?
Agriculture. Before then, people had to keep wandering around to find what they wanted. After they discovered a reliable, renewable food source that didn’t require constant mobility, they hunkered down to enjoy their Playstation.
And they invented land ownership, because land became valuable in and of itself, as a source of prospective wealth, instead of merely being the source of current wealth, such as nuts and fruits. Land ownership is the basis for both government and geometry, not to mention the standing army.
Agriculture begat architecture, and architecture begat engineering. All of these specializations begat the concept of a complex class system, and religions sprung up to glorify the suddenly all-important sun and the centralization of power in one God King the sun represented. Solar cults persist to this day, in the forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, among others.
Record keeping begat writing and a scribe culture, which came to value abstract knowledge over the purely physical. Mathematics worked here, too, and the idea of perpetuating knowledge in an extra-oral tradition created history and advanced philosophy.
I view agriculture as a necessary `first step’ in the development of a complex, lasting civilization.
I agree about the fibers allowing people to carry stuff around, ie allowed the possibility of tools and property. But I WAG that it was kids twisting grass that invented string, knots, nets, bags, etc. Kids and women, because they didn’t have to focus on maintaining their dignity and prestige.
And I WAG that kids invented engineering by damming creeks with rocks and clay, and bracing driftwood logs up to make bridges and towers.