Given that so much of our history (the history of people genetically indistinct from us) was unrecorded and presumed to be some form of hunting and gathering where no innovation took place (that was recorded), I think it goes too far to call innovation a human universal trait. I wish we could know what human cultures were like prior to all recorded history, even thirty thousand years ago. Perhaps we innovated in oral traditions, art, cooking, animal handling, social customs (you can innovate e.g. slang), dance etc. That would convince me of innovation’s place as a part of human nature. Short of that, I think of it as more of an occasional capacity or potential, and something we can find rewarding. Dogs can learn a great deal of clever tricks that they enjoy doing, but you wouldn’t call it canine nature to play dead when shot with a finger gun. It’s a novel behaviour borne of circumstances that can become rewarding with gradual behaviour shaping processes. I think of things like human invention as basically the same process with a more complex brain.
My only real point here was that if we’re going to stake the claim that “innovation is human nature”, we have to consider a broader scope of the word to include forms of innovation that are mostly invisible to archaeologists - the problem then being that we are making completely unsupported claims to do so.
Mmm… But there is archaeological evidence for a bunch of those… Cooking, art, animal handling. And art also provides evidence about other customs in some cases…
Pretty sure humans always did innovate as you said yes. And I mean, you can just look at modern humans for that, were not fundamentally biologically different to the humans back then. And we loooove slang, and trying out new things, and being curious, and learning. And we need no external motive to this
But you need to think yourself in their position, they wouldn’t have known the limits of technology, they wouldn’t have known that anything in our modern world was possible. They had nothing to go off on. All they had were rocks and wood and plants, and maybe fire (that’s not hot enough to melt metal)
There is such a long way to get to any technological point resembling anything close to the industrial revolution it’s not strange that it took a long time. Or, hell, even agriculture. A big problem with agriculture was that it didn’t improve the well-being of the farmers in the short-term (and the long-term is beyond their lifespan), so it wasn’t just a purely technological thing. It needed the correct set of external factors for it to be preferable to hunting and gathering.
I’d wager to guess that if you had the humans that were back then, but instead they just knew that our modern world is possible, you’d see a hell of a lot more progress happening a lot quicker. Because then it wouldn’t be a question of whether gears, or electricity, or medicine, or a complete understanding of the world was possible, but instead how.
That is the point I was driving at. They’re the same as us with different environmental factors. Hence the dog trick metaphor - you wouldn’t expect a dog to learn the “play dead” trick before the invention of guns.
My only real point here was that if we’re going to stake the claim that “innovation is human nature”, we have to consider a broader scope of the word to include forms of innovation that are mostly invisible to archaeologists - the problem then being that we are making completely unsupported claims to do so.
Those cave paintings were likely just to entertain children. You look at modern drawings a grown-up will do of animals while drawing with kids, and they’re not far off. These are people with brains exactly like yours and mine - if cave paintings were the apogee of artistic endeavour at the time, I’ll eat my hat.
Is this based upon an expert’s understanding of the topic, or is it just you speculating, though?
I do not intend to be hostile if it comes across that way, but it kinda feels to me a bit like you’re saying things were like this or that so it fits your conclusion instead of basing it upon any literature
But regarding the art, have you ever tried drawing? That shit is so much more difficult than it might seem at first. Converting a 3D world into a 2D image is not easy. Drawing is a technology, and not just that, but it’s culture, it’s subjective. People back then might not have cared about replicating reality in art, but instead cared about other aspects of it, and the brain is good enough to fill in the blanks as needed anyway
To further the point, perspective drawing was an invention. It’s not just something that humans intuitively know how to do. You look at old art humans made in the medieval times and so on, and they also look primitive compared to what human artists could make today (not me, however).
The technology of art needed time to develop, just like other forms of technology, and there was no such technology during those times. They had nothing to go off on, just like in other areas.
So, yes, it is not unreasonable to say that cave paintings probably were among the best drawings humans could make at the time, just like searing something over a fireplace might have been the best way of cooking food back then.
It’s also not unreasonable to say that cave paintings likely were important parts of culture and artistic expression as well. Doubly so when some cave paintings were deep inside dark caves. That’s not a place where you’d find people playing around with kids.
Saying that it was just to entertain children is very dismissive of the likely time and effort those art pieces, and the creation of their pigments, took
I think innovation is easier when you’re not constantly preoccupied with survival, having to spend every waking moment worrying about starvation or predators or disease or freezing to death probably puts quite a bit hamper on what creative new ideas you are able to come up with and try.
Given that so much of our history (the history of people genetically indistinct from us) was unrecorded and presumed to be some form of hunting and gathering where no innovation took place (that was recorded), I think it goes too far to call innovation a human universal trait. I wish we could know what human cultures were like prior to all recorded history, even thirty thousand years ago. Perhaps we innovated in oral traditions, art, cooking, animal handling, social customs (you can innovate e.g. slang), dance etc. That would convince me of innovation’s place as a part of human nature. Short of that, I think of it as more of an occasional capacity or potential, and something we can find rewarding. Dogs can learn a great deal of clever tricks that they enjoy doing, but you wouldn’t call it canine nature to play dead when shot with a finger gun. It’s a novel behaviour borne of circumstances that can become rewarding with gradual behaviour shaping processes. I think of things like human invention as basically the same process with a more complex brain.
All those things you mentions have been around since prior to the neolithic revolutions… Plus a whole bunch of tool making.
My only real point here was that if we’re going to stake the claim that “innovation is human nature”, we have to consider a broader scope of the word to include forms of innovation that are mostly invisible to archaeologists - the problem then being that we are making completely unsupported claims to do so.
Mmm… But there is archaeological evidence for a bunch of those… Cooking, art, animal handling. And art also provides evidence about other customs in some cases…
Pretty sure humans always did innovate as you said yes. And I mean, you can just look at modern humans for that, were not fundamentally biologically different to the humans back then. And we loooove slang, and trying out new things, and being curious, and learning. And we need no external motive to this
But you need to think yourself in their position, they wouldn’t have known the limits of technology, they wouldn’t have known that anything in our modern world was possible. They had nothing to go off on. All they had were rocks and wood and plants, and maybe fire (that’s not hot enough to melt metal)
There is such a long way to get to any technological point resembling anything close to the industrial revolution it’s not strange that it took a long time. Or, hell, even agriculture. A big problem with agriculture was that it didn’t improve the well-being of the farmers in the short-term (and the long-term is beyond their lifespan), so it wasn’t just a purely technological thing. It needed the correct set of external factors for it to be preferable to hunting and gathering.
I’d wager to guess that if you had the humans that were back then, but instead they just knew that our modern world is possible, you’d see a hell of a lot more progress happening a lot quicker. Because then it wouldn’t be a question of whether gears, or electricity, or medicine, or a complete understanding of the world was possible, but instead how.
That is the point I was driving at. They’re the same as us with different environmental factors. Hence the dog trick metaphor - you wouldn’t expect a dog to learn the “play dead” trick before the invention of guns.
My only real point here was that if we’re going to stake the claim that “innovation is human nature”, we have to consider a broader scope of the word to include forms of innovation that are mostly invisible to archaeologists - the problem then being that we are making completely unsupported claims to do so.
Wouldn’t say completely unsupported. Oldest tools, instruments, and cave paintings, are all older than 30 000 years old
Those cave paintings were likely just to entertain children. You look at modern drawings a grown-up will do of animals while drawing with kids, and they’re not far off. These are people with brains exactly like yours and mine - if cave paintings were the apogee of artistic endeavour at the time, I’ll eat my hat.
Is this based upon an expert’s understanding of the topic, or is it just you speculating, though?
I do not intend to be hostile if it comes across that way, but it kinda feels to me a bit like you’re saying things were like this or that so it fits your conclusion instead of basing it upon any literature
But regarding the art, have you ever tried drawing? That shit is so much more difficult than it might seem at first. Converting a 3D world into a 2D image is not easy. Drawing is a technology, and not just that, but it’s culture, it’s subjective. People back then might not have cared about replicating reality in art, but instead cared about other aspects of it, and the brain is good enough to fill in the blanks as needed anyway
To further the point, perspective drawing was an invention. It’s not just something that humans intuitively know how to do. You look at old art humans made in the medieval times and so on, and they also look primitive compared to what human artists could make today (not me, however).
The technology of art needed time to develop, just like other forms of technology, and there was no such technology during those times. They had nothing to go off on, just like in other areas.
So, yes, it is not unreasonable to say that cave paintings probably were among the best drawings humans could make at the time, just like searing something over a fireplace might have been the best way of cooking food back then.
It’s also not unreasonable to say that cave paintings likely were important parts of culture and artistic expression as well. Doubly so when some cave paintings were deep inside dark caves. That’s not a place where you’d find people playing around with kids.
Saying that it was just to entertain children is very dismissive of the likely time and effort those art pieces, and the creation of their pigments, took
I think innovation is easier when you’re not constantly preoccupied with survival, having to spend every waking moment worrying about starvation or predators or disease or freezing to death probably puts quite a bit hamper on what creative new ideas you are able to come up with and try.
Most hunter gatherers had a shitload of free time. Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything includes a bunch of references about this.
I love that book