Walter Bright wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
My list:
- wheel
- fire
- smelting metals
- writing
- arithmetic
But humans had fire 20,000 years ago!
Well in my fantasies time is a parameter...
I think fire goes back a lot
longer than that. I also suspect that simple arithmetic is innate,
although a numbering system is not (see Mayan and Roman number systems).
Wouldn't the wheel be useless to a hunter-gatherer tribe?
Not for transporting the hunt.
By and large, such mental exercises are indeed showing how dependent
everything in modern life is on infrastructure. Our major achievements
(electricity, automobiles, computers) cannot be fathomed absent a major
infrastructure.
Andrei
