PDA

View Full Version : The "tech tree" of human civilization



IthilanorStPete
2014-04-23, 10:55 PM
The concept of a tech tree is familiar from RTS's and 4X games like Civilization. Out of curiosity, I'd like to try modeling the development of things like agriculture, animal domestication, and metallurgy over time as such a tech tree. Something like:

-beginnings of agriculture with the Neolithic founder crops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_founder_crops)
--Irrigation
--Granaries
--Animal domestication
---Dogs -> herding and hunting
---Sheeps/goats -> wool
---Cows -> milk
---Draft animals
---Horses
with all of these leading to further developments.

I know a few caveats apply that need to be taken into account:
-There's not a universal progression of "less advanced" to "more advanced".
-Things aren't always deterministic; technologies don't necessarily have firm prerequisites like they do in games.
-Development doesn't happen at the same pace everywhere. I'm actually curious about the different paths taken in different areas of the world.

Feel free to weigh in, everyone! I'm looking forward to hearing from people who know more about history than I do.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-24, 02:20 AM
Pretty Euro-centric. Just looking all around the world shows how much can change with even relatively small differences. South American Mesoamerican cultures never had domesticatable animals large enough to work as draft animals, which is also likely one reason why they never really developed the wheel.

Eldan
2014-04-24, 04:34 AM
Yeah. Technology can go in strange directions. The Chinese never used glass much, so they never really developed lenses, either. In a lot of other ways, they were far ahead of the rest of the world for centuries. South America never really developed ironworking and had no draft animals, but their astronomy, mathematics and architecture were amazing for the time. And then, of course, there are developments that are later lost again.

Irk
2014-04-24, 12:21 PM
It would be pretty difficult, for sure, but I would make sure to include metallurgy, which is pretty important. I'd actually say that a lot of this stuff would concern Africa and Mesopotamia.

However, since civilizations developed technologies that had similar applications but did not ultimately describe an evolution in technology because of the geological separation of said civilizations. For example, farming emerged in numerous ways, so each technology would have to have multiple paths that would more or less merge at a a later point.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-24, 02:22 PM
Technology doesn't really develop the way we're normally taught: as a series of epiphanies by brilliant men, immediately adopted and put to use. The basic idea for a given innovation (including the means of producing/implementing it) might exist for decades, but go through dozens of tiny modifications by countless engineers before it becomes economically and socially viable. Or it might be suppressed be social forces (which might deem it immoral/illegal, or drive the company which produced it out of business). Or funding might run dry, and the innovation would be left to rot for another 100 years or so. Or people might not be comfortable using the innovation, despite it being cheap, and people knowing its benefits (boiling water being a shocking example of this: it took quite a while to get people to start doing it).



---Cows -> milk

This sticks out to me, because are lots of other animals from which you can get milk. Goats are a prominent example, and wikipedia tells me that a bunch of other animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#Sources_aside_from_cows) do too.

Also, dogs are not necessary for herding or hunting. If humans needed dogs to do those things, they would have died out a long time ago.

erikun
2014-04-24, 02:33 PM
Technology is probably less a tree, and more like a bunch of sprouts starting a forest. Occasionally they intermingle and merge, but the basis of most technology doesn't always depend on other technology existing. After all, while it is very obvious that stone tools came before metallurgy, that doesn't mean the crafting and use of stone tools made somebody think "Hey, let's boil this big rock and use the shiny hard stuff as a tool."

Of course, some forms of technology and advancement are related. Humans probably domesticated the dog first, and with that came the understanding that they could domesticate other animals, but that doesn't mean that humans need to have dogs around before they could raise goats. As another example, the ideas and concepts of storing food is likely downright ancient, from back when humans were gatherer-hunters most likely, and so the principles behind a grainery are nothing new. Graineries did not exist before agriculture simply because grain was not gathered in mass before then, not because agriculture was somehow required to understand how graineries worked. (If anything, it is likely the opposite - people need to know how to properly store large amounts of food over time before agriculture is useful.)

Ravens_cry
2014-04-24, 02:55 PM
It's also interesting how it's not humans capturing any random wild animal and forcing it to be domesticated through long breeding process. No, some animals are just easier to domesticate. The selective breeding came after.
This is why we ride horses and not zebras.
The first dogs were wolves that didn't mind being around humans, and while we gradually bred them to be more so, to respond to us as their pack leader, and, eventually, to fulfil different roles, these outliers were the basis for dog kind.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-24, 04:26 PM
Technology is probably less a tree, and more like a bunch of sprouts starting a forest. Occasionally they intermingle and merge, but the basis of most technology doesn't always depend on other technology existing. After all, while it is very obvious that stone tools came before metallurgy, that doesn't mean the crafting and use of stone tools made somebody think "Hey, let's boil this big rock and use the shiny hard stuff as a tool."

People assume that innovation is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...innovation-y... stuff.

Eldan
2014-04-24, 05:02 PM
Heh. I propose that this quote become the new official quote of this subform and should be mentioned in every single thread. I think this is the third time, now.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-24, 05:51 PM
Technology doesn't really develop the way we're normally taught: as a series of epiphanies by brilliant men, immediately adopted and put to use. The basic idea for a given innovation (including the means of producing/implementing it) might exist for decades, but go through dozens of tiny modifications by countless engineers before it becomes economically and socially viable. Or it might be suppressed be social forces (which might deem it immoral/illegal, or drive the company which produced it out of business). Or funding might run dry, and the innovation would be left to rot for another 100 years or so. Or people might not be comfortable using the innovation, despite it being cheap, and people knowing its benefits (boiling water being a shocking example of this: it took quite a while to get people to start doing it).
.
Well, boiling water takes a lot of energy, it's also why full body bathing was considered sinful in the Middle Ages in Europe, it wasted fuel better used for cooking and such, and the benefits of boiling water are not visibly obvious. Boiled water doesn't look any different from unboiled water after all, and would you want be the one to drink it to test to see if simple heating somehow made it more safe? Before germ theory, that would have seemed rather absurd. Small beer was a common drink in the Middle Ages, being safer than water, but not so much because of its minimal alcohol content but because the water was boiled as part of the process of making it.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-24, 09:14 PM
Well, boiling water takes a lot of energy, it's also why full body bathing was considered sinful in the Middle Ages in Europe, it wasted fuel better used for cooking and such, and the benefits of boiling water are not visibly obvious. Boiled water doesn't look any different from unboiled water after all, and would you want be the one to drink it to test to see if simple heating somehow made it more safe? Before germ theory, that would have seemed rather absurd. Small beer was a common drink in the Middle Ages, being safer than water, but not so much because of its minimal alcohol content but because the water was boiled as part of the process of making it.

The example I'm talking about was from 1955, long after germ theory was accepted. Granted, it happened in a peruvian village which mostly hadn't heard of germ theory, and had a superstition that only sick people should drink boiled water. Even when a health worker carefully explained the benefits to them, roughly 95% of them refused to boil their water.

In another example, from the same book actually (Diffusion of Innovations), the British navy only implemented lemon juice 200 years after an experiment clearly demonstrated that it prevented scurvy, and then it took another ~100 years for the practice to spread to the merchant navy.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-24, 09:31 PM
Well, trusting people just because they say something can be pretty foolish. Trusting doctors and other health care professionals is pretty new culturally, and building that trust takes time. I mean, if anyone but a surgeon said "I am going to knock you out, cut you open, and you'll feel better after,trust me." you'd think that person was nuts.
Now imagine this stranger comes to town and tries to get people to change their ways in ways that mean a sudden new expense AND conflicts with local culture.

Broken Crown
2014-04-25, 12:18 AM
South American Mesoamerican cultures never had domesticatable animals large enough to work as draft animals, which is also likely one reason why they never really developed the wheel.
What about llamas? They're not as big as horses or oxen, but they're much bigger than dogs, which have also been used as draft animals in some cultures.

I always thought the lack of wheels in South America was mostly due to wheels being much less useful when your land is nearly all mountainous. This does, however, still support your point about small differences having potentially large influences on technological development.

Speaking of the domestication of animals, it really doesn't seem to have been a single development. Dogs certainly predate agriculture; dogs and humans seem to have been together as long as there have been modern humans. The development of granaries was probably a prerequisite for the domestication of cats, though: Without large stores of grain to attract rats and mice, there was no incentive for cats to hang around human settlements, or for humans to want to have cats around.


The basic idea for a given innovation (including the means of producing/implementing it) might exist for decades, but go through dozens of tiny modifications by countless engineers before it becomes economically and socially viable. Or it might be suppressed be social forces (which might deem it immoral/illegal, or drive the company which produced it out of business). Or funding might run dry, and the innovation would be left to rot for another 100 years or so. Or people might not be comfortable using the innovation, despite it being cheap, and people knowing its benefits (boiling water being a shocking example of this: it took quite a while to get people to start doing it).
Or people simply might not recognize the potential usefulness of a discovery or invention, so a technology could stagnate for decades or centuries, or even be forgotten completely, before someone figured out what it was good for.

Alexander Graham Bell wasn't trying to invent the telephone, and when he did, most people didn't think it would ever catch on, because typing was faster than speaking for any reasonably skilled telegraph operator. People had to realize that the telephone would be used differently from the telegraph, rather than as a simple replacement, before it could be adopted.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-25, 01:02 AM
What about llamas? They're not as big as horses or oxen, but they're much bigger than dogs, which have also been used as draft animals in some cultures.

I always thought the lack of wheels in South America was mostly due to wheels being much less useful when your land is nearly all mountainous. This does, however, still support your point about small differences having potentially large influences on technological development.

Speaking of the domestication of animals, it really doesn't seem to have been a single development. Dogs certainly predate agriculture; dogs and humans seem to have been together as long as there have been modern humans. The development of granaries was probably a prerequisite for the domestication of cats, though: Without large stores of grain to attract rats and mice, there was no incentive for cats to hang around human settlements, or for humans to want to have cats around.

They aren't really big or strong enough to pull heavy loads, though they can be used as pack animals. Yes, the mountainous terrain certainly also does not help, nor do the thick jungles, and the tall grasses of the pampas also make wheeled vehicles difficult. It's funny how something we often think of as so basic can require such a specific chain of events and circumstances to actually become a useful piece of technology.

wumpus
2014-04-25, 08:54 AM
First, you probably want to look into the works of James Burke. He's been doing this as his shtick since roughly 1980. I'd recommend "Connections" (since it is pretty much about the historical "tech tree")*.

Some other notes. I'm not sure if agriculture keeps getting re-invented or old wise men/women keep the knowlege, but plenty of tribes would switch back and forth between farming and hunting/gathering. My guess is that when the game got to thin around the farms they would leave.

Most tech requires a bunch of other tech (not just one or two streams), but plenty of it is optional. This is yet another big argument against the patent system: when it is steam engine time you are going to see steam engines. Some exceptions:

Cars/planes: required a strong engine. Of course the Wright brothers also invented the wind tunnel (and thus had acurate aerodynamics assuming they were flying through molassas**, which was a bit better than "going by the book"). Note there is a motorcycle in the Smithsonian Air and Space musuem made by Glen Curtis, engines made or broke early aircraft. Cars got by for awhile with steam engines (Stanley Steamers routinely win races for thier age division), but eventually otto cycle and diesels took over.

Theory of gravitation: Obvious if you know Kepler's laws of planetary motion (which not only took painstaking calculation, but countless hours of observation by Tycho Brahe) and calculus. Of course, at the time only Newton and Liebnitz really understood calculus.

Turbo codes (a means of encoding data to reduce errors): This one pretty much came out of nowhere (except that it now competes with a previously forgotten tech called ldpc) and could have been used years earlier. A good excuse for a patent is if people are complaining that it couldn't possibly work and must be a scam.

*Note that after learning *way* too much about this stuff I've been less impressed (the last jump in the first Connections 2 was graphite for carbon paper -> genetic engineering. This isn't remotely a real link, nor was it the most important use of carbon for writing: Gutenberg's ink recipie was 1/3 carbon (lampblack).

** Not sure when they realized they were going to need a bigger wind tunnel.

JustSomeGuy
2014-04-25, 09:41 AM
Not sure when they realised they were gonna need a bigger wind tunnel? It's when they were making the robotic shark for spielberg.

Madcrafter
2014-04-26, 04:02 PM
For anyone interested in this I would highly recommend going down to the library and finding a copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) by Jared Diamond. He goes through (in rather broad strokes) and lays out an argument on how technological development and history is based on geography, availability of appropriate plant and animal species, and other such things, as well as several semi-case studies on different continents/South Pacific islands. There is a summary on the wikipedia page above, though it focuses a lot on Europe.

Lots of little interesting things in there too, such as the wheel in central america being limited to children's toys, continental orientation being a big factor in some cases, or Madagascar being colonized by Austronesians from across the Indian Ocean (who themselves are mostly of Taiwanese origin) rather than Africans.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-26, 05:40 PM
Makes you wonder what aliens are up to if this is how diverse things can be on one planet with one psychology.

IthilanorStPete
2014-04-28, 07:02 PM
First off: Wow, lots of responses! Thank you all for participating; I'm already learning a lot.



Technology is probably less a tree, and more like a bunch of sprouts starting a forest. Occasionally they intermingle and merge, but the basis of most technology doesn't always depend on other technology existing. After all, while it is very obvious that stone tools came before metallurgy, that doesn't mean the crafting and use of stone tools made somebody think "Hey, let's boil this big rock and use the shiny hard stuff as a tool."

I like this metaphor.


Pretty Euro-centric. Just looking all around the world shows how much can change with even relatively small differences. South American Mesoamerican cultures never had domesticatable animals large enough to work as draft animals, which is also likely one reason why they never really developed the wheel.


Yeah. Technology can go in strange directions. The Chinese never used glass much, so they never really developed lenses, either. In a lot of other ways, they were far ahead of the rest of the world for centuries. South America never really developed ironworking and had no draft animals, but their astronomy, mathematics and architecture were amazing for the time. And then, of course, there are developments that are later lost again.

Getting an idea of these different paths of development is part of why I started this thread! I'm curious why the Chinese didn't develop glassmaking until later; is there a particular reason for that?


Of course, some forms of technology and advancement are related. Humans probably domesticated the dog first, and with that came the understanding that they could domesticate other animals, but that doesn't mean that humans need to have dogs around before they could raise goats. As another example, the ideas and concepts of storing food is likely downright ancient, from back when humans were gatherer-hunters most likely, and so the principles behind a grainery are nothing new. Graineries did not exist before agriculture simply because grain was not gathered in mass before then, not because agriculture was somehow required to understand how graineries worked. (If anything, it is likely the opposite - people need to know how to properly store large amounts of food over time before agriculture is useful.)

Interesting. Do you know a good resource for reading about the development(s) of agriculture?


This sticks out to me, because are lots of other animals from which you can get milk. Goats are a prominent example, and wikipedia tells me that a bunch of other animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#Sources_aside_from_cows) do too.

Also, dogs are not necessary for herding or hunting. If humans needed dogs to do those things, they would have died out a long time ago.

I'll definitely keep this in mind, both specifically (with regards to milk) and generally (that there's more than one way to reach a given thing). I know cows dominate milk production in the modern era, but was that true throughout history? (In the areas where cows lived)

As for dogs, I didn't mean that they were necessary for herding or hunting, merely that they helped with those tasks. Were those the main reasons dogs were originally domesticated? Are there other helpful functions they perform?



First, you probably want to look into the works of James Burke. He's been doing this as his shtick since roughly 1980. I'd recommend "Connections" (since it is pretty much about the historical "tech tree")*.

Some other notes. I'm not sure if agriculture keeps getting re-invented or old wise men/women keep the knowlege, but plenty of tribes would switch back and forth between farming and hunting/gathering. My guess is that when the game got to thin around the farms they would leave.

Most tech requires a bunch of other tech (not just one or two streams), but plenty of it is optional. This is yet another big argument against the patent system: when it is steam engine time you are going to see steam engines. Some exceptions:

Cars/planes: required a strong engine. Of course the Wright brothers also invented the wind tunnel (and thus had acurate aerodynamics assuming they were flying through molassas**, which was a bit better than "going by the book"). Note there is a motorcycle in the Smithsonian Air and Space musuem made by Glen Curtis, engines made or broke early aircraft. Cars got by for awhile with steam engines (Stanley Steamers routinely win races for thier age division), but eventually otto cycle and diesels took over.

Theory of gravitation: Obvious if you know Kepler's laws of planetary motion (which not only took painstaking calculation, but countless hours of observation by Tycho Brahe) and calculus. Of course, at the time only Newton and Liebnitz really understood calculus.

Turbo codes (a means of encoding data to reduce errors): This one pretty much came out of nowhere (except that it now competes with a previously forgotten tech called ldpc) and could have been used years earlier. A good excuse for a patent is if people are complaining that it couldn't possibly work and must be a scam.

*Note that after learning *way* too much about this stuff I've been less impressed (the last jump in the first Connections 2 was graphite for carbon paper -> genetic engineering. This isn't remotely a real link, nor was it the most important use of carbon for writing: Gutenberg's ink recipie was 1/3 carbon (lampblack).

** Not sure when they realized they were going to need a bigger wind tunnel.

I've heard of "Connections", and I'll definitely look into that, though that link from carbon paper to genetic engineering definitely seems like a stretch.

Eldan
2014-04-29, 02:32 AM
I only heard the glass thing as an anecdote, but the version I heard was this: the Chinese had porcelain and paper, which took many of the earlier functions of glass. Porcelain for drinking vessels and cutlery, paper for lights and windows.

So, they did not have telescopes until the Jesuits brought them and also did not have eyeglasses. Glasses are a huge deal, they can prolong a scholar's productive life by decades.

erikun
2014-04-29, 10:11 AM
I'll definitely keep this in mind, both specifically (with regards to milk) and generally (that there's more than one way to reach a given thing). I know cows dominate milk production in the modern era, but was that true throughout history? (In the areas where cows lived)
Goats are, as far as I know, one of the most common sources of milk throughout history. I'm sure there are other animals, such as sheep or yak, that might've been milked as well.

Cows were chosen in the modern era due to their passiveness and size.


As for dogs, I didn't mean that they were necessary for herding or hunting, merely that they helped with those tasks. Were those the main reasons dogs were originally domesticated? Are there other helpful functions they perform?
This is just a guess on my part, but dogs were probably originally domesticated for alertness and defense. They're good at listening and alerting others in their "pack" of intruders or threats, and so a domesticated dog would be very useful for a group or village to know when something is approaching.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-29, 12:07 PM
Horses have also being milked, and still are, to make Kumis, for example.

Wardog
2014-04-29, 05:06 PM
Well, boiling water takes a lot of energy, it's also why full body bathing was considered sinful in the Middle Ages in Europe, it wasted fuel better used for cooking and such, and the benefits of boiling water are not visibly obvious.
Wasn't it the "lots of people being naked together" that led to it beng denounced as sinful?

Eldan
2014-04-29, 05:10 PM
Not sure if that would be a problem. I mean, I've read plenty of reports of half the household sleeping together in the same bed. Both sexes.

Ravens_cry
2014-04-29, 11:55 PM
Wasn't it the "lots of people being naked together" that led to it beng denounced as sinful?
That's more public baths, like in Ancient Rome.

Broken Crown
2014-04-30, 02:31 AM
As for dogs, I didn't mean that they were necessary for herding or hunting, merely that they helped with those tasks. Were those the main reasons dogs were originally domesticated? Are there other helpful functions they perform?

Just off the top of my head:

- Guarding
- Warfare
- Pest control
- Labour (pulling sleds and carts, hauling nets, etc.)
- Search and rescue
- Food
- Heat source
- Fashion accessory

However, outside Red Dwarf, I've never heard of them being used for milk.

Knaight
2014-04-30, 03:27 AM
Wasn't it the "lots of people being naked together" that led to it beng denounced as sinful?

Medieval Europe is obviously a long period with a lot of cultures in it, and generalizing is guaranteed to be somewhat wrong. With that disclaimer, I'd note that there wasn't actually all that strong of a nudity taboo in many places for much of it, with a far stronger one developing over the 17th and 18th centuries. Why this is is somewhat contentious, though it could largely come down to simple things like the general lack of privacy for much of anyone that came out of how living spaces worked.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-04-30, 11:20 AM
Not sure if that would be a problem. I mean, I've read plenty of reports of half the household sleeping together in the same bed. Both sexes.
I also seem to recall reading something about medieval inns working the same sort of way, with one massive bed for everyone.

From somewhere else, I also recall hearing that "medievals didn't bathe" was a bit of a myth, as with many characterizations of the medieval period.

Knaight
2014-04-30, 03:21 PM
From somewhere else, I also recall hearing that "medievals didn't bathe" was a bit of a myth, as with many characterizations of the medieval period.

It's a myth. Bathing was lower than modern frequency, but there are plenty of contemporary sources that mention it. For instance, there are Islamic sources on the vikings from travelers that consistently say something to the effect of "these nasty barbarians only bathe weekly", and that was in an area where the water tends to be rather cold and the old roman baths never reached.

noparlpf
2014-05-05, 09:10 AM
Hmm...you could do a 3D "tree". Start with a map of the world as the base, because things develop differently in different locations. Make the z axis time. Spend literally years mapping out everything. Use a 3D printer to actually make a physical model. Get a PhD out of it.

IthilanorStPete
2014-05-19, 11:29 AM
Once again, thank you all for the information!

I've got a new, somewhat related question, which also might be too complex for an easy answer: how did trade between societies and the general concept of merchants develop over time? When and how did the idea of "we've got iron, those people down the river have spices, let's trade those" emerge?

warty goblin
2014-05-19, 12:20 PM
Once again, thank you all for the information!

I've got a new, somewhat related question, which also might be too complex for an easy answer: how did trade between societies and the general concept of merchants develop over time? When and how did the idea of "we've got iron, those people down the river have spices, let's trade those" emerge?

I don't have any particular estimate, but the idea is ridiculously old, and goods have been being moved vast distances for probably about as long as there's been goods to be moved. Trade was certainly an established thing by the bronze age, and almost certainly earlier than that as well. Although it's not particularly ancient, there's well confirmed trade between Kamchatka and Alaskan native tribes in the early modern period; which almost certainly didn't start in the seventeen hundreds and clearly shows that trade is possible with a relatively low technology base, even in really harsh conditions.

russdm
2014-05-19, 12:40 PM
Once again, thank you all for the information!

I've got a new, somewhat related question, which also might be too complex for an easy answer: how did trade between societies and the general concept of merchants develop over time? When and how did the idea of "we've got iron, those people down the river have spices, let's trade those" emerge?

The best explanation I can think of comes from Deep Space Nine's Nog and his explanation of the concept of the Ferengi Great cosmic river. The people down the river have spices that the people with iron want and the people with spices want iron and so they tried because it is profitable. You have to remember that other than survival, greed or profitably is the defining push for progress. It may take time for someone to figure out that something might be worth something else and then try to make/get more of that something to exchange.

erikun
2014-05-19, 01:08 PM
Once again, thank you all for the information!

I've got a new, somewhat related question, which also might be too complex for an easy answer: how did trade between societies and the general concept of merchants develop over time? When and how did the idea of "we've got iron, those people down the river have spices, let's trade those" emerge?
Just a complete off-the-wall guess, but any large civilization is going to notice that resources in area X are different than resources in area Y. From there, they are going to make it a point to transfer goods from one location to another in order to produce things - shipping grain to the forested areas to feed people cutting down trees, or shipping trees someplace to create buildings.

Once the larger civilization collapses, you still have a number of smaller villages who know of each other and people aware of what each particular village wants. A group of people could - in exchange for something of value - simply take the grains from village X and bring them to village Y to sell to the loggers.

warty goblin
2014-05-19, 01:20 PM
Just a complete off-the-wall guess, but any large civilization is going to notice that resources in area X are different than resources in area Y. From there, they are going to make it a point to transfer goods from one location to another in order to produce things - shipping grain to the forested areas to feed people cutting down trees, or shipping trees someplace to create buildings.

Once the larger civilization collapses, you still have a number of smaller villages who know of each other and people aware of what each particular village wants. A group of people could - in exchange for something of value - simply take the grains from village X and bring them to village Y to sell to the loggers.

Trade pretty clearly predates anything that could be considered a large civilization, and also has existed between non-agricultural groups. Really all it takes to develop is two people realizing that both of them would rather have that other thing than the thing they have right now. If anything, large civilization appears to exploit and control trade, not the other way around.

Ravens_cry
2014-05-19, 02:27 PM
Indeed. I remember reading, though I can't remember where, of palaeolithic graves that had lumps of ochre in them as grave goods that would have had to come from somewhere quite far away, as they weren't local to the area. Trade is a very plausible source for such.

erikun
2014-05-19, 02:36 PM
Yeah, now that I think about it, that's probably true. Nomads or wandering gatherer tribes no doubt ran into each other occasionally, and they would likely be willing to trade possessions as they wished.

Then again, there's a bit of a difference from opportunistic trading while still within your tribe, and intentionally leaving a tribe to visit another with the intent of exchanging goods. It was probably still earlier than large civilizations existed; now that I think about it, wantering shepherds or goatherds were probably more inclined to move between societies and sell goods at different ones, even if the only trade they did were for small objects.

warty goblin
2014-05-19, 03:28 PM
So a bit of digging on Wikipedia, and checking sources suggests that there was trade in obsidian in Anatolia from ~12,000 BC over distances of 900km or so, and there's a citation that I can't follow up of trade appearing perhaps 35,000 years ago.

More specifically, there's certainly recognizably purposeful and organized trade by the early bronze age. Often to do with bronze, which was rather an international business; and control of copper by whatever passed for the local state was an important factor in the early bronze age through the Mediterranean and near East. By the mid bronze age, there's pretty good evidence of industries being set up to run off of goods only available by import - most of the woods in Egyptian chariots by ~1400 BC were not available natively and had to be imported. Chariots at this point in time were entirely vital for the Egyptian military to function, so we aren't just looking at small amounts of luxury goods being moved. There's evidence based on isotropic tooth analysis that numbers of people (http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2013/06/10/900-years-of-human-sacrifice-in-kent/) were moving (or being moved) around by ~1000 BC; people of Mediterranean extraction don't just teleport to Kent after all. Somewhat earlier than that there's been finds of Baltic amber and Irish gold in the context of British grave goods. Also what might be a Mycenaean dagger has been found in Britain from a similar time period.

The truth is that no matter how far back one looks, people (at least some people) are far more mobile than we tend to think of them as being.

t209
2014-05-20, 11:18 AM
http://www.cracked.com/article_20206_5-shockingly-advanced-ancient-buildings-that-shouldnt-exist_p2.html
Well, #1 implied that you can have structures in Hunter Gatherer societies. But there's a thing called Sendentary Hunting and Gathering.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2014-05-24, 10:24 PM
Yeah, I'd say trade is as old as peaceful communication between two strangers is. I mean, your tribe is wandering the Russian stepped. You meet another tribe from the south of you. You're wary of them, but they have some nice new shiny black rocks, and you have strong pelts for good clothing, so you exchange to ensure goodwill. Later, your larger more advanced descendants figure out that if they go south to the village on the big water, the villagers will exchange a lot more stuff! Eventually they figure out that they don't have to ALL go, and that one guy can go and trade stuff there, and then trade stuff when he gets back for the next journey.