These old guys must have known a thing or two

ICBM

HAL9000 said:

This is one of those things that has always amazed me. Compared with lots of other creatures, humans can't move particularly fast, and aren't especially strong. Add to that they are also pretty useless at hunting, or even defending themselves for the first several years of their lives. I guess its only our wits that make hunting, as opposed to gathering, possible. After all, without the tools to do the job I'd imagine most of us would struggle to catch even something small such as a fish or a rabbit, let alone anything that can actually put up a fight.

Humans have one surprising physical characteristic that helps with hunting though - endurance, as in the combination of average speed and distance. A human can run down almost any other animal, if they can keep track of it for long enough - although tracking is also an application of intelligence since our sense of smell is poor by animal standards.

But even then you're going to need a weapon of some sort to finish off an exhausted animal. An unarmed human is pretty feeble really, even compared to most other animals our size. Chimps are far more dangerous despite being slightly smaller, for example.

xSkarloey

@WezV makes an interesting point about access to knowledge and sharing it.

I think all of us have within our intellectual makeup the basic tools of adaptability and creativity in a given situation.

But developing and honing skills and knowledge through sharing is so vital to us as human beings I think. 'Many hands make light work'.

The Babylonians are notable for writing so much down to record it. But so many cultures and civilisations were oral rather than literate cultures. Maybe that's another set of skills we need to remember to credit many of our ancestors with: speaking clearly, listening properly, remembering fully.

Jalapeno

randomhandclaps said:

Historical achievements never really impress me as I truly believe human beings are capable of the most amazing accomplishments without the distraction of the internet constantly shoving breasts at you.  Olden days people had it easy.

They'd have had topless slave girls shoving real breasts at you all day !

digitalscream

ICBM said: The only big mathematical thing that you might learn at school today that's more advanced than the Babylonians knew is Calculus, which was developed in the 17th Century by Newton and Liebniz. That's sort of the point of the article - they had figured out the beginnings of calculus. Which, if you think about how long it took to get it back, is kind of mental.

ICBM said:

But even then you're going to need a weapon of some sort to finish off an exhausted animal. An unarmed human is pretty feeble really, even compared to most other animals our size. Chimps are far more dangerous despite being slightly smaller, for example.

Pretty feeble compared to an awful lot of smaller animals. Living with a 7 1/2 stone hunting dog (half my weight), I can honestly say that a human would likely not stand a chance. She's very well-behaved, but it takes all my weight and strength to hold her still when she's only putting 80% effort in, and that's not counting the fact that she's got rather pointier built-in weapons that an unarmed human.

Most wild canid species would probably put in similar numbers; same for the smaller end of the big cat family (cheetahs, for example).

Humans are pretty feeble full-stop, really.

ESBlonde

What this thread does hilight is that civilisations come an go. This should be a warning to the west as most advanced civilisations are replaced with violation barbaric (relatively ) civilisations that do not advance to the former levels for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Phil_aka_Pip

Sporky said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Sporky said:

It does require a lot of fingers though.

You can count from 0-63 on 6 fingers

Not in base60 you can't. But you can do it on four fingers in tertiary, which isn't (physically) too hard.

LGM - if you use each finger as a binary digit you can get to 1023 with ten fingers. Over 59,000 in tertiary (base 3). It's a nerd thing.

Counting in binary on your fingers is not a bad physical exercise. If your palm is towards you, just be careful you aren't facing someone else who might take offence when you get to 4.

quarky

I think base 12 would be good. And we could then go back to pence/shillings/pounds. That would be so much more interesting than this 100p in a £ garbage.

Phil_aka_Pip

quarky said:

I think base 12 would be good. And we could then go back to pence/shillings/pounds. That would be so much more interesting than this 100p in a £ garbage.

I knew a chap who did all his arithmetic in base 12. He invented single-character symbols for 10 and 11. Funnily enough he didn't use A & B, but maybe that's because he'd not seen hexadecimal.

midiglitch

ICBM said:

The only big mathematical thing that you might learn at school today that's more advanced than the Babylonians knew is Calculus, which was developed in the 17th Century by Newton and Liebniz.

People five thousand years ago were exactly as intelligent as they are today - there simply hasn't been enough time for a long-generation species like us to evolve significantly in that time.

And logarithms... (Discovered 17th century i think.)

Between logs and calculus that's a fairly big chunk of the a-level syllabus.  If you study further maths you can add complex numbers and matrices to the list of modern ideas.

But I agree, quite incredible what was achieved thousands of years ago.  

WezV

I taught an Iranian refugee who counted each section of finger when doing sums.

He used his thumb to point and therefore counted everything in base 12.

I remember watching him doing sums whilst every other special needs kid around him struggled to count to 10. He was EAL(English as an additional language) rather than SEN, but the often get lumped together. He was rather good at maths

Phil_aka_Pip

WezV said:

I taught an Iranian refugee who counted each section of finger when doing sums.

He used his thumb to point and therefore counted everything in base 12.

I remember watching him doing sums whilst every other special needs kid around him struggled to count to 10. He was EAL(English as an additional language) rather than SEN, but the often get lumped together. He was rather good at maths

You'd expect him to be. He's a descendent of the guys that wrote the clay tablets