For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[Green Baron]

39 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

(Tries to imagine the Pyramids building with stone tools.)

No problem in principle, better than copper and bronze at the time of the construction of the Great pyramids. Soft metals don't help carving granite. Experiments have been conducted with limestone concrete, material science has found evidence that this (besides manpower and a long construction time) technique might have been used. One doesn't need metal for a civilization. All of the neolithic ones were built without.

You need to feed the stock and people, which means nice climate, water, reliable food production. Climate deteriorates, civ dies out.

Edited July 31, 2018 by Green Baron
Which witch ?

[kerbiloid]

(Tries to imagine a heap of granite tools to be made and spent to make enough granite tools to make straight sandstone blocks 2..20 t each to build 7 pyramids ~100 m in size.

Also tries to imagine a king doing this instead of building fortresses.)

[magnemoe]

19 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

No problem in principle, better than copper and bronze at the time of the construction of the Great pyramids. Soft metals don't help carving granite. Experiments have been conducted with limestone concrete, material science has found evidence that this (besides manpower and a long construction time) technique might have been used. One doesn't need metal for a civilization. All of the neolithic ones where built without. You need to feed the stock and people, witch means nice climate, water, reliable food production. Climate deteriorates, civ dies out.

Bronze age collapse happened because trade stopped. 
Still this discussion has derailed a bit. My point was that metals help an civilization a lot, in part because bronze reward centralization but its not required. 
This is still an negative for an aquatic species, you can still have an civilization but life in water at least on earth would make farming very hard as almost all animals large enough to eat is predators themselves. 

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

metals help an civilization a lot, in part because bronze reward centralization but its not required. 

Without metals you can't accurately reproduce and standardize things.

[Green Baron]

"Bronze age collapse" (what a wording ...) is attributed to climate deterioration, possible causes volcano eruption(s), maybe cultural changes in conjunction with iron working technology, who knows ...

Yeah, i too can hardly imagine an aquatic civilisation, apart from Hollywood themes :-) The open sea is a desert, little raw materials, no fire. Life is mostly concentrated on the continental shelves and upwelling zones ... etc. Ocean floor is renewed every now and then, only the clays from weathering processes ... naa, there is a reason why we are pedestrians (if we are not in front of our pc) :-)

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Without metals you can't accurately reproduce and standardize things.

Upper paleolithic stone tool industries. Blade production, composite tools, exchangeable insets. Highly standardized to sub millimeter sizes !

;-)

[kerbiloid]

4 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Upper paleolithic stone tool industries. Blade production, composite tools, exchangeable insets. Highly standardized to sub millimeter sizes !

Early XIX century. Industrial revolution, producitvity raised up to 30 times, 3 crysises of overproduction, elimination of medieval guilds.

They just began melting iron and reproduce standardized tools.

Where is something comparable with paleolithic tools?

[ARS]

It's funny how the original question is "why cephalopods doesn't evolve smarter like us" turns into an analysis of bronze age and it's role in civilization

This is why I love this forum

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, ARS said:

It's funny how the original question is "why cephalopods doesn't evolve smarter like us" turns into an analysis of bronze age and it's role in civilization

Well, the main argument against underwater civilizations is no flame, no metals.

[ARS]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Well, the main argument against underwater civilizations is no flame, no metals.

Agreed, and it's very hard to advance if there's no metals since it's a vital resource for developing civilization

[p1t1o]

It is still up in the air if high intelligence and the construction of a civilisation is a benefit to survival. we've only been trying it for about 100k years, just a moment in evolutionary timescales.

Who is to say that octopuses (yeah thats actually correct) are not thinking "Why are the monkeys spending so much time building...what a waste".

We might be the only intelligences that thinks a civilisation is the goal to be achieved and perfected (Answer to Fermi paradox?)

 

And by quite a few metrics, this is not a human planet, this is a bacterial planet, we just live here. Many bacteria simply see us as real estate. We might not be the ones on the route to evolutionary perfection.

[kerbiloid]

8 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Who is to say that octopuses (yeah thats actually correct) are not thinking "Why are the monkeys spending so much time building...what a waste".

Spoiler

 

With tools they could do this much faster.

Spoiler

With money they could just employ somebody to do this.

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

You are right of course, they could rise up and conquer the monkey world, that is a possibility.

[Green Baron]

19 minutes ago, ARS said:

Agreed, and it's very hard to advance if there's no metals since it's a vital resource for developing civilization

I too think it is hard to imagine that the steps from standardized stone tools via soft metals like copper and tin to iron smelting can be performed underwater. Besides the difficulty to cut a tree and make a fire, Fish don't have fingers or similar manipulators to work things (though they had enough time to develop some), the brain alone isn't enough, one needs something to actually make a step from cognition to "handling", i guess. The octupuses i met when diving were curious, but that's it.

Humans with big brains and tool production too lived on the planet for 2.5 million years without anything that we can call a civilisation. It was just the hardly explainable step from living for the day to production planning that more or less accidentally happened some 12.000 - 5.000 years ago that made us long for the neighbour's stuff :-)

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by Green Baron
Nonsense deleted

[KG3]

On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 4:20 AM, Xd the great said:

They die too soon. TOO SOON.

Sadly this is true for the poor cephalopod.  They live long enough to reach sexual maturity then die soon after reproducing.  Some species stick around for a bit to nurture their young but not long enough to put them through college.   

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

9 minutes ago, KG3 said:

Sadly this is true for the poor cephalopod.  They live long enough to reach sexual maturity then die soon after reproducing. 

A friend zone octopus lives long, learns much.

 

[Green Baron]

Afaik they don't even use tools, if i consider the shell stapling similar to a bird's nests, the latter not really being "tool use". But "tool use" has seen quite some inflation in the past :-/. Many vertebrates have larger capacities than cephalopods, and nobody would expect ravens or elephants to build a civilization, or would they ? :-)

Anyway, why didn't Neandertals, not really being much different in cognition than ourselves, start the "Now we build civilization, *hough* !" thing, let's say in the last warm phase, 125.000 years ago ?

Because they were wiser, eh :-)

 

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by Green Baron

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, KG3 said:

Sadly this is true for the poor cephalopod.  They live long enough to reach sexual maturity then die soon after reproducing.  Some species stick around for a bit to nurture their young but not long enough to put them through college.   

As pre-human intelligence rose, skull size increased to accomodate the brain. So the female pelvis got wider to accomodate live birth. But at a point, a very wide pelvis starts to become a hindrance so a limit was reached.

This was solved by giving birth to an undeveloped child, so its brain and skull can continue to grow after birth. This is why a deer can walk within minutes of being born but a human baby cannot.

So now parents have to live long enough to raise it to maturity, until it can survive on its own. Except parents need to hunt and gather to provide so we live long enough to become grandparents, assisting in the raising of undeveloped offspring.

Octopuses have no skull and do not give birth, so no pressure to live longer - it would not increase their chances of passing on their genes. On the other hand, there does not appear to be any impediment to the size of their brains.

***

Side fact - Our height was set at the big bang.

All material properties were decided at the big bang, and we are as tall as we can be (to increase visibility and long-limbedness for speed and reach) without risking immediately fatal injury if we trip and fall. This height is decided by skull strength which is dependant on the strength of atomic bonds.

I know almost everything was set at the big bang but its fun to think about.

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by p1t1o

[Green Baron]

17 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

I know almost everything was set at the big bang but its fun to think about.

 

If i think about, this certainly includes uncertainty ?

Edit: i mean, if something went just a tiny little bit different in an early phase, then things come out very different at the distal end. But i think you didn't mean that deterministic ?

Edited July 31, 2018 by Green Baron

[ARS]

5 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

If i think about, this certainly includes uncertainty ?

 

It's "external variables"

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

As pre-human intelligence rose, skull size increased to accomodate the brain. So the female pelvis got wider to accomodate live birth. But at a point, a very wide pelvis starts to become a hindrance so a limit was reached.

This was solved by giving birth to an undeveloped child, so its brain and skull can continue to grow after birth.

Let me suggest another story. Where pelvis goes before skull.

Spoiler

Once the climate got dry, and our native African jungles had no more enough room, our ape ancestors were thrown away from the forest into savannah by stronger and healthier bullying apes, like chimps and gorillaz.

Weak and ugly (otherwise they would throw away those chimps), they were inhabiting the savannah and the edge of the forest.
Hiding from Sun and predators in stones.
Stealing big and hard bones (skulls and others) left by the predators, running by two back limbs, carrying the grub in the upper hands, then crashing them with stones like they were doing with coconuts while living in the forest, and eating the flesh remaining inside.
Digging out roots, softening them with same stones.

So, they were surviving more often, who could stand on their two and look around like a gopher, while their comrades were stealing as much leavings as possible in two hands.
So the survived pre-humans became bipedes. Their legs and pelvis became optimized for running.

But they were living very bad. (Even worse than in an openspace, really. Wait... savannah IS an openspace... Oh, ...)
Lack of food, attacks of predators, taunts and abuses from chimps, rocks in desert instead of the native forest.
They were nearly extincted, their life was hard, short, and unhappy. They were ugly, hairy, two-legged, disgusting, unviable junk between apes. 

As those pre-humans were dying before or right after they could become adults, not those of them were leaving the offsprings who would become most big and hairy ten years later, but they who could do that as soon as possible.
So, neotenic changes have happened. Neotenic children of underdeveloped parents suffering from hunger and lack of vitamines.
The pre-human were staying more childish even in adult age. So, they were looking less and less like an adult ape, but more and more like a baby ape.

Hairless, just with a bunch of hairs on top of the head. With thin bones and weak muscles compared to apes. With small bad underdeveloped teeth and jaws.
With no brow ridges, but with big round eyes sticking out from shallow sockets on their underdeveloped flat face of their underdeveloped skull.
With lack of hormones and weak immune system.

Their babies also had an underdeveloped skull. Happily, this allowed to some of them to pass through the deformed bipedal pelvis of their undergrown mother.
But on another hand the underdeveloped skull was able to grow after the birth, and brain was not limited by pelvis and skull.
And their weak immune system was not supressing extensive growth of the nervous tissue.
So the result was an enormously overgrown brain. Not that it helped them a lot. But it gave some help in communication and experience.

Hairless and deformed, weak and sickly post-ape pre-humans were suffering from cold and thus illnesses.
This made them to cover the bodies with skins of dead animals and bunches of grass.
(The "naturists" say that it's natural for a human to go without clothes.
Fools! Human clothes is like a prosthesis for a one-legged. Just it's a prosthesis of hair. Human kind can't live without this prothesis.)

Sickly pre-humans, with weak teeth and stomachs were suffering from raw meat eating, as it was strong and hard to digest, unlike for their ape ancestors.
But sometimes a fire was burning out a forest near savannah.
Ugly but clever pre-humans were realizing that soon and run away to a safe place on rocks or somewhere.
While stupid animals were dying in flames leaving a lot of fried corpses.
Pre-humans were getting on the hot ash and eating the soft and edbile, fried meat for free.
Once there was not enough burnt animals. Then one pre-human took a burning branch and set the unburnt part of the forest aside on fire.
So, humans realized how important is to carry fire with them, to burn a forest when they want to eat. Or just to put a deer corpse into a fire to soften.

(The "rawists" say that it's natural for a human to eat raw food. They even invent "paleolithic diets" or so.
Fools! Fire is a prosthesis of teeth and stomach. As well as tools are prosthesis of teeth and nails. Human kind can't live without this prothesis.)

(Spectacles, metal teeth, and titanium sticks are just gadgets compared to this).

At last, this means that no "natural" human can be at all.
The human is by default a biomechanoid. It became the biomechanoid long before he recognized himself as a human.
And now this came to the main step: cyborgization.

So, it's hard to imagine a non-tech civ for me.
Civs don't appear just by wish. 

P.S.
About caves.
Just think: a human, who (as a former ape) got down from trees, from nests. if lives in a forest builds not a nest, but an artificial wooden cave!
Just imagine the force of the human natal psychological trauma!

Edited July 31, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

As far as we know, there has been one species capable of building a civilisation. Its a bit presumptuous, to think that from that sample set of 1, that we would assume that civilisation is the direction that all animals aspire to.

 

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

So, it's hard to imagine a non-tech civ for me.

How about non-civ tech?

 

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Civs don't appear just by wish. 

Precisely, what if there is intelligence but no wish? Must all intelligences universally wish for high rise buildings and wifi?

 

 

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

How about non-civ tech?

Many animals can use things as tools. But they know just 1-2 tricks, and don't invent new ones.

7 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

intelligence but no wish

Then the intellicence keeps dropping nuts under somebody's car to open them.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Afaik they don't even use tools, if i consider the shell stapling similar to a bird's nests, the latter not really being "tool use". But "tool use" has seen quite some inflation in the past :-/. Many vertebrates have larger capacities than cephalopods, and nobody would expect ravens or elephants to build a civilization, or would they ? :-)

Anyway, why didn't Neandertals, not really being much different in cognition than ourselves, start the "Now we build civilization, *hough* !" thing, let's say in the last warm phase, 125.000 years ago ?

Because they were wiser, eh :-)

Neanderthals are interesting, almost no technological progress, yes some at the end but that was copying modern humans, still that indicated they could learn and knew better stuff then they saw it, plenty indications they was very spread out and tribes has little contact. 
We on the other hand used the land more efficiently. Also lots of trade and communications we found seashells used in necklaces in central Asia, yes it might have traveled for generations but knowledge is not an zero sum game. Among the Neanderthals lots of stuff might be lost because low level of contact but we interacted so much that something useful would spread easy. 

Still if you have enough land hunter gathering is far easier than neolithic farming. No metals and no draft animals makes farming idiotic hard. 
An alien species who can control reproduction easier would probably not bother (another filter) 

[Green Baron]

19 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

P.S.

About caves.
Just think: a human, who (as a former ape) got down from trees, from nests. if lives in a forest builds not a nest, but an artificial wooden cave!
Just imagine the force of the human natal psychological trauma!

Humans never lived in caves, life in the open savanna is more like their original habitat. "Living in the trees" has become a saying more than anthropological reality, or at least one must go many millions of years back with the danger of ending up in the wrong line of evolution.

We find things in caves and rock shelters and their sediments more often than elsewhere only because of preservation. Deep caves with middle and upper paleolithic finds can more be seen as ritual places. At least those well researched ones in France and Germany. And then there is that gray zone between cave and abri or rock shelter, where fire places and stone tool knapping, mending and repair over longer periods took place. But these were mostly open to one side and frequently offered a nice view over the landscape. Things in the open are much rarer (though they exist) because they were exposed to weathering and/or transported away by sedimentary processes.

Just now, magnemoe said:

Neanderthals are interesting, almost no technological progress, yes some at the end but that was copying modern humans, still that indicated they could learn and knew better stuff then they saw it, plenty indications they was very spread out and tribes has little contact. 
We on the other hand used the land more efficiently. Also lots of trade and communications we found seashells used in necklaces in central Asia, yes it might have traveled for generations but knowledge is not an zero sum game. Among the Neanderthals lots of stuff might be lost because low level of contact but we interacted so much that something useful would spread easy. 

Still if you have enough land hunter gathering is far easier than neolithic farming. No metals and no draft animals makes farming idiotic hard. 
An alien species who can control reproduction easier would probably not bother (another filter) 

Ha, that was the view until February ! But meanwhile it is clear that Neandertals did not copy and had the same cognitive abilities. Published in Science in February (i linked it in the Random Science Facts thread) :-)

Only gradual differences remain, easily attributable to the much greater number of the likes of us.

Yeah, hunting and gathering is easier than farming and keeping life stock.

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Humans never lived in caves, life in the open savanna is more like their original habitat. "Living in the trees" has become a saying more than anthropological reality, or at least one must go many millions of years back with the danger of ending up in the wrong line of evolution.

We find things in caves and rock shelters and their sediments more often than elsewhere only because of preservation. Deep caves with middle and upper paleolithic finds can more be seen as ritual places. At least those well researched ones in France and Germany. And then there is that gray zone between cave and abri or rock shelter, where fire places and stone tool knapping, mending and repair over longer periods took place. But these were mostly open to one side and frequently offered a nice view over the landscape. Things in the open are much rarer (though they exist) because they were exposed to weathering and/or transported away by sedimentary processes.

Yes, they store stuff better and is easy to find. Still they was premium real estate you can close of the entrance or build an hut in one who don't need to been waterproof. 
On  the other hand the cave paintings might be an sort of weird doomsday cult, everybody else put wooden totems  out in the open for all to enjoy.