MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > How did humans manage to invent, make an...

How did humans manage to invent, make and manufacture so much compared to that of other animals?


Seriously we, human beings, didn't start with much more than what animals had on this planet like rocks, sticks, grass, water, but how did we manage to make SO much in terms of technology, cars, computers, houses etc etc etc and use materials as such and even make machines that make other machines?

Also, I know that humans are flawed and far from perfect species. And yes we are guilty of pollution and ruining the Earth too.

But how come, those who are moralists and those who criticize humanity by saying how universally "bad" it is, almost NEVER bring up what we have achieved technologically so far as a HUGE argument in FAVOR of humanity and either NEVER reference it or do it briefly, often stating "Yes humans can do this" but animals are better than us for this and that and that we should learn from them etc?

I for one, wonder how we really managed it? How did it start AND also, how come Earth has THIS much materials to make it POSSIBLE, and let's say it was only 5 or so humans left on Earth, could we do it, thanks.

reply


The eerie, atonal music played; the ape-men touched the monolith....

reply


From the greatest film of all time!

😎

reply

The long extinct Egyptian Dodo build The Great Pyramid of Giza.

Source: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

reply

Opposable thumbs and large brains.

reply

But even so, we made SO MUCH, I mean, after only starting with rocks etc, how did we succeed to the degree we did, with even SPACE SHIPS?

reply

Not all human is able to make SPACE SHIPS.

reply

Ancient aliens helped us out😬

I saw it on The History Channel so it's gotta be true

reply

our conceptual faculty

reply

I know I'll get laughed at but I believe there just has to be some kind of higher power, a creator. I'm not really religious but my human mind just can't accept the universe just sprang from nothing. How can something come from nothing? And where did that nothing come from?
I don't claim to have any answers but the only way I can kind of sort of wrap my head around it is that some higher power for whatever reason decided it wanted to create the universe, and once done selected one species to have dominion over the others (at least on this planet) and blessed it with the power of intelligence.

reply

"I'm not really religious"
Haha, I'm not either, but still, it doesn't stop me from wondering about things.

I also don't give religion in any aspect even much if any THEORETICAL importance. But lot's of people are and do.

reply

Yep, most days it seems like all I can do is wonder about things.

reply

I’m absolutely 100% with you on this, however, there are times when I wonder if we’re just some alien kids science project.

reply

Haha, I've had that thought too. What if God's a scientist just throwing stuff in a Petri dish to see what happens.

reply

Wouldn't "some kind of higher power, a creator" need a cause as well? A Super Creator of Creators? People have trouble with accepting existence as a primary yet have no such trouble accepting "a creator" as a primary. Prior to bringing existence into existence, what realm would this creator exist in? Existence is the inescapable, rather than a creator.

reply

Maybe its just NATURE, cosmos, space, sky and the fact that Earth is filled with *living* organisms INCLUDING us, humans?

reply

If God exists, he sure is hiding himself well all this time. :) Invisible and invincible apparently. )

reply

People who have had near death experiences say they saw God.

reply

OK, MAYBE, but how do you know they are either telling the truth or if they mean it literally? Or maybe they were intoxicated or under substances or maybe they imagined it?

reply

Or the brain is firing in atypical ways due to the circumstances. If spicy food can give people weird dreams while they sleep, imagine what near death extremes could elicit. And some of them have been chemically reproduced. Also, I never understood why "near death" would give you a glimpse. Wouldn't God know if you're really dead, as in not coming back? Near death isn't death, so why get a sneak preview? Did God go "Ooops, I got a little ahead of myself since I thought you were a goner for good."?

reply

My theory is WE ARE GOD, because our FUTURE SELVES have CREATED US, and USE US as a way to ENTERTAIN themselves (very much the same way as the STAR TREK CREW of the NEXT GENERATION also used the HOLODECK as a way to keep themselves ENTERTAINED).

A FILM called "THE THIRTHTEENTH FLOOR" also explores the same concept when characters from 1990 create characters in a 1930 WORLD in their OWN IMAGE, only to later discover they themselves had been CREATED by others in 2024 (who had also created the 1990 characters in their OWN IMAGE).

And in his tale about the MADMAN, NIETZSCHE also informs us about how WE MUST BECOME GODS ourselves:

http://historyguide.org/europe/madman.html

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"


reply

I have a similar theory to yours. Our consciousness is immortal. We take on a temporary role (aka: life) in the physical world to gain different experiences.

reply

Our consciousness is immortal. We take on a temporary role (aka: life) in the physical world to gain different experiences.



Nicely put.

Thanks for sharing that Keelai.

Plato said we're all FALLEN ANGELS who are here to WIN back our WINGS.

So perhaps we might also be doing some kind of prison time, or be in some kind of a house arrest situation by being here???
🧐

reply

I have a slightly more positive spin. Perhaps we're here to learn by gaining experiences. A way to grow.

Or if we're a part of God, he/she observes us and our experiences. We're the entertainment.
: )

I'm about to read my umpteenth NDE book so I'm curious to hear what the author says about the purpose of life

reply

Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander wrote an excellent book, "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife" which explained the process. When your brain flatlines, there are no thoughts, dreams, delusions, no processing, nothing firing, etc.. It's similar to when you unplug your PC or TV - it shuts off and doesn't work.

But people with no brain function describe an NDE experience, anyway.

If your heart, brain and respiration stops, then you are clinically dead.

One theory is that our consciousness uses the brain to interact with the material world (5 senses), but acts like a filter preventing us from seeing or experiencing spiritual or ESP. When the brain is shutdown (flatlines), the filter is off and people can see more of what already exists.

reply

I had one but I didn't SEE GOD.

What I saw was a very brief glimpse of my deceased mother coming towards me before being sent back here again for some unknown reason.

Because I also LIKED IT there much better than I liked being here and wanted to STAY there.

But here I am back here again ....

reply

I often wonder about that too and it makes my head hurt. It's just like the question about where does the universe end, or is there even an end? And if it does end, what's on the other side? And what's on the other side of what's on the other side? How can something go on forever, and if it doesn't go on forever what's outside of it?

reply

I'm not laughing at you, you pretty much posted my post before I could👍

reply

See Genesis 1:26. God wanted to make humankind in His image and likeness. God is the Creator; humans are creative.

reply

There's also another part of this story where GOD'S MOTHER SOPHIE CREATES him without the AID of her husband, thus making him a DEMI GOD (or a DEFECTIVE GOD).

So she places him off in a place by himself where he assumes he's THE ONLY GOD, and then proceeds to create other creatures in his OWN IMAGE (us HUMANS).

Sophia (Gnosticism) - Wikipedia


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(Gnosticism)


But since he's only a HALF GOD, he's also not able to BREATH "the SPARK of LIFE" into us, so SOPHIA takes pity upon us and does that for him.

Thus the reason why ALL of US have "MITOCHODRIAL DNA" that comes from OUR MOTHERS (not from our FATHERS). And the MITOCHONDRIA is also the part of the cell that ENABLES us to BREATHE.

🧐

reply

How did it start AND also, how come Earth has THIS much materials to make it POSSIBLE, and let's say it was only 5 or so humans left on Earth, could we do it, thanks.

No.

Because if only 5 humans were left, we'd go EXTINCT and not survive, due to the way that's NOT a large ENOUGH GENE POOL for us to be able to continue on as a species.

What's the minimum number of people needed to survive an apocalypse?

https://www.livescience.com/minimum-people-to-survive-apocalypse.html

"With populations in the low hundreds, you can probably survive for many centuries.

A surviving population of just a few hundred people would need a way of maintaining a breeding system, Smith said. Inbreeding, or breeding between closely related individuals, is one major challenge small populations face.

The consequences of inbreeding can be demonstrated with the fall of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, which ruled Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. The dynasty regularly kept marriage in the family until 1700, when the bloodline ended with an infertile and facially deformed King Charles II

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160113-could-just-two-people-repopulate-earth

Charles II was the family’s most famous victim. Born with a litany of physical and mental disabilities, the king didn’t learn to walk until he was eight years old. As an adult his infertility spelled the extinction of an entire dynasty.

“With a small population size everyone is going to be related sooner or later, and as relatedness increases inbreeding effects become more important

Of particular concern are the effects of inbreeding on sperm quality, which has increased the proportion of eggs that will never hatch from 10% to around 40%. It’s an example of inbreeding depression, Robertson says, caused by the exposure of recessive genetic defects in a population

“Basically you need 50 breeding individuals to avoid inbreeding depression and 500 in order to adapt,” ...

but if each woman had eight children, we’d be back to seven billion people and our current population crisis in just 556 years.



reply

But Adam and Eve started with two people. And after the Great Flood, only Noah's family was left, so we started with small populations before. So with that incontrovertible evidence, I have refuted your statement.

Hey, are you the same person as the original poster? Or are there two people who randomly capitalize entire words throughout their posts?

reply

The MAN has slowly but surely been ADOPTING my posting style. But that's ok because originally I also BORROWED it from someone else in ENGLAND (who also once attends a SEMINARY in order to be a priest before getting married to raise a family).

Anyhow, here's how the word INCONTROVERTIBLE is DEFINED:

>>Not able to be DEFINED or DISPUTED

And DARWIN'S THEORY of EVOLUTION also seems to have DISPUTED the theory of ADAM & EVE being the FIRST HUMANS pretty well (along with other MITOCHONDRIAL EVIDENCE we have that indicates ALL of us HUMANS have originated from LUCY or from "MITOCHONDRIAL EVE" ... due to the way that's also the SCIENTIFIC way that we've trace our origins).

The L0 lineage is a sequence of DNA encoded solely in mitochondria, a small structure in your cells that turns food into cellular energy. Mitochondrial DNA accounts for just a fraction of your genome, with the bulk of your DNA locked away in cell nuclei.

By studying the genomes of more than 1,200 indigenous Africans living in the southern part of the continent today, the team pieced together a history of one of the oldest DNA lineages on Earth: a collection of genes called L0, which is passed down maternally through mitochondria and has survived remarkably unchanged in some populations for hundreds of thousands of years. By tracking where and when the L0 lineage first split into the slightly different sublineages still seen in some indigenous African populations today, the researchers believe they have pinpointed precisely where the first carriers of L0 lived and thrived for thousands of years.

"We've known for a long time that humans originated in Africa and roughly 200,000 years ago,"

while nuclear DNA is inherited from both parents and recombines with every generation, mitochondrial DNA is inherited solely from your mother and can remain unchanged for tens of thousands of years. As such, mitochondrial DNA (also known as the "mitogenome") is a key tool for tracking genetic history.


In other words, Adam & EVE were NOT the FIRST HUMANS. And the FLOOD STORY in GENESIS is also an OBVIOUS RIP OFF of the SUMERIAN FLOOD story found in GILGAMESH (which also makes sense -- because the HEBREWS were also once the SLAVES of the SUMERIANS).

The CREATION story was also STOLEN from the SUMERIANS as well, because GILGAMESH is also a WILD MAN like ADAM running around in the WILDERNESS with animals before a female is introduced as a way to TAME and CIVILIZE him (just like EVE did ADAM), and a SNAKE character in the SUMERIAN story also EATS the TREE thus robbing humanity of IMMORTALITY (very similar to what takes place in the Genesis MYTH about the GARDEN of EDEN).

https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/gilgamesh.htm

>>Epic of Gilgamesh, first written in 1,800 B.C.E., around 1,000 years before the Hebrew Bible.

>>some, if not all, of the Hebrew Bible was borrowed from neighboring civilizations.

>>Did the Bible 'Steal' the Flood Story from Gilgamesh?

>>All signs point to yes, that the authors of Genesis were clearly aware of the divine deluge described in the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh.

Thus the reasons why BOTH the FLOOD STORY and the CREATION STORY in the book of GENESIS have already been SUCCESSFULLY DISPUTED, which also means your FALSE "INCONTROVERTIBLE" CLAIM has NO MERIT .



reply

Yeah, but the Epic of Gilgamesh stole all their stories from the legends of Darmok and Jalad.

reply

Ok.

So where's the proof of this???

And what happens in those stories???

https://www.thefunstons.com/darmok-and-jalad-at-tanagra-sermon-for-the-last-sunday-after-epiphany-7-february-2016/

If you are or were a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know that “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is a line from an episode of that show entitled Darmok in which Jean Luc Picard, the captain of the Enterprise, and Dathon, the captain of an alien vessel, are marooned on a planet called El-Adrel. The alien race are called the Children of Tama or “Tamarians” and their way of communicating is by making metaphorical references to legends, myths, and incidents in their history.

“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is the alien captain’s way of trying to say that he and Picard, the Tamarians and the humans, though strangers can become friends and allies — the reference is to a story in which two strangers become allies against a common enemy. Picard, of course, does not understand and so the Tamarian captain in frustration says, “Shaka, when the walls fell,” a metaphor for failure.

That episode and the Tamarian way of communicating came to mind as I considered the story of the Transfiguration as told by Luke in today’s Gospel lesson. The point of the episode is that we all communicate by way of analogy and metaphor; the fictional Tamarians were simply an extreme case. So is religion. All talk of God, all religious language, is metaphorical.

reply

Darmok on the ocean. Jalad on the ocean. Tanagra on the ocean. Darmok at Tanagra. Jalad at Tanagra. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. The beast at Tanagra. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

What else needs to be said?

reply

But WHAT you've said doesn't really answer the QUESTION that "The MAN" put forth in the OP which is as follows:

How did humans manage to invent, make and manufacture so much compared to that of other animals?

🧐

reply

It is difficult to say.
In the same way that there is life on this planet as a result of a sequence of coincidences, I guess that it was more or less the same with our evolution. For some reason, our brain mass increased step by step in the way that we have been able to assume the role of the dominant species.
The question for me is what will be the next stage of evolution for us?

reply

The question for me is what will be the next stage of evolution for us?

This interesting article indicates we're DEVOLVING rather than EVOLVING:

http://www.actforlibraries.org/the-human-race-is-devolving-devolving/

The human race is clearly devolving overall as a species

With these technological breakthroughs we have artifically evolved ourselves ...

With the loss of technology many would be hardpressed to survive. With weakened vision, and other physical decreases many would find it impossible to survive.

without the highly advanced technological breakthroughs, we have devolved and our natural mental and physical abilities have been diminished

survival is about your ability to work at a desk, and go to the supermarket, instead of feeding your family by your ability to hunt.



reply