Wednesday, May 16, 2007

So easy a caveman could do it.

People talk about the invention of the wheel as a major accomplishment of early human beings, but how hard would it have been to notice that round rocks roll down a hill?
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure everyone noticed that round rocks roll down hill more easily. But only one guy said, if only I could put round rocks underneath my mastodon kill. I could bring it to camp to clean and dress it. The genius is the guy who innovates what others already know.

11:18 PM
-Dave said...

And what's almost as impressive is how American civilizations (Inca, Maya, etc) got along without the wheel at all where instead it certainly wasn't.

If it were as simple as you imply, it seems it would have been a foregone conclusion.

Another example - everyone around them could see that horses ran, dogs hunted, and seeds grew to plants. But the people that saddled horses, hunted with dogs, and purposefully planted crops did something that hindsight makes fairly obvious.

11:23 AM
Kenny said...

Something else that must have been totally obvious was general relativity...I mean, you just have to look around and it's obvious enough that space is curved and is also the same as time.

11:42 AM

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