BestOfLemmy

But the Bronze and Iron Age did not lead to one another. In fact, much of Subsaharan Africa lacks a Bronze Age entirely, precisely because they don't lead to each other - the forms of furnaces (bloomeries) that spread in Subsaharan Africa were efficient enough to smelt iron from the start. Bronze is not needed to smelt iron - bronze or iron tools (though obviously you still need the iron itself) are not even needed to smelt high-quality steel, if you really know what you're doing - all you would need are earthen furnaces, clay crucibles, coke (processable, if you know that it can be, in earthen kilns), and flux.

Theory does a lot of lifting that we often don't appreciate.

It may be worth pointing out that the metal ages are used primarily for old world archaeology. The Americas utilize a different system that isn't so bound to metallurgical ages.

Lithic > Ancient > Formative > Classic > Post-Classic

Each era is about mlre than material sciences, and specifically metallurgical ones, of the old world. (But let's be clear, the Bronze age is so, so much more than bronzeworking. Sometimes that gets lost in the nomenclature.)

Arguably one could apply the american measurements similarly to old world history too, since these are all approximations for coherent discourse.

In the 1800s you suddenly had a middle class where farmers, small business owners, and local artisans had access to a wide variety of tools and books, things their ancestors could have never afforded.

In my uninformed view I came to a different conclusion.

I mean... yeaahhh?

Is there a tendency to assume ‘everything should have been possible in antiquity’? What is that supposed to mean?

A user posited the question of why hot air balloons were not invented sooner despite the materials and tools being available.

There are plenty of examples of inventors through history with concepts and ideas that were not really practical in their time.

How is that in any way contradicting what was said?

Atomism is an another ancient concept across cultures east and west, which was conceptually used in the development of modern atomic theory.

... that's literally a question of theory. On both ends of the equation.

I think the Turks invented the steam engine based on Hellenic Greek concepts, but it was the English put it to state-level use and implementation.

The Turks invented what is called the steam jack, which is distinctly different from the atmospheric engine used in English mines some ~150 years later. The steam jack is much closer to the aeolipile; the atmospheric engine which was instrumental in the industrial revolution was based on fundamentally different theory.

So there’s just a long history of technologies being adapted and improved for different purposes. Ballooning is a good example of something that has existed for many centuries in Asia. Lifting a person into the sky, instead of a message, is a newer concept that branched off an existing technology.

Except it didn't branch off from an existing technology. The early European attempts at ballooning, which led to the hot-air balloon being discussed, did not originate from the East Asian practice of kiting or sky lanterns.

A great deal of technological advancements have been out of military necessity/value, such as with the balloons,

... ballooning did not start out of military necessity and was not even taken seriously by most militaries of the day. The French Aeronautic Corps lasted maybe a decade; ballooning in the US Civil War was taken seriously until internal politiking wrecked it. Very little investment in ballooning was done by or for military purposes.

but the prerequisite for innovative adaptations of technology have simply had to do with how well they were recorded and disseminated throughout populations.

That's not a question of invention, which is what was being discussed.

Militaries have been pretty good about learning a thing and getting a group to do that thing, and then recording itnfoebthe next time.

You're fucking kidding, right?

Militaries as standing institutions do not even date back before the 17th century in most parts of Europe, unless you want to go all the way back to Rome, and effectively many were not really created until the 18th century.

Militaries, historically, have been horrible at learning, recording, or getting people to do something specific. The modern institutionalized military that is competent at that is an extremely recent development.

Well said!

Large scale education with writing and reading is a pretty late stage development.

Correction: a weirdly recent development in Sapiens, but go for it..?

I would replace "war" with "defense," since we do a lot of shit to stay "safe."

Yes, that's how war works.
On a tribal level, it's just survival.
On a nationalistic level?
It's legitimate-patriotism!
From there, the reinforcement of hierarchy
leads your blind horse right up to 1984.

Sky lanterns require an open and continuous flame, which is considerably more troublesome to combine with cargo of any sort. Early manned hot-air balloons were filled by gas generated on the ground, which requires an understanding that it is the gas which generates lift through buoyancy.

Concept behind hot air balloon understood.

I'm not well-read on the history of Chinese scientific thought, but it could very easily fit into what I said in the comment: "If you lack the concepts behind the invention, the only way to discover it is by accident" That's how most things were discovered before early modernity.

Knowing how to make something, especially something discovered by accident or passed on by practice rather than taught as an application of theory, is different than knowing why it works, and understanding why something works opens up a much broader range of applications and elaborations.

The same amount of days he's been here while saying he's leaving. So we're sitting on 7 days of "I'm gone for good."