this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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Greentext

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This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (7 children)

The answer is probably language. Before advanced language was developed, there wasn't a good way to pass along any knowledge that was gained by an individual.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And storage / dissemination of that language.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Thats why the fediverse is the next step in evolution.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

Brainrotmaxxing

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Let's carve our memes into stone and bury them for future archaeologists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

4chan knows how to destroy it but nobody had made the effort lol.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago

I thought it was because proper farming.

Like being able to support larger groups of people, where individuals could specialize in other things than hunting, gathering and whatever else was keeping the early humans busy.

On the other hand I've heard we've been possibly farming long before 10,000 BCE.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Language is much older than just 10k years. There's a few reasons to think that language might have developed with erectus, which could make language 10x older than the 'human specie', according to anon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That's why i said advanced language. Lots of animals have language. Crows have language

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Usually the distinction is between "advanced communication" which some animals display, and "language", which only humans have.

Whether you want to call it language or advanced language, what we do today is way older than 10k years. There are stories that have been dated to 100k and if the arguments about erectus are correct, then what you call advanced language is probably 2m+ years old.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

As IoaExMachina correctly highlighted, language predates those 10k years.

For reference, Proto-Afro-Asiatic (ancestor of Egyptian, all Semitic languages, Amazigh, plus a lot others) is believed to have been spoken 12k~18k years ago. So... like, it was already old back then, and yet it has modern descendants.

And the role of language is probably not just communication, it's also to formalise thought. It's easier to think with language than without it, and you can reach more reliable conclusions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

The answer is agriculture, which lowered the standard of living and health of the individual, but sustained more people, allowed for specialization, permanent settlement and building large structures.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes there's only one answer to how our species developed space flight

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago