What could you show a caveman?

On Saturday, Cat, Chuck, and I discussed, "What could you show a caveman?"

 Here are some of the things we came up with:

You might be able to make bow, sling, spear, spear thrower, boomerang, candles, sail boats (keel, rudder), canoes, pulleys, levers, windmills, watermills, the plow, a screw pump, possibly an aqueduct, chairs, tables, carpentry, writing, clocks, catapults, possibly penicillin, vaccines, soap, hygiene, hygienic surgery, copper tools?, (i would try for bronze, iron and steal also) a lathe, pottery, domesticating animals, Robert's Rules of Order, the scientific method, statistics, compass, mud huts, toilets?, plumbing, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, how to trade, clothing, yarn, twine, rope, sewing, how to make fire, cooking, baking, alcohol, bathing, and how to clean clothing.  I would try to invent concrete, electricity, light bulbs, and vacuum tubes.  If there were villages of a couple hundred people, you could introduce sewage plumbing and treatment.  

Comments

  1. HeinJuly 16, 2020 at 12:39 AM

    Chuck wrote:

    Some of this stuff seems hard:
    Screw pump - tight tolerances, need metal?
    Aqueduct - large scale, water tight, heavy loads
    Vaccines - still hard today
    Iron and steel - high temperatures, don’t know process
    Concrete - don’t know process
    Electricity - need batteries, copper wire, magnets

    I would not have confidence in getting the above list done

    ReplyDelete
  2. HeinJuly 16, 2020 at 12:40 AM

    Cat wrote:

    I agree, some of these would probably be beyond me, but some of them we're already halfway good at just by living in our culture.

    Levers, arithmetic, and the scientific method strike me as having large payoff-to-investment ratios, for example.

    ReplyDelete

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