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History of Technology 2: Walking 35 Views
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Description:
Back in our day, we had to walk all the way across the continent uphill in the snow, both ways.
Transcript
- 00:03
Okay, time to zoom in on humankind's first big technological
- 00:08
innovation. Drumroll please! Walking, seriously walking? All right fine, walking [Caveman walks in and modern human is driving a Segway]
- 00:15
woohoo. Well this thrilling lesson is the story of how people move before they had
- 00:20
any help no wheels no horses not even a cheap Kmart bike that falls apart in two [Caveman in a cart, the horse and wheels vanish and it falls to the ground]
- 00:25
minutes. Even without the benefit of any transportation technology good old human
Full Transcript
- 00:29
beings still managed to get around we settled every habitable part of the
- 00:33
planet from the Tropics to the far North so how did Stone Age humans cover
- 00:38
thousands of miles and settle the entire planet with nary a pair of sneakers? Well [Cities appearing all over a map of the world]
- 00:44
they just kind of had to, it was basically walk or die. Remember early
- 00:48
hunter-gatherers didn't get to hang around in their boxers and microwave
- 00:52
mammoth for lunch. They were constantly on the move these days human beings
- 00:57
mostly avoid walking, seriously if it's farther than a city block we call Uber. [Boy sat on a couch on his phone]
- 01:01
But at the beginning of human history walking was literally the only way to
- 01:05
get anywhere animals weren't domesticated yet, wheels hadn't been
- 01:08
invented, but early humans were hunters and gatherers which meant that they
- 01:12
couldn't just hang out and wait for their wheat to grow or hogwarts acceptance letter
- 01:17
to show up. They had to go out and find their food or else risk a growling
- 01:21
stomach and ya know, what's that called? Oh yeah dying. In East Africa where our [Caveman''s stomach grumbles and he falls over]
- 01:26
species began, people had to go a long long way to find their food. There's a whole
- 01:31
theory about Stone Age hunting called the endurance running hypothesis and it
- 01:36
basically says that our ancient ancestors would have put us to shame on
- 01:39
the elliptical. Anthropologists and archaeologists both believe that early
- 01:44
humans hunted their prey by literally running it to death over a few dozen [Caveman chasing after animal]
- 01:49
miles so let's imagine we're happy little cave people, we see a hamburger on
- 01:54
legs in the distance like a gazelle or an antelope. We don't have any projectile
- 01:59
weapons.. yet, and the Gazelle is way faster than us in a sprint so what's our
- 02:05
advantage? We sweat. Oh yeah it's a gross advantage but it's a big advantage.
- 02:11
Human beings are really good at getting rid of excess
- 02:13
heat so we can run for long distances without overheating and erm, dying. Those [Man on a treadmill sweating]
- 02:19
other animals can't say the same. Pit stains, humanity's great evolutionary hope.
- 02:24
But there was a whole task force of cave people working on primitive deodorant. [Scientist spraying deodorant on caveman]
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