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Originally Posted by BWillie
You would be surprised what you can do with 100,000 slaves and whips
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They don’t believe slaves had anything to do with construction of the great pyramids anymore, FYI. It was built by free men during the agricultural offseason. Apparently they’ve got writings about how they were paid with food, beer, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Which was just comically arrogant of us.
Exceptionally intelligent people have always existed. And as a fairly firm believer in the 'great man' theory, I do think most moments that shape humanity came about as a result of just a handful of brilliant people who were in the right place at the right time.
I mean agrarian society is one that I point to a lot. You look at certain grasses/wheats and they have drought protection mechanisms that mean only 1 in 5 or so seeds actually germinate in a year. They didn't know that then.
So they have 100 people in their village and they plant enough wheat seeds for 100 of them....20% of those germinate and half the village starves to death.
In most cases that probably ended things. They went back to hunting and gathering.
At some point then there was one guy who said "Nah, we're gonna try this again..." and they powered through and made it work. And suddenly agriculture was born.
There has always been brilliance in the world. Doggedness. Industriousness. And there's always been lazy and/or simply mediocre and forgettable.
Why should we have EVER believed that there weren't people who were absolutely as innately intelligent as anyone we have on the planet today. And as such would have problem-solving skills that rival anything we see in modern times. They use the tools at their disposal but as brilliant people they could make those tools do some pretty remarkable things.
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Has nothing to do with ingenuity but I always think about the poor bastards who shit their brains out for a lifetime until one of their kids randomly developed the lactose tolerance mutation.
Now I can enjoy ice cream and pizza with no issues.. thank you, determined ancestor!