The striking similarity between us and our ancestors

Azhagarasu A
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read

You and I live in the most advanced period of our time unless there are people among us who have traveled from future. If there are no time travelers on earth, then we certainly are the most advanced civilization currently living on planet earth as well as the small group of people residing in International Space Station. Humans are the finest result of evolution that has spanned more than two billion years. Could there be any similarity between the most advanced civilization and ape men who wore no clothes?

Our ancestors in the Hominidae family developed hunting just a little over 2 million years ago. Yes, this is little when compared to the many million years of human evolution. Ape-men developed tools that can be used to hunt and butcher animals. They not only used it for hunting but the tools which they developed aided for self-defense as well. Unlike modern world, surviving in the forest filled with constant threats was not an easy task for our ancestors. Scientists claim that meat in their diet fueled the evolution of larger brains and bodies. Larger brains gave us the ability to develop; hunting weapons and tools, language and skills to create and maintain complex societies.

Image source: commons.wikimedia.org.

Only 20,000 years ago humans used animals to aid them hunting. Studies claim that they used wolfs to help them in hunting initially and later on over time due to evolution, those breeds of wolfs evolved to dogs. Ancient Humans faced very uncertain future due to unpredictable climate, predators and many other factors.

The problem

Two prominent problems which they might have faced during that time are gathering food and protecting themselves from predators; to solve this problem they developed some techniques. How do you feed a large number of people? While hunting in a pack and special tools to kill animals are very useful to solve the problem of food gathering but as the population increases it is quite a challenge to feed a group of people. Using animals to hunt is a perfect example to illustrate how humans solved the problem of gathering meat for a group of individuals. In the 21st century, humanity is faced with problems of a different kind, as technology develops we continue to enhance life with the help of it.

“Evolution is not only biological it is also sociological”

Along with humans, the society which we live in also has evolved. Industrial Revolution during 18th and 19th century was the rallying point of today’s modern world. It fundamentally changed everyday life of humans. Industrial Revolution introduced new manufacturing techniques which lead to the development of factories where goods are manufactured and before those people produced items in their house by hand with the help of small tools. With new factories, the goods were mass-produced. Merchants then needed a new marketplace to sell these products, and they made use of rail, road and sea network which was also being developed due to the need of increased transport. Before Industrial developments, the merchants provided raw materials and tools to workers at their house. They then used these to produce a product. The merchants found it quite difficult to get back the finished product on time. To eradicate this inefficient system, engineers and innovators invented new machines using steam power or some other source of energy to increase productivity. The newly developed machines were then employed in factories to mass produce goods.

Production hall of a factory in Germany (1868). Image source: commons.wikimedia.org.

Use of modern machines introduced fear among people as they thought their job is at stake due to a number increasing factories. Riots were widespread during this time. Industrial Revolution made it tough for the poor and working class. But as time progressed people started to embrace the change without which today’s modern world may not exist.

Just like our ancient ancestors, we solved the problem of inefficiency in manufacturing by inventing new manufacturing process with the help of machines or simply called as New Technology”.

New kind of problems are born as the society that we live in grows more complex. We invented banking system to manage money and property. Public transportation helps people to move from one place to another. In a nutshell, just like our ancestors who used animals to increase the efficiency of hunting, it is one of the fundamental characters of humans is to solve the problem that is hindering our growth. And we solve today’s problem by inventing new technology and tools.


The content and idea of this post is an excerpt from my knowledge sharing article published by Dell EMC — https://goo.gl/ioQ3Pz.

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Azhagarasu A

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