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Communication, Tools, and Progress

Jim Mason
Age of Awareness
Published in
3 min readJan 17, 2025

Why other animals and many humans can’t make complicated things

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

We humans are unique among animals that we know of in our ability to develop complex technologies. Other animals are known to be able to make simple tools out of wood, leaves, or rocks to access sources of food or provide temporary shelter from rain, for example. But only we “modern” humans have developed more-and-more-complicated and powerful tools to assist us in surviving and reproducing.

Our language abilities account for part of that success. Unlike other animals, we can not-only show other people how to make things; we can also tell them about the things that we are making and the techniques that we are using. Furthermore, for those of us who can read and write, we can use written languages to inform people who are distant in space and time how to make new things.

But even written language only gets us so far. For some complicated things, diagrams and mathematical notations are necessary to communicate to other people details of the techniques for manufacture or construction.

Our written languages, drawings, and mathematical notations have enabled us to achieve amazing progress in our development of complicated tools — from simple spears and baskets all the way to electric appliances, rockets, and cell phones.

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Age of Awareness
Age of Awareness

Published in Age of Awareness

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Jim Mason
Jim Mason

Written by Jim Mason

I study language, cognition, and humans as social animals. You can support me by joining Medium at https://jmason37-80878.medium.com/membership

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