The greatest inventions of all times – now this is a question I have been thinking about for a long time now.
I say that the truly great inventions or discoveries were all way back in the past. Telephones, electric light or light bulbs etc. are good examples for useful inventions, but 100-120 years ago my ancestors lived happily with oil lamps, horses and washboards, and still today there are millions of people who live without many modern appliances (albeit they are not as happy as my grand grandmother was). But the inventions/discoveries I nominate are those without which we would not be who we are, and to the dismay of Scottish, British and American inventors they are all African (and maybe one European):
The ladder
The stick
The lighter
The flint stone tool
Le cave art
The wheel
Unfortunately for the poor chaps who invented them they forgot to patent them and therefore their families could not benefit from the popularity of their discoveries. But because of their pioneering work we are now able to tell their tale. (Not necessarily in chronological order).
NOTE: The following is a rough draft for a funny children book with pictures. I thought that my 3 kids have a right to know the truth about this. I also think that you, my fellow satellite enthusiasts, might be interested. Of course, it will be improved upon, and I also would like to add some pictures to it. As my painting abilities are even worse than my grammar, anyone with painting skills who is interested in collaborating on this PM me. Copyright by T_G 2006.
The Ladder
Lets start with the ladder. This was invented by a monkey called EeehhhhUHUHUH who found that swinging from branch to branch is sort of nice, but more interesting things are happening on the ground. He was a very busy monkey and also, he was determined to make a name for himself in the monkey community. He wanted to become the top dog of the monkey pack (which is easier than being top monkey in a dog pack), and he figured he needs something to make him stand out intellectually from the other silly simians around him. So he invented the ladder, which everybody agreed made descending from the tree a much more dignified and affair than simply plummeting to the ground. (This is also the basis of the expression “to move up the social ladder”) The minute the ladder became public knowledge, a few fortunate und brave monkeys used it to climb down from the tree they were on. What happened though (as with many inventors) EeehhhhUHUHUH was a bit nutty and forgetful, after the first few monkeys went down the ladder they found that EeehhhhUHUHUH forgot to tell them the instructions of this revolutionary device. Going down was easy, but up was altogether rather more difficult. And as always, trouble never comes alone: Just when they wanted to ask him about this, he was ripped to pieces by a lion and it took mankind another 2, 3 million years to be able to solve this problem. In the meantime those who already were down there had to adapt and invent other things to make living more interesting and satisfying. For instance, the stick. (And no, I don’t mean you, `Stick, although you are so special you had to be invented)
The Stick:
The stick was invented by another monkey called EeeehhUHUHUH. Although his name sounds fairly similar to our friend EeehhhhUHUHUH the “Ladder Monkey”, they were not related at all, although if they would have met accidentally in an extraordinary twist of fate they would have found that they were very much alike and that they shared many similar interests such as grooming and eating the parasitic insects they find behind and inside each others ears. In any case, this clever and enterprising monkey discovered that a stick made of wood or any longish object is very useful indeed. We all seen the Stanley Kubrik movie where EeeehhUHUHUH smashes a scull with a large bone jumping up and down and screeching very excitedly looking all evil and bloodthirsty. The thing is, EeeehhUHUHUH was a peaceful and loving ape, the Hollywood dramatisation of these early events painted a completely wrong picture of this monumental event. The truth of this historic moment was that when EeeehhUHUHUH discovered the stick, it was quite a large heavy one, almost the shape of a mid sized cudgel. While turning it around, sniffing it, licking and tasting it and generally trying to figure what this thing is and what could be made of it, (maybe he was thinking of merchandising, subcontracting, movie rights etc, but as these were all not invented yet it caused a big confusion in his monkey brain) he accidentally dropped it. Even as far away as ancient pre-human history “Sods Law” was already activated by cheeky higher beings, who liked to have a divine giggle observing the consequences of this twisted, evil law. The heavy side of the club fell directly onto EeeehhUHUHUH’s pinkie toe (or maybe it was the second one from the right on his left foot, exact records are not found), and EeeehhUHUHUH, after 3 seconds of doing absolutely nothing, until his brain registered “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHH” (which means *#$#$%$64#4343#* in Monkeish), started to jump up and down screaming like a monkey who has been hit by a heavy club on his pinkie toe. (This turn of events was deemed too tame for Hollywood, so some clever screenwriters changed the club to a bone and instead of the calamitous event of the squashed toe they decided to use a plastic scull for dramatic effect). Anyway, after the pain receded EeeehhUHUHUH understood that the stick was a good method to inflict pain or even death. It took some time to figure out that if you wanted to hunt, twisting it in your hands, licking and tasting it and then accidentally dropping it on a passing Wildebeest might only work out once in a while: You got to be positioned downwind on high ground, a Wildebeest path beneath you, a Wildebeest heard passing on the Wildebeest path and, most importantly, your toes carefully folded underneath your foot). A more efficient method was gradually and scientifically developed. He started to use it more and more to his advantage for hunting, bashing, and in a more cultural setting occasionally to show his grandmonkeys how he discovered this wonderful “thing” (the older he got the less he told it as he did not like limping around for days every time with an aching foot). EeeehhUHUHUH’s favourite nephew continued to develop the stick, and found that a thin long stick can be good to inflict pain by poking other monkeys, but also to stick into Termite mounts and get a tasty snack out of it. The stick developed into many interesting and useful forms and shapes. Even today, millions of male monkey descendants still like to use them for any occasion (especially overpriced, shiny red brand named types advertised on racing cars) and drop them on their toes or bash their fingers. The primeval cry of pain in the 21st century is surprisingly similar to the one sounded by EeeehhUHUHUH all this time ago at the exact moment of his revolutionary discovery!
The Lighter
One of the best discoveries of ancient times truly changed our life: The lighter. With it, man could make fire whenever he wanted, woman could use it to cook things that were hunted by man. It represents one of the cornerstones of man’s wellbeing which are: Hunting, eating, watching TV and of course, playful wrestling with Mrs. Caveman. The fire made sure the mammoth loin steak was nice and tasty, and afterwards “Pre-TV-Man” used to stare hours and hours into the fire. Early man might not have had the intellectual capacity, but he surely was as practical as modern man is today: Instead of getting up and “flicking the channels” with the hand (which used to burn the hair off his hairy limb) he used a long stick to poke the fire without getting up. Later in evolution, the stick got shorter and shorter and filled with electronics, but it is still essentially a poking stick to change channels. When the cave or hut was warm and cosy, and man had made sure enough sticks were there to keep the fire going there was a much better chance for some wrestling than if it was cold and wet.
In any case, the traditional scientific community believes that fire was invented when stone age man tried to make holes in objects by twirling a thin piece of wood until it got so hot that a fire broke out. As with many of the greatest inventions, the discovery event was purely accidental. (This phenomenon continued all the way to the present, for instance Newton discovered gravity when an apple fell accidentally on his head – or was it an insolent student who threw an apple at the dozing mad scientist snoring in mid day under the tree?)
The first human-made fire not only changed the life of UgHUgHUgH, our stone age fire starter, but also changed all man and womankind. (It also had a devastating effect on UgHUgHUgH’s straw roofed dwellings which were burnt down to the ground in the event). But first things first: As UgHUgHUgH did not have a fire to stare into, or a TV or an aquarium, he had to do something to pass the time in the long warm African evenings. The cave man of these pre-historic times was a rough, brutish ogre, but he had very sharp instincts. Through observation and guttural conversations with his friends he knew that the only way Mrs. UgHUgHUgH would agree to participate in a bit of fun or prepare a proper dinner (none of that vegetarian roots and herb stuff, I am talking about mammoth sized mammoth steak) is if he heaped presents upon her on a regular basis, and more precisely, jewellery. It has been claimed many times that early men made holes into stones so he could put a stick into it and use it as a much better battering tool or axe, but the real use was to make holes in things, put a dried animal sinew through it and hang it around woman’s neck or arm, or hang it in the living room and lovingly say “Ough?!!” (Nowadays “Oughh?!!!” can be translated to something along the lines of “Of course I do?!!”). So what happened is that UgHUgHUgH had everything prepared for the fabrication of some pre-historic jewellery that fateful day: A twirling stick, a bow, some quartz sand, some pieces of wood, some straw to sit on, a collection of colourful feathers, dried flowers and some rabbit fur. UgHUgHUgH was working feverishly trying to hole a piece of wood when the stick got so hot it started to ignite. UgHUgHUgH did not have a lot of experience with fire. The only other time he saw a fire before he had to run like hell to prevent being grilled by a bush fire, so naturally he was a bit apprehensive. And when he frightfully threw away the burning stick the result was a disaster - but unintentionally he also invented the first throw-away lighter. But UgHUgHUgH was a fighter and not a giver-upper, he rebuilt the hut and perfected his lighter. The fire experience made him re-evaluate his personal life and he decided that he would start to work from home. He successfully applied for the position of valley medicine man and lived happily to a grand old age of 26 and was never cold again. Mrs. UgHUgHUgH was also much happier with their new found wealth and social standing.
The Flintstone Knife
Without the discovery of the stick, it would not have been possible to take the next invention to its full potential as well: Flint stone knifes.
Flint stone itself was discovered many times before, but usually after one of the potential inventors cut his hand on its sharp edges they threw it away as far as possible and tried something else. Only in the Neolithic period (plus-minus a few hundred thousand here and there) a very playful bloke called UH-UH-UH managed to get somewhere with it. As mentioned before, ALL great inventions start by accident and coincident! UH-UH-UH was trying to invent a game that he could play with his hunter gatherer chums when they were not hunting or gathering, normally between 16:30 in the afternoon until tea time on nice summer days. He asked Ah-Ah-Ah (his bestest friend and regular hunting buddy) to throw all sorts of objects in his directions, and he tried to hit them with his fire hardened club. (He hadn’t come to the part yet where he needed to figure out the scoring system and objective of this game, but the fact is that most games derived from these early experiments keep the somewhat primitive and confused Neolithic score system and rules). Anyway, the first throws with first dry, then fresh elephant dung were very unsuccessful and rather unpleasant to the nose, so he urged Ah-Ah-Ah to throw some harder, less smelly objects. Ah-Ah-Ah searched and sniffed around the floor a bit and found a completely odour-free object with exactly the right size and weight. When UH-UH-UH’s club connected successfully with the ball sized flint stone, it shattered into a few smaller pieces which were very sharp indeed. UH-UH-UH knew immediately that they were sharp because one of those splinters was stuck in his leg and hurt like *#$%^&*(# (In pre historic times *#$%^&*(# was the closest thing to our modern word of “Hell”, a concept which was only discovered much later in evolution). But being a clever chap UH-UH-UH figured out that if this stone could cut into his leg it might actually cut into Ah-Ah-Ah’s leg as well (he did blamed him for the whole episode) and chased him around the huts a few times shouting EeT! EeT! EeT! (the meaning of which is not entirely clear, but still today young children subconsciously re-enact this historic moment by chasing each other and shouting “it”, while young adolescent males in certain parts of the UK tend to run after each other with a knife shouting “You little shit shit shit”). After he calmed down (and due to the fact that Ah-Ah-Ah was a much faster runner than him), he tried cutting into an antelopes leg, which was really much easier than to rip chunks out with your own teeth, or someone else’s as in the case of his toothless granny. Over the next years UH-UH-UH perfected the art of smashing small sharp pieces off flint stone off a larger piece. At first, in line with proper scientific protocol, he had to reconstruct and verify the discovery. He immediately experienced a major setback as his assistant, Ah-Ah-Ah, was reluctant to participate. Ah-Ah-Ah had some health and safety issues with this experiment, he was specifically worried about the chasing-and-cutting-the-leg part of it. But after he was assured by UH-UH-UH that he would NOT chase him around the huts again, he agreed to help. UH-UH-UH of course honourably kept his Neolithic word (Uuuugh), and only chased him through the meadow and up the hill, when the next splinter pierced his arm. In time, Ah-Ah-Ah developed a self preserving, unique throwing style. Before throwing the stone, he would lift up the opposite knee to his throwing arm high up, concentrate, look around, especially to the back, to make sure the escape route was clear, and then suddenly release the stone. As the stone was just leaving his hand, and still in mid air, his still raised leg would rapidly come down and effectively be the first step of a successful escape run.
To avoid further injury, Mrs.UH-UH-UH and Mrs. Ah-Ah-Ah took some tough water buffalo hide and some bendy willow sticks and expertly fashioned some sort of protective armour that would prevent UH-UH-UH getting hurt. Over time this armour covered almost the whole of UH-UH-UH and that made chasing AH-AH-Ah almost impossible. But the chase, in their somewhat mystical holistic Neolithic thought process, was still deemed too important to the knife creating process, so he asked a third friend, Ugh-Ugh to help out. Ugh-Ugh took his very own club, and took up his position next to UH-UH-UH and once the flint hit the club he started chasing. In due time the mainly hit and miss tactics of throwing rocks onto a club was replaced by the similar ineffective method of throwing the clubs towards a pile of rocks, until that time when a flash of inspiration hit UH-UH-UH and he started to hit the rocks directly. In the end, UH-UH-UH was using all sorts of things such as stones, sticks and antelope horn to chip off thin blades of flint. He became a master craftsman and completely forgot about the game it all started with. If he hadn’t connected with the flint stone that fateful day but with his emergency food supply (a dried water buffalo testicle he kept in a small round hamster skin pouch hanging around his neck), he would never had invented the flint stone knife. Evolution would have caught up with it eventually, but it would have taken thousands and thousands of years because instead of inventing and developing knifes and tools early man would spend all his free time playing Cricket, Baseball, Hockey and Tennis and other similar games that involve a stick and a small hard ball.
Thats it for now, the rest will follow in due time
an err maybe not..
