so, we're here in the syner of technology
and I just wanted to ask a simple question.
What was the greates technological
discovery ever made the basis for all
subsecuent technology,
and when was it made?
The gratest technological brakethrough
of human beings is language.
invented two million years ago
in the first and gratest information age
by Homo erectus: mom and dad.
Homo erectus was one of the most successful
crearures who ever walked the earth.
The lived on this planet for nearly
two million years.
We have so far lived on this planet
for a certain two hundred thousand,
perhabs as many as five hundred thousand.
So, we haven't lived the quarter
of the time that Homo erectus lived
on this planet.
Homo erectus was a marvelous creature.
Had the gratest brain the wolrd
have ever seen, maybe the universe
had ever seen.
The range of size of the Homo erectus brain
was about 950 CC, 75% of the size
of an adult Homo sapiens male
and roughly in the range of many
Homo sapiens female, and that proofs
to us that size doesn't matter.
The Homo erectus brain and body
were both phenomenal.
That was the first body Homo erectus
stood about as tall as we do.
They were probably aorund 150 pounds
and they were the first creatures
in the history of the universe capable of
persistance hunting or bipedal gate
enables us to run long distances and
cool down more efficiently than quadrupeds.
So, Homo erectus was actually able to
chase down its prey until the prey
either died of heat exhaustion or
Homo erectus beat it to dead with
a stone axe or club.
Homo erectus was a marvelous creature,
and they had many accomplishments.
Homo erectus made a variety of tools
starting with the Olduwan tools and,
they kept these tools and they
transported these tools and
they improved these tools, so they had
an upgrade: Acheulean tools
and they upgraded this to Levallois tools
and each tools was better than the one
before, but they weren't limited
to stone tools.
Homo erectus also made spears wooden
tools we have found hundreds of thousands
of year old spears, and they made
two kinds of sprears. They made spears
for throwing and spreasr for thrusting.
What does spears for thrusting mean?
It means you're a 5 ft 8 to 6 ft 1
Homo erectus male 150 lb
and you run up and stick that spear
into a mastodon.
These were first creatures, they were
brave creatures and they were
extremely intelligent creatures.
So, tools were one of the great
accomplishments that lets us know
what kind brain they were developing.
They also had representations of reality.
This is a 250,000 year old
partally naturally form and
partially artificially form by humans
by Homo erectus venus. It's called
the Venus of Berakhat Ram,
and there's some evidence said
it was dyed red on certain parts.
A shell found on the island of a found
in Java, with engravings on the shell
by Homo erectus.
Homo erectus wasn't simply a toolmaker.
they were both makers.
They traveled the oceans
2 million years ago.
How do we know this?
Well, the firts island that we find
evidence, is the island of Flores in
Indonesia, which would have been about
a 24 mile boat trip visible from land
about the size of the English chanel
exept that Flores was then and now
surrounded the most treacherous
and strongest oceans currents
in the world.
t