The Handful of Prehistoric Geniuses Who Powered Humanity’s Technological Revolution (And What Their Inventions Were)

During the first million years of human evolution, technologies slowly changed.

About three million years ago, our ancestors made chipped stone flakes and rudimentary grinders. Two million years ago, hand axes.

A million years ago, early humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty.

Later, 500,000 years ago, technological change accelerated when spearheads appeared, the production of fire, axes, beads and bows.

This technological revolution was not the work of a single people. The innovations arose in different groups (modern Homo sapiens, primitive sapiens, possibly even Neanderthals) and then spread.

Many key inventions were one of a kind. Rather than being invented by different people independently, they were discovered once and then shared.

That implies that some smart people created many of the great inventions in history. And they weren’t all modern humans.

The tip of the spear

500,000 years ago in southern Africa, early Homo sapiens for the first time tied stone blades to wooden spears, creating the spearhead.

Spearheads were revolutionary as weaponry and as the first “compound tools,” combining components.

The spearhead spread, appearing 300,000 years ago in East Africa and the Middle East, and then 250,000 years ago in Europe, wielded by Neanderthals.

That pattern suggests that the spearhead was gradually passed from one people to another, from Africa to Europe.

Burning fire

400,000 years ago, traces of fire, including charcoal and burned bones, became common in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

It happened around the same time everywhere, rather than randomly in disconnected places, suggesting an invention, then rapid spread.

The usefulness of fire is obvious and keeping a fire burning is easy. However, starting a flame is more difficult and was probably the main barrier.

If so, the widespread use of fire probably marked the invention of friction fire: a stick that is rotated against another piece of wood until combustion begins, a technique still used by hunter-gatherers.

Curiously, the oldest evidence of the regular use of fire comes from Europe, then inhabited by Neanderthals. Did Neanderthals rule fire first? Why not?

Their brains were as big as ours; They used them for something, and living through the Ice Age winters in Europe, Neanderthals needed fire more than African Homo sapiens.

The ax

270,000 years ago in central Africa, hand axes began to disappear, replaced by a new technology, the core ax.

They looked like chunky little hand axes, but they were radically different tools.

Microscopic scratches show that core axes they were tied to wooden handles, which formed an ax with a handle.

Axes quickly spread across Africa, then carried by modern humans to the Arabian Peninsula, Australia, and ultimately Europe.

Ornamentation

The oldest accounts are 140,000 years old and come from Morocco.

They were made drilling snail shells and then stringing them with string.

At that time, archaic Homo sapiens inhabited North Africa, so its creators were not modern humans.

The beads later appeared in Europe, 115,000-120,000 years ago, used by Neanderthals, and were finally adopted by modern humans in southern Africa 70,000 years ago.

Bow and arrow

The oldest arrowheads appeared in southern Africa more than 70,000 years ago, probably made by the ancestors of the Bushmen, who have lived there for 200,000 years.

The arcs then spread to modern humans in East Africa, South Asia 48,000 years ago, Europe 40,000 years ago, and finally Alaska and the Americas 12,000 years ago.

Neanderthals never adopted bows, but the timing of the bow’s appearance means that they probably Homo sapiens used it against them.

Trading technology

It is not impossible that people have invented similar technologies in different parts of the world around the same time, and in some cases this must have happened.

But the simplest explanation for the archaeological data we have is that instead of reinventing technologies, many breakthroughs were made just once and then spread widely.

After all, taking on fewer innovations requires fewer assumptions. But how did the technology spread?

It is unlikely that prehistoric people traveled long distances across lands held by hostile tribes (although there were obviously large migrations over generations), so African humans probably did not know the Neanderthals of Europe, or vice versa.

Instead, technology and ideas spread, transferred from one band and tribe to the next, and the next, in a vast chain that linked the modern Homo sapiens of southern Africa with the archaic humans of North and East Africa and the Neanderthals of Europe.

The conflict may have fueled the exchange, with people stealing or capturing tools and weapons.

Native Americans, for example, obtained horses by capturing them from the Spanish.

But it is likely that people often limited themselves to exchange technologiessimply because it is safer and easier.

Even today modern hunter-gatherers, lacking money, still trade; Hadzabe hunters trade honey for iron arrowheads made by neighboring tribes, for example.

Archeology shows that this trade is ancient. Ostrich eggshell beads have been found from South Africa, up to 30,000 years old, more than 300 kilometers from where they were made.

200,000-300,000 years ago, archaic Homo sapiens in East Africa used obsidian tools obtained 50-150 kilometers away, farther than modern hunter-gatherers typically travel.

Finally, we must not overlook the human generosity; some exchanges may have been simply gifts.

To be sure, human history and prehistory were full of conflict, but then, as now, tribes may have had peaceful interactions (treaties, marriages, friendships) and may simply have gifted technology to their neighbors.

Geniuses of the Stone Age

The pattern seen here – single origin, then spread of innovations – has another notable implication. Progress may have been highly dependent on individuals, rather than being the inevitable result of larger cultural forces.

Consider the arch. It is so useful that its invention seems obvious and inevitable. But if it were really obvious, we would see bows invented repeatedly in different parts of the world.

But the Native Americans did not invent the bow, nor did the Australian aborigines nor the people of Europe and Asia.

Instead, it seems that one clever Bushman invented the bow and then everyone else adopted it.

The invention of that hunter would change the course of human history for thousands of years, determining the destiny of peoples and empires.

The prehistoric pattern looks like what we have seen in historical times.

Some innovations developed repeatedly: agriculture, civilization, calendars, pyramids, mathematics, writing, and beer were invented independently around the world, for example.

Certain inventions may be obvious enough to emerge in a predictable way in response to people’s needs.

But many key innovations (the wheel, the gunpowder, the printing press, the stirrups, the compass) seem to have been invented only once, before becoming general.

And likewise, a handful of people (Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers, James Watt, Archimedes) played a huge role in driving our technological evolution, implying that highly creative people had a huge impact.

That suggests that the odds of hitting a major technological innovation are low.

Perhaps it was not inevitable that fire, spearheads, axes, beads, or bows were discovered when they were discovered.

Then, as now, one person could literally change the course of history, with nothing but an idea.