Human Social Evolution (in the face of civilization collapse)

I am currently doing some research on humans and their environment and I thought I would pose a question or two (I'll see how it goes) to those on this board on their view on human adaptability in the face of civilization collapse. I would like to focus my first question on whether humans, in the aftermath of a large scale collapse of 'civilization' will be able to retain knowledge and skills necessary for their survival? (think: Europe after collapse of Rome or Easter Island, roughly 1000 years after for this scenario.)ps. I would expect that some or a few humans would be able to adapt but that many of us would have a hard time figuring out how to make a bow or trap; light a fire without matches; make a 'home' comparable to those made by earlier indigenous populations; know how to cook using locally available food resources...Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add "(in the face of civilization collapse)" part to topic title.

Thread copied here from the Human Social Evolution (in the face of civilization collapse) thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

I wonder what about the end of a civilization would make matches stop working..

Nothing. They would run out, however.

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I hunt for the truth

My point being, even in the face of the fall of a civilization, we have access to resourses and information. Suppose we do run out of matches, what stops us from using modern know-how to start a fire another way?If only one in 1000 has the nessessary ability to accomplish a goal, all it takes is one to teach others.

Oh, it takes a lot more than that. Admittedly, the "other stuff" it takes are generally things we take for granted:In order to teach others anything you need:-an area in which no one is trying to steal anything/everything you own for their own personal survival
-an area in which you are largely free from 'mob mentality' taking over and destroying (even killing) any people you're trying to teach
-people who can understand "learning for the future" is more important than "living for the present" (difficult for hungry individuals in a lawless environment)None of these can be taken for granted in the face of civilization collapse.Now, onto the main question: I think the knowledge will be largely retained (although some loss is likly inescapable). At least for the short-term, anyway. The difficult part would be finding a stable environment that would support being able to use such knowledge. If people are all suddenly in need of providing their own food/water/shelter... I would suspect that mass panic/hysteria/destruction would become a higher priority and more people would be protecting themselves and trying to survive rather than worrying about preserving knowledge. But, my optimism comes from how much more infrastructure is currently in place then there was thousands of years ago. With more infrastructure in place, it should take longer to tear it down, therefore giving any re-surgeance of stability a longer time to get a foothold and start climbing the ladder again.I think it's all a matter of how difficult it is to regain some sense of a stable environment. Is the first "crazy fire" going to be in the Library? Or can the right people get lucky enough at being in the right place at the right time to organize a powerful, stable, group that can produce the necessary environment?

You misrepresent my statement, let me explain. When I said, "all it takes is one to teach others." I am making a referance to the first part of the sentance that says, "If only one in 1000 has the nessessary ability to accomplish a goal," and is not making any referance to anything else let alone any environmental factors.Never the less, I'll play along..First, lets define "civilization." ..It is safe to assume that the 3rd definition of civilization is applicable, considering Europe is only one specific place in the world. (correct me if my understanding is wrong.)Now, using this paradigm, lets observe a hypothedical situation where the colapse of civilization in Italy (Sticking with the Rome theme)has occured and address the questions. Considering our current technological state, sharing information (and to an extent skills) with the rest of the world is not only possible, but practiced almost world-wide. The question becomes not 'if' we can, but 'what' we can share. For example, is the knowledge freely given, or is it withheld?Now for your specific concerns; Do you assume there are no areas in which someone isn't trying to steal something 100% of the time? I certainly don't assume there are no areas in which someone is trying to steal something 100% of the time, and I certainly never said it would be an easy task. Do you assert that mobs and killing sprees will be so widespread for a thousand years? In your views of a post civilization meltdown, are people inherantly malicious and evil? Even in 'lawless' areas of the world, riots, mobs, killings, etc.. don't occure all the time.I would apply the same logic I used for the previous statement. And do you assume such principals would be lost to everyone in the event of civilizations fall? I would like to see your evidence to support this if this is the case. In many 'lawless' places in the world, such thinking is not absent from everyone. Do you presume I do? Explain.

Just to quickly throw a few bits in.This question has been covered many times over in the science fiction literature. However schlocky some of it can get, sci-fi especially in written form is mainly a "what if?" kind of fare.Also, I remember a thread about a year or so ago, most likely on this forum, which dealt with a similar question, though a bit more along the lines of "if you were the only person left, how long could you survive on what was left?".A lot of things to consider. Some consideration of how civilization had actually fallen after Rome would be needed. But let's just start with today. We are so interdependent on infrastructure, that most of what we could do to be "self-reliant" will go away when that infrastructure collapses (assuming that it will immediately). Concern has been expressed over lost how quickly skills and knowledge will be lost, but we have already lost so very much. As technology advanced, skilled workers have forgotten how everything was done before all this great technology. They know how to dug a tunnel with modern tech, but how did they do it before? Drill holes in rock? Easy now, but what did they do before electricity? (HINT: star bits, which you might still find at a hardware store, if you're lucky) So when electricity is no longer available and nobody knows about star bits anymore, then what? Ever use a router? (the woodworking kind) While working with my father (whose carpentry experience started before electric tools), I used his hand router on the job on one or two occasions and it's still in my garage. Anybody here ever use a hand router? Or even seen one or knew that one existed? That's what we'll need when electricity goes away. What is anybody's chances of finding one? Rather, you'll need to re-invent one, which will be loads of fun when you don't even have any idea what one might look like. Starting to get the idea?Also, I am reminded of one particularly stupid creationist claim: that "evolutionists" believe that the people who built the pyramids were "ape men" (not only was it expressed by a fairly well-known minor creationist, but it was also posted on Answers in Genesis). The truth is that, given the intelligence of gorillas (Hanabi-ko ("Fireworks Girl"), AKA "Koko" of National Geographic fame, had been tested at a human IQ of about 80 and only score so low because of species bias), we would expect ancient man at the beginning of history to be about equal in intelligence to us. The truth of the matter is that, because their technology did not have as much brute-force strength as ours, they had to work a lot smarter than we do.Eg, a German schoolmaster was angered by his students' bad behavior, so as punishment he gives them a massive arithmetic assignment: Add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. All the boys immediately start writing furiously, except for one boy who just sits there thinking. Then he writes a few things down and turns in his assignment, which was completely correct. The boy's name was Karl Friedrich Gau, one of the greatest of Germany's mathmaticians*. The point is that anyone of us given the same assignment would have programmed it into his computer to grind out the answer through sheer brute force. Take our computers away (as when the electricity infrastructure goes away) and we will be reduced to the level of Gau' hapless schoolmates.Ever read the sci-fi classic book, Earth Abides (c. late 40's)? The world human population had gotten to a point where nature puts it back under control as it does to other animal populations, through disease. Civilization collapses (the protagonist is in the mountains suffering from a rattlesnake bite, so he misses the actual collapse). He returns to his home in San Francisco and, after a time, a small community of survivors gather together, of which he ends up being the oldest survivor. They have children and grandchildren. They try to pass civilization on to their progeny, but it doesn't take. I've seen it with a foreign language: if the child doesn't see any use for it, it won't bother to learn it. Reading and all that other stuff didn't mean anything to the kids, so they never bothered to learn it -- the only exception was the protagonist's own son, who was sickly and died young. When the protagonist himself dies of old age, none of his culture has been passed on, though they do know how to tell whether a can of food had gone bad.Which brings up the main problem, which will not be with us, but rather with our offspring. We know what is important, but can we pass that on to our progeny? How many generations does it take to lose everything? Fewer than we may think.Remember, we are incredibly dependent on infrastructure, so we are incredibly vulnerable to loss of infrastructure. And, over 1000 years, we are talking about ten's of generations.Also, the difference with the modern scenario and the Dark Ages is that while the West fell into darkness, the East was still vital and keeping the ancient knowledge alive. Remember, it was the renewed contact with refugees from Byzantium and with the Arabs that helped to spark the rebirth of civilization, the Renaissance. Which brings up another question. What was the role of Christianity in the on-set of the Dark Ages, what with Christianity's dependence on its followers' ignorance? After all, it took the reintroduction of pagan knowledge to bring about the rebirth of Western civilization, the Renaissance in case some have forgotten.Carl Friedrich Gauss - Wikipedia[/url]:

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Another famous story, and one that has evolved in the telling, has it that in primary school his teacher, J.G. Bttner, tried to occupy pupils by making them add a list of integers. The young Gauss reputedly produced the correct answer within seconds, to the astonishment of his teacher and his assistant Martin Bartels. Gauss' presumed method, which supposes the list of numbers was from 1 to 100, was to realize that pairwise addition of terms from opposite ends of the list yielded identical intermediate sums: 1 + 100 = 101, 2 + 99 = 101, 3 + 98 = 101, and so on, for a total sum of 50 101 = 5050 (see arithmetic series and summation).[6] However whilst the method works, the incident itself is probably apocryphal; some, such as Joseph Rotman in his book A first course in Abstract Algebra, question whether it ever happened.

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To sum consecutive integers from 1 to n, the formula is (n (n+1) / 2). Now that's the smart way to work the problem.has beenmany authors have given your question a

Assert? About a hypothetical situation? I'm not asserting anything, I'm just trying to talk about the same thing the guy who started the thread is trying to talk about. I may certainly be wrong, but who knows? From the OP, I take it that he's attempting to discuss something extremely catastrophic. Something that kills anywhere from 50% to 100% of the local civilization.

Indeed, you have.. I'm more asking for a clarification on these statements then anything else. As am I, which is why I attempted to explain my understanding via a model of a post-civilization experience, I fully admit I may be wrong but this is how I currently understand the scenario. Then my paradigm still fits, unless I've missed something. Here is where I come into a road block, however..Without knowing how the civilization fell in the first place, how can the question be addressed beyond this point?

I'm afraid my time on the internet is limited today, so I will not be able to respond to your message until I have a bit more time. You did raise a few good points and a few I would like to contest once I have the time.Until then..

Um.. with all the contextual jumping around I don't really know if you're attempting to talk about something specific or just talking for the sake of arguing in general.Also, since this isn't a topic I'm overly attached to in the first place, I don't have the patience or motivation to address the confusion. So I'm going to entirely concede whatever-it-is-you're-after and leave it with "I don't really care, you win."I do entirely agree with your final rhetorical question, though:

Contextual jumping around? It may be my perspective speaking, but I don't see how I was doing said 'jumping'. If thats what you percieved, then I apologise, but my interest was genuine.I left the model vague for the specific reason that the quote you made of me addresses, I was hoping the author of the OP would fill in some blanks.If you are leaving the topic, I certainly don't consider it a win.. I was attempting to pick your brain, not win a contest.Good luck!

I absolutly agree.. Now this makes things a bit more interesting, now not only do we have the fall of civilization in our scenario, but now we have the demise of infrastructure. For the sake of argument, whatever occured caused the immediate fall of infrastructure.. Yes, and if were speaking of personal or unique information and skills, then I agree. The differance is in our technological age, there is very little knowledge that has not breached the digital realm, for that matter, I know of no skill that is not practiced in almost every other country in the world. I fail to see how using a computer to solve an equation is 'sheer brute force' but I do get your point, I just disagree. I have come across few people who could not perform at least basic math without the use of a computer. One of the benifits of public education. No, I haven't. I will soon now that I've head of it. Thank you for that.Unfortunatly, in the story you described, unless I misread, this fall of civilization was on a global scale where as this paradigm is on a relitive local scale. I don't see why not, considering the local infrastructure may be gone, but the global infrastructure is still existing. It seems to me that it would be just a matter of time. The first few generations may forget much, but it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world presses its influance. I agree, however, like I pointed out earlier, there is still an infrastructure on the global scale. Over a 1000 years is a long time for the rest of the world to not have any influance over the lost civilization. Are you forgetting this paradigm is only a relitivly local event? The rest of the world still exists. One could only guess.. I wouldn't even know where to begin addressing this train of thought. I'm afraid you've lost me..

Pardon that I start off out of sequence. To quote Emily Litella: "Never mind!"That was a remnant of the first pass at an earlier paragraph that I overlooked and failed to clean up. What it became was:

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This question has been covered many times over in the science fiction literature.

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If you're hep to the jive, then you already know t'ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. If you're not, then the meaning of that swing song reference from 1939 should still be self-evident.I'm a computer programmer by profession. Part of our academic training is studying the efficiency of algorithms. There are many problems that would take enormous amounts of time to solve, even with our most powerful computers ... if we were to attempt them with brute-force methods. To attempt those kinds of problems, we need to be smarter about it.More basically, you do not just use a computer, but rather you tell it what to do and how to do it. That's what a program is. And even if you yourself did not actually write the program you're running, somebody did write that program that tells the computer every single thing to do. And we can be smart about what we're telling that computer to do, or we can be dumber than a sack full of hammers. And for some problems, like this one (the summation of integers from 1 to 100), it doesn't really make much difference. BTW, the sack-of-hammers approaches are what we call "brute force methods", which are, let's face it, how most amateur programmers would hack it together.But I had explicitly stated the point I was making, right there at the end of the paragraph you qs'd. Here, I will bold the punch line:

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The point is that anyone of us given the same assignment would have programmed it into his computer to grind out the answer through sheer brute force. Take our computers away (as when the electricity infrastructure goes away) and we will be reduced to the level of Gau' hapless schoolmates.

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And by being "reduced to the level of Gau' hapless schoolmates", I specifically meant that we would be scribbling away frantically with pencil and paper (or whatever we're left with). When we have the technology to do the brute force work for us so rapidly that who cares?, then we can very well afford to be dumb as a bag of hammers and we will get away with it every time! But when that technology is taken away from us, then we can no longer afford to be dumb. When all we have going for us is the sweat of our own brows, then we need to start doing everything a lot smarter.Now, a practical story of over-reliance on technology and how we fall apart when it suddenly disappears. One day while I was in line at a computer store (Micro Center in Tustin), the store lost all power. Management's solution (the right one, BTW) was to bring more people in to the check-outs and hand them calculators to add everything up, factor in sales tax, and write every transaction down so that the computers could get updated when power returned. But their trained, experienced clerks looked at those calculators and threw up their hands; they had no idea how to figure sales tax on those things! Well, being 57, I remember back when clerks didn't even have that! Back in the day, beside every cash register was a small printed chart that broke down the sales tax over a dollar and gave the sales tax for multiples of a dollar. That way, the clerk only had to look up and add two numbers to get the sales tax for any transaction.Similarly, there's giving change. The clerks need their computer cash register to tell them how much change to give. My mother once taught me the non-tech method she had learned while working for the post office in the late 1930's: start with the amount of the purchase, count out the pennies up to a multiple of dimes or nickels, then count dimes or nickels up to a quarter boundary, quarters up to a dollar level, ones up to a higher denomination, those higher denominators to a next higher, up until you arrive at the amount the customer had given you. Very simple, but how many clerks know it? Well, with our technology doing it all for them, why do they need to know it?Nowadays when kids learn logrithms and trig functions, they use computers and scientific calculators (which are actually special-purpose computers). When I learned those things, we used tables; that is all we had to work with. Therefore, we studied and practiced long and hard to learn interpolation, a technique of approximating the value we're looking for between the two bracketing values from the table. Do the kids today learn interpolation? I doubt it very much, because they don't need to know it. When they lose their calculators and computers, then they will not only have to suddenly reinvent interpolation, but they'll have to try to hunt down a book of tables real fast.Oh, no book of tables? OK, we'll have to reinvent that too. Well, at least the Maclaurin series (a special case of the Taylor series) should still be easy enough to look up. Then they'll just have to do lots and lots of calculations by hand. Know how we used to do massive iterative calculations? Get a room full of girls (young women; you know, the low-paid types) into a room sitting at desks arranged in a rectangular array. At each desk they had a mechanical calculator. Each girl performed a single calculation and passed her result to the girl in front of her who then performed the next. Over and over again (which is to say, iteratively). Know what "computer" meant before the 1940's? One of those girls.Also on the topic of lost skills, math classes today are very different from the classes in the past. A very basic part of math class for every single year was ... mental calculations. You would spend time in class going through exercises in which you performed complex mental calculations. Why? Because when you grew up and went out to work, you would very well need to perform such mental calculations in daily life. Know what else you learned? Math tricks. Tricks that mathematicians had discovered over the centuries to simplify many calculations and as ways to check a calculation. Any math tricks being taught in school now? Why not? They don't need them what with their calculators and computers. So when that technology disappears, they're going to have to be very lucky to find any old books that will teach them those tricks again. Assuming, of course, that they even realize that those tricks had ever existed to begin with.OK, I guess the wine is kicking in sooner than I thought it would. To summarize, my basic points were:1. Before we did everything the way we do now, we did it some other way. If we lose our current technology, then in order to do the same things, we will need to revert back to that older way.2. Problem is, nobody has been taught that older way. For the most part, nobody has even been taught that that older way even ever existed.3. Our current technology allows us to solve too many problems with the brute force of our machines. The ancients who did not have such machines had to do everything smarter, whereas with our machines we can do things very stupidly and still be able to do the job. When we lose our current technology, we will suddenly have to learn how to work a lot smarter.4. Problem is not only having to suddenly be a lot smarter, but also discovering the smart solutions to problems. It's not just a matter of being smarter, but also of knowing the techniques for doing all those things. The first time around, it took us generations to figure all that out and now we have lost it within a couple/few generations. How long will it take us to relearn all that?Kind of just because I'm bordering on stream-of-consciousness mode now, but also because it touches on rediscovering lost technology. In a gaming magazine a couple decades ago, there was once a short story called "Half the Battle." It wasn't the best sci-fi short story by any stretch of the imagination (hey, look at where it was published!), but it has stuck with me. In a post-apocalpse future, generations of archaeologists were digging through the ruins of our current civilization searching for information about the technologies they had lost. Information about the steam engine which seemed unimaginable, but "knowing it can be done is half the battle". And then generations later they dig up plans for a Messerschmidt plane whose engine far outstripped the steam engine at an incredibly small fraction of the weight, but "knowing it can be done is half the battle". Then finally, a new discovery of incredibly advanced technology unlike anything else they had dug up. Very sketchy in the details, but "knowing it can be done is half the battle". It took them two hundred years with many false starts but they kept driving forward with the knowledge that "knowing it can be done is half the battle". The story ends with the first-person perspective belonging to the commanding officer of the product of that advanced technology as he gives the historic command: "Helm, ahead warp factor one!"