Prehistoric Morons

Our prehistoric ancestors were simple people, speaking in grunts and chipping away at rocks

It is a miracle the human race survived at all. With their limited intelligence, primitive mindset and total lack of technology, their survival under some of the most impossible circumstances most have been dumb luck. Any evidence of global trading from prehistoric times should be attributed to nothing more than the random stumbling about of simpletons. Their megalithic monuments are just a product of brute force and stubbornness. It’s a good thing we modern humans have evolved so far beyond our brutish, stupid beginnings and are so much smarter than our primitive ancestors.

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Let’s imagine, just for a moment, that you were transported back in time, to the world our pre-historic ancestors lived in. Surely you, with your superior intellect and sophisticated technological knowledge would soon be able to lead those poor dimwits out of their Stone Age into an Age of Enlightenment.

Or would you?

How much of the technology you have come to rely on do you actually understand? Do you know how to make even the most basic of the tools that are part and parcel of our modern world?

And how resilient are you, really, without any of those tools readily at hand? Would you be able to find and prepare food straight from Nature? Would you be able to navigate dense forests, vast open steppes, and even medium-sized seas without your technological crutches? Do you know how to carve a megalith out of a sheer cliff face, let alone how to transport it for 100s of kilometers, and then place it upright in a way that will last for millennia?

Before you assume you would easily become the King of the Stone Age people, consider this: not only did they survive and often thrive in situations you would perish in within minutes of your arrival; they did so using mostly their own brains, cunning, muscle-power, and verbally transmitted lore. All of the daily challenges you need modern technology for — technology invented by others, made by others, and kept running by others — they would have to find solutions for themselves.

Who is the clever one now? You, who can Google anything you need to know, stay in touch with 100’s of friends you never actually meet, and program a microwave to cook the perfect frozen meal? Or the ‘primitive’ Stone Age human, who had to remember 1000s of lines of verbal tradition, could survive solely on what Nature provided, and still managed to traverse the globe, and leave monuments that will outlast almost anything modern humans have produced?