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  • From: Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Technology
  • Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 08:28:08 -0800

At 11/19/2006, you wrote:
The metal worker recorded in Genesis, was quite a long time before Columbus.
Something like 2000 years?

Agriculture started about 10,000 years ago. The Bronze age started about 5000 years ago and the iron age was about 3000 years ago.

The American natives were still knapping flints in 1492 and for years
afterward...perhaps as late as the mid-1800s.

Stone tools were in use until cheap trade goods started flooding the market. Metal knives were some of the first goods requested followed by metal cooking pots. Scrap metal had a very high trade value.



Don Bowen Awl Knotted Up KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com
My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

I am omnivagant.
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The start of agricultural can be traced to about 10,000 years ago in the middle east. It is an area of several plants and animals that could be domesticates, sheep, goats, wheat, some peas, etc. The growth of agriculture lead to the growth of many less desirable institutions such as churches and governments. Many empires rose and fell using stone tools.

The bronze age started about 5-6000 years ago. Before that there were some metal workers beating metal into decorative items but as pottery workers learned to control the use of fire and heat, it became possible to work metal. Learning the alloy process lead to the bronze age and an increase in metal weapons. Only later were metal tools more common.

About 3-4000 years ago further increases in how to use heat and work with alloys lead to the Hitites learning how to manipulate iron ore into even better tools and weapons. The roman destruction of the Hitites scattered iron knowledge through the migrations of the Celts. Steel was a rare and poorly understood part of the iron mongers art. It was not until the harnessing of the steam engine and the energy in coke about 150 years ago that steel became so common that it is often just thrown in the trash when objects are worn out.

Oil as a source of cheap energy started 150 years ago. Cheap oil is drying up as we are watching it and will not be a major source of energy in 50 years.


Don Bowen Awl Knotted Up KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com
My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

I am omnivagant.
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Has technology made us any happier? Instead of taking some joy in what
technology brings us, it appears to me that instead there is only the creeping fear of being without it. Yet we often mistake that unrealized (as yet) fear for happiness.

Happiness is one of those words like good and bad that challenge simple and universal clarification. Each of us here is communicating via what I still see as magical technology. Each of us may judge whether we are happier with it or would be less happy without it. Were we happier before or after? If keyboards become impossible because of lack of oil, will we sob? Nah, we'll figure out how to make them of bamboo. We will not give them up until a superior typing method is developed.

For me, the Internet contributes to my happiness but is not essential to it. Information is power; better decisions are made with better information. Whether we are merely titillated or actually empowered by the plethora of information provided by the Internet, I feel that few of us would willingly give it up.










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