A Long View of Change
Rick Potts, in Humanity’s Descent, tells us that our ancestors, the
mid-Pleistocene hominid, spent one million years with the same technology:
hand-flaked handaxes. Handaxes litter the Olorgesailie rift valley in
Southern Kenya; though each handaxe is unique, made of different types of
stone, each one is fashioned in exactly the same manner. The tool of choice,
the only tool, for 1,000,000 years!
As Potts says, "In our present world of rapid-fire technological advance, it
is unthinkable that any single manufactured item could endure, much less
remain dominant, for so long." (page 139). The reign of the handaxe set
against our era of innovation, our spinning out new ideas daily, maybe
hourly, gives even greater perspective on the accelerated pace of change that
we all feel, see, contribute to. One issue of the New York Times contains
more information than any man or woman of the Middle Ages would have gathered
in a lifetime.
Still, heft a stone in the palm of your hand . . .feel good? feel familiar?
