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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8337112" data-attributes="member: 82106">It is not that I think the steel blade is 'useless in the rain forest'. It is probably more useful than the ones made from local materials, up to a point. Again, what I am saying is that effectiveness and sophistication aren't the same thing. It takes at least as much skill, and probably a good bit of social organization, to create a stone tool crafting culture on a par with those seen today in remote areas, or in the late paleolithic. Look at the fine craftsmanship. Surely it took years, maybe decades, of instruction and practice to achieve. It also required long-distance trade for good raw materials in at least some cases. Is that 'more primitive' than building a blast furnance, etc.? I think it produces a somewhat less effective product, but there are, as discussed in later posts to yours between [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] and myself, some fairly good explanations for why capital formation and production has occurred in some areas and not others. This ties back to my point about biological evolution. In terms of culture/society, every one of them has evolved through the same time frame. it isn't clear to me why we would assume that one made 'more progress' than another, and is thus 'more advanced'. Nor do I think the western world has simply 'discarded' certain ideas. I mean, maybe they have discarded some, but a Medieval European farmer wouldn't have solved the Sahel's problems either. It relied on knowing how to use certain specific tree species and where, when, and how to plant them. This is clearly locally determined knowledge. It was ignored simply because westerners held local knowledge in contempt. It is just as silly to imagine modern hunter-gatherers coming to England and telling the people there how to knap flint and ignoring their ability to smelt iron and make steel.</blockquote>

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