From the time 10 thousand years ago mankind developed agrarian settled societies, a general form of organization came into being.  A pyramid with a relatively small ruling class at the top and the masses at the bottom.  Royalty, military and religious leaders backed by their staffs and bureaucracies directed the lives of those below.  Needed Artisans often had a special rung.  The wild card were the merchants who facilitated the exchange of goods within the society and with others.  Altogether they constituted a relativity small minority, supported by a base of the multitudes that provided the basic substance of life.  Whatever we gained “more” through trade, increased labor or innovation the “more” mostly went to to those toward the top of the pyramid. The upper classes gained in better food & drink, shelter, clothing and adornment and maybe most important time.  From 10,000BC to 1,500 AD, the masses across the world lived relatively short lives with the barest of necessities while providing the basics for  mankind. Continue reading →

In the Musical “Oliver” the title urchin asks simply for “More”.  Over our long history the vast majority of humanity, having “More” than the bare basics of food, clothing and shelter was a dream.  Sometimes they didn’t even have even those and failed survive.  Anatomically modern homo sapiens  appeared in Africa  about 200,000 years ago. If we go by the introduction of The Big Bang Theory, we think mankind’s progress was  pretty straight line march from there.   Actually it wasn’t till 12,000 year ago that we got around to domesticating plants and animals to have agrarian societies.  It it is only in the last few centuries a good part of humanity has risen beyond subsistence.  Given the history of mankind, is this real and sustainable progress or just an aberration.  If we use as a baseline our earliest forebears we can determine what constitutes “More.”  Even though being blessed with a better brain and opposable thumbs, they spent their time much like the rest of the animal kingdom, finding food and  shelter, resting and procreating.  All they had to work with was their own physical abilities.  In order to actually have more required first of all was taking time from there basic pursuits and investing it thinking of new ways to improve and physically putting it into practice.  Better hunting and gathering tools and practices, fire, domesticating dogs and then other animals and finally agriculture to name some milestones on the way to “More”.

Unfortunately, it took enormous amounts of time to achieve to these breakthroughs.  Even though our ancestors had some tools 2.6 million years ago, it took another 800,000 years just to get to fire or 400 times the the birth of Christ to the present.  Given this timeline major innovation was a rare occurrence.  Even when it happened it often was lost and had to be reinvented again and again.  Just because something was discovered or invented in one place didn’t mean was duplicated elsewhere.  Innovation was hardly early on the path to more. Continue reading →