[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Paul D. Anderson]

dsimcha Wrote:

> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1 at digitalmars.com)'s article
> > Sometimes I think what if I were dropped naked back in time 20,000 years
> > ago? Assuming I didn't get promptly cooked for dinner, what technology
> > could I deliver that would have the most impact?
> > I can't decide between iron, agriculture, or writing. I suspect writing.
> > Every time humans got better at communicating, there was a huge increase
> > in the rate of progress.
> > speech
> > writing
> > printing
> > telegraph
> > telephone
> > internet
> 
> One that noone seems to mention, not only on this NG but in general, is birth
> control.  I think a pretty good argument can be made that a major reason for
> recent social advances is that, by only having 2-4 children per set of parents
> instead of 10-20, parents are able to invest much more in each child than they
> otherwise would be.  The end result is a much more educated society and one with
> enough surplus resources to look beyond its mere collective survival to actually
> improving its state of knowledge, comfort, etc.

That may be a reasonable argument from a modern standpoint, but for much of human history infant and childhood mortality was so high that the number of children born was much higher than the number that reached adulthood.

Oversimplifying, of course, but it was necessary to have a lot of children to have a reasonable expectation that there would be enough adults to provide for the family.