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

[Walter Bright]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> Even writing has its problems. What are you going to write on? Bark? 
>> Animal hides? How are you going to make paper? Ink? A hunter-gatherer 
>> tribe may find it not worth the effort, and so the writing will not 
>> "take".
> 
> The Maya wrote on treated Birch Bark, which apparently worked great 
> until Spanish Missionaries burned all their libraries :-)  Sumerians 
> used fired clay tablets for writing, and treated animal hides were 
> pretty popular until relatively recently (Vellum, for instance). 
> Vegetable dyes would make decent ink, if needed.

It's the "treating" that's the problem. Do you know how to treat animal 
hides? I sure don't! I saw the process once on TV and it looked rather 
involved.


> The bigger problem with writing is the difficulty in transporting the 
> books or whatever, assuming a hunter-gatherer culture.  Until 
> agriculture, I can't writing being used much outside of "graffiti" on 
> cave walls, trees, etc.  From your date of 20,000 BC, I believe you 
> predate agriculture by at least a few thousand years (I recall hearing 
> speculation about Human settlements in the teens somewhere).

You're right that a settlement is probably a precursor to viable writing.

Even smelting iron has a lot of problems. It may take a lot of trial and 
error to get it to work, time you may not have :-) before they spit and 
roasted you for dinner!

Could you even recognize iron ore?

But all you really need to produce is a serviceable hatchet, because a 
few of those will give your tribe a distinct advantage.

This would all make for a great scifi story!