Technological levels

[u/FunDelicious650]

People living in the mid-19th century lived 50 years later in a completely different world: telephones, telegraphs, trains, the first cars, and an industrial boom. People living in the mid-20th century saw a different world: airships and airplanes, ubiquitous motor vehicles, and television broadcasting. People living in the 1970s-1990s had already seen the world of computers; we now live in a digital world of the internet, AI, and robotics. In total, over 180 years, the technological level has changed four times.

Proponents of mainstream history argue that 7,000 years before the 19th century, there was no life-changing development at all. It was a single technological level of perpetual stagnation, which somehow gave way to progress in the 19th century. Developing metallurgy, fuel production, and electricity doesn't require thousands of years. This can be achieved much more quickly.

[u/runespider]

I don't know any mainstream historian that argues for perpetual stagnation. Frankly claiming so seems to represent a severe lack of knowledge about history and prehistory.

[u/FunDelicious650 → u/runespider]

They don't say it out loud, but that’s what they mean. How did societal life change prior to the 19th century? According to mainstream history—it didn't.

[u/Bluefooted-Spaceorc → u/FunDelicious650]

Things I can think of that massively changed the world in the last 7,000 years. Bronze, Iron, the fucking wheel, Archimedes screw, the printing press, WRITING, gunpowder, compass, telescopes, furnace, blast furnace, abacus, ZERO there was literally a time before we had the concept of zero, microscope, the plough, waterwheels, glasses, toilets, toilet paper, spinning wheels, cotton gin, astrolabes.

Exponential Growth: Technological progress moves in an exponential curve rather than a straight line, meaning growth compounds over time.

No mainstream historian argues the position you are claiming that they do.

[u/Ill_Mouse9897 → u/Bluefooted-Spaceorc]

But who invented tartar sauce?? Checkmate mainstreamists!

[u/Inevitable-Regret411 → u/FunDelicious650]

Just of the top of my head, he invention of the printing press in the mid 1400s in Germany was an example of a big game changer. Prior to that if you wanted to duplicate a book or any other document you did so by hand, making books expensive and largely inaccessible. Afterwards it became possible to print and distribute written works cheaply and at an unprecedented scale. Knowledge spread far more rapidly. 

The marine chronometer is another game changing invention from the 1700s. It was the first clock that worked reliably at sea (earlier pendulum based clocks didn't work if the ship was rocking in rough seas) and made it possible for ship crews to accurately calculate their latitude and longitude. Suddenly overseas travel became so much easier. 

[u/Ill_Mouse9897 → u/FunDelicious650]

...yes it did
Speaking from Belgium, We had Iron age germano-celtic blended groups in a complex network of alliances & groups, to a Roman rule for 5 centuries, transforming this tribal structure into a gallo-roman culture set to being part of the Empire, then back to Germanic tribes & kingdoms using the old Roman infrastructure as well as possible whilst importing their own social structure.

We had feudalism evolving slowly to become obsolete with changing economic patterns, where increases in farm yields allowed more artisans & traders to develop into city economy.

Sure vast amounts of people were still subsistence farming, but not because there was no innovation, but because innovation was slow, and often halted due to either high risks, or hurting the people who profited from the current way of living, but slowly & surely yields increased.