Rapid Human Technology Advance

[Byebyebadman]

Why have humans advanced so rapidly in the last 100 years compared to the previous say 2000 years?

Also why haven't any animals advanced in intelligence in the same time period?

[Denton]

Humans went to school,Animals did not. Sorted!!.

[Calibax]

Probably mainly due to communication advances. 2000 years ago the only real way to impart knowledge was by word of mouth among your own village or surrounding villages. Then came writing, printing, better sea and land transport, postal services, telegraph , radio, television. satellite communication and the internet so that advances that lead to further advances can be rapidly spread.
Animals have not yet learned how to talk!

[EDDIE51]

Humans have not advanced in intelligence since we evolved as Homo Sapiens tens of thousands of years ago.
What has changed is technology.
If a human baby from 20,000 years ago could be brought into the 21st century their intelligence would be exactly the same as a baby born today.
Your question suggests that Shakespeare or Aristotle were less 'advanced' than a person born today, which is simply untrue.

[Byebyebadman]

What i meant was we seem to have advanced so much more in the last 100 years than the 2000 years proceeding

[Old_Geezer]

The more you know the more you discover. The limit tending to be the number of folk society can afford to fund discovering & inventing things. Also the more educated a society becomes the more they can understand. Greater prosperity means more resources to investigate rather than just survive. Greater trust in the scientific method rather than ancient myths and traditional knowledge/belief helps also.

[EDDIE51]

In the last 100 years ,electronic communication has been developed.
Telegraph ,Radio , Telephone , Television , internet , mobile phones That has allowed us to have vastly more information about the world around us. That alone has made an immense difference.
100 years ago electricity generation and distribution was still new, most places still had no electrical supply . That meant only candles or oil lamps ( Gas mains were even rarer than electricity mains) for illumination. The entire world, inculding inside homes, really was dark at night, so dark that there was nothing we could do at night apart from sleep. Human activity was restricted to the daylight hours. Only electricity has allowed us to become a 24 hour society.
Just 200 or so years ago there was no land transport apart from horses/ donkeys and other animals and no sea transport apart from sailing ships. Very few people had been far from the place where they were born. In fact most people were born, lived their entire life and died within 30 miles of their birth place.
Those are the things that have advanced in the last 100 / 200 years not human intelligence.

[atalanta]

How do you know no animals have advanced recently ? If they had become more intelligent, that means they would be able to conceal their increased intelligence from us. One of these days we might be in for a really big surprise !

[hc4361]

This is a very interesting question. It used to bother me that such a simple machine as a bicycle was not in common use before the mid 1880s but of course it was the development of rubber for tyres that made cycles a feasible and popular form of transport. They must have been hellishly uncomfortable before then especially as the roads and paths would have challenging.

[New Judge]

The biggest and most difference between humans and other animals is the written word (or more lately the electronic word).

Animals can only learn from their parents and siblings and what they absorb in their lifetime is lost when they die. Human development is incremental with each new generation having the benefit of all the recorded knowledge of their ancestors.

[Old_Geezer]

Other animals have no need or opportunity to advance in technology. Their adopted strategies for their species to survive don't tend to rely on greater intelligence. It's better camouflage, or sharper teeth, or more muscle, or being poisonous to eat, or venomous attack, or faster speed, or whatever.

[youngmafbog]

//If a human baby from 20,000 years ago could be brought into the 21st century their intelligence would be exactly the same as a baby born today. //


But would it? We continually evolve so it is perfectly feasible our learning ability is matching our new thirst for knowledge.