Who would have ever thought that prehistoric man had even an ounce of intelligence?

I'm not talking about prehistory as in Egypt, during the ages of massive empires and such. I'm talking about Homo Erectus, over 200,000 years ago. When people were in the process of evolving from apes to humans.

Ever heard of flint knapping? I have. I'd actually read about it more than ever in THE EARTH CHILDREN SERIES by Jean Auel. Good books, gotta tell ya. Jean Auel's characters were Cro Magnons, coexisting in Europe with the now extinct Neanderthals approximately 30,000 years ago during the ice age. The hero, Jondalar, was a sophisticated flint knapper.

But that was 30,000 years ago, the dawn of man as we know it. 200,000 years ago, we wouldn't even recognize homo erectus as being our own species. And yet they knapped flint, obsidian, and other materials into rather useful tools. My professor told me before the video he showed us to demonstrate how these people built the tools they used to survive that it was outstanding, and required as much intelligence as it took for us to transport a man to the moon.

I didn't believe him.

I can't really describe how cool it is, watching someone build tools with a regular rock and another rock. I couldn't have ever imagined that it could be so complicated, and require such an amount of intellect and planning. All you have to do is hit it the wrong way and the entire tool you were attempting to build would shatter into a million pieces. In order to shape it into a useful tool that could cut meat, skin hides--or whatever survival demanded at that particular moment--it required understanding the physics and technique of flint knapping incredibly well. The archaeologist conducting the demonstration would indicate the angles and amount of pressure needed before he struck his tool and removed flakes, and it seemed to be rather clear that the people designing and crafting these tools weren't dummies.

And yes, I believe that creating those techniques took as much intelligence as it took to land a man on the moon. See, everything in society builds up. Meaning one person discovers one thing, another learns it and then with the previous knowledge can discover something on top of that--which might be considerably more sophisticated, but couldn't have done that without the previous discoveries. Therefore, discovering how to build a tool without any previous knowledge and discovering how to build a spaceship to go to the moon with previous knowledge are about the same thing.

Not to say that one person one day just decided to build a tool and did it in one go. I'm sure the homo erectuses got in their little caves together and worked on tools. But that's how it's always been. With any technology. People work together to do wonders, not alone.

Yay for the homo erectuses! Or is it the homo erecti?