Sunday, September 23, 2012

Human history and growth


Ending the week in Math class our homework was to write a paper on the History of Pi. When I started the assignment this weekend I realized that not only is the history of how humans came to be extremely interesting and unique, but also the history of how the things humans have created may be even more interesting. The fact that humans could adapt to the evolving ecosystem and still manage to out compete and live many other species is an amazing accomplish in itself. However, the fact that humans could accomplish all that they have in surviving and then develop complicated mathematical problems and solutions from nothingness is even more amazing.

Some believe that the history of pi started over 4000 years ago with the Egyptians through their pyramid construction. It is interesting that over 12,000 years ago homo sapiens began to develop from basically nothingness and it only took them around 8,000 years to finally start putting together technical math sequences such as pi. While 8,000 years may seem like an awfully long and dragged out time to finally start putting together mathematical sequences when you break it down and start to analyze the time that it took homo sapiens to simply stay alive and out compete other species it is an amazing accomplishment that should not go unnoticed.


Our history as a unique species is so fascinating and diverse that someone should never get bored learning about it. There are so many different parts to our history that are being discovered still that bring us closer to our ancestors. Sometimes I think it is easier to think about the development of human species as a game show such as Survivor. There were small bands of people who were in remote locations like the tropics or the middle of African forests. They had little to no materials to hunt with leaving them to gathering local fruits, plants, and vegetables to live off of. The foods that they did find lacked many nutrients that all humans have a necessity for making them weaker and malnourished directly leaving them vulnerable to disease and easy fast deaths, or eliminations from the game show. However, once one tribe figured out an efficient way to gather and hunt providing enough nutrients and nourishments for their tribe or band of people they were able to out compete other bands or teams. These teams or bands that figured out how to advance in the game or in life were able to reproduce and generate the following generation that followed the same techniques that could supplement a whole community. These communities that could survive in such harsh environments successfully is the same as the one winner of the Survivor show. That winner represents someone who outlived, outplayed, and outwitted all other contestants or bands of people leaving that winner the ability to spread their hints or secrets on what it takes to be successful, similar to oral traditions passed from successful tribe to tribe extending that species life.

2 comments:

  1. I love your analogy comparing the development of humans to the game show survivor... so true! Very interesting and detailed post, nice job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If it took 8,000 years to get Pi down and more recently 4,000 years to define the general theory of relativity and quantum theory. Then what will happen in the next 2,000 years. You posts got me to stop and just realize how amazing it is that in the millions of years of life on this planet in the smallest fraction of a blip humanity has gone from gather-hunters trying just to survive to beings mathematically try just to define the entire function of the universe mathematically.

    ReplyDelete