Grass. Silicon. Fire.
Without these three things we would be still climbing trees and picking ants out of ant holes with sticks.
It is all about brain size/capacity.
When grass started to mass grow, making large grass plains and such, it forced apemen from the trees simply because the trees were far fewer and far between and so they had to venture out onto the plains to find food.
As such hunched over and with a tail is not ideal and so slowly we evolved to stand on two legs. This was primarily for two reasons, 1st being that it allowed us to look out over the grass for danger and the 2nd being that we could reach up into trees for food.
This is significant because walking upright on two legs uses less effort, not by much but still, then walking on all fours.
Because we use less effort to move around we were consuming more calories (well, the same but less was going to the effort of moving around). The extra calories that were no longer used for movement then went to growth, brain growth.
Silicon is significant because it's soft, you can chips bits off and form crude tools.
Suddenly you have a hammer or knife. You can kill larger prey, more food, more calories, more brain growth. You can make shelter, protecting you from the elements, reducing calories spent protecting you from the elements.
Fire. Fire is the biggy. Without fire, we wouldn't have made it past the stone age.
Cooking things greating increases the amount of calories that food produces. Thus, our brains were able to rapidly grow.
We became very smart.
Grass, again, with our new found intellect we were able to go from foragers, to hunters, to now farmers.
A hunter/gather requires (something around, i can't remember exactly) 10km^2 area in order to survive, where as a farmer requires only a fraction of that.
This means we were able to fit more people on the same amount of land.
Grass is significant here because that is what was grown, wheat and suger and other grass based food.
By now man has ventured across landbridges and migrated around the world.
The difference however is that the Middle East, northern Africa had these grass plants that they could farm. They also had animals easy to domesticate. Goats, cows and such. This is why life skyrocketed in this location where as other cut off locations, such as the Americas, lagged behind.
With all these new foods and requiring far less effort to acquire them and in far smaller space, our brains continued to grow.
Soon small towns/cities were errected across egypt and the middle east.
With small cities comes specalization. Trade. Instead of having to do everything myself, I could focus on being a fantastic pot maker and trade my work for other things I need such as food. This is basic principle of economics today, effeciency.
Soon trade spreading ideas from Egypt to Greek etc... with that comes more growth etc.. etc.. etc..
The rest is history.
Without these three things we would be still climbing trees and picking ants out of ant holes with sticks.
It is all about brain size/capacity.
When grass started to mass grow, making large grass plains and such, it forced apemen from the trees simply because the trees were far fewer and far between and so they had to venture out onto the plains to find food.
As such hunched over and with a tail is not ideal and so slowly we evolved to stand on two legs. This was primarily for two reasons, 1st being that it allowed us to look out over the grass for danger and the 2nd being that we could reach up into trees for food.
This is significant because walking upright on two legs uses less effort, not by much but still, then walking on all fours.
Because we use less effort to move around we were consuming more calories (well, the same but less was going to the effort of moving around). The extra calories that were no longer used for movement then went to growth, brain growth.
Silicon is significant because it's soft, you can chips bits off and form crude tools.
Suddenly you have a hammer or knife. You can kill larger prey, more food, more calories, more brain growth. You can make shelter, protecting you from the elements, reducing calories spent protecting you from the elements.
Fire. Fire is the biggy. Without fire, we wouldn't have made it past the stone age.
Cooking things greating increases the amount of calories that food produces. Thus, our brains were able to rapidly grow.
We became very smart.
Grass, again, with our new found intellect we were able to go from foragers, to hunters, to now farmers.
A hunter/gather requires (something around, i can't remember exactly) 10km^2 area in order to survive, where as a farmer requires only a fraction of that.
This means we were able to fit more people on the same amount of land.
Grass is significant here because that is what was grown, wheat and suger and other grass based food.
By now man has ventured across landbridges and migrated around the world.
The difference however is that the Middle East, northern Africa had these grass plants that they could farm. They also had animals easy to domesticate. Goats, cows and such. This is why life skyrocketed in this location where as other cut off locations, such as the Americas, lagged behind.
With all these new foods and requiring far less effort to acquire them and in far smaller space, our brains continued to grow.
Soon small towns/cities were errected across egypt and the middle east.
With small cities comes specalization. Trade. Instead of having to do everything myself, I could focus on being a fantastic pot maker and trade my work for other things I need such as food. This is basic principle of economics today, effeciency.
Soon trade spreading ideas from Egypt to Greek etc... with that comes more growth etc.. etc.. etc..
The rest is history.
