However arguably humans existed from tens of thousands of years and only really started to make huge technological leaps when writing existed. Prewriting culture is still quite fascinating and complex (ex: Homer or Olmec/Maya art) but it does seem to be stuck at a certain level.
I think Egyptian civilization provides a fascinating mid point where there is writing but it's not very accessible... And Egyptian civilization is slow to develop (it's also very weird they don't have their equivalent of Homer or Gilgamesh)
i'm not sure if this is the case or not but if it is lack of evidence may not be evidence of a lack! they may have done and it may have not been transmitted to us
I know I'm arguably moving the goalposts here from "writing stuff down for others to read" to "using symbols on a durable medium to express meaning to other humans." But that's a category of behavior that writing belongs to so I don't think it's logically inconsistent. :)
The idea that any roughly equivalent human culture will develop the same things is clearly wrong. Just look at the plough - for centuries or even millenia, humans outside of what is now China had ploughs but failed to gain the insight to improve it in the way it was improved in China. Once trade exposed them to the Chinese plough, it was more or less universally adopted within decades.
While multiple (re)invention may be common, it is not universal. Just because culture A manages to find is way to cultural/technological innovation doesn't imply that culture B will, even if the two cultures are very similar.
just as it's not problematic to discover that bonobos talk to each other like Shakespeare, it would not be problematic to discover that humans are animals. keep your fingers off the scales (and, to mix a metaphor) let the scales fall from your eyes: it's science, follow the evidence to the truth. Don't be guided by what you want to hear, in either direction.
And "problematic" here means it's racist in a dumb and obviously incorrect manner. We already have plenty of evidence against that idea.
stop wrapping humanity in the cloak of personification, it's the first [animal] refuge of rats and weasels. also, stop accusing people of racism all the time, it makes me think you are a worse person, not a better one. studying hunter gatherers gives us a lot of important data, and they can't help their race, nor can the researchers, it's an immutable characteristic.
You're using two different definitions of "animal" in the same sentence here. That's only going to cause problems.
> also, stop accusing people of racism all the time, it makes me think you are a worse person, not a better one.
No person was accused of racism. It was a theoretical argument brought up and dismissed in the same sentence, as a rhetorical device to show a problem with a different argument.
> studying hunter gatherers gives us a lot of important data, and they can't help their race, nor can the researchers, it's an immutable characteristic.
But they are not fundamentally set apart and a different species from other humans. And the idea under discussion only works if major groups without writing are fundamentally set apart and a different species.
If the data showed those differences, it would not be racist. But we know those differences don't exist. Humans are all extremely similar.
So the only way someone would think they are fundamentally different is because some neuron misfired in their brain, or they got to that conclusion based on racist teachings or racist reasoning.
And it's more than 99% likely it's the latter. That's enough confidence for me to claim it's a racist idea.
And again, this is based on the actual data, not what anyone wants to be true.
There are for instance Greek plays that are of the form you imagine. Where they're important, referenced, and no surviving copies exist