A meander through the evolution of information and communication technology, from prehuman times to the advent of the printing press. (Part 2 will cover subsequent eras). Topics cover include primate communication, fire, body art, language, cave painting and stone age technocomplexes, different types of writing, the alphabet, the printing press and much inbetween.

1. Information Technology
The first two million years

2. 2,000,000 BCE

3. Homo HeidelbergensisHomo neanderthalensis Homo sapiens

6. 1,760,000 BCE
Turkana
✦First evidence of
controlled use of fire

11. BODY ART

16. 300,000 BCE
TWIN RIVERS
✦Over 3000 pigments
✦Brown, red, yellow,
purple, blue, and pink
✦Show evidence of being
ground to make powders

17. 115,000 BCE
SKUHL CAVE
✦First evidence of
jewellery
✦Shells with holes
deliberately fashioned

18. 100,000 BCE
MOUNT PRECIPICE
✦Evidence of burial
✦Boar jaw left on chest
✦Perforated beads, shells
✦(Where people of Nazareth
tried to throw Jesus off a
mountain)

19. Joshua Knobe, Finding the Mind in the Body
“Focussing on the body leaves us thinking of
the person as an animal. That is, it leaves us to
think of the person as having more of the part
of the mind we associate with animals (fear,
pleasure, pain) and less of the part we regard
as distinctively human (complex reasoning,
planning, self control)”
Why decorate your body?

20. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order
“Status seeking behaviour has become
genetically coded for a wide variety of animals,
including humans, and is associated with
biochemical changes in the brains of those who
compete for status.”
Why decorate your body?

21. Alex Wright, Glut: Mastering information through the ages
“Symbolic communication provided a
networked communication platform that
allowed more complex social and eventually
political hierarchies to emerge”
Why decorate your body?

23. In-group signifiers

36. Ibn Fadlan, 10th Century
“Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife
and keeps each by him at all times. The swords
are broad and grooved, of Frankish sort. Every
man is tattooed from finger nails to neck with
dark green (or green or blue-black) trees,
figures, etc..”

38. 80,000 BCE
BLOMBOS CAVES
✦Shell beads
✦“Ochre processing kits”
✦Example of “composite”
technology.
✦One remarkable item…

40. 1980
(77,985 years later)

42. Mount St Helens (1980)
VEI 4 - Cataclysmic

44. 1980 CE

47. Mount Tambora (1815)
VEI 7 - Mega-colossal

49. 1815 CE

50. 1816
✦ “Year without a summer”
✦ Dropped global temperatures by 0.4 to 0.7 °C
✦ "Dry fog" was observed in eastern U.S
✦ Sunspots could be seen with naked eye
✦ “Red snow” fell in Italy
✦ Famines in Europe led to death of 200,000
✦ Led to social instability, food riots
✦ Cultural impact…

52. I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day

53. TOBA EVENT

54. Toba (73,000 BCE)
VEI 8 - Apocalyptic

55. VOLCANIC WINTER

56. ✦ 90% reduction in photosynthesis
✦ Ecosystem collapse
✦ Difficulty spotting prey, finding food
✦ Stars, sun, moon not visible
✦ Genetic bottleneck
VOLCANIC WINTER

57. MIGRATION

58. DIASPORA

59. DIASPORA

60. "A divine couple who are bound together and
separate to create heaven and earth, who are
then mutilated and torn apart by their
offspring, who use parts of the parent deity to
create the landscape... Many myths in this
constellation contain episodes of post flood
incest, usually between brother and sister. "
Peter Watson, The Great Divide

61. Ouranos & Gaia
Arrival of Con
Tiqui Viracocha
Geb and Nut
An and Ki
Rangi and Papa
SEPARATION
Udan & The Golden Pillars
“Castration of dad”

62. “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth…. Now the earth was formless and
empty, darkness was over the surface of the
deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over
the waters.And God said, ‘Let there be light’”
The Bible

63. Myth & Art
The cognitive big bang

66. From The Mind in the Cave
By David Lewis-Williams
Waking, problem
oriented thought
Daydreaming Hypnagogia Dreaming Unconscious

67. shaman video

68. From The Mind in the Cave
By David Lewis-Williams
Waking, problem
oriented thought
Daydreaming Hypnagogia
Dreaming
Unconscious
Entoptic phenomena
Constral
Hallucination

69. Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 5Type 4

71. San rock
painting
Palaeolithic
cave art

72. Interpreting natural
symbols (“index”), like
hoof prints
Intentional
communication
Producing artefacts
from material
templates
From The Prehistory of Mind
By Steven Mitten
Linguistic
Intelligence
Natural
History
Intelligence
Technical
Intelligence
Social
Intelligence
GENERAL
Intelligence

73. From The Prehistory of Mind
By Steven Mitten
Natural
History
Intelligence
Technical
Intelligence
Social
Intelligence
GENERAL
Intelligence

80. Physical
World
Human
World
Spiritual
World
Tracks
Law
Celestial objects
Waterholes
Sites
Animals
Rocks & Trees
Atemporality
Punishment
Care of environment
Stories
Healing (seeing the future)
Singing, dancing & storytelling
TotemsFamily relationships
People
Art & pictographs
Rules of behaviour, secrecy

81. "In the often hostile landscape of Australia, the
transmission of Dreamtime myths through the
generations must have saved many lives, since
the stories provide the equivalent of an outback
sat-nav, leading people to waterholes, food,
shelter and natural resources like stone and
pigment."
Chris Stringer, The Origin of our Species

82. Aboriginal pictographs
Honey ant Witchetty
Grubb
Kangaroo Emu

83. Aboriginal pictographs
Meeting place Paths between
camps
Stream between
waterholes

84. “Genealogy provides the ideal classifcatory tool, for it narrates a
sequence of actions. It thus sustains the tradition while, at the same
time, subjecting it to hierarchical ordering that clarifies the nature
of various figures. When Gods are considered, genealogy becomes a
means of understanding the cosmos... when mortals are considered,
it becomes an encyclopaedic framework for historical and
geographical as well as social information.”
"
Holbart and Schiffmann

85. WRITING
Encoding knowledge in external media

86. "Speech, the universal way in which humans communicate
and transmit experiences, fades instantly: before a word is
pronounced it has already vanished forever. Writing, the
first technology to make the spoken word permanent,
changed the human condition."
Denise Schmant-Besserat, How Writing Came About

88. “The Eridu temple was the symbol of a community who believed
in, perhaps one might say invented - the ideology of progress. The
idea that it was possible and desirable to continually improve
what had gone before… The divine power celebrated and honoured
here was the expression, embodiment and personification of that
idea: No less than the God or Goddess of civilisation. ”
Paul Kriwaczed, Babylon

89. EARLY CUNEIFORM

90. Man Woman
EARLY CUNEIFORM

91. EARLY CUNEIFORM

92. EARLY CUNEIFORM
Head Bread

93. EARLY CUNEIFORM
Eat

94. EARLY CUNEIFORM
Hat Secret Rage

97. “The complex social and political changes that
took place in Mesopotamia in the late Uruk
period, represent a quantum leap of
unprecedented dimensions.”
Professor Piotr Michaelowski

98. Evolution of Cuneiform
3200 BCE 3000 BCE 2400 BCE 1000 BCE

99. “Before 2600 BCE it was capable of
enumerating lists and transmitting simple
commands. It had now however communicate a
sophisticated narrative or allow rulers to
transmit highly detailed commands.”
Denise Schmant-Besserat, How Writing Came About
Evolution of Cuneiform

101. 2334-2279 BCE

102. hammurabi
1900-1600 BCE

103. hammurabi
1900-1600 BCE

108. Circle Rectangle

109. Plate, Sieve,
Moon, Bucket
Door, house,
mirror

110. code of hammurabi

111. “Armed with a vast arsenal of recorded
information about governance, military
strategy, weapon making, agriculture,
mathematics, and other topics, the empire
stood poised to dominate the region.”
Alex Wright, Glut

112. 668-627 BCE

113. 668-627 BCE

114. Subtitle
Qin Shi Huang

116. “For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the
minds of those who learn to use it, because they will
not practice their memory. Their trust in writing,
produced by external characters which are no part of
themselves, will discourage the use of their own
memory within them.”
Plato (as Socrates)

117. Subtitle

120. 117 CE

123. Before the space After the space

124. “Romance of the Rose" “Book of common prayer”

125. Printing
The medieval bittorrent

126. ✦Bookbinding / Codex (500 - 700 CE)
✦Industrialisation of paper manufacture
(from China via the Middle East and
Spain)
✦Developments in mining technology
✦Metallurgy (soft metals like antimone)
Precursors to print

127. 1455 CE

128. “ They shamelessly print, at a negligible price, material
which may, alas, inflame impressionable youths, while a
true writer dies of hunger… They persist in their sick
vices, setting Tibullus in type, while a young girl reads
Ovid to learn sinfulness… they encourage wantoness, and
swallow up huge gain from it.”
Filippo de Strata, 1474 CE

129. “Writing indeed, which brings in gold for us, should be
respected and held to be nobler than all goods, unless she
has suffered degradation in the brothel of the printing
presses. She is a maiden with a pen, a harlot in print.”
Filippo de Strata, 1474 CE

130. 1522 CE

132. The cognitive schism

133. 1543 CE

134. 1622 CE

135. To be concluded