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Nosajimiki
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Early Stone Age at Best

Without experimentation and imagination, history tells us that getting past the early stone age is nearly impossible. Let's say your aliens make a fire, and surround the fire with a retainer wall of copper ore. The ore will melt, and your aliens will see the metal. The human reaction to this is "Cool, I got something new and I should see what I can do with it.", but your aliens will just leave it there because they lack the imagination to FIND a use for it. Without any inclination to experiment on its discovery, you alien will just look at his melted rocks and decide not to use those rocks any more because they melt. Not only will your society not learn to make copper tools, but because of how good they are at remembering and passing on knowledge, they will collectively remember to not even try doing that again for the next hundred thousand years because they will not want thier fire pits to melt.

In fact, they probably won't make fires at all because the first thing they will do with a fire is burn themselves, decide fire is bad, and make good and sure to avoid it at all costs like most animals do.

In short, you are basically describing chimpanzees. We know from experimenting with chimpanzees that they can learn to communicate and share technology from one generation to the next, and use all sorts of tools like you describe, yet millions of years in the wild and the most advanced tool they've come up with on their own is sticking a twig into a termite mound to get the bugs out... and honestly, there is no proof that they did not see a human do that first.

Early Stone Age

Without experimentation and imagination, history tells us that getting past the early stone age is nearly impossible. Let's say your aliens make a fire, and surround the fire with a retainer wall of copper ore. The ore will melt, and your aliens will see the metal. The human reaction to this is "Cool, I got something new and I should see what I can do with it.", but your aliens will just leave it there because they lack the imagination to FIND a use for it. Without any inclination to experiment on its discovery, you alien will just look at his melted rocks and decide not to use those rocks any more because they melt. Not only will your society not learn to make copper tools, but because of how good they are at remembering and passing on knowledge, they will collectively remember to not even try doing that again for the next hundred thousand years because they will not want thier fire pits to melt.

In short, you are basically describing chimpanzees. We know from experimenting with chimpanzees that they can learn to communicate and share technology from one generation to the next, and use all sorts of tools like you describe, yet millions of years in the wild and the most advanced tool they've come up with on their own is sticking a twig into a termite mound to get the bugs out... and honestly, there is no proof that they did not see a human do that first.

Early Stone Age at Best

Without experimentation and imagination, history tells us that getting past the early stone age is nearly impossible. Let's say your aliens make a fire, and surround the fire with a retainer wall of copper ore. The ore will melt, and your aliens will see the metal. The human reaction to this is "Cool, I got something new and I should see what I can do with it.", but your aliens will just leave it there because they lack the imagination to FIND a use for it. Without any inclination to experiment on its discovery, you alien will just look at his melted rocks and decide not to use those rocks any more because they melt. Not only will your society not learn to make copper tools, but because of how good they are at remembering and passing on knowledge, they will collectively remember to not even try doing that again for the next hundred thousand years because they will not want thier fire pits to melt.

In fact, they probably won't make fires at all because the first thing they will do with a fire is burn themselves, decide fire is bad, and make good and sure to avoid it at all costs like most animals do.

In short, you are basically describing chimpanzees. We know from experimenting with chimpanzees that they can learn to communicate and share technology from one generation to the next, and use all sorts of tools like you describe, yet millions of years in the wild and the most advanced tool they've come up with on their own is sticking a twig into a termite mound to get the bugs out... and honestly, there is no proof that they did not see a human do that first.

Source Link
Nosajimiki
  • 97.8k
  • 7
  • 135
  • 387

Early Stone Age

Without experimentation and imagination, history tells us that getting past the early stone age is nearly impossible. Let's say your aliens make a fire, and surround the fire with a retainer wall of copper ore. The ore will melt, and your aliens will see the metal. The human reaction to this is "Cool, I got something new and I should see what I can do with it.", but your aliens will just leave it there because they lack the imagination to FIND a use for it. Without any inclination to experiment on its discovery, you alien will just look at his melted rocks and decide not to use those rocks any more because they melt. Not only will your society not learn to make copper tools, but because of how good they are at remembering and passing on knowledge, they will collectively remember to not even try doing that again for the next hundred thousand years because they will not want thier fire pits to melt.

In short, you are basically describing chimpanzees. We know from experimenting with chimpanzees that they can learn to communicate and share technology from one generation to the next, and use all sorts of tools like you describe, yet millions of years in the wild and the most advanced tool they've come up with on their own is sticking a twig into a termite mound to get the bugs out... and honestly, there is no proof that they did not see a human do that first.