Innovation and Social Transformation among Primitive Cultures

Innovation and Social Transformation among Primitive Cultures

'Putnam Swopes, 3rd Edition, Massachusets Press, 1968 'Even relatively small changes in technology or behaviour can have huge consequences. A simple change in sewing needle, can transform a society.

The appearance of a new sort of needle in the proto-inuit society allowed for the sewing of watertight skin boats, which in turn created new opportunities for fishing and seal hunting, allowing the inuit to prosper and expand their range to places where humans had been unable to survive, and to supplant other arctic cultures, such as the Dorset, which rapidly dwindled towards extinction.

So too among the middle-era Tsalal, where the first plows were small, human driven, push plows, literally shovels, for turning soft ground. With the development of woven rope, these had been replaced by pull plows, but still hauled and pushed by humans. Human hauled plows lead to the development of a human harness for the plow to make the job easier and maximize the value of labour.

The adaptation of this harness to Shaghui and later Mothbeasts lead to a revolution in agriculture and cultural transformation.

The plow harness was adapted again, for sleds and travois. To minimize drag, sleds runners were developed for sleds and travois. The effort to minimize drag further by elevating the sled or travois base from the runners lead to wheeled carts.

An adaptation of sled harness to a riding saddle and reins, essentially a slightly different harness. transformed the thinly populated highlands, replacing them with mounted nomads and higher population densities.

In each turn, a relatively small innovation transformed culture, creating new cultures, new communities, new ways of life. And, invariably, has lead to the extermination of preceding cultures.