technology

Basic needs

Imagine you’re a prehistoric human, freshly arrived in a new location. In reality a group of migrating humans, no matter how ancient, would surely carry their important belongings with them, but for the sake of really starting from scratch pretend that you’re completely unprepared. What are the most immediate needs you have to meet in order to survive in this new setting? The most obvious are food, water, and shelter, so let’s talk about those first.

Food

What kinds of plants, animals, fungi, and minerals occur in the immediate vicinity? Are they palatable? Safe to eat? Nutritious? Some foods are fine to eat raw, but you’re almost certainly going to want to cook something at some point, and that requires fire, which means you have to know how to start a fire or have access to an already burning fire.

What kind of tools are needed to gather the food? Specialized equipment is obviously necessary for hunting and fishing, but just because plants aren’t a moving target doesn’t mean that they can’t be finicky to collect. In terms of hunting and fishing, for many species you can probably get away with weighty rocks and pointy sticks, but the larger, faster, and more distant your prey gets the more you’ll have to rely on blade technology like spears and arrows.

If your food sources are any distance away, you’ll need ways of transporting the food back home: baskets or pottery might do for plants, but for large game you might need to pull the carcass on skids, or butcher it on-site, meaning you’ll still need to carry a suite of tools with you.

How plentiful is food? If you’re somewhere like a rainforest, which has essentially a year-round growing season and dense and diverse animal populations, depending on the size of your community it’s possible you don’t need to put any food aside at all. Otherwise, though, some sort of preservation will be necessary. Drying, smoking, and salting are the most low-tech methods; if the climate is cold enough freezing might be an option. How do you store your excess food? Cured meats and dried bundles of plants hanging from the rafters? A storehouse full of crockery? Bags made from naturally watertight animal stomachs? A pit in the frozen earth?

Water

How close is the nearest body of water? Is it running water, like a river, or still water, like a pond? Is it freshwater, saltwater, or brackish? If there are no water bodies, what other methods do you have to resort to, like digging a well, or collecting rainwater?

How safe is the water to drink? Does it need to be filtered? Purified? What equipment is required to treat it to make it drinkable? Do you have vessels to boil water in?

Shelter & safety

Fire can be used as a means of protection in a couple ways: to provide warmth, and to keep dangerous or hungry animals away. If the climate is favourable, sleeping around a campfire might be all the protection you need. At some point, though, it’s likely you’ll need some sort of structure to take cover in, whether to bed down in during cold winters or just to get out of the sun in the afternoons.

Is there any sort of natural shelter in the area, like a cave or a rock overhang? Does it provide protection from both weather and wildlife? If you have to make your own, what materials are available to build a shelter with? Reeds, bamboo, wood? Brush, thatch? Mud that can be made into bricks? Stone? Leather, fleece, woven fabric? The climate will dictate what resources are plentiful, and also what weather conditions you’ll have to plan for.

Are the structures permanent or temporary? How many people can they hold? Are they weather-resistant? Are they meant for round-the-clock-habitation? How is temperature regulated? Are they ventilated? Insulated? Can fires be lit inside them? Is a long-term heat source necessary?

What’s the climate like? The temperature? The amount of sunlight? If it’s always warm out and shelter from the sun is easily accessible clothes might not be necessary; in other circumstances they’re critical. What are they made of? Animal skins? Plant fibres? What kind of processing do they go through to make them wearable, comfortable, and weather-resistant? What kinds of tools are necessary to process them?

How do you get a good night’s sleep - on bare ground? A bed of leaves? A woven mat? A frame lifted off the ground? A hammock? Are the nights cold? Do you need a heat source or a way to keep heat in?

Health

What common health concerns does the environment present? Disease transmitted through insect bites? Wildfires? Poison ivy? What kind of topical treatments are used? What kind of oral treatments? Many diseases can be prevented through good hygiene; what kind of hygiene practices are employed? What kind of public sanitation practices?

Materials

  1. Earth
  2. Clay
  3. Stone
  4. Plant materials (resin, rosin, turpentine, sap, gum, latex, wax, lacquer, pitch, tar, bitumen/asphalt)
    1. Wood
  5. Animal materials
    1. pelts: skin (rawhide, leather), fur
    2. bone, gut, horn, antler, feather, ivory, quills
    3. fat, beeswax
  6. Metal
  7. Glass

Human inventions based on human needs. Technology that is a prerequisite for later technology. Some important milestones in the timeline of human technology, which may or may not be applicable to non-human species.