Abstract
Not only has prehistory failed to leave us with written records, it has also failed to leave us with any clear sign of who—male or female—first conceived of many of humankind’s earliest inventions. At first, this seemed to pose a problem that could only be solved by making some major assumptions.
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Notes
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Dyble, M., Salali, G. D., Chaudhary, N., Page, A., Smith, D., Thompson, J., … & Migliano, A. B. (2015). Sex equality can explain the unique social structure of hunter-gatherer bands. Science, 348(6236), 796–798.
- 2.
The Mecanum wheel was invented by Swedish engineer Bengt Erland Ilon and patented in 1972. The Mecanum wheel can be described as a conventional wheel with angled rollers mounted around its circumference. The design makes it possible for the wheel to move in any direction—forwards, backwards, and sideways.
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Image Credit: Wikimedia, Daniel Thornton, Creative Commons 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode.
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This makes me think of Buzz Lightyear, and his description of flying as falling, with style. A wheel is just dragging, with low friction.
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However, there is considerable debate over which came first: the vertical, load-moving wheel, or the horizontal potter’s wheel.
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In German, it is spelled Ötzi, after the Ötztal Alps, where the body was discovered.
- 7.
This shoe is a replica of those worn by “Oetzi”, the European man found preserved in a glacier in 1991. This replica was developed by Petr Hlaváček and Václav Gřešák, of Zlín, Czech Republic. Image Credit: Wikimedia, Josef Chlachula, Creative Commons 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode.
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Chalcolithic from the Greek “Khalkós” meaning “Copper”. In other words, what is called the Copper Age.
- 9.
At the risk of insulting your intelligence, and because the word is often used in contexts associated with innovation, the origin of serendipitous bears repeating here: it is the adjectival form of serendipity. That word was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, in his story The Three Princes of Serendip. In it, three heroes constantly discover by accident things they were not searching for.
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(1822–1895) and inventor of Pasteurisation, as well as vaccines for Anthrax and Rabies.
- 11.
Aleppo Soap is a hard soap made from olive oil and lye (sodium or potassium hydroxide, originally obtained from ashes) mixed with laurel oil (a fragrant oil obtained from an aromatic, evergreen tree). Although not the first soap made by humans, there are unverified stories that Aleppo Soap was used by Cleopatra. Image Credit: Wikimedia, Bernard Gagnon, Creative Commons 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode.
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Cropley, D.H. (2020). Prehistory (>2700 bce): Ancient Invention. In: Femina Problematis Solvendis—Problem solving Woman. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3967-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3967-1_3
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