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History of Technology 2: Yokes and Shoes 19 Views


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Description:

Plenty of primitive technologies made walking easier for our ancestors. The yoke, the travois, shoes, Segways. One of those things might not be as primitive. You'll have to watch to find out.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

So how's this for impressive? Using only the power of their [Caveman walking in barefoot]

00:07

own two feet, early humans populated the entire world okay yeah it took a few thousand

00:14

years so maybe watching paint dry would be more exciting, but it's still pretty

00:19

impressive. And anyone who's not impressed should try walking from East

00:23

Africa to northern Eurasia, and you know get back to us on that. Oh and remember

00:28

our ancestors did it while contending with giant cats that wanted to eat them. [Human walking on world map and a giant cat jumps in their way]

00:33

Just because Mr. Pawssanova gets a weird glint in his eye around feeding time well

00:39

that doesn't mean you have the same problem. Of course our ancestors did have

00:43

a few early technologies that helped them in their journeys, what were they? Well

00:48

primitive GPS's.. well not quite but imagine the amazing cult that would have

00:53

started. So here are a few of the actual primitive technologies that our [Caveman trying to lift a large dead animal]

00:57

ancestors used to make walking a little easier. What one nifty device ancient

01:01

humans figured out was called a yoke and no not like egg yolks, they're not all that

01:06

helpful when carrying stuff. Seriously they don't even offer.. Well the kind of

01:11

yokes we're talking about we're tools made by Stone Age hunters to help carry

01:15

around dead animals. They took sticks tied the hamburgers with legs to one end [Cavemen carrying a giant hamburger with a yoke]

01:20

and put the other over their shoulders. They also tie the animal in the middle of

01:25

the stick and one person could carry either end on their shoulders. Once they

01:29

had yokes it wasn't a big jump to the Travois or slide car. Travois was still

01:36

pretty basic not that we're trying to criticize. Hey one day in the ancient

01:39

world and most of us would be tiger snacks, really. Anyway to make a travois our [Tiger licking its lips]

01:44

very competent ancestors took two long sticks and strung an animal hide between

01:50

them. Then they put their cave-person stuff and thingamabobs on the animal

01:55

hide and dragged the two sticks along I'm sure they still had to drag the weight but

02:00

that was way easier than carrying it. And last but not least our ancestors came up

02:05

with their most amazing invention of all, shoes.

02:09

Don't think they're amazing when I'll go walk a mile in the snow with bare feet. [Man in shorts walking in snow with no shoes]

02:13

Forget a mile we'd be ready to cut off her frostbitten feet after about three

02:17

inches. Well archaeologists think humans mostly did without shoes until they got

02:22

far enough north that there was snow on the ground. Then people wrapped leather

02:27

around their feet in a hurry, shoes let people deal with harsher environments

02:31

and tougher terrains. Northern Europe and Asia probably wouldn't have been settled

02:35

if humanity hadn't figured out how to make a nice set of kicks, and once we [Caveman holding shoes with a Nike logo on them]

02:40

were in the north humanity figured out how to make skis and sleds. What better

02:44

way to haul stuff over the snow right? And bonus point well they're pretty

02:48

simple to make, all we need are some flat pieces of wood and suddenly we're about

02:52

a hundred times faster and double bonus points well they're super fun even if

02:57

our ancestors might not have medals in the Olympics... [Caveman skis into a tree]

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