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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.
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
Full Transcript
- 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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