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The level of technology a society can achieve is heavily based on division of labor and worker population.
Technology has a ceiling based on the size of the worker population. By “worker population”, I mean people who don’t hunt/gather for food or do any type of agriculture.
This is why small, isolated tribes always have primitive technology. They’ve hit their ceiling because their worker population never grows high enough to allow for deeper levels of division of labor. In most cases, hunter/gather groups don’t have a worker population at all, because everyone is … hunting and gathering.
If the working population increases, technology will become more advanced. If working population stagnates, then technology will do the same. If the working population decreases, then technology will regress.
Trading with other countries can enhance technological progress because it's combining the resources of multiple working populations.
Thoughts?
It isn't a factor of population per se...its more the transition to an agrarian economy, which leads to mercantilism, and subsequently, innovation, through settlement and development. You can't invent anything following the herds around and living in the dirt.
Oh but if you'll go this rout, you'll inevitably come to the conclusion, that "diety" clearly gives more preference/knowledge/advantage to SOME nations over the other. He clearly gives them the upper hand so to speak.
Interesting point, but, what if that "deity" gives the same knowledge to all, but, only some accept it? -- Yes, those who accept have an advantage because God's ways work, but, only by virtue of exercising their own free will to accept or reject it.
Technology can mean a lot of things. A spear, a plow, a gun, a computer. How advanced a society is can be pretty subjective depending how you look at it. A hunter gatherer society may appear to be technically primitive since they don't have electricity, but they may have invented a very efficient way of hunting which kills an animal quicker and with more success per hunt than a hunter with a bow and arrow. At any rate technology will usually develop in order to improve the survival of a certain group. Some peoples live in an area with such an ample supply of food that the need to develop agriculture isn't there. Then there are people who live in regions with a clear wax and wane of food vs seasons. For them developing agriculture and food storage creates they need to make tools to aid this need. When you get enough food for more downtime other cultural aspects develop, like culture (writing and art) which helps preserve and spread technology. In due time people will get lucky a discover metal smelting and subsequently more advances.
However, historically there have been periods of very advanced civilizations to periods of sudden collapse. Technological advancement isn't always so linear and there can be centuries of stunted growth and lost knowledge. Right now we are lucky in the sense we can communicate and preserve knowledge better than ever before.
Don't forget weather some countries are in very barren locations, where technology is almost essential to extract a useful life. in places where the weather is more forgiving there's really no reason to advance technology as all they need to have a functional society is pretty much in plain sight. look at China and India they both have massive populations due to living in prime environments for human development. When you look at what we are meant to do evolutionarily is to reproduce, and one can say based on this that they are the most successful societies on earth. They don't even need to have huge families to produce large populations.
A fascinating exploration of this subject is in the book: "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.
Turns out, soil fertility and weather give the initial advantages to a society. If those are marginal, that society will be marginal. On top of that, if there is a preoccupation with building huge monuments, that takes away resources that could be used for developing technology. So there you have misguided religion at work.
The Norsemen who settled Greenland had marginal farming/weather conditions. Cows and pigs did not thrive. They decided not to bother with fishing, though the seas were rich all around them. Eventually they starved to death, despite having elaborate churches with imported stain-glass windows and copper bells.
Priorities....
Technology depends on the freedom to think. The industrial revolution did not happen until the protestant revolt broke the power of the Christian church. We went from Roger Bacon being imprisoned and Galileo being forced to recant to The Enlightenment. The technology of Persia and Egypt actually declined after the Arab conquest. There was never a shortage of workers, but always a shortage of inventors. You have to have security and transport for technology to progress. First you need a James I, then you get James Clerk Maxwell.
A healthy trade economy is also essential. Greece had the metal lathe, and somebody put together the Antikythera Mechanism, but there is no record that anyone got rich manufacturing metal artifacts.
With a healthy trade economy goes a literate society. Innovators have to communicate with each other, and you never know where genius is going to pop up. Ramanujan invented his own mathematics, but there was no one within 3000 miles who could understand him. Newton and Descartes independently invented the calculus, but never met.
It all comes down to corruption. You give some countries $100 million in aid/investments and they will indeed invest the majority of that money into social projects and infrastructure. However you give other countries that same amount, not one penny will ever go to the community.
It’s tragic when developing countries get hit with natural distasters when the world can see in fully display the cost of not investing back into your country
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