What are the key factors that prompted humans to create civilization?
We believe that, first of all, at the physiological level, the Creator has given human beings a physiological foundation that is most suitable for creating civilization. Human beings have very powerful sensory, cognitive, memory and thinking systems, and the ability to understand the nature of things, the mechanisms and laws of movement and change, With the ability to transform the environment and create means and tools, human thought and spiritual power make up for the physical and other weaknesses of human beings in the cruel struggle with nature, ensuring that human beings become the king of the biological world in the cruel struggle with nature. Continue to reproduce. Secondly, human beings can understand things other than matter and physiology, such as the internal essence, factors, and mechanisms of action of things, and other natural laws and natural laws. They can also understand spiritual laws and laws such as thoughts, values, and souls. Therefore, human beings can get rid of matter and physiology. Constraints, think about problems, understand life and the world in a purely spiritual way, and establish a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values, thereby promoting the progress of human civilization.
Humankind's understanding of natural laws and regulations has enhanced humankind's ability to defeat and transform nature, and enhanced humankind's ability to create environments, equipment, and tools.
Human beings' understanding of the spiritual world such as the soul has enabled human beings to no longer rely solely on physical sensations, nature and instincts to live. It has enabled human beings to have a spiritual world and spiritual pursuits, and has led to a revolutionary sublimation of human values.
At the same time, human beings’ understanding of the spiritual world such as the soul also promoted the emergence and development of human religion and its undertakings. In order to facilitate the operation of religious rituals and affairs, theocratic classes such as diviners, wizards and priests began to emerge. The daily behaviors of religious believers include avoiding disasters, worshiping and respecting gods, observing rules and regulations, and cultivating their moral character. Religion plays a very key role in establishing spiritual elements such as the spiritual world, world view, outlook on life and values for mankind. Without religion, thought and spirit are only the patent of thinkers and prophets.
In religious education and practice, human beings learn to revere and worship nature and gods, obey the strong and wise, and seek God's will, help and protection by offering sacrifices to God. In various religious ceremonies, human artistic talents in dance, singing and music are fully developed. Artistic experience enriches the emotional world of human beings, increases human happiness, and increases the meaning and value of human life.
For secular society, religion is only a spiritual placebo for human beings. Religion is only used to alleviate the pain of human life. Religion has no effect on human growth and civilization progress. In fact, this is not the case. Let’s think about it. If human beings cannot think beyond material needs and physiological needs, can the human ideological world be purified and achieve stability? Can humans discover the essence, laws and patterns of things? Can humans find a better way to survive and develop?
Of course, we do not deny the key role of material because we emphasize the importance of spirit, because human beings live in the material world after all, and human beings cannot live for a moment without the material foundation!
Therefore, the progress of human civilization must begin with humans acquiring materials, creating tools and methods, and transforming the natural environment.
In ancient times, after tens of thousands of years of accumulation of knowledge and thinking about everything in this world, humans invented tools such as stone tools, bone tools, and wooden tools in terms of material creation, including stone knives, stone axes, millstones, and touch sticks. Tools such as javelins and bows used for gathering, hunting and making food.
Through long-term observation of fire and understanding of the physical principle of "frictional heat", the ancients invented stable and reliable fire-making methods such as drilling wood and flint to make fire. At the same time, humans invented methods with good ventilation, continuous and stable combustion, and A stove that can effectively control the temperature of the furnace, and a method of maintaining a fire that allows humans to quickly and efficiently make and light fires without the need to drill wood and flint.
The use of fire has greatly improved human production and quality of life. Fired and steamed food is more palatable, easier for human digestion and absorption, and at the same time reduces the harm of food viruses to the human body. It has greatly improved human physical fitness and physique.
In the process of using fire, people discovered that the clay under the fire was burned into hard lumps. This understanding was the beginning of the invention of pottery by humans. After countless experiments, people mastered the selection, washing, precipitation, slurry, shaping, After pottery making processes such as air drying and furnace firing, when pottery with stable quality is fired, mankind has entered the era of precision manufacturing. Pottery has greatly improved human production and life.
The use of fire and human understanding of ores led humans to explore and experiment with ore smelting. From this, humans invented metal smelting processes, lime burning processes, charcoal burning processes and other early industries related to fire.
In terms of cultural creation, in order to build large-scale equipment and facilities such as ships, cars, and houses, the ancients began to involve planning, design, modeling (of course modeling can be done as miniatures, or on drawings), and prefabrication of materials and accessories , assembly and construction processes and other complex work processes. To complete this process, the ancients must have systematic spatial thinking ability and mathematical knowledge, must master precise measurement technology and methods, and must have effective processing tools. Only in this way can they build ships, Build cars and build houses.
In order to solve the problem of accurate measurement and measurement in manufacturing large-scale equipment and facilities, the ancients invented the weights and measures system, and invented measurement and positioning tools such as rules, compasses, yardsticks, and hanging hammers, as well as methods for large-scale measurement and positioning.
At the same time, in order to calculate the spatial parameters of large equipment and facilities, the ancients invented elementary algebra based on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and invented geometry. The ancients gradually mastered the fixed functional relationships between the interior angles and sides of triangles, and mastered the correspondence of similar triangles. There is a fixed ratio of sides. The understanding of this mathematical theorem enables humans to calculate any other side through the modeled triangle and the planned and measured side of the actual built triangle, such as the hypotenuse of a beam, tripod; ship hull Many materials for the skeleton must be pre-selected, calculated and prepared. Soon people were able to calculate the height of any mountain through the principle of similar triangles.
The circle is a geometric figure that humans like to use the most. In the process of using circles, people realized that there is a fixed ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle, which is the pi ratio. And the ancients calculated the pi ratio more and more accurately through repeated actual measurements, so that Craftsmen only need to know the diameter of the circle to easily calculate the length of the circle, which provides great convenience for craftsmen in preparing materials.
In terms of agricultural development, the construction and management of farmland, villages and cities all involve the measurement and planning of land area. In order to solve these problems, the ancients invented the weights and measures system, measurement and calculation methods of land area. In order to measure irregular land area, people Invented the equal division measurement sum calculation method, that is, the middle section of each block uses the rectangular area calculation method, and the two ends of the block use triangles of cut and complement planning to calculate its area. The rectangular area of the block is added to the areas at both ends to obtain the block area. The area of each block is calculated in this way, and the final sum is calculated to calculate the total area. This method of engineering mathematics laid the foundation for future generations to develop the discipline of calculus.
Mathematics is the basic method for accurately understanding things, describing and planning things. Mathematics not only expands human thinking, working ability and creativity, but also greatly expands human ability to understand the world and things. Mathematics is the foundation of all sciences. Since human beings After understanding mathematics, human beings began to view the world and the future with a precise and rigorous attitude and style of behavior.
At present, humans have a consensus - food (the ability to obtain stable and abundant food), tools (the ability and methods to make tools and supplies), language, writing, fire (the ability to keep warm, burn food, smelt metal, and create new materials) ) and other five factors determined the height of early human civilization.
After mankind has completed self-recognition, mankind has been thinking about a question: Are our thoughts and civilization left to us by gods, super-sapient humans? Will God still help us in the future? We have already answered the first question in the previous chapter, so we will not repeat it again.
Now we come back to the second question. If God does exist, mankind will never escape God's sight, which means that God has been paying attention to mankind and everything on earth from beginning to end. But for gods, humans are just ordinary creations, so gods will not pay special attention to or help humans. The history of humans has proven that humans basically rely on their own strength and wisdom to survive various disasters. Overcome all kinds of difficulties, and God's help to mankind only appears in mythical stories. God will not be able to help humans in the future, because God does not care about human feelings and destiny.
In order to obtain more happiness and spiritual experience, the ancients invented art and artistic aesthetics. In ancient times, humans have combined what they saw, heard, pursued and dreamed into their lives through painting, dancing, singing and storytelling. Experience and spiritual experience are expressed, and these primitive thoughts and arts lay the foundation for future generations to design religious rituals, compose mythological stories, and plan artistic life paths.
In the following chapters, we will describe the development of human civilization starting from the last ice age.
During the last ice age, due to the extreme cold and drought of the earth, humans could only live in crowded tropical areas. In this process, humans have experienced major natural disasters such as severe volcanic eruptions and major earthquakes, and humans are facing extinction crises in many places. Humanity has experienced warming due to the ice age, rising sea levels, and major land submergence and floods, which have led to the great migration of humans to various parts of the world, forming a large pattern of human race and population distribution in the world, and thus triggering changes in human society and human civilization. Great development and prosperity.
Human history proves that human beings, in a primitive and ignorant state, relied on their own strength and wisdom to develop human civilization step by step today. In primitive times, human beings lived a life without enough clothing and food. In the face of diseases and disasters, many ancient people were frightened, overwhelmed, struggled in pain, and died in despair. It is a painful past to look back on.
Today, mankind has entered a highly civilized era. People have abundant food and clothing to choose from. There are hospitals with complete medical conditions to treat people's diseases. There are complete social management and service institutions. They can provide people with safety and security and help them cope with the disease. Emergencies and Disasters.
At the same time, modern people can also take planes for intercontinental travel, and take high-speed trains to shuttle between cities. They can communicate with relatives and friends thousands of miles away through video on their mobile phones, and make electronic payments by scanning QR codes to obtain the goods and services they want. Humanity's dreams of freedom and happiness have been fulfilled in many ways.
Civilization is still progressing. As long as human beings continue to dream, in the future human beings will go out of the earth and solar system and enter the boundless space of the universe to achieve the ultimate goal of human beings gaining freedom, happiness, immortality and bliss!
