After reading this page, if you only remember one thing, make it this:
We are all naturally creative, don’t let anyone tell you you’re not, it’s why we’re not still using stone tools… But you can’t do it alone. Being self-sufficient means you’ll forever live in poverty (like a caveman). So get good at working with other people.
The Birth of Creativity
Altamira cave paintings in Spain, 36,000 years old.
In the beginning (but after the Dinosaurs) there were many different human species, some stronger than us Homo Sapiens, some with larger brains than us, and all the while, the technology humans used remained unchanged for a very long time.
A single stone tool, that fit the palm of your hand was the most advanced tool we had ever developed. Like a bird building a nest each year, there is no evidence that its design had changed in over one million years!
If you needed something, a tool, a job doing, an animal catching, some berries collecting… you did it yourself or in your small family group. In these early days it is also thought that there was no male / female divide. Everyone did whatever was needed, but you didn’t trust anyone else, you were safe only in your small group.
Self-Sufficiency was the aim of the game. Self-Sufficiency was survival.
Otzi the Iceman
Discovered in 1991, frozen in Alpine ice since 3,300BC
He was 45 years old, 5’3” tall and his clothing and possessions reveal an incredibly rich and well connected society. Owning things made from such a wide variety of animals that it was highly unlikely he had made them all himself and with materials from such a wide range of places he was unlikely to have visited himself.
Wearing a woven cloak of grass, sewn clothes, a hat, gloves, waterproof shoes, all from the skins and hides of at least 12 different animals.
A copper axe, knife, bow & arrows. Herbal medicines and disinfectant for tending to wounds. Fire lighting equipment, food… Otzi as he became known by the archaeologists was well equipped for life at this time, yet for reasons we’ll never know, he was murdered in the snow and left for us to find.
Then something amazing happened.
The exchange of dissimilar things, with a stranger.
The birth of wealth & cooperation.
Homo Sapiens (archaeologists and biologists believe) developed a genetic mutation that for the first time allowed the widespread cooperation, trust and ability to work with strangers. People from beyond our immediate social groups.
Our uniqueness in this regard can be seen in all other social animals. Monkeys for example will work with each other and exchange favours and food within their extended family group. But they will fight with another group. It is thought that Neanderthals, an early human species who coexisted alongside Homo Sapiens and were stronger and had larger brains than us, would however not work or communicate with other Neanderthal tribes. This greatly constrained them to the resources around their home and the limitations of the skills and knowledge within that group.
Homo Sapiens on the other hand could come together to form large groups of distant tribes, driven by a common purpose and for that period of time, long or short, could trust and cooperate with each other.
It’s not known which came first, but unique to Homo Sapiens and thought to have started around 100,000 years ago, was a natural association with being able to trust and cooperate with a stranger, was trade.
Trading favours or like for like was nothing new, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, but being intelligent enough to form something new. Asymmetric trade, swapping goods or actions that are not the same but that benefit both of us. I’ll give you this spear for that pair of shoes.
Thus, was born all human technological development.
If you can trade, you can specialise.
With the invention of trading (and greatly enhanced by the idea of trading with strangers) it was now possible to practise and concentrate on becoming good at a particular skill (making spears) and not have to worry that if you were not very good at something else (making shoes), you didn’t have to be without.
No longer did you need to do everything yourself, being self-sufficient in all skills and activities unlocked an enormous productivity boost. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency was holding us back.
If we could specialise in certain jobs, tasks, activities and trade these specialisms with others, then we could all develop. Increasing specialism naturally encourages incentives and innovation… If I can make better spears, then they will be more popular, and I will be able to get more or more interesting stuff back.
Creativity is a team sport
Greg Hoffman (Design and Innovation Leader at Nike)
More People,
More Problems,
More Opportunities.
Around 10,000 years ago the invention of agriculture created another turning point in human development. We no longer needed to hunt or forage but could let nature do the hard work. This led to a population explosion and the formation of towns and cities across the world, starting in the Middle East.
Cities are by definition a collection of specialists, in our early human sense, as the lack of farmland means very few of the residents are involved in food production or self-sufficiency. This increased concentration of people produces vastly more issues (social and technological) that need solving. The population is solving problems that only people who do not need to worry about who is going to grow their food can work on (designing, trading, building, educating, entertaining, security, tax collection, governance etc…).
Studies show that there is a non-linear relationship between populations growth and increases in creativity. Doubling a city’s population will more than double its creative output. So as towns and cities grow, so does the ability of a tribe to be more creative and innovate.
And it is my conclusion from this fact that technological growth and idea development is linked to population density of cities throughout history. The Romans being an excellent example of this. Whenever they took control of a new province, the percentage of urban residents increased and so the level of technology employed rose.
This image is representative of how a typical European might have lived, for thousands of years, before Christ.
Animals kept with the home, often in the home for warmth. A central fire for cooking and heat, with no chimney, the smoke causing lung problems for the inhabitants but also protecting the building from insects and animals that might eat the roof.
The walls were made of wood and animal faeces mixed with grass. The toilet was maybe a hole in the ground somewhere outside. Your neighbourhood was perhaps all you ever knew, a travelling merchant or moving family may bring new things through the village occasionally. Or maybe once or twice a year all the surrounding villages would meet up for a seasonal harvest festival and share ideas, marry their children to a different family and hope the winter months is kind to them.
You were likely indebted to that of a local ruler. Not a slave as such, but your life was not your own. The leader would have absolute power.
It is now also thought that the local elder women of your close society were the keepers of the community’s ‘finance’. Keeping a track of who owed what to who and what was a fair trade for something else. This meant there was no need for currency and money within your community and a sophisticated basis of trade and debt could be established.
What did the Romans ever do for us?
The Roman Empire had risen out of central Italy to dominate Western Europe, then Eastern Europe and North Africa. A common language for official matters and finance was installed, a single currency and method for trade, a single rule of law covered much of the known world. Trade links were forged throughout the world, goods could travel from Scotland to China.
With huge amounts of food coming in by ship to Italy from Egypt each day, the population boomed to unprecedented levels.
At its peak at around 200AD, Rome had a population of 1 million people and a Free Market Economy.
A Roman house at this same time (around 100AD) had pumped hot air central heating, decorated, brick and cement walls, tiled roofs, flushing toilets, glass windows, mosaic decorations, ornamental gardens, sculptures, sofas and cushions, steam rooms and saunas. Outside the home there were piped water supplies, underground sewers, roads with pedestrian pavements, ‘zebra, crossings’, restaurants, shops and even public hospitals where you could receive cosmetic or even brain surgery.
A Roman temple in Egypt even had steam engines to open and close the temple doors, but apparently due to the high numbers of slaves available at that time the technology was only used for dramatic affect as there was little widespread need for mechanical power.
This was at a time of 95% illiteracy. They were by no means extraordinarily smart, but the vast network and diversity within it, could support a huge number of creative people, who did not need to work just to survive.
Only 60% of the population was involved with agriculture (as opposed to 90%+ during the medieval period 1,000 years later!).
Sadly political unrest caused the Empire to fracture. Small kingdoms appeared throughout the territory. It became harder for each region to rely on other parts of the empire for support and so each needed to be more self-sufficient. The network started to collapse and as everyone had to start fending for themselves technology fell apart unrepaired, city populations collapsed and all quality of life regressed back to a previous state when it was as if the whole thing had been a strange dream.
“You can’t use up creativity, the more you use, the more you have.”
Maya Angelou
Cooperation is Wealth.
Networks and systems stretching across the world, never before seen diversity of people, things and ideas. All the world’s people and knowledge was accessible to anyone.
Self-Sufficiency is Poverty.
Once the common systems were lost, the technology and prosperity achieved was unsustainable without the international networks that made them possible.
Political unrest caused the Roman Empire to fracture. Small kingdoms appeared throughout the territory. It became harder for each region to rely on other parts of the empire for support and so each needed to be more self-sufficient. The network started to collapse and as everyone had to start fending for themselves technology fell apart unmaintained, city populations collapsed and all quality of life regressed back to a previous state when it was as if the whole thing had been a strange dream.
As the world returned to fending for themselves, we returned to living in homes made of animal waste, sleeping with the cattle and being controlled by a lord of the land. It would take, in many cases, more than 1,700 years for Europe to return to the technological heights of the Romans.
Even in a luxurious house of the late medieval period, a house of a wealthy land owner, with plenty of indebted peasants to support their lifestyle, there are almost none of the ancient Roman home comforts.
There is still a smokey fire in the middle of the house or in every room, and an outside pit toilet. Glass windows would not be re-invented till the 1600s, in fact for 300 years before that, the best Europe could manage, and only in the wealthiest of places, were windows made of thin slices of slightly transparent bone.
In the few short years since regaining the mantel of civilised living, the technological trend has accelerated to interplanetary proportions. Specialism has gone so far that now only 2% of the UK’s population is involved in agriculture (the basis of our survival) and the rest are free to design and develop, to varying degrees, whatever they please. This has led to a fascinating conundrum, that was first articulated in Leonard Reed’s 1958 piece called “I, Pencil” where he made the observation that not a single person in the world knew how to make the classically simple object, a pencil.
Not one person, knows how to harvest and process wood in the right way, who can also mine and refine graphite for the led. Mine and melt the ore to make a steel band that holds the vulcanised rubber eraser… For even a simple product we have never been more dependant on each other. The dream of this course is to teach you (or at least get you to admire and respect) how to best work with each other so that you might one day also make a contribution to this innovation journey.