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GermaneRiposte101 t1_ja9zipk wrote

Reply to comment by Ansuz07 in Eli5: How did people know how long a year was in olden times? by Slokkkk

And, for reasons to do with farming (planting crops/harvesting/etc) there was a very real need to learn this.

People were not stupid in olden times: they just had less knowledge.

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whereisfatherjack t1_jaa0257 wrote

Less technology

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thatthatguy t1_jab9pmu wrote

They knew what was relevant to them. More personal experience kind of knowledge than book larnin’. When your livelihood depends on finding edible plants and tracking animals to hunt you het pretty good at recognizing patterns in the weather and seasons. I might be able to say that there are just under 365.25 days in a solar year. A hunter gatherer will know that when the rains stop you have only a few days to move camp to where the herd likes to come through. But harvest as many of the funny blue berries as you can before you leave because they’ll be gone before you come back.

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Smallpaul t1_jabrm0f wrote

Both. They had neither the content of Wikipedia nor the technology to store it.

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whereisfatherjack t1_jac01n1 wrote

They had a lot of the content and they stored it verbally, through songs and poems.

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Smallpaul t1_jact4ov wrote

They had a tiny fraction of the content. They didn’t know what an atom was, not a galaxy, nor a continent, a complex number, etc.

They may have had wisdom about how to run their societies, live a good life and live in their local environment, but that is not the same as having vast global knowledge.

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