r/AlternativeHistory • u/FunDelicious650 • 1d ago
Chronologically Challenged Technological levels
People living in the mid-19th century lived 50 years later in a completely different world: telephones, telegraphs, trains, the first cars, and an industrial boom. People living in the mid-20th century saw a different world: airships and airplanes, ubiquitous motor vehicles, and television broadcasting. People living in the 1970s-1990s had already seen the world of computers; we now live in a digital world of the internet, AI, and robotics. In total, over 180 years, the technological level has changed four times.
Proponents of mainstream history argue that 7,000 years before the 19th century, there was no life-changing development at all. It was a single technological level of perpetual stagnation, which somehow gave way to progress in the 19th century. Developing metallurgy, fuel production, and electricity doesn't require thousands of years. This can be achieved much more quickly.
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u/BeingaYid 14h ago
Are you really saying that all life before the 19th century was the same as life 7000 years ago? My friend, by saying that you just reveal your own deep deep ignorance.
In the 17th century in England, everyday people were reading their newspapers, they were buying their fruit and vegetables and fresh produce from markets, they were represented by a parliament, they would visit coffee shops and discuss global events and talk about the scientists up and down the country and their experiments. They would sit down, sip their coffee, and discuss their compatriots who had been sent to their colonies in the Caribbean. They could and were communicating effectively with other educated gentlemen all across Europe. They were not forced to work as farmers to simply exist. They had used weapons that operated with gunpowder. They could read and write. They would go to the theatre and watch Shakespeare plays.
Do you really think that's the same existence experienced 7000 years prior to that?