You guys are dodging the question or not understanding what I am asking- Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest mentions man's brain enable them to survive because they were more intelligent than other creatures and knew how to adapt- ok if this is true- and modern man has been on earth for at least 40,000 years-- what the hell was going on in the first 39,000 years? Why are we seeing the greatest advancements in the last 170 years?
Originally Posted by wellendowed1911
Your examples are increasingly ridiculous.
First, the increase in knowledge if NOT linear, it is exponential.
40,000 years ago, there were a few tens of thousands of early humans spread out over hundreds of 1000s of square miles. They only slowly developed language and even more slowly developed writing. They lived in small tribes and only occasionally bumped into other tribe members. So the exchange of information between humans - that's how knowledge spreads - was very slow.
It took many thousands of years for the population to become large enough to where people ran into each other regularly and learned from each other. Even then, they spoke different languages and had no writing or at least different writing.
So it took many thousands of more years until there were enough people and enough translators and enough written documents that knowledge could be spread by reading.
And finally, most of the early inventions were simple and inexpensive things. It took a a lot of time to develop governments and institutions that could provide money to fund exploration and research. Just look at electricity. Before you can experiment with electrical circuits, you first have to invest in copper mining in order to create enough wires so that Ben Franklin could play around with his kite.
But, finally, when you DO have modern communications in place and you have companies and/or governments that fund research and development, the pace at which we acquire knowledge and spread it increases tremendously.
These concepts aren't difficult to grasp and they have been written about widely. If you weren't so adamant about "proving" your religious beliefs to be true, you would figure out these answers for yourself.