Dwarkesh Patel

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We were talking earlier about how there's no fixed differences between humans 50,000 years ago and humans today.

So if there's no genetic basis for...

the kind of thing that allowed humans to have more symbolic representation, have farming, et cetera.

I think I asked you this question last time we talked, but especially with this context, why no farming before the Ice Age?

Genetically, we were there.

Oh, so you increased the range there.

So you said 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 years ago.

And we, based on the genetic differences between modern people and people from even 300,000 years ago, you think basically there's

they're modern 300,000 years ago?

The climate thing seems surprising given there were so many different environments in which agriculture was independently developed.

Now I understand that across environments, the variance could have gone down, but it just like, if it only had happened in one place at one time, I could have bought that explanation.

But the fact that they're making maize in the new world and they've got, you know, cereals in the old world and so forth and

just in very different environments makes it surprising.

is it possible that agriculture existed but you didn't have modern metallurgy or whatever it was that allowed populations to explode starting in

5000 BC with the Bronze Age, because like population wise, it doesn't seem like, you know, 10,000 BC to 5000 BC, the early Neolithic, much is happening.

It's as possible that they had farming, but they didn't have copper, they didn't have tin, which you needed to go to, I guess, the Middle East for to develop a civilization that could make use of bronze at a large scale.

And so they just disappeared from the historical record.

You would see them today if they had gone completely vanished.

It's even more impressive because it's not only without metal, but it's without animals and without wheels, which is crazy.