this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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My favourite is language, not even writing, but language itself. We could collectively invent ways to understand each others with codes shared by tens of millions of individuals, living kilometres apart.
And then I also love early astronomy, like being able to approximate Earth's circumference (or later the time needed to reach Asia by navigating west), based on the shadow lenght at two fairly distant (but still pretty close) places, thanks to that quirky thing some friends of yours invented to divide land called geometry. To say nothing of those demonstrating Earth rotates around the Sun just by looking at star positions during the year.
As for recent things, something pretty cool we take for granted is radio signals. Information getting places without anything moving, just invisible vibrations through space.
Language is an interesting one... It seems like everywhere we look for language, we find it
And not just signaling systems or rudimentary understanding - everyone has a name, there's animals in the wild that are bilingual across species, and this is symbolic abstract language. There's animals out there with governmental systems - like crows, they have fucking trials and negotiate territory
Cows negotiating territory is very funny ๐
Would love a documentary about it, if you have any pointers
I don't know of any documentaries, there's probably some stuff on YouTube. It is really interesting learning about crow social structures through, we're looking at it from the outside, but it sure sounds like some form of basic government to me
I read cows at first ๐ซ
Dope stuff anyway