Addressing the European technology gap
Man’s technological ascent began in earnest in what is known as the Neolithic period (“New stone age”). The invention of polished stone axes was a major advance because it allowed forest clearance on a large scale to create farms. Additionally, children could contribute labor to the raising of crops more readily than they could to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Human ancestors have been using stone and other tools since long before the emergence of Homo sapiens approximately 200,000 years ago.
- Basic economic relations are changing as new technologies and markets emerge.
- Technology’s central role in our lives has drawn concerns and backlash.
- Moreover, these technologies have become so complex that entire fields have developed to support them, including engineering, medicine, and computer science; and other fields have become more complex, such as construction, transportation, and architecture.
- Europe is home to 43 percent of the world’s top 100 universities for life sciences, according to The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021; the United States has 34 percent.
The use of tools by early humans was partly a process of discovery, partly of evolution. Early humans evolved from a race of foraging hominids which were already bipedal, with a brain mass approximately …