Grateful for cumulative knowledge

There was a time the first of our species took a piece of sharp rock in their hands and hit a fruit or a nut (or an enemy) with it, only to become the first one ever to use a tool. Their peers would then learn that a walnut opens much easier with a rock than with your teeth or fingernails. Knowledge was shared and passed onto generations. Little by little humans were learning cumulatively: always building on the foundation of knowledge and adding their own discoveries.

8000 BC the Sumerians grew wheat and barley and gave birth to the concept of agriculture. Only some 10 000 years later the farmed wheat had turned from a loaf of bread into a loaf of sliced bread sold in markets around the globe. Any of the following steps would not have been possible if it weren't for that first knowledge of how to cultivate wheat.

There are some primal things you know, for example the smell of feces repulse you for a reason as it's something you should leave be and not stick your finger in for a sample. When you vomit, often the last thing you ate will repulse you if not for the rest of your life, for a long while after. It's your body's way of telling you the reaction you had was due to what you put in your stomach and you shouldn't do it again. This reaction, knowledge, of your body is there to keep you from eating poisonous food.

Any knowledge that you have that you've learned consciously or subconsciously from the world around you, is someone's understanding of it. You are constantly building onto knowledge gathered by those who came before you. In 2017 we individually and at a collective level are able to learn from a bigger variety of people, whereas ancient Sumerians could only hope to pass something forward to those they came in direct contact with. These days all you need is a smartphone - which is available to almost every second person on earth (43%) and a connection to the internet - to teach or learn something new from all the potential internet users. The fact that I know this is all thanks to the cumulative knowledge of people who came before me and made my life as it is, possible.

I'm grateful for knowledge, but especially two types of it: new knowledge and cumulative knowledge that make the lives of each and everyone of us more comfortable or interesting. If it weren't for the Sumerian's ingenuity, we wouldn't be having our sliced bread. If it weren't the crazy, daring, inventive, curious people, or that person who discovered the use of a tool, in all of our pasts, we wouldn't be where we are today.