We will never know the name of a human that lived 50,000 years ago

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨solidheron@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

Kinda a thought that pops into my head from time to time about if people that lived well before writing wanted to leave an eternal legacy and at best we see their remains dressed in ornaments.

It’s interesting to think that someone that lived 50k years ago paved a path for me in the sense that they probably exploded lands weren’t known to their tribe or human at the, found new edible plants, or maybe created a new tool.

Crazy to think that there’s billions of humans that I contributed to the life I have know and their names have long since been lost to time and that what I do today can still affect someone well into the future

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

DoubleDongle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I just like to imagine there was a real person called Unga Bunga though. It seems statistically likely. Or some guy named, like, Andrew or something, but with absolutely no linguistic ties to any of the modern name’s roots, like it arose independently more than once.

source
- solidheron@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Lol like Andrew meant star puncher in ancient language that no tale or legend can recall.
  
  source
  - betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    It used to mean “land exploder” in the before-times.
    
    source
- AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  If the name “Naomi” can occur independently in Hebrew and Japanese, it’s probably been popping up regularly since the beginning of language.
  
  source
  - rockerface@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Naomi is the crab of names
    
    source
- Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  “Long” is interesting. It’s an English surname, but there’s also Chinese people called “Long” as it means “Dragon”
  
  source
  - DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    FYI: 龙 is not pronounced “long” lmao
    
    you do not pronunce the pinyin as if it were an English word
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
MimicJar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Many years ago I heard a comedian tell a joke, “I come from a long line of people who had kids.”

He was a funny guy, with a funny set, but that line always stuck with me.

source
- jjpamsterdam@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Anyone who doesn’t have children is breaking a million year old family tradition. I regard it as willfully dying out.
  
  source
  - sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Populations of animals tend to either naturally maintain an equillibrium with their surrounding environment…
    
    … or grow their population beyond the carrying capacity of their environment, and then rather suddenly collapse, sometimes even going extinct.
    
    source
- Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m nonbinary, like if a man and a woman had a baby
  
  source
- fizzle@quokk.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’ve heard it as a witticism amongst new parents - no idea what im doing but all of my ancestors seem to have figured it out.
  
  source
- solidheron@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I just remembered telling a bunch of men than at one point that DNA evidence showed that 1 guy had kids with 18 women to get black pilled responses, but one guy said “that’s my ancestors” and I thought that was funny
  
  source
toynbee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I suspect it was probably “Phil.”

source
- Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Ben. I’m sure he was Ben. The caretaker.
  
  source
  - toynbee@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Of course, how could I have forgotten!
    
    source
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
On the other hand, the number of humans from 50,000 years ago whose names you don’t know is vastly smaller than the number of humans alive right now whose names you don’t know.

source
Apytele@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I bet at least one person was named UUUUUUURRRRR and he had two buddies named AAAAARRRRR and AAAACCCHK

source
TheBat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

they probably exploded lands

Khaal explores. Khaal not explodes. Khaal not dumb.

source
- Godort@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Khaal took Armegeddon out of his commander deck.
  
  source
- solidheron@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Kha’ra al explodes new lands kha’ra al found volcano
  
  source
Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The best guesses are either Mohammad or McLovin. 🤷‍♂️

source
Snazz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
It’s theoretically impossible to create a system to remember every human that doesn’t rely on external storage.

I’ll explain: let’s say that for every human that dies, they will be remembered and live on in the heart of another, living human. Each living human can remember n dead humans.

we can set up an equation

pn >= r

where p is the current population of live humans, r is the amount of dead humans that must be remembered.

We can express the rate of deaths as a proportion of the current living population:

d/dt[r] = pb

Where t is time and b is the instantaneous death rate per captia with respect to time (generally a constant).

Combined with the previous, we get the separable differential equation:

d/dt[r] = pb >= (r/n)b

dr/dt >= rb/n

[1/r] rt >= [b/n] dt

Integrated:

ln|r| >= tb/n+C

r >= e^(tb/n+C)

pn >= r >= e^(tb/n+C)

p >= e^(tb/n+C)/n

So in order for this system to work, the living population must always be growing exponentially, which is not feasible for modern humanity.

source
- solidheron@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  You could say that n would also have to increase with time. I’m thinking you have a tribe of 10 then 1 dies then 9 people to remember that person. We can say as time goes on the tribe stays at 10 but the original 10 die off then n = 1. So you could turn n into a function of it then solve the equations to see if it prevents a divergence
  
  source
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You don’t understand how much this hurts me

source
- freeman@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  forgetting names is truly a sad thing, ComradeSharkfucker
  
  source
- idiomaddict@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I like to think that historical humans prefer it that way, if it helps.
  
  I want my name known to people who loved me and whose life I directly impacted. I like the concept of getting to know the larger human community, but I don’t think I’ll have failed if nobody remembers my name a hundred years after my death. If the choice is between my diary being found and read by people or my name forgotten, I’d prefer the latter.
  
  source
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I have a Geneology book that have the names of my ancestors that were alive circa 1200 CE… (like 20something generations ago)

But like… does that even matter?

Idk what they even did except like they village wrote a short summary of what that time was like but idk what their jobs were or their behavoirs, thoughts, philosophical beliefs, political beliefs, or maybe if they were just as toxic as my parents… I literally have no info on them other than their name… so does knowing the name of your ancestors even matter?

(Also its male ancestors only… thanks, patriarchy 🤦‍♂️)

source
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Bob. There has been and will always be a Bob around.

source
BlueEther@no.lastname.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Have a read of how much history is embedded in Australian aboriginal oral stories. Their stories go a long long way back

source
- fizzle@quokk.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I think it might be possible to… over-state that.
  
  Im sure that in some regions many of these oral histories are preserved, but in others they’ve sadly been lost to time. In my region there aren’t any youth spending their days learning these histories, and I doubt there have been for the last 5 or 6 decades really.
  
  Even Aboroginal place names are very unreliable.
  
  source
psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You don’t know John Sapien and Jennifer Sapien?

source
- BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Wasn’t their kid a Homo?
  
  source
- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  John Q. Sapien? The guy they named the species after?
  
  source
fizzle@quokk.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think cave art is also quite intimate. Like the hand prints and stencils are very human.

source
HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I mean nothing is eternal but I do get that feeling. The immensity of all the people who lived and died and how your life on the scale is so short and will end soon. Im not sure I want to have any type of written immortality and not sure anyone does. Do you really know the person who wrote or made things? Even people that meet and know you just have a kind of personal concept of you influenced by their own being. Ones entity is really something to unique to them and can’t really be after it is. Heck do I know myself yesterday like I do today or last week or from last month or last year or last decade. My 5 year old self is dead. I can remember a bit from the time but can’t really wrap my head around how I thought and who I was.

source
FaceDeer@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
We know a few. "Fire", for example. And "Axe". The inventions named after them are still in use to this day.

source
halfapage@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
you don’t know Kyle?

source