A History of Ideas - Archaeologist Matt Pope on tools and human evolution

Download Archaeologist Matt Pope on tools and human evolution

There's a tiny bone needle at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire. For archaeologist Matt Pope it's hugely significant. 13,000 years ago local people used it to construct tailored clothing which allowed them to survive and thrive at the very limits of Ice Age civilisation.

Skip forward millennia and the first human visitor to Mars will be protected by a thin skin of man-made fabric, a suit containing the only biological processes for millions of miles. Our ability to create tools that take us into new and hostile environments is, for Matt Pope, the key to man's evolutionary journey.

It's a view he shares with the first philosopher of technology, Ernst Kapp. Living through Germany's rapid industrial revolution Kapp came to believe that we could extend all the functions of the human mind and body through technology. Together, man and his tools would know no limits.

Published on Friday, 30th January 2015.

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