The Shape of Things to Come

“Necessity, who is the mother of invention” as Plato wrote it in the Republic about 380 B.C. has less thought on what has yet to come or will be invented. By that time the technology to make fire at will may have not come to being or if it did, maybe it was confined on rubbing stones against each other to create a spark or through two dry wooden sticks by friction, matchsticks or lighter were not yet available. Whatever ‘invention’, being referred to may have been advanced in its time, but that was way back around 380 B.C. so what could have been regarded as great inventions except for shields, armours, slings, spears, bows and arrows, etc.? How that saying survived the times to be proven appropriate in the present was just a gigabyte of history omitted to pop up in our midst at present with the words as we popularly knew it, restated “Necessity is the mother of invention”.

How did the historians managed to preserve literature before paper was available would be a matter for consideration. Paper has its origin in China way back 105 AD as Cai Lun improved the process. Before that, paper was available as a crude writing material made mostly from hemp. The luxury of writing on paper just arrived in the West around 8th century. The first paper mill to start producing paper for Europe was built in 1009, that’s ten centuries ago. Just figure out all the bright ideas that have come to be thought about in the last ten centuries that could be taken into evaluation at the pages of books and journals which have been stored around the world’s oldest libraries. Would you be so patient to take a mobile ladder going through the highest shelf and search for a rare title amidst dust and moulds just to sniff the idea written or would still go farther, beneath buried stone rubbles on ancient pyramids and decipher messages contained in hieroglyphs?

The forces of nature may have been the earliest pressure known by man that obliged him to devise ways to better himself. During the stone age, the extreme cold and danger against wild animals enabled people of the period to build weatherproof shelters and make clothing out of animal skin to protect them from the cold. When civilization was established and communities flourished, people gathered together and learn to select a leader to rule among themselves. With leadership and territorial limits established, kingdoms came to being and most probably with insecurities amidst kingdoms, wars were waged.