If technology and advances are exponential then does it not stand to reason that horse riding would have developed far earlier?

That's all I was getting at. Stereotype me all you want if it helps you.

So you're suggesting that children rode horses before adults? What for? Baby soldiers? Why would that practice spread in the way you think it would?

No one is suggesting that they didn't make technological advancements. They did. Where did you hear that people "didn't advance"? Also, you're starting to sound an awful lot like social darwinism.

If you have even a cursory knowledge of archaeology, then you know that there have been a lot of technological developments over thousands of years, but technology is iterative; it gets faster and easier the more that has already been done. Rate of technological advances also increase alongside literacy, so before writing was developed, it all had to be passed down verbally, i.e., there's no library to hold all of the designs. I don't know why you're drawing this bizarre conclusion because of when ridable horses were first developed. Horse riding isn't indicative of much except riding horses.

>Milk isn't THAT bad and it's so popular I think I'd leave it alone and focus on other improvements. Sometimes you just have to judge the popularity of something and find an alternative approach.

Milk only looks terrible because it's compared to beverages with little nutritional value. I don't think it's intentional. People just compare "milk" with "milk" and many people are trained to think "calories=bad" so if they do glance at the nutrition profile it's easy to think "ah—milk=less healthy!"

Of course animal milk takes more energy to produce. There's more energy in it!

When you actually want the nutrition milk offers instead of hydration, it suddenly becomes a whole lot greener. We didn't start drinking milk to mellow out our coffee or quench our thirst, we started drinking it because it's nutritious food.

(Let us also not forget that milk is a local product and transportation of heavy things like unitised liquids over long distances have huge carbon costs.)

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Egypt didnt have horses until well after then. The Hyksos brought them to Egypt when they invaded around 1600 bc

Probably longer. Horses, like dogs are very aware and sensitive to human voices, body language and even facial expressions. They can even copy your behavior without being trained if they were inclined to do so. Highly curious, intelligent, and socially complex. They are more cat-like than dog like though. They strike a bargin and expect something in return. They have lots of opinions, especially a mare.

Egypt didnt have horses until the Hyksos invaded around 1600 bc

Iirc, the arrival of horses to the fertile crescent and so forth only goes back to the Gutians

Why can I picture alcohol being involved with the first person to try to ride a wild horse?

That's really concerning. Depression can often be overlooked when it comes to physical health, but this emphasizes the importance of considering mental health too.

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People are always stunned to learn that most of the languages in Europe and the near-east are all related and derive from a common ancestor language (Indo-European). And they are also stunned to learn that horse culture (i.e. horse-based transportation) is only a few thousand years old.

Not too many figure out that these two facts are closely related to each other. The people who revolutionized transportation spread their language, culture and religion everywhere they went.

I agree that's what a lot of riders would say, but it's a complete waste of human resources. If something like transit is such a public good (users and non-users), there's no reason to put an additional burden on those that choose to use the service when it's such a low cost when distributed across the population. Taxes are the most efficient way to fund public services. All that said, public transit should receive way more funding.

So for at least 5,000 years we have been torturing and abusing one species of animal.

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They didn't have them at first, no. The people who built the pyramids, sphinx, etc. did so without horses.

They didn't have horses in widespread use until after the first and middle kingdoms were dead and gone. True fact.

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OK. Then what about someone who isn't an adult?

You're missing my point entirely. My argument isn't so much about technology. It's about the length of time.

I'm not arguing that they should have advanced as much but merely that they should have advanced. People would have made discoveries, practices and methods would have changed. To my knowledge the human brain hasn't changed that much. People would still be inquisitive.

The presentation we are given with articles such as this only feeds the impression that people were basic and that they did not think in the way we do. In basic terms they weren't that advanced. That doesn't really follow through.

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It pretty much is, you can't forget that an exponential curve looks the same no matter how much you "zoom" in. It takes ten thousand years to go from stone to bronze, a thousand years from bronze to iron, and then merely a few hundred years to go from simple steam coal mine pumps to nuclear-heated steam-electric turbines. You don't see an enormous change in quality of life for the average person, but the reality is that each of these advancements absolutely rocked their contemporary world. Combined with how technological advancement only takes hold with economic incentive (steam engines have been around for a thousand years, their uses have not) you get what looks like very little progress until just now. But in reality there was constant independent innovation and improvement around the world.

Oh no, what will I do

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Ah yes....let's place the blame for global warming on regular people, checks notes....eating.