The cliché says nothing happened before 1800. The data say capability rose steadily—only population swallowed the dividends. Replace vibes with an index: average income × √population. Suddenly...
*Nothing* happened before 1800 is a straw person, but 'next to nothing happened before 1600' is not. I would add two things to your account. (1) dont forget the big reverse with agriculture- two inches off average stature and what seems to have been a period of very intense patriarchal violence. (2) It is probably wrong to assume that people much before 1600 were trying to produce more but failing: they had little interest in doing so. Inventions arrived but did not spread. People were more focused on the next life than this one. Security (especially for rulers) was to be found not in risky innovation but maintenance of the status quo. Information was not about norms not evidence. If 'facts' fell foul of the norms then it was the facts that were seen as 'fake news'. (3) what changed after 1600 was a revolution in knowledge creation: science, discovery, evidence, facts. Within two centuries it started to have a massive impact on applied technology. Hence the 2%.
It is interesting but as a statistician I'd be very skeptical that modelling can solve a problem of missing data. Illiteracy is a great barrier to understanding the lives of those who could leave no records. Too many historians overrate the capacity of their imaginations to fill in the blanks. However the records of the literate are hardly an 'objective' source either. Did they understand their own lives any better than we ourselves do today?
The discovery of the logic of scientific knowledge production. The discoverer of the telescope didn't think of using it to work out the laws of motion of bodies on earth or in the heavens and destroy a couple of millennia of established ignorance. Neither did they improve on the original design as Galileo did, or use their understanding of the composition of light to design a completely different telescope technology (the refractor) as Newton did.
There are actual accounts of the invention of the telescope by a glasses-maker in Holland who was tinkering with lenses - surprise! - and maybe others. Certainly when Galileo improvised his own, based on rumors from afar, it was apparent that this would be useful to sailors. Especially with his 'telescoping' tube for focusing; the *reflector* was invented by Newton, contrary to the previous posting.
I'd work with a Cobb-Douglass formulation; Y = A*K^(1-alpha)*L^alpha, where we are trying to estimate A*K^(1-alpha). L is population (not labor) so alpha I think is smaller than 1/2. If I'm eyeballing this correctly. K is an agglomeration of capital, land, and natural resource use.
*Nothing* happened before 1800 is a straw person, but 'next to nothing happened before 1600' is not. I would add two things to your account. (1) dont forget the big reverse with agriculture- two inches off average stature and what seems to have been a period of very intense patriarchal violence. (2) It is probably wrong to assume that people much before 1600 were trying to produce more but failing: they had little interest in doing so. Inventions arrived but did not spread. People were more focused on the next life than this one. Security (especially for rulers) was to be found not in risky innovation but maintenance of the status quo. Information was not about norms not evidence. If 'facts' fell foul of the norms then it was the facts that were seen as 'fake news'. (3) what changed after 1600 was a revolution in knowledge creation: science, discovery, evidence, facts. Within two centuries it started to have a massive impact on applied technology. Hence the 2%.
I'm pretty sure your #2 is wrong. See Bret Devereaux's recent series: https://acoup.blog/2025/10/17/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-v-life-in-cycles/
It is interesting but as a statistician I'd be very skeptical that modelling can solve a problem of missing data. Illiteracy is a great barrier to understanding the lives of those who could leave no records. Too many historians overrate the capacity of their imaginations to fill in the blanks. However the records of the literate are hardly an 'objective' source either. Did they understand their own lives any better than we ourselves do today?
I can't count. Three things.
What happened in 1600, or 1608 to be precise? The invention of the telescope. As the saying goes, 'No telescope, no Galileo,' and no Newton either.
The discovery of the logic of scientific knowledge production. The discoverer of the telescope didn't think of using it to work out the laws of motion of bodies on earth or in the heavens and destroy a couple of millennia of established ignorance. Neither did they improve on the original design as Galileo did, or use their understanding of the composition of light to design a completely different telescope technology (the refractor) as Newton did.
Unintended consequences! I agree the original inventor(s) probably just wanted to spot ships at sea, or something like that.
There are actual accounts of the invention of the telescope by a glasses-maker in Holland who was tinkering with lenses - surprise! - and maybe others. Certainly when Galileo improvised his own, based on rumors from afar, it was apparent that this would be useful to sailors. Especially with his 'telescoping' tube for focusing; the *reflector* was invented by Newton, contrary to the previous posting.
Doubtless so (& I imagine it was a typo as reflector and refractor sound similar).
A lot of the nothing before 1800 should include (with bogus dates):
- Worked stone tools, worked wooden tools -110K
- Control of fire and cooked food -100K
- High intensity foraging strategy adopted -90K
- Rope, string, nets, snares -80K
- Human language -80K (For real bogosity, add the past participle at around -63K.)
- Clothing, portable storage -70K
- Transmission of cultural information, first schools -60K
- Oceanic travel - 50K
- Lunar calendar for predicting animal migration -40K
There's a massive amount of technology there, but not a lot of it shows up in fossil record.
I'd work with a Cobb-Douglass formulation; Y = A*K^(1-alpha)*L^alpha, where we are trying to estimate A*K^(1-alpha). L is population (not labor) so alpha I think is smaller than 1/2. If I'm eyeballing this correctly. K is an agglomeration of capital, land, and natural resource use.