The Engines of Our Ingenuity 1559: The Oldest Technology

0:00This is the engines of our ingenuity made possible by the friends of KUHF Houston. Today we look for the oldest technology. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them. So what do you suppose the oldest technology might be? Farming came late in history, before farming settled herdsmen and gatherers made clothing, knives, tents, spears, but so did nomads before them. Go back further, picture painting was the technology that heralded in the Upper Paleolithic Stone Age. We all know the magnificent cave paintings of Altamira and Lisco. But archaeologists have also found evidence of rattles, drums, pipes, and shell trumpets from that period, although the sounds alas are gone. And the Bible, the chronology of the Hebrew tribes, identifies musical instrument

1:00making as one of the three technologies that arose in the 7th and 8th generations after Adam. As we move back into the Stone Age, the artifacts peter out, but that doesn't mean the technologies of music making weren't present. We have evidence of another kind. It is that music is a huge presence in societies with the least technology on earth. Australia and Aborigini culture is defined by its song, dance, musical instruments, and poetry. We have the sure knowledge that whales sing, that the animal urge to make music precedes, not only artifacts, but our own presence on earth. And while music is the most accessible art, it is at the same time the most sophisticated. In any age, music making becomes every bit as complex as any other technology in a society. And so I offer music making as my candidate for the oldest technology of all. But our experience tells us more than archaeology does. Experience tells us that music is primal. It is not just a simple pleasure.

2:04In Shakespeare's merchant of Venice, Jessica says to Lorenzo, I am never merry when I hear sweet sounds of music. Lorenzo answers her. The reason is, your spirits are attentive. The man that has no music in himself is fit for reasons. And we know perfectly well what he means. If we can't respond to art, to music, then something is missing. We are fit for reason. Music helps us understand the human lot. Music is as functional as any worthwhile technology. Its function is to put reality in terms that make sense. And that means dramatizing what we see, transmuting it into something more than is obvious. Poet Wallace Stevens said that wonderfully well when he wrote, they said, you have a blue guitar. You do not play things as they are. The man replied, things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar. Stevens' blue guitar, music or any art, does change reality. It turns the human dilemma around until we see it in perspective.

3:05Sometimes it takes us through grief and pain to do that. It disturbs us at the same time it comforts us. But it serves an absolutely fundamental human need. And that, beyond history or archaeology, is why music making has always been the primal human technology. I'm John Leanhard at the University of Houston, where we are interested in the way inventive minds work. This programming is sponsored by Metro. World Cup planning includes transit improvements intended to serve Houston after the final match. Metro provides bus, rail and para transit service and continues mobility enhancements across the region. More at ridemetro.org forward slash Metro now.