Early in their evolutionary history, Homo sapiens began
expressing a unique urge to understand and influence their environment, seeking
to explain phenomena and manipulate materials. This instinct led to the development
of technology. Beginning with the
mastery of fire and the fashioning of stone tools in the Paleolithic, sapiens
slowly and incrementally accumulated a vast array of tools and skills, eventually
allowing them to invade virtually every habitat on the planet.
Technological development was excruciatingly slow for tens
of thousands of years, until, beginning in the era we call the Enlightenment,
advances in the natural sciences laid the foundation for an explosion of
technical expansion. Since then, sapiens
technology has become so refined that some members of the species are even capable
of making replacement body parts.
