How long would it take to reproduce our level of technology?

The other day I was thinking to myself the following:

If you were to drop a large group of people who possessed all the current scientific and engineering knowledge of the world, into an area with abundant natural resources BUT with absolutely no tools whatsoever - how long would it take for them to re-create an advanced level of technology, capable of producing as our goal for this example, a basic internal combustion engine powered car.

I'll rephrase this question in the form of a thought experiment with the following caveats for the sake of simplicity.

1.) They are located in an area with abundant and easily accessible natural materials, with no predators, year round perfect wheather and no disease. They live together harmoniously and the acquisition of food is no issue at all - they do not need to complete the domestication of animals for example.

1.) There is enough of these people to complete the necessary tasks in parallel, such as the smelting of large amounts of metals.

3.) Their knowledge is perfect, and subsequent knowledge inherit this knowledge perfectly as well, or perhaps lets say that these people do not even age.

4.) Any other stupid issue I haven't covered is now covered by this sentence

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All I want this post to focus on is the length of time required for the systematic process of advancing technology step by step, from stone tools to forged metals, synthesised chemicals and machines powered by internal combustion.

Disclaimer: Honestly I'm a layman, so I can't even begin to guess how long it would take, I presume however you would reach a point where technology advancement increases at an ever faster rate, a "revolution" if you will.

I'd estimate the entire process would take about 100 years.

 

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I've seen soemone forge an engine block with a wodden mold he carved by hand and it was rated at over 500hp.
Just something to factor in - WHO are these people? Not just their knowledge, but their experience and skills.

 

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It would partly depend on what sort of scale you're talking about. For example, building a modern oil refinery can take a year or more even when you have all the equipment etc. already. But if you just wanted to make a few gallons of gasoline to run a prototype car (instead of millions of gallons to run a civilization's worth of cars), you could probably whip a primitive little refinery using using ceramics, crude blown glass, and wood fires in just a few days or weeks.

If everyone knew exactly what they were doing, I would guess that it could be very fast - probably a matter of just a decade or two. If there's a lot of metal etc. around, you could probably go from nothing to early 1800s steam tech more or less right away. It would just be a matter of making some crude tools that you then use to make high-precision tools that you then use to start making machinery.

 

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that is true.

for one thing just the knowledge of something is different than people who have some experience or even expert experience, so that should be taken into account. you said a basic ic automobile, basic as in an engine, 4 wheels, steeering etc. but not necessarily complete with sheet metal body doors, glass etc.

given the above criteria, i would estimate 5-7 years or maybe even less.

unless i read it wrong, maybe i did.

 

I suspect it would be much faster. Sure, making stone tools is hard, but if the only thing you do all day is sit around trying to make stone tools AND you already have written instructions/a general understanding of the procedure, I doubt it would take more than a few days or weeks to become proficient. And if there's metal just laying around on the surface waiting to be fashioned into something useful, you can more or less skip the stone age and jump to iron and steel right away.

Edit: It only took so long to go from copper/bronze to iron and steel because of how long it took to figure out a way to smelt it properly. If you already knew how to do it, it wouldn't take very long to set things up to start making iron or steel tools.

 

I agree with one raven it would depend on who they people were as to how long it would take. That is unless the people that were dropped knew everything there is to know then I would say after they finished puberty it would likly take them 10 to 20 years to reproduce a crude version of what we have but I really think it would take several generations of them to get back to the level we are at now. That is unless we are Talking about Gilligans Island here it only took them 5 or 6 seasons to get the comforts of home back.

 

Based on the OP, I though it seemed pretty obvious that they were supposed to be more or less perfect experts in everything, and it was just a matter of how long it took them to actually do the work of making all the stuff they needed.

 

Look at Battle Star Galactica. Here we are 150,000 years later and still no starships!

 

None in our vicinity, that's for sure.

I think that the OP says that every hindrance to technological advancement is mitigated. But I worry about the motivation. If we are all comfortable, have all the food and shelter, amiable neighbors, no social problems, what is the motivation to strive for continual improvement?

 

its one thing to have the knowledge required to produce a something , its quite another to have the facilities to do so

200yrs at least

 

It is more or less asking the question of, for example, "how long would it take for nature to establish a copy of an elephant DNA?" Our current level of technology has its own -ongoing- evolution dynamics. And nothing can be isolated from its evolution or history of development. Forget about current technology, how long would it take to invent the wheel or how long would it take to control the fire? If we look at from here, we would say "a second" or "a minute". The reality has been slightly different.

Ask this question: "how long would it take to create a technology which can show things in front of our eyes without using a screen?" We don't know, because we haven't been there yet. It will take its own time. And human technology has inevitable elements of human intentionality. Why did we not create electric cars in the first place instead of combustion engine? At the end of the day, there was/is not an example of combustion engine in nature, moving bodies does not produce steam or noise, our ancestors should have guessed that something was wrong in their design. It does not work like that: Technologic developments are not linear progress or advancement stories; just as natural evolution, they are trial and error, modification, replies to problems, mistakes and achievements...

You also hinted the importance of the environment (a society without any disease, war or short supply). What will be the motivation factor(s) for this society? I am not saying that "sufferings are necessary for technologic achievements";quite opposite; mostly you need a relatively isolated environment, peace of mind or suitable workspace in order to create solutions. What I am saying is that the paces of technologic developments are dependent upon various factors including the level of previous technologic knowledge and products as well as the nature of the problem(s) (often decided by human agents and systems, unless nature pushes itself as asteroids, earthquakes or diseases).

Even politics play an important role: Why didn't we create secured drinking water providers instead of designing atom bomb? Because it never occured to us that drinking water could ever be a serious problem comparing with your rivals' attempts to create the biggest bomb against you. We are apes with attitude, who knows what's going to happen next...

 

No it isn't, since we already know the principles.
To recreate the technology would be working from an existing knowledge base.

 

That's cheating. Isolate a large group of children, provide no teaching etc, then drop them "into an area with abundant natural resources BUT with absolutely no tools whatsoever".
That's a much more interesting question.


To answer yours, if the group contained experts of all needed areas of expertise, a few years perhaps (if they really wanted to).

 

Well, if history is any benchmark to go by, I'd say about 200,000 years for an uneducated group of homo sapiens to build a car

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Obviously my original question is an unrealistic and contrived scenario - reality contains far more variables, that's not even necessary for me to say.

However, I believe that if we can roughly estimate the amount of time it takes to physically progress through each step, then afterwards we can begin to factor in those other fuzzy variables which would impede progress.

Call me what you will, but I'm hoping at least some of what groups like "The Disclosure Project" claim is proved true, and that it will indeed be alien technology which provides us with the next quantum leap forward - without us having to stumble upon it at an agonizingly slow pace.

Interestingly, if you read the claims made by Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso (wikipedia him) much of the modern progress made in the fields of fiber optics, lasers, and integrated circuits back in the 1960's was made possible by study of recovered alien material, which was distributed out to industry for reverse engineering by the convenient cover of the "Foreign Technology" desk in "Army Research and Development".

Of course, that could all be a load of bullcrap, but it gives me some hope for other major breakthroughs to suddenly be achieved within our lifetime.

Food for thought at least.

 

Read properly before you say anything.

It was an analogy to describe the non-linear nature of human technology. Nobody said "human technology is equal to DNA" or anything like that. You have to use already established knowledge (wheel, electromagnetic, combustion etc.) in order to produce a car. DNA does the similar thing and use the codes of eye, teeth, etc. to establish an elephant DNA. Both processes takes time, and both processes require previous sets of knowledge, method, or code.

In somewhere else you would easily say "...,since we don't completely know the principles". I know that, I am familiar to your approach.

 

Do you actually think before posting?

And I didn't go anywhere near that.

The OP:

In other words, working from an established base to recreate current technology that group would start knowing what to do: no hit and miss, no working out science from scratch...

And that knowledge was built up over centuries, which the group in the OP would NOT have to do.

But not in this case.

No you aren't, you appear to have missed it completely.

 

Agreed.

That's not entirely true.......

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The potential acuity meter tests a patients "potential acuity" by projecting an image directly onto his retina. The patient actually sees the chart as if it were in front of his eyes.

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This allows the doctor to determine what vision a patient might expect to have after cataract surgery or a corneal transplant (two common varieties of media opacities).

 

What is your basis for saying this? Is that just your best guess as to how difficult it is, or have you actually spent a considerable time trying to make stone tools? Also, even if we assume that it is as difficult as learning an instrument, if you make it your full-time job I don't think it would take more than months to get reasonably proficient. If someone spends 14 hours/day learning the piano, he's going to get pretty good in a couple of months. No, he probably won't be as good as some neolithic guy who has been doing it for years, but good enough to make the necessary tools to start smelting iron.

At one time you could find significant amounts of iron ore just sitting around on the earth's surface that could be fed directly into a furnace and smelted. Since in the OP's scenario the people are already experts at iron smelting, it would probably just be a matter of constructing a wood/clay furnace, going down to the local stream bed for some big chunks of hematite, and getting to work. Yes, constructing the furnace will be a chore, you'll have to get good enough at pottery to make things the shape you want, etc. But I still think that would be more a matter of months than years, especially if you already know how it's supposed to be done.