The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs and Early Paleontology
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- Опубликовано: 8 окт 2020
- Humans have been discovering fossils for thousands of years, but the field of paleontology only started in the nineteenth century. Early paleontology was highly contentious as scientists argued over what the fossils meant, and what the creatures might have looked like. The History Guy recalls the forgotten history of early paleontology in England and the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs that introduced the new field, and ancient creatures, to the people of London.
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
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All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.
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Script by JCG
#history #thehistoryguy #paleontology
I'm so glad you gave Mary Anning her due. She was such a groundbreaking (no pun intended) fossil hunter and self-taught paleontologist before the term was invented! She found the first Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, and Pteranodons among many other discoveries including fish species, ammonites and belemnites. She pioneered techniques for removing and preserving specimens. She led Buckland, Mantell, Owen and many other male naturalists and geologists of the era on the outcrop at Lyme Regis on the south coast of England. Curiously, though women were not allowed in the geological society meetings it was very common for their wives to do the actual field work, sample prep and labeling. The men confined their efforts to the interpretation and pro or con biblical arguments. The young princess, soon to be Queen Victoria, even purchased fossils from Mary's shop in Lyme Regis
As a young boy, I was quite enamored w/ all things "dinosaur." One of my first papers (reports) was on dinosaurs and I really wanted a picture of a Trex in my paper, so I asked my mother if she would draw one for me - she could draw anything w/ a No.2 pencil and make it look like a B & W photo. It took her about 15 minutes, but there, on the first page, was an exact copy of a Trex. I got an A, but was sad that my teacher wouldn't give my report back, as I wanted to keep my mothers drawing. I have all of her drawings and a few paintings she did. RIP Mother Rembrandt (my nick-name for her).
Very sweet story, thank you for sharing.
V. E. Lucky you! Fond memories are the best history!
Wow! Thank you so much for sharing that story. Your mother would have been proud of you, and honored by you remembering her in this way.
I remember reading something in Psych class about little boys fascination with Dinosaurs having to do with empowerment. Giving them a sense of control over something otherwise terrifying.
I guess if the phase most boys go through. I didn't experience it myself, but it didn't give me a charming tale to share either.
@@HM2SGT Ain't human psychology something? Never thought about the psychological implications of my predilection for dinos. I just thought they were cool looking giant reptiles, but certainly they were a formidable sight.
I like those news stories about regular people stumbling across intact dinosaur fossils. It always makes my day.
I used to love going to Crystal Palace and wander amongst those concrete dinosaurs as a child.
I used to live near there as well. Sunday morning trips to walk around the park, see the dinosaurs & the statue of Guy the gorilla.
How many children climbed over that gorilla over the years - untold. I be one of them also.
Yep me too. My grandparents lived just round the corner in Annerley so this was a regular trip out to them. Even found a five pound note in the park. This was 45+ years ago... Nice to see them being mentioned again
@@MrLeighman Me too. Climbing over them (not all were on islands) gave me an interest in dinosaurs. Nowadays, a Health and Safety buffoon would prevent all that.
@@andrewemery8495 Yes, indeed. unfortunate times for children we are living in when there are too many adults whom are murdering the freedom of youth.
You may remember near by was the adventure playground park that as children we would have so much fun in. That would of been in the mid eighties.
unfortunately, I believe health and safety got at that to. It has mostly gone now together with the tyre swings.
I have noticed that several of these episodes have been about the ..."history of the history of......" I think this is neat and also very interesting.
...the history of learning from (and about) the past
historiography is the term
@@thatsme9875 So that is the term..thanks !
Fascinating. I am still, at age 66, fascinated by dinosaurs. Living in Montana the T-Rex is king. A sculpture outside the Paleontology Department at the University of Montana in Bozeman, has a life-size tyrannosaurus - named Big Mike. He's awesome.
This brings back a number of memories of when I was a kid watching documentaries at the dawn of the dinosaur revolution of the 1980s. Heck I remember back when we had dinosaurs dragging their tails only for that to be revealed to be inaccurate. Now we think that many dinosaurs were covered in feathers and that they had wildly varied metabolic rates and one-way respiratory systems. As someone who is in the fields of geology and paleontology by education and professional research, the field is constantly being updated and changed as new specimens, species, and findings are always being uncovered and published on. Remembering how we once envisioned these animals isn't bad and we should go back and remember to humble ourselves when we think we know everything about the prehistoric world that we are doing the best we have with what we know and should be open to new information while proving our findings. Thank you for this wonderful video.
If the story ain't got pirates in it then dinosaurs are a perfectly acceptable alternative!
wordsmith challenge: make a dinosaur pirate.
I also like the Sumerians and most of the first civilizations....
Or cowboys. Gladiators are also acceptable.
Argh matey!! We are eye to eye on this opinion of yours!!
“PREhistory that deserves... to be remembered.” ☺️
Nice one
There is no such thing as prehistory. It has all been recorded since time and life began 6,000 years ago.
@@jimanruth Life started billions of years ago. Please throw away that silly bible book and learn what science has to say about it.
Funny story: when I was working in Saudi Arabia, I used to go out to the desert with the Hash House Harriers (a drinking group with a running problem). One time I found a fossilized sand dollar out there, and I brought it back and used it on my desk as a paperweight.
One of the Saudi officers I worked. With saw it one day and asked me where I got it. I told him and he started smiling, and asked me how it got there. I told him about how fossils came to be and he laughed at me. He told me that the truth was it was blown in from the Arabian Gulf by the wind. No clue how you answer that one!
I worked with a guy that truly believed that dinosaurs still lived in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Arizona.
Ignorance is bliss
@@ziggy2shus624 You mean they don't?!?! LoL
@@StAndrew65 Of course not. Everyone knows their in the Amazon and the Congo.
Somethings never change. Judging people/ideas/actions in the past based on contemporary knowledge mostly displays how ignorant people still are. If you worry about how the future will judge you, you'll never risk putting out your ideas. People should be taught to understand the faults in thinking and appreciate the efforts in trying to improve them.
And the History Guy's videos should be mandatory in public schools from grade 6 through grade 12. One video per day, everyone has to write a paragraph on when new bit of information they learned and why bow ties are cool. (Okay, maybe no requirement for bow tie adulation, but definitely the info paragraph.)
John Barber I was taught that, too. I’m a mother who home schooled her five children, and so I’ve had to stay brushed up on grammar! Lol I Googled and found a surprising, concise, CORRECT answer for us all. www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-to-not-begin-sentences-with
@John Barber Another mistaken idea that should go the way of the Victorian depictions of dinosaurs
"If you worry about how the future will judge you, you'll never risk putting out your ideas."
Only if you're a coward.
Very well said, Voyager!
History Guy, I notice your intro is more sedate and may I say, humble. I like them. Just because some folks can make big, splashy, longer, musical and noisy intros, I'm glad you went for attractive, short and modest intros. Very good for you, sir! Teach on!
The History Guy talking about Dinosaurs. It don't get no better! Oh, how I loved the dino toys I got from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. My friends and I spent hours setting up scenes from the Mesozoic. Yes, they were inaccurate by today's standards, but I have very fond memories, and I still have some of the toys.
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”
― Carl Sagan
99.99% of all species are gone.
Did you just read that with his voice, too?
You know what is said, it’s just a matter of time and we too may become fossils in the limestone of earths history.
@@MrWATCHthisWAY Or just a group of puzzling greasy nodules distributed among the inexplicable PVC ‘bones.’
Jon Rolfson - I couldn’t have said it better myself! Great definition of our existence, or shall we say extermination? Entities digging up our remains in future will definitely determine that plastics will play a major roll in our extinction. “Look they even have plastic’s in the excrement’s”. Did they eat this crap??? Must have been their daily diet’s!! Dumb asses they didn’t even have the knowledge that plastics would kill them... oh wait we do, but choose to ignore this fact..
My high school, Webb School of California, began the Raymond E Alf museum of paleontology where the work was done by students. It is history deserving to be remembered.
If anything, the history of paleontology on the American frontier in the late 1800s is much more colorful than anything done by the British Victorians. You MUST do an episode about the paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Early friends, they became extremely fierce rivals to see who could name the most dinosaur species. They each sent expeditions across the Mississippi and into the Rockies. Their expeditions took to fighting with each other physically over excavation rights. It got to be such a scandal that the newspapers took to calling them "The Bone Wars." Marsh (who established the Peabody Museum at Yale) won the "naming contest," but not by a lot. However between them, they got to name the most popular dinosaurs. As you say, it's history that deserves to be remembered.
I'm so impressed by your enthusiastic love of historical moments in time...and your basic statement of " deserves to be remembered "...couldn't be more true. History...the thing we all seem doomed to repeat,..has a delightful advocate at last...thank you!
That's one of the few descriptions of the Crystal Palace statues that didn't show any glaring errors. Kudos to you, sir, also for making that point about the value of older reconstructions so well.
Another great video. This one especially spoke to me as somebody who was obsessed by dinosaurs as a boy, and has lived both not far from the Jurassic Coast and Crystal Palace. I recommend that anybody interested in this era of palaeontology visits Lyme Regis (Mary Anning's hometown) in Southern England - which is personally my favourite English coastal town.
Great job, History Guy! As a paleontologist and a fan of history, you really made my day. It’s difficult to summarize 400 years of natural history in 15 minutes, but you hit on most of the big names and ideas. The Crystal Palace story is a wonderful introduction to natural history. I’d love to hear your take on the Bone Wars between Marsh and Cope sometime.
I've lived at Crystal Palace for 17 years and still feel a sense of foreboding and wonder when i cycle through the dinosaur glade at night and see the moon glinting off the highlights of Megalosaur and co. Just for a moment, you could be in Conan Doyle's Lost World...
Ted thesailor - When we were kids, my brother and I would sometimes get on the small island and climb on the dinos... one of them you could get inside. I know it was wrong, but we were 70s kids just messing about.
When I was a kid it was believed that dinosaurs were evolutionarily primitive creatures, which died out as more "advanced" creatures evolved. Dinosaurs were big, slow, and especially stupid. The larger ones such as "brontosaurus" were thought to inhabit wet, marshy areas, and depended on the water to support their massive bodies. Bipedal dinosaurs were thought to stand upright, with their tails on the ground like a kangaroo.
History guy, you should do a story about King Phillips War!
Great idea
I agree!
I was taking a haunted history tour in plymouth and the alley that used to be a street corner in the 1600's where they displayed king Phillip's head on a giant spike was kind of eerie. I also had a indian "meeting" area where indians used to plan attacks on Deerfield and turners falls mass.
@@jimvanderpoel4467 we still remember what the colonists did to cause us to attack but that is a part of history most whites ignore
Atun-Shei Films has a few videos on it and he absolutely does not hold back on the descriptions of the racist colonial motivations and bloody barbaric actions on both sides (and not to equate the motivations either since one was protection of their home and the other was theft and rulership of those homes)
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are maintained by the local council. They recently advertised for a structural engineer to be the "Dinosaur Keeper".
I grew up studying the past and it's been my passion for more then 50 years. I've worked as both a professional archaeologist and historian, and while not a paleontologist, I've been fortunate study to have both studied the subject at university and excavated fossils. I've never dug up a dinosaur but in my work I've found lots of fossils, and excavated 3 animal specimens: an late Pleistocene-aged elephant (probably a mammoth but lacking teeth we could make no further identification), a Tertiary-aged whale, and a Pleistocene-aged mammoth. I also found a Baluchitherium (an Oligocene-aged animal related to rhinoceros) that was later excavated by The University of California. Finding fossils has always thrilled me and some of the specifems that I've found adorns my yard. It's amazing just how much our understanding of these animals has changed in 50 years.
Thanks Mr. Mrs. History couple I never get tired of your channel content .
Around 1957 I was taken to Crystal Palace from my humble home in Thornton Heath (an epic journey of at least three miles) and saw the dinosaurs. They weren't at all frightening to a small boy, just very impressive and very credible. As an afterthought, I also at that time got to look over the parapet of the bridge that crossed the end of the then closed Crystal Palace High Level railway station (one of two lines promoted after the relocation to take advantage of the traffic potential offered to the railways of the day), to look down into the abandoned turntable pit which was located at the terminus end of the platforms. That made a far greater impression on a child already ensnared by the romance of the train...
Dinosaurs and pirates! Two of the best subjects of any genre! And Space is another! And the History Guy discusses all of them in a way that is better than any history class currently on the curriculum of most schools in our Country. 👍
You are cranking these out at a startling rate but maintaining very high quality. Thank you. Oviparous is not "cold blooded," it is "egg laying"..There is currently a lot of discussion about "dinosaurs" being "sort of warm blooded" like some Tuna and Shark. Way back in the 1970.s.(..or 80's. I'm way to old to remember), there was an article in Scientific American describing how Tuna stored energy as "wax" which it convert in to fat and then oil to replace energy used in those 30 mph dashes and deep dives.
I really enjoy your enthusiasm, stay safe, greetings from Kent, England!
The history of the discovery of prehistory! It just doesn't get any better!
8:07 Iguana Dawn what's that flower you have on? RIP Helen Ready !🎼
Oh, when did she die? I don't recall ever hearing about it.
@@StAndrew65 this past week!
Could it be a faded rose from the Mesozoic Era?
@@michaelmanning5379 You may be right!
"Of course we're so separated by time we can't directly observe them" Says you, my mother-in-law is 80 years old and I have personally observed that mean old dinosaur walking around terrorizing the people and other smaller animals around her.
She is Woman , hear her roar , just like a big old dinosaur
BRAVO!!! As a child of the 1980s and all to deep into the Jurassic Park revolution of they are birds, I can tell you, Sir History Guy, you brought up pictures from books I had long long thought I had forgotten, particularly the dinner in the dinosaur. THANK YOU THANK YOU. You are part of RUclips's 1%.
I live in the wonderful small town of Front Royal Virginia. Here we have Dinosaur Land! Is a hang over from the 60's. There are some modern sculptures mixed in with some comical interpretations from decades ago. My daughter,was recently hired to restore the paint job on some of the older ones and I was thrilled to assist. Nothing is more fun than painting a dinosaur! Dinosaur Land is loved by kids from all over and is always busy. P.S. It's fun to see the 25 foot tall T-Rex covered in snow during the winter.
I live in a rural area where the old beliefs and disproven theories still abound. Kind of sad, that the rest of the world has moved on without these folks, sometimes it makes for difficult conversation.
Mate those rural beliefs still exist in cities large and small and held by people who should know better.
@@fordprefect80 What you think are superior are just new illusions, "equality" is incompatible with "diversity" let alone evolution, and "born this way" implies a divine creator.
Sometimes old beliefs are evolutionarily tested functional, so I wouldn't be so certain what is better.
Always informative, interesting, and entertaining. Thanks History Guy
Best history teacher on the internet.
I remember watching old films, like the 1925 silent version of "The Lost World", and 1933's "King Kong" where the T. Rex's stood upright, like kangaroos, and not as we know them today. Another find from "today", is that of feathers on different dinosaurs. No one in Victorian England could have thought that this would have been the case. This is a fascinating subject. You should tell the story of the "Bone Wars" of the late 19th Century in America. I bet you will get many viewers who like dinosaurs and paleontology. Thank you very much.
I enjoy your informative videos so much.
As a Physical Geographer, I love stories like this. Well done HG!
Thank you for another awesome video Paleontology is such a wonderful subject
History guy- I just want to say ive always been a big fan of your videos, but something about today's really got to me. Your devotion to detail and the spreading of little known history is outstanding. My family always made fun of me growing up because I love all things history, and every time I watch, no matter whats going on that day, it makes me feel good knowing someone else out there shares the eagerness to learn and appreciate times past. So, in short, thank you for everything you do. I wish you and your loved ones a life of health and happiness, for you have spread that happiness to at least one viewer... Me
I find myself smiling by the end of most of these videos from THG's authentic enthusiasm for his subjects, if not always from the subject matter.
In the remaining history of man, there will NEVER be a better historian on RUclips or anywhere else. No kidding.
Wonderful topic today! As always you have opened my mind a little bit more.
I remember being shamed. By my teacher as a child. When I told her she was wrong about paleontologist and archeologists. My oldest brother told me the difference but she wouldn’t accept my disagreement and told me I’m wrong and my brother was stupid.
And that was a very good lesson in human nature!
I really enjoyed this episode. Keep them coming History Guy!
Glad to see Mary Anning being honoured; so many of the great and good of Victorian Britain's gentleman scientists built their work on her discoveries and ideas. Both gender and class meant she was never going to be given the proper credit in her time, although in later life when she was ill Buckland and others she had helped campaigned go get her a civil list pension,. After her death from cancer, the Geological Sciety gave a eulogy (something normally only given for esteemed members - and at this time that meant no women, sadly), where they noted her huge contributions to their understanding of geology and that she had struggled to do that by hard labour and brain power alone. A remarkable person and important in our growing understanding of the natural history of our astonishing world.
y'all do a great job, thanks
I was delighted to hear about Mary Annling (?) first woman studying paleontology. I was always ridiculed as a kid because I displayed an interest in dinosaurs. I was told that only boys were to be interested in them. I love the history of history aspect. History Guy and History Gal thank you for all of your lessons. They all deserve to be remembered.
I loved dinosaurs, too, as a child. I know exactly what you experienced. It wasn't cool for a girl to like dinosaurs. I wish I'd known how attitudes would change, I would be a paleontologist today.
Thank you so much. Your videos help so much in theses times.
very interesting and entertaining as usual, thanks HG :-)
Thank you.
I grew up not far from Crystal Palace and used to go there often with my father to watch the car and bike racing they had there in the sixties.
After the racing we often used to walk down to the ponds and sit by the dinosaurs with a flask of coffee and sandwiches.
In later years a mate worked in the sports centre there, I went to visit him and had a chance to climb on a couple of the Dino's while they were cleaning them.
Very entertaining and informative...thank you sir
Excellent episode once again
As a paleontologist by education who has done nothing with that education, I thank you for this!
Always love the bow. This is particularly nice.
You nailed this episode like a BOSS. Thanks man!! :D
Well done! What a unique approach to the history of paleontology!
Hi THG, just saw your mutual interview with Joe Scott & how cool/dangerous hydrogen airships were. It occurred to me that the R-101 disaster would make a great/tragic episode.
Just got Magellan TV about 3 days ago. Got 14 days free and opted to pay once a year as it works out to a monthly rate of only $4.99 per month (Canadian). If you enjoy watching THG and similar channels you'll like Magellan. Found out Netflix is raising its monthly fee again...so, you know.
@John Barber 0 ads on Magellan since I got it.
I've been binging your videos since I found the channel thanks to your chat with Joe Scott. I'm amazed at the quality of your scripts, thanks for all you're doing.
Thank you so much History Guy. I love the Waterhouse Hawkins dinosaurs so much.
I love what you’re doing. Keep it up man!
Ha! So THAT'S where that scene from Good Omens was filmed!
Thank you for the clarification of the early figures and interpretations of paleontology. Very interesting!
Thank you for a very interesting and informative article ! Take care , stay safe and healthy wherever your research or adventure takes you ! Doing well here in Kansas .
Such a great channel, one of my favs
This is a fascinating time stamp of history. Never knew about this before, thanks for your historical info mate! Cheers from Canada
Thanks for your efforts; I appreciate it.
keep up the great work
Lance, one for your highlight reels.
Well done!
Thanks
First-time commenter but I just listened to your interview with Answers with Joe and I was so excited to hear that we're in the same area. Love your content and hope to hear more of our local history at some point. :D
A good period of history to reflect on. Neither matters of science or faith are truly set in stone.
Dinosaurs are just really, really cool. Especially if you are under ten. One of my kids called them 'darsels' before she could pronounce the word properly. Dinosaurs are forever known as darsels in our extended family.
And now, even the Jurassic Park dinosaurs are outdated, no feathers whatsoever. Is amazing how rapidly paleontology has advanced in recent years.
None of the dinosaurs in those movies were even around during the Jurassic period but I guess Cretaceous Park doesn't have that ring to it.
Bender Rodriguez
Right off the top of my head from the first two movies, Compsognathus, Stegosaurs, Dilophosaurs, and Brachiosaurs were all Jurassic genera. There were more in the books, too, that got left out or changed.
It's nice to see some history from where I live. Thank you.
Extremely well put together and more informative than a lot or what little knowledge I have of Paleontology. It is always a learning experience, as I've said in the past, anyone with desires to teach history needs to watch you and how you make a loop on the subject for that day. Which provides the commoner such as myself a nice picture for the imagination to put together l. Great job sir....
I really enjoyed your collab with joe scott
Keep kicking ass
👌Another great episode, seen the concrete beasts a few times.
I totally missed visting these statues in London! Thanks, now I know what to do next time. :)
Excellent video as always History Guy! I’d love to see a follow-up video on Othneil Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope; the feuding dinosaur hunters of the American West.
I remember during my youth how many educators believed that evolution was a strict progression from less complex to more. They believed that dinosaurs were less "developed". I was also told that they were not related to birds because of a single skeletal feature. I was VERY dubious. When I found out about the terror birds I was absolutely certain that these birds were directly descended from dinosaurs and astonished that this wasn't a common belief.
Just subscribed to Magellan absolutely love it it's what the history channel used to be plus much more thanks for the suggestion History Guy love your vids keep up the great work
Ooh new video :)
last time i was this early, dinosaurs walked the earth...
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
This was great. Thank you, I learned a lot. Wished I was around to see that Crystal Palace display.
It's still here mate. I live in Crystal Palace. If your ever in South London it's worth a visit
@@craigd4840 Thank you for your response! I thought I heard Hyde Park mentioned as the area too. Long way there from CA, USA.
Thank you for sharing Sir,good health to all.
A very informative and entertaining episode Mr History Guy. Mary Anning is a giant amongst paleontologists and should be recognized as such. Coming from this video, could you do one dedicated to 'the Scientific Method'? What came before, how it developed,how it changed theories and our view on many subjects and what it competes against.
The crystal palace dinosaurs are a perfect example of why when we were wrong should be remembered. It lets us look back and see that we are always working to learn more. The crystal palace dinosaurs are not a display of paleontology, but of the history of paleontology.
11:20 Just a little correction, the giant deer Megaloceros is from Eurasia, while the proto-mammal Dicynodon was the creature from South Africa (it's the turtle-like statue, though nowadays it's speculated to have looked somewhat like a beaked boar). I would also like to mention the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs charity group. They help restore, inform & promote the statues. Follow them on social media & maybe give them a donation. They also have a website that contains information about the various species, alongside modern artwork for comparison by artist & paleontologist Mark Witton.
Always looking for good new content found you through joe scott, you get my sub 😁
As a kid I lived about a mile away from the Park. I loved those dinosaurs!
Cool. I'll watch this when I have more time.
Great video, as always. Thanks so much for all the great content. You should do a video on the “Bone Wars” in the future.
History Guy (advertising Magellan): "I'm a big fan of History documentaries...
Me: You think you know someone!
I thought the same thing when he said like like oh really you don't say huh?
Hi 🙋♀️ this is a really nice 👍🏻
The attempts at understanding are still ongoing, I think of Jurassic Park, which put a lot of effort into scientific accuracy of the dinosaurs, yet even they feel dated by current comparison, the dinosaurs not having any feathers as now most are believed to have had. The more recent reboot of the franchise has depicted them with a more current understanding. Interesting to think of the earliest depictions, I respect them as they weren't driven by theology, attempts to sensationalize them, or any other nonsense, they were built according to the best, very legitimately scientific, knowledge available at the time. And if they hadn't started out where they did, we'd have had nothing to build our more modern ideas from. Every study has to start somewhere, and even if something is wrong you usually have to start with something wrong before you can find out what is right. Which we still don't know for sure, as I already said. Which is what's so cool about science, it just keeps forging ahead, ready to change long-accepted beliefs based on new evidence.
Well said. I heard someone explain the advancement of man as each generation building and redefining on the previous generation. Works for me.
@@ronfullerton3162 Agreed - I think that's the one thing that sets us apart from other species (almost everything else we thought of has been found to be done by at least one other species, possibly with the exception of deliberate usage and control of fire, though that could be related to this). Humans don't use instinct or re-learn everything each generation, we build upon the ideas, the learning, the knowledge, the technology of those who came before us, allowing our collective knowledge to grow with each generation rather than being stagnant, stuck with what each generation can find for themselves. Basically nothing humans have done in our time is wholly new, everything is built upon hundreds or thousands of years of past knowledge.