Everyone figures out how to stack blocks on top of each other.
Not everyone. American Indians and negroes in Africaland never figured it out. Ancient people in the middle east understood it, but when it was later overrun by Arabs, the knowledge disappeared and it had to be taught to them by their intellectual superiors. Only a few places in East Asia knew how (such as the temples in Cambodia), but they're more isolated examples.
"Stacking blocks on top of each other" is a lot more complicated that you think. It involves an understanding of stone-cutting (the mechanical aspect) and engineering (the mathematical part of it) so that it doesn't collapse while you're building it. It's actually a very difficult thing to learn and it takes a society decades to hundreds of years to get the basics of it.
HughBriss 2 points 3 years ago
"Stacking blocks on top of each other" is a lot more complicated that you think. It involves an understanding of stone-cutting (the mechanical aspect) and engineering (the mathematical part of it) so that it doesn't collapse while you're building it. It's actually a very difficult thing to learn and it takes a society decades to hundreds of years to get the basics of it.