Timeline for Would limbs evolve underwater?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 19, 2021 at 16:13 | comment | added | Pelinore | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Mar 19, 2021 at 12:08 | comment | added | Mon | More than happy to accept people free dived to greater depths than was usual but the question actually asks for (QUOTE) ' a level of technological sophistication'. Your solution doesn't involve technology at all. And even leaving that aside a few elite athletes 'reaching' the mesopelagic zone for a few brief seconds doesn't really constitute contact. And even that's assuming random chance lead to a million to one shot situation where free divers actually 'dived' on a location where (again by chance) merpeople actually happened to be in residence/passing by. | |
| Mar 19, 2021 at 10:19 | comment | added | Pelinore | Oh dear, you don't think people were free diving b4 then to much greater depths than the mere 30m or so normally associated with sponge fishing, the point isn't that they did it's that they could, & there's easily a visual overlap between where they most often did & the start of the zone in question to explain their discovery of each other which can easily explain why they'd then go deeper than that, & deeper needs no new tech... but your obviously too invested in your 'answer' to leave any comment unchallenged no matter how ridiculous your challenge is so I'll just say goodbye o7 | |
| Mar 19, 2021 at 7:17 | comment | added | Mon | Sorry, competitive free diving of the type Nitsch engaged in only developed as a sport in the late 20th century. Before that it was limited to trades like pearl diving at much shallower depths. So no - to dive deeper requires a reason and no-one had one prior to this century. | |
| Mar 19, 2021 at 5:35 | comment | added | Pelinore | Then let me present to you Herbert Nitsch with a free diving record 253.2 meters, free divers can reach the zone the OP asks about with no diving bell, & besides that a bell of the most basic sort has no actual limit other than the ability of a person to withstand the pressure & that imposed by how much air it holds (so, it's size), the limits you've been reading are merely notional ones for the depths at which they were normally used for commercial purposes like sponge harvesting not ones imposed by their 'technology; | |
| Mar 19, 2021 at 0:04 | comment | added | Mon | I forgot about diving bells but that stated did take a 'broader' interpretation of the term 'travel underwater'. I suppose purely vertical travel counts though the question then becomes how would the two sides discover each other/come into contact? Diving bells capable of reaching the depths required weren't invested until the 20th century anyway. So unless the mer-people? always had the ability to rise to the surface (even briefly) the only way humans would discover them prior to the 20th century would be the odd dead body on the surface - which is unlikely given their normal living depth. | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 14:17 | comment | added | Pelinore | ^ I think you've overestimated the tech needed & underestimated early tech, Aristotle described a diving bell so it's actually 4th century BC (or earlier) tech rather than 15th century AD as I previously said. | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 14:13 | comment | added | Pelinore | ^ the mesopelagic zone begins at only 200m & the world record for scuba diving is 322 meters so the pressure can be handled if you descend slow enough, you'll need a really big bell if you don't have air pumps from the surface mind.. though it's worth noting the Greeks & Romans had water pumps, same tech different use, water pumped in air rather than air pumped in water. | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 13:43 | comment | added | Pelinore | "In order for humans to reach mesopelagic zone deliberately (going down in a sinking hip doesn't count) as mentioned requires 20th century levels of technology" Diving bells have been around since the 1600's, you wouldn't usually use one to go down this deep but I'm sure it could be, that's 15th century technology. | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 12:37 | history | edited | Mon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 8 characters in body
|
| Mar 17, 2021 at 13:03 | comment | added | ShadowRanger | Short version of this is: Fully aquatic creatures can't tame fire. Fire is a baseline necessity for basically every meaningful technological development we've had beyond the Stone Age. Even non-fire technology requires so many layers of bootstrapping from fire-based technologies that you'd never get there underwater. | |
| Mar 17, 2021 at 10:44 | history | answered | Mon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |