Today I encountered a fascinating (and hopelessly flawed as I will elucidate) take on technological progress as a cumulating body of imitation and innovation. She calls it Cumulative Culture. Here's where I first found mention of it, linked in a disturbingly myopic MIT Review article on the extinction perspective and apocalytic thinking. Science is plumbing profound new depths of unconscious but intentional blindness and ignorance.
The strange part of the cumulative culture argument is that human technology has evolved much further than the apes over the 7 million years following our genetic diversion. However the Toba supervolcano, which erupted 74K years ago, is widely thought to have obliterated most mammals including humans. However a recent revisitation finds that people near Lake Malawi in East Africa and in coastal caves in South Africa were likely not wiped out or even disturbed by the Toba.
If the Toba all but wiped us out, then the technology present thanks to cumulative culture is only 74K yrs of progress. This could have been reached and surpassed 100 times over in 7 million years.
If the Toba didn't wipe us out and cumulative culture operates as described, then where is the other 100x technological progress that we ought to have compiled from before the ice age and the flood which are now deeply encoded in our myths.
Perhaps our storytelling as myths represent the true cumulative culture, not the tool-making and physical manipulations of so many atoms. Perhaps if we follow our myths more closely we will uncover the true extent of our previous tool-making abilities which could have compounded at the current rate for 100x as long as we have on this stretch between extinction events.