pppPreface.- 1 Introduction.- The Global Intelligent Machine.- Cultural evolution.- Production technology and information technology.- 2 The Rise of Homo Sapiens.- Animals using production tools.- Monkeys and apes using production tools.- Information tools in the animal world clues, signs and signals.- Communicating honey bees.- Communication among monkeys and apes.- From the hairpin ancestor to Homo sapiens.- Olduwan technology.- The adze makers of Langda.- Language as an information tool.- The control of fire.- The Stone Age Revolution.- Information tools.- Whistle languages.- Talking drums.- The Ishango bone.- Orientation in space, maps in the Pacific.- 3 Tools in the Early Agricultural Empires.- Economic surplus.- Agriculture.- The wheel.- Monumental architecture.- Complete writing.- Towards the alphabet.- Mathematics.- Sundials and water clocks.- 4 The Axial Age and the Birth of Western Science.- The Axial Age.- The rise of abstract symbolic thought in China and India.- Oral versu