2000 FACTS

Today, we are going to talk about how the capital and capitalism were originated, the human accumulations in the cities, in which circumstances did the commerce emerge, as well as how it was found out that the exploitation of other human beings could be a very profitable activity. We are going to walk through all the moments and circumstances when the urban population exploded, along with the technological revolution in the 19th century, and the new philosophical notions which started to value the human being as part of a social mass. Gin Lane - William Hogarth, 1751

No other gadget is so associated with inventors as the machines, apparatuses which show pretty well the human designing skills. It seems like a curse that humans imagine activities that exceed their forces; but if it turns out to be that, a curse, if that urge makes them cursed for their dream, also it's true that they possess an ability to invent mechanisms which allowed them to multiply their forces up to, sometimes, fulfilling those dreams. No sensitive person would ever imagine that is reasonable to build a pyramid, or a big wall using giant stones, like the Great Wall of China. However, Egyptians, Chinese, Aztecs, Incas, and Greeks built pyramids and raise walls, using forces that outperformed theirs. It's true that they mobilize large groups of slaves and serfs, but without brains, without gadgets which allowed them to improve, modify or direct their forces would have been almost impossible to build all the great constructions that we today admire. James Watt's St

The Irish writer Jonathan Swift wrote in 1726 a book titled "Gulliver's Travels", a satire of the society of the time. From all stories in this book, the most famous are the ones which sent the main character, doctor Lemuel Gulliver, first to Lilliput, little people's land, and thereafter to the giants' land. The traveler always found human beings of different size from the standard, both bigger and smaller, who often had the same moral and social problems as any "real" political community of the context and age when the author lived (1667-1745); in his opinion, all human societies, wherever he went to, presented the same ethical issues. Swift lived during the so-called "Enlightened Period" and, without a doubt, he wrote "Gulliver's Travels" using the metaphor of travel, a comprehensible resource in a time of journeys and expeditions to remote places which started to look as more accessible and closer territories. A Look Into

Pain has accompanied humans throughout their history, as a loyal but importunate ally. Popular punishments like the one that must suffer a woman while giving birth were seen as unavoidable. Without the necessity of appearing in any religious book, it existed different types of pain associated with the unbearable. Imagine that 300 years ago, teeth were extracted without anesthesia, and surgeons had to cut limbs with knives and saws, again, without any drug to kill the pain. Moreover, there was a 60% chance of dying in some interventions. This was the reason why many people with huge tumors (according to records, some of them were so big that they have to be carried using a wheelbarrow) refused to be taken to an operation. During centuries, it was believed that a creature located in the teeth roots, was the cause of pain, like a woodworm but it ate away the teeth and bones. The Morphine - Santiago Rusiñol (1894).

200,000 years ago, the Homo neanderthalensis , the Neanderthal, occupied the hostile and cold lands in Europe, seeking for food and easily dying, very frequently, because of traumas, as a result of falls, accidents, and skirmishes while hunting or walking through long inhospitable trails; other times, they died simply due to starvation. It was very weird that individuals passed the 50-year-old mark and, as a consequence, there's no evidence that they suffered from degenerative illnesses. In the Neolithic, things changed; around 8,000 b.C., the climate became more benign and the necessity to move from one place to another to survive was vanishing, so the Homo viator finally settled, starting an appearing process of the first civilizations, intrinsic to the domestication of the beasts and plants. Louis Pasteur in his Laboratory - 1885

The Mongols, a semi-nomadic ethnicity dedicated to grazing and hunting, have always been considered as the "lords of the steppe". Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the Mongol tribes unified under the authority of a single leader, or Khan, and they managed to conquest the entire Asian continent, including China. At its peak, the Mongol Empire had dominated all Asian commerce, controlling a territory that went from the Great Wall of China to Persia and southern Russia, even threatening countries and regions in Europe, like Poland or Bohemia in the current Czech Republic. The Mongol Empire at its Peak under Kublai Khan's leadership

Since Eratosthenes' age, humans know that we live on a sphere. In the 2nd century b.C., Greeks thought that it was only inhabitable a zone in the northern hemisphere, that nobody could live in the southern hemisphere, known by them as the " terra incognita ", or "unknown land". In the 15th century, expeditions across the Globe proved that the South existed and that it was inhabitable as the North. The Earth was filled up with plenty of sailors who traveled from one place to another. The seas, outside the Mediterranean, turned out to be immense. First, the Atlantic until arriving to the new continent. Secondly, the Pacific, which spreads towards the west and managed to circumvent the Earth, passing through Japan, the Philippines, and the entire Asian continent. Compared to these, the Indic Ocean looked like a small, "homely" sea. The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer, circa 1668