Six degrees of civilization
How does anything connect to anything?
Nothing we know how to do stands alone. Every capability is the top of a relay run by people who never met — a potter's kiln becomes glass, glass becomes lenses, lenses prove germs exist and print microchips. Pick any two capabilities and see the actual baton passes between them: not trivia associations, but verified could-not-exist-without dependencies from the graph.
great connections
The longest relays in the charted graph — paths that cross the most domains and the most millennia.
Seed Saving → Information theory10 steps · 7 domains · 10,948 yearsFood Triage → Error-correcting codes9 steps · 7 domains · 301,950 yearsAgriculture → Information theory9 steps · 7 domains · 11,448 yearsDivision of Labor → Information theory10 steps · 7 domains · 8,948 yearsAnimal Domestication → Metabolism (the biochemical map)9 steps · 7 domains · 10,437 yearsAnimal Domestication → Insulin therapy9 steps · 7 domains · 10,422 yearsFood Triage → Information theory8 steps · 7 domains · 301,948 yearsFood Triage → Large Language Models8 steps · 7 domains · 302,020 yearsFood Triage → Patents8 steps · 7 domains · 301,474 years