Today's useless fact - If humans have been around for the last 120,000 years, why the extreme technological development during only the last 2,000 years?

To give you the simplest answer I can muster, the evolution of intelligence of civilization can be compared to the evolution of intelligence of an individual. Our latest developments are nothing more than the accumulation of knowledge of all those 120,000 years. The same would apply to a person who is 30 years old. This persons knowledge is the accumulation of all the knowledge he/she gained since they were born. When they were in their infancy, they had little knowledge, therefore they could only do technologically simple things, like form simple words using our alphabet. At 30 years old, this person has this knowledge, plus complex words, grammar, and sentence structure, and could conceivably write an entire book. This analogy can be applied to human development, and it has been shown that knowledge growth happens exponentially. Check out the links in our Homo Sapiens category for more.