HUMAN PREHISTORY PALEOLITHIC

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HUMAN PREHISTORYPALEOLITHIC NEOLITHIC AGES
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Origins of Early Man
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The Paleolithic Age

• Prehistory
• period before written records
• Anthropologists
• study human culture, reconstructing their lives
  so we can understand them better
• Archaeologists
• dig to search for objects so we can develop a
  better understanding of the past
• The Paleolithic Age
• Also known as the Old Stone Age
• 2.5 million BCE 8,000 BCE
• The Ice Age

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Historical Overview

• Human beings first emerge in East Africa
• As they evolve, they develop complex technology
  and spread over most of the world
• In some areas, people develop agriculture and
  settled villages, some of which eventually grow
  into complex cities and develop the five traits
  of civilization

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4,000,000 B.C. First hominids appear in Africa.
1,600,000 B.C. Homo erectus appears.
8000 B.C. Neolithic Age begins first agriculture
takes place.
2600 B.C. City of Ur flourishes in Sumer
2,500,000 B.C. Paleolithic Age begins.
3000 B.C. Bronze Age begins in Mesopotamia.
40,000 B.C. Cro-Magnons appear
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Human Origins in Africa

• The first hominids emerge in East Africa about
  3.6 million years ago
• They gradually develop large brains and learn to
  make tools and use fire, which allows them to
  spread over the earth.

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Major Discoveries

• Leakey family
• family of paleontologists (fossil experts)
• discovered that there were humanoids as much as 5
  million years ago in Eastern Africa
• Donald Johanson
• Lucy
• first complete hominid discovered

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Early Hominids
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Evolution of Hominids
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Famous Caveman Personalities
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Evolution of Prehistoric Man

• Australopithecine
• Southern Ape
• Walked upright
• Smaller brain than modern human
• Homo Habilis
• Handy Man
• Began using crude stone tools for chopping and
  scraping
• Brain was half that of modern humans
• Homo Erectus
• Upright Man
• Used tools for digging, scraping cutting
• First hominids to migrate
• Used fire
• Used broken language

• Neanderthals
• Powerfully built
• Developed religious beliefs
• Performed rituals
• Exceptional survival hunting skills
• Used early stone tools
• hand ax
• Learned to control fire and migrated out of
  Africa
• Cro-Magnons
• Structurally identical to modern humans
• Planned hunts
• Advanced languages
• Beat-out Neanderthals for survival
• Migrated around the world
• Used a variety of tools, learned to create fire,
  likely the first to develop language

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Paleolithic Lifestyle

• Hunting and Gathering
• Use wild animals and plants for food
• Migrate seasonally
• Live in family or tribal groups - Clans

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Hunting Gathering

• Advantages
• The land supplies whatever is needed.
• Movement is easier when food is scarce.
• Life encourages cooperation and language skills.
• Special weapons and tools develop for hunting and
  digging up plants.

• Disadvantages
• People are always searching for new food sources.
• It is more difficult to store food.
• People must carry everything along when
  traveling.
• Only simple social organization was possible.

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Early Homo Sapiens

• Simple Tools
• Sharpened rocks or tools fashioned from wood,
  plant fibers, animal skin, hair and bone.
• Invented spears for easier hunting.
• Other tools included the bow and arrow, fishing
  hooks, canoes, needles for sewing
• People were hunter-gatherers
• Dependent on resources and conditions provided by
  their environment.
• Pack mentality survival of the group
  necessitated sharing the products produced and
  resources with all the group members.

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Early Neolithic Civility

• The need for food, clothing and shelter
  controlled the actions of the group.
• Most groups were probably nomadic, following
  seasonal migrations of their prey
• Groups based on extended families which combined
  into clans and tribes (30-50 members).
• Gender specialization
• Male hunted and made tools
• Women gathered food, made fabric and utensils,
  tended the camp (fire) and were responsible for
  rearing the children
• Burial sites with offerings show the development
  of a belief system that believed in the
  afterlife.
• Cave paintings show belief in magic that could be
  used to influence fertility and availability of
  food.
• Competition likely existed between
  hunting/gathering groups

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Evolution of Paleolithic Tools
Homo Habilis Tools
Homo Egaster Tools
Homo Neanderthalensis Tools
Homo Sapiens Tools Upper Paleolithic Era 90,000
BC (Africa) 40,000 BC 12,000 BC elsewhere
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Migration Settlement
BERINGIA
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Early Migration

• Early human ancestors began to migrate around 1.6
  million years ago.
• Due to long periods of freezing temperatures, ice
  sheets covered the land and lowered the oceans
  level (Ice Ages)
• These ice sheets created land bridges
• Eventually early hominids died out and humans
  began to migrate, peopling all the continents by
  9000 BC (except Antarctica).

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Clovis Sites

• Some of the earliest people to inhabit the
  Americas.
• Clovis sites are name because of the Clovis tools
  found at the archeological sites
• Spear points are fluted which allows for easier
  attachment to a wooden shaft
• Clovis people were probably proficient hunters
  though they also gathered roots, seeds and
  berries.

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Thought Question

• Which of the following skills toolmaking, the
  use of fire, or the development of language do
  you think gave hominids the most control over
  their environment?
• Things to think about
• the kinds of tools early humans developed
• the various uses of fire
• the benefits of language

• Toolmaking, because it enabled hominids to hunt
  game and build shelters.
• Fire, because it allowed hominids to survive in
  cold climates.
• Language, because it helped hominids coordinate
  hunts and other tasks.

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Extinction of the Megafauna

• Why did the megafauna disappear?
• Inability to adjust to major climatic
  changesthough they had adjusted in the past
• Appearance of humans who hunted animals to
  extinction
• Animals had not coevolved with humans (as they
  did in Africa and places in Asia). This
  prevented them from developing significant fear
  of humans.
• Humans in some places could just walk up to
  animals and kill them.

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Evolving Lifestyles Paleolithic Era to the
Neolithic Era

• Neolithic Lifestyle Settled Communities
• Raise herds of tame animals
• Plant seeds and raise crops
• Live in permanent settlements

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How this all changes
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Neolithic Tool Making

• USING TOOLS TO MAKE TOOLS
• Blades and spear points become highly refined
• Use of bone tools

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Neolithic Innovations

• Simple homes built from available materials
• Simple pottery with or without decorative artwork
• Beads and other forms of jewelry
• Artifacts representing gods or spirits

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More Neolithic Innovations
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Settled Communities

• Advantages
• Crops provide a reliable food supply.
• Population grows as life becomes more complex.
• Societies become more complex.
• Trade increases and commerce develops.
• Division of labor allows workers to specialize.

• Disadvantages
• Crop failures due to weather or pests cause
  famines.
• Floods, fire, or even raiders could destroy
  villages.
• Disease spreads easily when people live together.

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Farming

• Occurred in a number of places at the same time
• Americas, Middle East, China, West Africa
• Began about the same time the last ice age ended
• Barley and wheat appeared with warmer weather
• As the population increased, people required more
  food.
• Experimentation with planting seeds and selective
  breeding
• Animals such as dogs, cattle, goats, pigs and
  sheep were domesticated early

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Farming Impacts

• Increases standard of living
• better diet
• more resources
• sharing of skills/jobs
• leads to threat of invasion
• must continue to organize and specialize to
  defend against threats

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Foundations for Civilizations

• More food could be raised in an area
• Surpluses lead to
• Increased carrying capacity of a region
• Sustainable population
• Both human and animal
• Farming led to settlement and creation of early
  towns and villages.
• Hunting and gathering was replaced
• Domestication first civilizations arose

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Direct Impact of Agriculture
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Five Characteristics of Civilizations
What makes a civilization?

• Advanced Cities
• Specialized Workers
• Complex Institutions
• Record Keeping
• Advanced Technology

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Advanced Cities

• Became the political, economic, and cultural
  centers for surrounding areas
• Begin around river valleys in ancient
  civilizations
• Ur and Uruk near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
• Memphis on the Nile River
• Mohenjo Daro on the Indus River
• Anyang near the Huang He

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Advanced Technology

• Many ancient civilizations faced natural
  foreign adversity
• Irrigation needs, flooding prevention, lack of
  natural barriers, unpredictable weather patterns,
  lack of natural resources, etc.
• Growing population demanded a need to improvise
  and invent new ways for the society to survive
• Necessity is the mother of all invention
• Societies that adapted and invented survived
• Earthen walls, irrigation ditches, raised fields,
  terrace farming, aqueducts

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Complex Institutions

• Formal religious institutions that included
  ceremonies, rituals, and other forms of worship
• People built large temples and participated in
  various ceremonies to please the gods
• Religious leaders often interpreted the will of
  the gods
• Priests became powerful figures
• Competed for power

• Government, Religion, Social Class Systems
• Building large irrigation systems and feeding a
  growing population required planning, decision
  making, and cooperation
• Supervise food production and building projects
• Social order based on peoples occupations,
  wealth, and influence
• Rulers, priests, and nobles had the most power
  and ranked highest in the social order
• Merchants and artisans usually ranked next
• Farmers and unskilled workers, who made up the
  majority of the people, ranked next
• Enslaved people at bottom of the society

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Specialized Workers

• As cities became more complex, the division of
  labor increased and many new jobs developed
• Officials gathered taxes, engineers planned
  irrigation systems, soldiers defended city walls,
  farmers raised crops, laborers built large public
  works, such as temples and roads

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Record Keeping

• As life in early cities grew increasingly
  complex, people needed ways to keep permanent
  records
• Merchants needed to keep records of trade goods
• Officials needed to track tax payments
• Sumer used clay tokens and pouches to keep
  records.
• The Inca used knotted colored strings
• Systems of writing began to develop about 5,000
  years ago
• First writing used pictographs, or picture
  symbols, to represent objects or ideas
• More advanced writing systems invented that used
  abstract symbols to express a wider range of
  ideas
• Early civilizations began to create a written
  record of their society
• Provide historians with a wealth of information
  about early civilizations
• Calendars
• People needed to track the changing of the
  seasons and when it was time to plant or harvest
• Early river valley civilizations also needed to
  know when yearly floods would occur
• Based on the phases of the moon, which were easy
  for early people to see and track
• Were inaccurate because the lunar year is many
  days shorter than the solar year

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Thought Question

• Why do you think the development of agriculture
  occurred around the same time in several
  different places?
• Think about
• the migrations of early peoples
• changes in the earths climate
• a rise in human population

Global warming trends resulted in longer growing
seasons a rich supply of grain helped support a
population boom. A rise in population placed
pressure on hunter-gatherers, who had migrated
throughout the world, to find new sources of food.
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