PREHISTORY NOTES

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Overview

Scholars define prehistory as events that occurred before the existence of written records in a given culture or society.

History refers to the time period after the invention of written records in a given culture or society.

Archaeologists have discovered written records in Egypt from as early as 3200 BCE, which is the accepted date at which history "begins" there.

Written records give historians resources to deal with that are more detailed in some ways than other records, such as archaeological or biological remains.

The scope of history

Historians currently think that anatomically modern humans have been around for between 200,000 and 300,000 of the planet’s 4.5 billion years. And even though 200,000 years is less than one 20,000th of the history of the planet, it is still a very long time!

For context, 200,000 years would represent at least 6,000 generations of your ancestors (your grandparents are only 2 generations from you). 200,000 years is also nearly 1,000 times as long as the United States has been a country. It is 100 times as distant in the past as the time of Jesus and the Roman Empire. It's also 40 times as distant in the past as the earliest written records we have found.

Think about the scope of what must have happened during that time: adventures, sorrows, environmental change, and the rise and fall of civilizations. As historians, we have the privilege of exploring this vast expanse of human experience.

Written records

Our main tool as historians is what has been written by those who came before us. In fact, this is what formally defines history and sometimes sets it apart from archaeology and anthropology. For example, the oldest written records archaeologists have discovered in Egypt are from over 5,000 years ago; the date when they were created is the currently accepted date at which formal history (as opposed to "prehistory") begins in that part of the world. Of course, we might one day find older records!

Even with written records, though, we have to be careful and thoughtful. The writing may be in a dead language that we know little about. If one tribe conquers another, we might only get the biased, one-sided story of those who won and wrote about it.

Many times, narratives are only written down after generations of being transmitted orally, through speech, with every transmitter of the story consciously or unconsciously changing the specifics. Even for events that happened yesterday, two direct observers could have two completely different perceptions of what happened, how, and why.

You can imagine that things get even tougher for prehistory, or the events that occurred before the existence of written records. But we still have many tools. Archaeologists can excavate ancient structures and burial sites and begin to infer how the people lived from fossils (like human remains) and artifacts (human-made items). Archaeologists can estimate the age of fossils and artifacts through several techniques.

Carbon dating measures the amount of radioactive carbon in fossils to place them in time. Age can also be determined by identifying the age of the layer of rock that the artifacts are buried in. This is called stratigraphic dating, from the Latin word stratum, meaning "layer."

Linguists can often piece together possible human migrations and connections based on similarities in modern, living languages.

Similarly, geneticists can piece together how humanity may have spread and intermingled based on genetic similarities and differences in populations today.

Uncertainty remains

By putting all of these pieces together, we can construct surprisingly rich narratives of the distant past. But we should never let the tools and knowledge we have make us overconfident. After all, every piece of historical evidence needs to be closely read, sourced, interpreted, contextualized, and compared with other available sources. These kinds of thinking and questioning are the historians' toolkit.

Even today, we can only piece together a tiny fragment of all that has occurred. And a lot of that understanding could very well be wrong because it is inevitably partial and incomplete. Many things that historians take as a given today will be questioned by future historians armed with new tools and new evidence.

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Overview

Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.

The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.

Humans are the only known species to have successfully populated, adapted to, and significantly altered a wide variety of land regions across the world, resulting in profound historical and environmental impacts.

Where do we begin?

Before we tell the stories that make up world history, it is useful to ask: where do we begin? Where did our human stories start?

Homo sapiens is part of a group called hominids, which were the earliest humanlike creatures. Based on archaeological and anthropological evidence, we think that hominids diverged from other primates somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million years ago in eastern and southern Africa. Though there was a degree of diversity among the hominid family, they all shared the trait of bipedalism, or the ability to walk upright on two legs. ^11start superscript, 1, end superscript

Evolution

Scientists have several theories about why early hominids evolved. One, the aridity hypothesis, suggests that early hominids were more suited to dry climates and evolved as the Africa’s dry savannah regions expanded.

According to the savannah hypothesis, early tree-dwelling hominids may have been pushed out of their homes as environmental changes caused the forest regions to shrink and the size of the savannah expand. These changes, according to the savannah hypothesis, may have caused them to adapt to living on the ground and walking upright instead of climbing. ^22start superscript, 2, end superscript

Hominids continued to evolve and develop unique characteristics. Their brain capacities increased, and approximately 2.3 million years ago, a hominid known as Homo habilis began to make and use simple tools. By a million years ago, some hominid species, particularly Homo erectus, began to migrate out of Africa and into Eurasia, where they began to make other advances like controlling fire.

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Paleolithic societies

Paleolithic literally means “Old Stone [Age],” but the Paleolithic era more generally refers to a time in human history when foraging, hunting, and fishing were the primary means of obtaining food.

Overview

Paleolithic societies were largely dependent on foraging and hunting.

While hominid species evolved through natural selection for millions of years, cultural evolution accounts for most of the significant changes in the history of Homo sapiens.

Small bands of hunter-gatherers lived, worked, and migrated together before the advent of agriculture.

Sociocultural evolution

Paleolithic literally means “Old Stone [Age],” but the Paleolithic era more generally refers to a time in human history when foraging, hunting, and fishing were the primary means of obtaining food. Humans had yet to experiment with domesticating animals and growing plants. Since hunter-gatherers could not rely on agricultural methods to produce food intentionally, their diets were dependent on the fluctuations of natural ecosystems. They had to worry about whether overfishing a lake would deplete a crucial food source or whether a drought would wither up important plants. In order to ensure enough food production for their communities, they worked to manipulate those systems in certain ways, such as rotational hunting and gathering.

This was the case for much of human history; it was not until about 11,000 years ago that these hunter-gatherer systems began to transform. As humans began migrating and adapting to new environments, they began developing tools and methods that equipped them to make the best of their respective environmental constraints.

The study of early humans often focuses on biological evolution and natural selection. However, it is also equally important to focus on sociocultural evolution, or the ways in which early human societies created culture. Paleolithic humans were not simply cavemen who were concerned only with conquering their next meal. Archaeological evidence shows that the Neanderthals in Europe and Southwest Asia had a system of religious beliefs and performed rituals such as funerals. A burial site in Shanidar Cave in modern-day northeastern Iraq suggests that a Neanderthal’s family covered his body with flowers, which indicates a belief in something beyond death and a deep sense of spirituality. They also constructed shelter and tools.

An opening to a cave, surrounded by greenery and some simple roads and structures.

Shanidar Cave, an archaeological site in the Zagros Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Image courtesy Flickr.

Cultures evolved and developed in specific environmental contexts, enabling their communities to not only survive but to flourish in unique and dynamic ways. But what exactly is culture? Culture is a broad term which encompasses the full range of learned human behavior patterns, behaviors which are often linked to survival.

Homo sapiens has not changed much anatomically over the last 120,000 years, but it has undergone a massive cultural evolution. Accordingly, cultural creativity rather than physical transformation became the central way humans coped with the demands of nature.

Nevertheless cultural evolution cannot be divorced from biological evolution, as the evolution of a more highly developed and advanced human brain, more highly attuned to social structures, enabled cultural growth. In fact, the very large size of a human brain itself necessitated certain cultural adaptations: many scientists have theorized that more difficult births, due to larger skulls, longer gestation periods, and longer periods of infant dependency, required more advanced social organization and communication, which played a big role in the cultural evolution of humans.

Homo sapiens’ unique aptitude for creativity allowed for symbolic expression, particularly in cultural and spiritual contexts, such as artwork and burial rituals. This creative activity is the hallmark of the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens(wise, wise human), which is what we are today, a subspecies that is distinctive for its intellectual abilities.

Small communities

Eventually, with the expansion of the human population, the density of human groups also increased. This often resulted in conflict and competition over the best land and resources, but it also necessitated cooperation. Due to the constraints of available natural resources, these early communities were not very large, but they included enough members to facilitate some degree of division of labor, security, and exogamous reproduction patterns, which means marrying or reproducing outside of one’s group.

Anthropologists were able to draw these conclusions about Paleolithic people by extrapolating from the experiences of modern hunter-gatherer communities, such as the Khoisan of the African Kalahari Desert. Based on the experiences of modern hunter-gatherer societies, who typically have around 500 members, and based on theoretical mathematical models of group process, Paleolithic bands of people were likely around twenty-five members each, and typically about twenty bands constituted a tribe.

A man standing and looking off into the distance. In the background, there is sandy terrain, some green shrubbery, and a wooden rod. He is wearing a kind of beaded necklace and is not wearing a shirt.

A San man from Namibia. Many San still live as hunter-gatherers. Imagecourtesy Wikimedia Commons.

How much land did these bands of people need to provide the necessary food and water to support life? Anthropologists have estimated that the technology available to Paleolithic humans who lived between 150,000 and 12,000 years ago would have required over seventy miles of relatively unproductive land, with a low density of resources, or over seven miles of fertile land to meet the basic needs of each small community. However, considering how limited these communities were, this land requirement is extremely inefficient compared to modern productivity levels. At such densities, the area of the modern-day United States could sustain no more than 600,000 people, and the entire planet only 10 million. For comparison, the current population of the United States is well over 300 million, and there are 7 billion people on the planet!

Division of labor

Before the advent of agriculture, Paleolithic humans had little control of the environment, so they focused on staking out territory and negotiating relationships with nearby communities. Eventually, groups created small, temporary settlements, often near bodies of water. These settlements allowed for division of labor, and labor was often divided along gender lines, with women doing much of the gathering, cooking, and child-rearing and men doing much of the hunting, though this was certainly not the case across all Paleolithic societies. For example, some archaeological evidence suggests that Middle Paleolithic cultures in Eurasia split work fairly equally between men and women.

However, it is important to note that gender dynamics in Paleolithic times were likely drastically different from our own, and as such, the division of labor between men and women does not necessarily indicate differences in equality or power. There are competing theories about whether hunting or gathering contributed more to group nutrition, but both seemed to have played an important role.

What do you think?

In what ways does the culture of Paleolithic people resemble modern human cultures ?

Archaeologists often extrapolate the behaviors of ancient hunter-gatherers by studying modern hunter-gatherer groups. Do you think this is a valid approach? Is it useful to learn about modern hunter-gatherer groups in order to understand early societies?

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Paleolithic technology, culture, and art

Paleolithic groups developed increasingly complex tools and objects made of stone and natural fibers.

Overview

Paleolithic groups developed increasingly complex tools and objects made of stone and natural fibers.

Language, art, scientific inquiry, and spiritual life were some of the most important innovations of the Paleolithic era.

Technological innovation

Stone tools are perhaps the first cultural artifacts which historians can use to reconstruct the worlds of Paleolithic peoples. In fact, stone tools were so important in the Paleolithic age that the names of Paleolithic periods are based on the progression of tools: Lower Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic(Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age).^11start superscript, 1, end superscript

Stone tools also give us insight into the development of culture. Anthropologists think Paleolithic people likely hunted, foraged, and employed a communal system for dividing labor and resources. Anthropologists have inferred this by drawing analogies to modern hunter-gatherer groups and by interpreting cave art which depicts group hunting.

By approximately 40,000 years ago, narrow stone blades and tools made of bone, ivory, and antler appeared, along with simple wood instruments. Closer to 20,000 years ago, the first known needles were produced. Eventually, between 17,000 and 8,000 years ago, humans produced more complicated instruments like barbed harpoons and spear-throwers.

It is likely that many tools made out of materials besides stone were prevalent but simply did not survive to the present day for scientists to observe. One exception is the Neolithic “Ice Man”, found by two hikers in the Ötztal Alps, who was preserved in ice for 5,000 years! He was found with a robust set of stone and natural-fiber tools, including a six-foot longbow, deerskin case, fourteen arrows, a stick with an antler tip for sharpening flint blades, a small flint dagger in a woven sheath, a copper axe, and a medicine bag.

Language, culture and art

Language was perhaps the most important innovation of the Paleolithic era. Scientists can infer the early use of language from the fact that humans traversed large swaths of land, established settlements, created tools, traded, and instituted social hierarchies and cultures. Without the aid of language, these things would likely have been impossible.

Examinations of the craniums of archaic Homo sapiens suggest large brains with indentations that imply the development of brain areas associated with speech. Exactly how humans developed a capacity for language is a matter of considerable debate. However, the historical record shows that language allowed for increasingly complex social structures, with an enhanced capacity for deliberation, morality, spirituality, and meaning-making.

Artwork such as cave painting and portable art demonstrates creativity and group structures as well. They show an interest in sharing knowledge, expressing feelings, and transmitting cultural information to later generations. Though artwork from over 35,000 years ago is rare, there is ample evidence of cave paintings and statuettes from later periods.

In addition to cave art, portable figurines dated to Paleolithic times have been found. Many of these include finely carved facial features, while others accentuate sexual organs and buttocks, such as the 25,000 year old figurine found at Dolni Vestonice in the modern-day Czech Republic. Such an object shows a desire to create beautiful figurines, but some also suggest that objects like this are tied to an interest in human fertility.

What do you think?

What evidence do we have that Paleolithic people had developed a capacity for language? Could Paleolithic people have survived in the ways that they did without language?

What do you think was the purpose of Paleolithic art such as cave paintings and figurines?