The Prehistoric World

The World Before History

To about 3000 BC.
 Introduction to History
• History is a written record of the past
• Everything before writing is prehistoric
• Progress is driven by human ambition to
change one’s conditions to match one’s
hopes.
• Social power comes from communication
that sustains cooperation.
• Groups that achieved more efficient
communication and cooperation within
their own ranks improved their competitive
position and survival chances.
• The power of human communication,
cooperation and competition shaped
history
• Scientists believe humans first appeared
in Africa.
• To expand across world humans needed
capacity to find food and settle in new
environments.
 History Terms
• Society : organized groups of people
with a language and beliefs that can be
taught.
• Culture: The total way of life of a group
of people that is passed on to the next
generation.
• Civilization: A state of human society
with a complex culture including:
government, arts, writing, science, and
religion.
 • Anthropologists study
human societies (living
people).
• Archaeologists study
artifacts. (old stuff).
• Hunter gatherer societies:
hunt animals and gather
fruits, nuts and
vegetables.
• First division of labor: men
hunted while women and
children gathered fruits,
nuts and wild vegetables.
Shared the food.
Kalahari Bushmen Family
Man was in
competition
with other
hunters.
 The Old Stone Age
• Paleolithic means Old
Stone.
• Old stone age, flint
knives and spear
heads (artifacts) 

Stone
Ax
Learning to use and make fire was
a big step for mankind.
 Mans Big Problem
• Getting enough to eat
• Carrying Capacity: limitations of an environment
on numbers of people it can feed.
• Carrying Capacity can be changed by
discovering a new source of food, discovering
how to store or preserve food, or produce more
crops or higher crop yield. Carrying capacity also
influenced by changes in climate.
• When an area is near its Carrying Capacity there
are serious shortages of food.
 Dealing with the problem
• Develop better methods of getting food.
Problem with this: population will grow.
• Take land from neighbors: war.
• Fewer people: infanticide, killing babies;
later marriage. Problem with this: If one
group has fewer people group with more
will take land.
 The Ice age was
a period of expanding
ice sheets in
the northern and
southern hemispheres.

In the Ice Age people had

many large animals
to hunt.
 Early Societies
• Forager bands: hunter gatherers. Up to 40
people. Men related to each other.
• Classless societies: everyone equal.
• Leaders rise based on ability and skill.
• Land “carrying capacity” for hunter gathers very
small: each group needed a lot of land. Had to
continually move camp to search for food.
• Led to constant war to defend hunting grounds.
No-man’s land in between hunting grounds.
• Up to 25% of men and 5% women killed in war.
Man became a Big Game Hunter.
Who was Neanderthal Man?
Neanderthal man was
fully human.

Neanderthal Men trap a woolly rhinoceros.

 Man Domesticated the Dog
during the Old Stone Age
Dogs were the first animals
European To be domesticated (tamed)
Gray Wolf
Dogs provided more than
companionship.

Almost every society on

earth kept dogs.

Dogs were most likely

domesticated because of
mans constant warfare.

Their barking gave

warning when enemies
were near.
Breeds were created by selective breeding.
Language, song and dance: created
emotional solidarity and made cooperation easier.

Painting on
cave wall.

Dancing Shaman in reindeer skins:

Shaman knew how to communicate
with spirit world.
 Paleolithic Art

Cave Painting Lascaux France: Successful big game hunters

probably learned to smoke meat. Gave them leisure time to
create art.
 Stone Age
Artists

Venus
of
Willendorf
 Global
Warming
• Warming climate caused
thick forests, old food
sources of some big
animals cut off. Some big
animals became extinct.
• People hunted smaller
animals and learned to
fish (invented bows, nets,
baskets, cord bags,
boomerangs, spear
throwers, snares and fish
hooks).
Bone needles were used to make clothes from animal skins.
Stone Age Wigwam
 The Noble Savage Myth
• Many people want to believe that humans once lived in
peace and in balance with nature.

• Popular idea that traditional societies are more noble

than Western Civilization because they had more
respect for nature and lived in peace.

• The idea that Native Americans and other traditional

people lived in ecological harmony is pure fantasy.
No evidence that ideal ecological behavior ever existed
for long anywhere in the world.

• Competition for food made traditional societies warlike. A

peaceful society could not last long.
 Running a herd over a cliff is not
killing only what you need.
Native Americans had uses for
every part of the buffalo. But not
every part of every buffalo.

Stone age hunters often used this method to hunt buffalo and wild horses.
 Fable of two make believe
societies.
• The Ant People live in • The Grasshopper
harmony with nature. People are wasteful
• Careful not to use up and use up their
resources and keep resources.
population under • They allow their
control. population to grow
• Do not fill up “carry and soon there are
capacity” of their land. too many people for
• They are a peaceful the “carry capacity of
people. their land.”
• What happens next?
 The larger Grasshopper tribe attacks
and kills the Ant People and takes their land!

Tribal warriors Papua New Guinea

 The Roots of War
• Humans starve only when there are no
other choices.
• Neighbors are a potential new source of
resources.
• Humans have the ability to take resources
from other groups.
• Threat of starvation usually leads to
conflict.
• Constant wars helped control population.
 The Agriculture Revolution
(7000- 6500 BC)
• Probably began in hills of north and east of Iraq
• Learned to grow wheat and barley (bread and
beer)
• Domesticated animals (goats and sheep)
• Slash and burn farmers in woods: needed ax,
hoe, sickle
• New Stone Age: polished granite or basalt ax
heads, clay pots and bricks
• Villages: tribal society developed
• Number of people grew, division of labor.
 Neolithic Tools

Stone sickle

Stone ax

Flint spearhead
A Neolithic man
and woman glean
wheat and barley
on a spring morning in
Mesopotamia around
5000 B.C.
In the background
stand the mud houses
of their permanent
village.
 Domestic Animals

Goats and Sheep domesticated in Middle

East about 7500 BC
 Impact of Farming
• Farmers actions tended to hurt environment
more and faster than foragers.
• More wood needed to cook crops, burn clay to
make bricks, heat lime to plaster walls.
• Cutting down forests destroyed animal habitat
and caused erosion of soil. Over grazing by
sheep turned grasslands into deserts.
• Farmers could reproduce faster than foragers.
Did not solve long term “carry capacity” problem.
• Benefits of new plants and animals and new
technology quickly used up by growing
populations.
 New Societies
• Farmer Tribes: farming increases land’s carrying
capacity.
• Still classless societies: everyone equal.
• Leaders still rise based on ability and skill.
• More people survived to fill land up to carrying
capacity. Digging irrigation systems and cutting
down forest was hard work. Most tribal people
would rather fight to take existing resources than
create new ones.
• Still always at war. Pushed hunter gatherers off
the best land. No-man’s land in between tribes.
• In time tribal societies developed into larger
more complex social organizations known as
chiefdoms.
 A Neolithic Tribal Village

Neolithic villagers busy themselves in front of pressed-mud houses in

Mesopotamia around 4500 B.C.
 Tribal Wars
• Wars were slow paced but losses were high
over time. People lived in constant threat of
attack. Death rate in wars still about 25% of men
5% women.
• Almost every adult male was a warrior. Lots of
raids and ambushes. (Native American style
warfare) War was very personal.
• Killed men, women and children. Few prisoners
taken except women who became part of victors
tribe or men to be tortured. Often took heads,
scalps, or body parts as trophies.
• In one generation tribes gained or lost up to 60
percent of their land. Some societies were
completely destroyed.
What he
probably
Otzi: the ice man
looked
like.
frozen tribal warrior

Body discovered by hikers in Alps, 1991.

Evidence of tribal war. Carried copper ax
better for chopping people than trees.
Cause of death: arrow in back.
Probably killed during raid on neighboring
Battle-ax
tribe about 3300 BC.
Neolithic Art
Walls of
Jericho
about
6000 B.C.
more proof
of wars.

Baked clay
pottery

Neolithic
Plastered Skull
Jericho c. 6000 B.C.
Egyptian farmer using a plow drawn by domesticated animals.