The Origin of Humanity
Scholars have divided Prehistory into four periods:
Paleolithic (Chipped Stone Age)
Mesolithic
Neolithic (Polished Stone Age)
Age of Metals
Before the 19th century, history was made only through written documents. When the first traces of human life began to be discovered through excavations in archaeological sites, all events prior to the emergence of writing (between 3,500 and 3,000 BC) became known as Prehistory.
Australopithecus (southern ape), humanity's first ancestor, appeared in Africa about 5 million years ago. It was a primate like the gorilla and the orangutan and already walked on two feet. Also in Africa, lived about 2 million years ago, Homo habilis. He made stone tools and is considered the first recorded human being.
More than 1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus lived, the first group of the human genus to leave the African continent and spread across Europe and Asia. 150,000 years ago, the Neanderthal Man appeared, a species like the current human being and the first to bury its dead. Deadly records of them have been found in Europe and Asia. Homo sapiens sapiens, the species to which we belong, also emerged in Africa 150,000 years ago, coexisting with Neanderthal Man. He was the first hominid to express himself artistically and to migrate to other continents.
Studies on human evolution have changed as new data emerge. According to the theory most accepted by scholars, human beings have undergone a long evolution. Fossils, bones that have petrified after being buried for a long time, signal when different species appeared and when they became extinct. Hominids migrated to regions of the African savannah where there was water, and they lived there because food was abundant there.
The stone and its multiple functions
The material that gives name and technological unit to these periods of Prehistory is stone. It is assumed that early humans used other materials such as wood, bone, skin, leaves, and herbs. It is presumed that bone horns were used as pickaxes in flint mines and elsewhere, but none of these survive.
Stone tools survived in abundance. They only became tools when they were deliberately shaped for specific purposes, and to do this efficiently, hard, fine-grained stones had to be found. They used suitable means to shape them, and especially to put a cutting edge on them.
Flint, a hard rock of very fine grain and variable color, often light yellow, brownish, or black, composed of silica crystallized in the form of chalcedony or quartz, found in the form of concretions in other rocks, generally calcareous, became a very popular stone for this purpose, although fine sandstones and certain volcanic rocks were also widely used.
Paleolithic or Polished Stone Age
The word Paleolithic means ancient stone and refers to the stone tools made by hominids during this period. The Paleolithic covers the emergence of the human being (3 million years ago) until approximately 10,000 years ago and was subdivided into three phases that are Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Primitive men used chipped stone instruments, lived in clans, had no religion, were nomads and practiced extractivism.
Where did hominids live?
Hominids had their origin in Africa, inhabiting mainly the savanna regions, a landscape that consisted of large meadows of low herbs and pastures dotted with acacias. Along the lakes and rivers, the vegetation was thicker, with reeds and various species of cereals, sugarcane, and other plant specimens.
These first tools were used by hand, but gradually ways were invented to protect the hand from the sharp edges of the stone. One end was wrapped in skin or grass and the stone was placed on a wooden handle.
It was an endless time before they regularly manufactured these tools. Much time passed before they arrived at the successive stages up to the manufacture of crushers and stone beaters.
A degree of specialization in toolmaking was achieved by Neanderthal times (70,000 BC). More advanced tools, requiring head and handle assembly, were produced by the Cro-Magnons (perhaps as early as 35,000 BC). The application of mechanical principles was achieved by Neolithic (Polished Stone Age; 6000 BC) and Metal Age (circa 3000 BC) peoples.
In these regions there were, among other animals, elephants, giraffes, hippos, zebras, and monkeys that inhabited places close to water sources. There were also large predators, which were always lurking in the herbivore herds. Hominids often became victims of these animals.
Although they shared the savannah with other animals, they mostly ate vegetables. When they ate meat, it came from the remains left by other animals. These remains were much more used by hominids thanks to their tools. With them, they broke the bones they found and ate the marrow, quite nutritious. In addition, they were better able to remove the meat from the bones.
Division of labor
The division of labor took place according to the lifestyle of human groups. Men were responsible for hunting and women for gathering food. With the development of agriculture, this activity also became the responsibility of women.
The German female professor and sociologist Maria Mies suggests that the survival of human groups, during part of Prehistory, was possible, above all, from the role played by women, since a large part of the food consumed came from gathering and agriculture, and a small part was the result of hunting, a male function.
The glacial landscape
About 1.8 million years ago, Earth's climate changed. Temperatures dropped and the polar ice caps advanced, covering parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. The long periods of icy weather, which occurred every 100,000 years, are known as glaciations or the Ice Age. The last ice age began about 80,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago.
Hominids had to adapt to the cold. To do so, they wore animal skins, inhabited caves or huts built with tree branches, and used bonfires to keep warm. Fire was also used to cook food, light caves, and scare away wild animals.
As soon as food was exhausted, they left for places conducive to survival. They used stone axes to smash and chop with slivers. The tools used could be made from bones, stones, and ivory. There was a certain social organization and sense of family.
The consanguineous relationship was already perceived. They dominated, preserved, but did not produce fire, which will only be learned in the Neolithic period.
Life was very hard, and most of the time they were dedicated to getting food. They had no way to protect themselves from disease. A broken bone, a cold or a toothache could kill them. Life expectancy was very low, just over 20 years.
Making tools and weapons
The basic tools of prehistoric peoples were determined by the materials at their disposal. But once they acquired the techniques of working stone, they were ingenious in creating tools and weapons with spikes and barbs. Stone instrument manufacturing techniques have been perfected over time. The first tools were simple and had rounded ends. By hitting one stone against another, they took advantage of the cutting edge.
Later, they began to use stones such as flint. They broke them into blades when struck. They served as knives and points for arrows and spears. In addition, they made tools with flakes of sharp stones on both sides, such as needles, harpoons, and hooks.
The stone-headed spear, harpoon, and arrow came into widespread use. The bow and arrow were an even more effective combination than the spear, the use of which is clearly demonstrated in the earliest "documentary" evidence in the history of technology, the cave paintings of southern France and northern Spain, which depict the bow being used in hunting. The ingenuity of these hunters is also shown in their slingshots, throwing sticks (like the boomerang of the Australian aboriginal people), blowguns, traps for birds, fish, and animals.
The first beliefs
The first religious experiences began at the end of the Paleolithic. They buried their dead and celebrated funeral ceremonies and rituals. In the tombs, they placed valuable objects, such as necklaces and weapons. During this period, Cro-Magnon Man, the modern man itself, developed.
Many scholars claim that our ancestors believed in the existence of supernatural forces that helped them in hunting, favored the birth of children, caused illness and even death. According to some authors, to practice their beliefs, hominids produced paintings and sculptures, worshiping the forces of nature and the celestial stars.
Mesolithic Period
It is the intermediate period between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, and it happened in certain parts of the world. Specialists in Prehistory point out that it happened, above all, in places where there were intense glaciations, in Europe and parts of Asia. It lasted between 13,000 and 9,000 BC.
Neolithic or Polished Stone Age
It is the last phase of the Prehistoric period which lasted from 10,000 to 3,000 BC. It marked the decline of human groups that lived exclusively from hunting to the detriment of those who were hunters and gatherers. Man polished the stone, became sedentary, lived in villages, and started mystical rituals. He underwent a real change in his material and spiritual way of life. He ceased to be a hunter and gatherer of food and dominated nature.
The discovery of agriculture and livestock
About 10,000 years ago, in the Middle East, humans learned to cultivate plants and domesticate animals. These skills were developed by people from China and the Americas. In other regions of the world, agricultural and livestock techniques were being introduced through contact between peoples.
The technique of agriculture was possibly discovered through observation of nature. They realized that sometime after a seed was buried, a plant was born. Hunters and gatherers then began to sow and water the land to reap the fruits that sprouted from it.
The first agricultural species to be cultivated were wheat, in the Middle East and Europe; rice, bread and millet in Asia; corn, cassava, beans and potatoes in America. Millet is a plant, probably from central Asia, of the grass family, with the sheath of the leaves covered by long hairs and cultivated in Europe and the Mediterranean for 5,000 years. It was used especially as fodder and preparation of flour and alcoholic beverages.
Agricultural and pastoral peoples
With the practice of agriculture and livestock, there was a radical change in the way of life and in the organization of human beings, as hunting and gathering were no longer the only forms of subsistence. In addition, human groups began to prepare their own food.
Agricultural peoples became sedentary, that is, they settled in a certain place, no longer moving from one region to another in search of food. They built settlements along the rivers and established crop fields and corrals for domestic animals there.
The production of agricultural surpluses and their storage ensured the necessary food for times of drought or floods. With more food, the communities grew and soon the need for exchanges with other communities arose.
Shepherd peoples lived in huts close to their herds, moving from one region to another in search of better pastures and water for their livestock. Agriculture and livestock practices, as well as sedentary life, contributed to population growth, giving rise to the first villages.
The Neolithic Revolution
At the end of the last ice age, around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, some of the communities most favored by geography and climate began to make the transition from the long Paleolithic Period to a more stable way of life, depending on livestock and agriculture. In the Neolithic Period there was a sharp increase in population and growth in the size of communities. It was the beginning of life in cities. The speed of technological innovation has greatly increased. Due to this, human social and political organization became much more complex.
The Neolithic was also marked by the development of architecture, which allowed man to build stone houses and megalithic constructions, with large stones, little or no roughed at all, used in monuments from prehistoric times. Until today, their purpose has not been very well clarified by archeology.
As human groupings grew, the societies that formed became more complex and more unequal. The people directly involved with resource management have become more important and more influential.
Way of life in Neolithic villages
The Neolithic villages were small and formed by circular or rectangular adobe huts, a kind of brick made of clay and straw. In addition to houses, villages had stables for animals and warehouses for grain. Its inhabitants produced everything they needed to live, in addition to trading in flint, shells and certain ores.
All villagers participated equally in preparing the fields for cultivation, sowing, and harvesting. In the period between one harvest and another, they fed on what they had stored, hunting and gathering wild fruits.
Although villagers' participation in agricultural tasks was equal, some managed to accumulate more land and livestock. The more they accumulated, the more powerful they became. Thus, began social inequalities.
Over time, they established the division of labor in the villages. Some inhabitants cultivated the fields, others took care of the cattle and the rest made fabrics, ceramics, baskets, and weapons. The head of the family that had the most members and the most land ran the village and negotiated with the leaders of neighboring villages.
With their increasing dominance of the material world, they began to work with other substances such as clay for ceramics and brick. The growing competence in handling textile raw materials led to the creation of the first fabrics that replaced those made from animal skins.
The curiosity about the behavior of metallic oxides in the presence of fire promoted one of the most significant technological innovations of all time. The end of the Neolithic Period was marked by the development of metallurgy, that is, the ability to produce tools from metal casting and by the development of humanity's first form of writing, cuneiform writing.
Age of metals
Approximately seven thousand years ago, humans began to produce metal objects. Due to the great importance of the development of metallurgy, historians called this period the Age of Metals.
The discovery of metals
The first metal to be smelted was copper. At first, it was worked in a very simple way, with stones. Because it is not a very resistant metal, it was used in the manufacture of jewelry and decorative objects. Later, man discovered iron and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. Both were quite tough. With them, he began to manufacture all kinds of utensils, work tools, weapons and armor, containers, jewelry, and statues.
Life in the first villages
During the Neolithic Period, settlements were generally built next to a river or a lake – so water could be obtained to water the fields and to supply the population and livestock. It is reasonable to assume that most of these communities developed in tropical latitudes, especially in Africa, where climatic conditions were more favorable for a creature with as little bodily protection as humans.
It is also reasonable to assume that the tribes moved into the subtropics and eventually into the landmass of Eurasia, although colonization of this region must have been severely limited by successive periods of glaciation, which made large parts of it inhospitable, even though humanity has shown remarkable versatility in adapting to such unfavorable conditions.
The power of fire
The use of fire was another basic technique mastered at some unknown time in the Chipped Stone Age. They discovered that fire could be generated by persistent friction between two dry wooden surfaces. The mastery of fire was the most important contribution of Prehistory to energy technology, although at that time it was only used as a defense against wild animals, such as lighting and food preparation.
Prehistoric communities were still dependent on labor, but as they transitioned to a more stable standard of living in the Polished Stone Age, they began to gain some power. It also seems likely that, in late prehistory, sailing emerged as a means of harnessing the wind for small craft, starting a long sequence of developments in maritime transport.
The community developed only the most suitable instruments for their specific purposes, but all were in use by the end of the Stone Age. Furthermore, the Neolithic Revolution contributed important new tools that were not primarily related to hunting. These were the first mechanical applications of rotary action in the form of the potter's wheel, the bow drill, the lathe, and the wheel itself. It is not possible to be sure when these significant devices were invented, but their presence in early urban civilizations suggests some continuity with the late Neolithic Period.
The potter's wheel, set in motion by the operator's kicks, and the wheels of early vehicles gave continuous rotary motion in one direction. The drill and lathe, on the other hand, derived from the bow and had the effect of rotating the drill or workpiece first in one direction and then in the other.
Developments in food production brought further refinements in tools. Food production processes in the Paleolithic were simple, consisting of gathering, hunting, and fishing. If these methods proved inadequate to support a community, it moved to better hunting grounds or died.
With the onset of the Neolithic Revolution, new food production skills were created to meet the needs of agriculture and livestock. Digging sticks and the first rough plows, stone scythes, crushers that crushed grain by rubbing it between two stones, and, most complicated of all, techniques for keeping the soil irrigated and fertile - all these became well established in the great subtropical valleys of Egypt and Mesopotamia in the millennia before 3000 BC.
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