Pre History¦


Six million years is a vast span of time. In order to begin to comprehend it¸ to grasp its salient pattern of events¸ it helps to think of those events as constituting a play¸a drama of our past. A very special play¸ for no one wrote the script six million years of improvising. Our ancestors are the actors¸ their tools are the props and the incessant changes of environment through which they lived the changes of scenery, but as a play do not think of it as a “whodunit¸” in which action and ending are all. Fore we already know the ending–we are living it. The�Stone Age actors all died out leaving just one single survivor¸ Homo sapiens sapiens. Steven Mithen (1996¸ p.17).


T he Home page for this site informs the reader about the great discovery in the Valley of the Kings¸ and a typical ancient myth about the creation of the planet. The rest of the chapter will explain the history of history IE how we come to the conclusions that inform us about our ancient past. Information is always changing. At the beginning of the 20th century Egypt was the oldest known civilization. Then by the 1920´s discoveries in the land between the rivers changed that. Who knows what new discoveries will change how we look at our ancient past and ourselves.


©In the beginning¦


“A fter the Great Fire destroyed the world and before the little bird Icanchu flew away¸ hr roamed the wasteland in search of the First Place. The homeland lay beyond recognition¸ but Lcanchu´s index finger¸ of its own accord¸ pointed to the spot. There he unearthed the charcoal stump that he pounded as his drum¸ Playing without stopping¸ he chanted with the dark drum´s sounds� At dawn on the New Day¸ a green shoot sprang from the coal drum and soon flowered as Firstborn Tree� From it branches bloomed the forms of life that flourished in the New World�” (Sullivan¸ 1988¸ p.92)

We Westerners take the past for granted; accept human evolution as something that extends back many thousands¸ even million of years. Science provides us with a long perspective on ancient times. In contrast¸ the story of Lcanchu´s drum is a classic origin myth of the cosmic fire by the Mataco Indians from South America. Like all such accounts¸ the tale begins with a primordium (the very beginning) in which a mythic begins¸ in this case Icanchu, works to create the familiar animals¸ landscape¸ and plants of the world¸ and then the human inhabitants. Icanchu¸ and his equivalents in a myriad of human cultures throughout the world¸ create order from primeval chaos¸ as God does in the first Chapter of the bible–Genesis.

Myths¸ and the rituals and religious rites associated with them¸ function to create a context for the entire symbolic life that is very cornerstone of human existence. The first human beings establish the sacred order through which life endures from one generation to the next. This kind of history¸ based on legend and myth¸ is one symbolic existence. Creation legends tell of unions between gods and monsters¸ of people emerging from holes in the earth after having climbed sacred trees that link the layers of the cosmos. They create indissoluble symbolic bonds between humans and other kinds of life¸ such as plants animals¸ and celestial beings.

The vivid and ever–present symbolic world has influenced the course of human life ever since humans first acquired the power of creative thought and reasoning. The Cro-Magnons of late Ice Age Europe depicted mythical animals and the symbolism of their life in cave paintings more than 20¸000 years ago. They modeled clay bison in dark chambers deep beneath the earth. The sculptures seemed to flicker in the light of firebrands during powerful carried out by shamans¸ tribal priests with the ability to voyage into the mysterious supernatural world. So compelling was the influence of the unknown powers of the cosmos and of the gods that inhabited it that the Maya and other Central American civilizations created entire ceremonial centers in the form of symbolic landscapes to commemorate their myth universe.

Today¸ Western science has chronicled more than 2.5 million years of pre–history¸a narrative of human endeavor that extends back through hundreds of thousands of years of unfolding time. This story is one based scientific research¸ something quite different from the creation legends that people use to define their complex relationships with the natural and spiritual worlds. These legends are deeply felt¸ important sources of cultural identity. They foster a quite different relationship with the past than the engendered by archaeology¸ which seeks to understand our common biological and cultural roots¸ and the great diversity of humanity.

Prehistory, Archaeology, and World Prehistory¦


H uman beings are among the only animals that have a skeleton adapted for standing and walking upright¸which leaves our hands free for purposes other than moving around. A powerful brain capable of abstract thought controls these physical traits. The same brain allows us to communicate symbolically and orally though language and to develop highly diverse cultures–learned ways of behaving and adapting to our natural environments. The special features that make us human evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.

The scientific study of the pas is a search for answers to fundamental questions about human origins. How long ago did humans appear? When and how did they evolve? How did early humans settle the world and develop so many different societies at such different levels of complexity? Why did some societies cultivate the soil and herd cattle while others remained hunters and gathers? Why did some peoples like¸ for example¸ the San foragers of southern Africa or the Shoshone of the Great Basin in North America live in small family bands¸ while the ancient Egyptians and the Aztecs of Mexico developed highly elaborate civilizations When did more complex human societies evolve and why? The answers to these questions are the concern of scientists studying world prehistory.

Archaeologists define prehistory as the portion of human history that extends back some 2.5 million years before the time of written documents and archives. In contrasts¸ history¸ the study of human experience through documents¸ has a much shorter time span. Written records go back before 5000 years in western Asia/ Writing and written records came into use centuries later elsewhere in the world¸ in some parts of Africa and Asia only within the past century, when European powers annexed vast new territories and started to rule their new possessions. The study of prehistory is multidisciplinary enterprise that involves archeologists¸ geologists¸ and zoologists–to mention only a few. However¸ archaeologist is the primary source of information of human prehistory.

The archeologist is a special type of anthropologist concerned not with living societies but with ancient cultures. Archaeology consists of a broad range of scientific methods and techniques for studying the past¸ used carefully and in a disciplined way. The archeologist studies human societies of the remote and recent past, using the surviving material remains of the cultures to do so. Archaeology is a highly effective way of studying human cultures in then past and the ways in which they have changed over long periods of time. It covers the entire time span of human existence¸ from over 2.5 million years right up to the study of nineteenth–century railroad stations and the garbage from modern industrial cities.

A century ago¸ most archaeologists worked in Europe and western Asia. They thought of human prehistory in very provincial terms and were convinced that all significant developments such as agriculture and civilization itself had originated in the area between Mesopotamia and the Nile. Today¸ archaeologists are at world all over the globe–in Africa¸ Alaska¸ and Australia. Thanks to universals dating methods such as radiocarbon dating, we can date and compare prehistoric developments in widely separated parts of the world. We know¸ for example¸ that agricultural began in Syria in about 10¸000 B.C.E. and in central Africa about 2¸000 years ago. We can date the first human occupation of Europe to about 500¸000 years ago¸ and that of North America to about 15¸000 years before present. This is the study of world prehistory¸ the prehistory of humankind evaluated not just from the perspective of a single region such as western Asia¸ but also from a global viewpoint.

World prehistory developed as a result of two major developments in archaeology. The first was the development of radiocarbon dating by University of Chicago physicists Willard Libby and J. R. Arnold in 1949. For the first time¸ archaeologist had at their disposal a dating method of potential global that enable them not only to date sites in all corners of the world¸ but also to compare the chronology off¸ say¸ the first agriculture in southwest Asia with that in the Americas. (See Radiocarbon Dating)

Until then¸ no one could make easy, direct chronological comparisons between widely separated regions¸ nor did the have a way of measuring the rate of cultural change through time. Within 15 years of Libby and Arnold´s remarkable discovery¸ radiocarbon dates from hundreds of sites allowed the construction of the first reliable global chronologies¸ as a population explosion of professional archaeologist occurred worldwide.

Today¸ archaeological expeditions are at world in every corner of the world and in every environment imaginable¦ in the remote wilds of Siberia¸ in tropical rain forests along the Amazon River in South America, on Eastern Island in the Pacific¸ in the middle of the arid Sahara Desert¸ and under the world's oceans.

In 1961¸ the Cambridge University archaeologist Grahame Clark published his classic World Prehistory (third edition 1977)¸ the first synthesis of archaeology that took full account of radiocarbon chronology and global archaeological research. This ground breaking volume helped turn archaeology intellectually from a somewhat provincial discipline into the global enterprise it is today.

©Major Developments in Human Prehistory


World prehistory¸ as described on this site¸ is concerned with the broad sweep of the human past¸ more specifically with four major developments.

  • The origins of humankind some 2.5 million years ago. We describe the ancestors of the first humans¸ the fossil evidence for our origins¸ and some of the behavioral changes and innovations that accompanied the appearance of our earliest forbears.
  • The evolution of archaic humans like Homo erectus and the origins of anatomically modern people¸ ourselves. These developments span a long period between about 1.8 million and 150¸000 years before the present. We also describe the spread of fully modern humans through the Old World and into the Americas¸ a process that ended about 15¸000 years ago.
  • The origins of more complex forager societies¸ of agriculture and animal domestication, sometimes called food production¸ after about 12¸000 years ago. We evaluate the different theories developed to explain greater cultural and social complexity and why humans took up farming and describe the early beginnings and spread of agriculture in western Asia¸ Europe¸ Asia¸ and the Americans.
  • The origins of urban literate civilization (state-organized societies) in about 3100 B.C.E. in western Asia and the development of similar, complex societies in other parts of the world in later millennia. These major developments provide us with a broad framework for telling the story of prehistory. central to this frame-work are the notione of time and space--the context of biological and cultural developments in the past. (For a breif summary of how archaeological research proceeds see link)


Cyclical and Linear Time


All human societies have an interest in the past. It is always around them, haunting mystifying, tantalizing, somethimes offering potentiall lessons for the present and future. The past is important because social life unfolds through time, embedded within a frameowrk of cultural expectations and values. In the high Arttic, Inuit preserve their tradioional attitudes, skills and coping mechanisms in some of the harshest environments on earth. They do this by incorporating the lessons of the past into the present. In many societies, the ancestors are the guardians of the land, which sybolizes present, past, and future.

Westerners have a intense scientific interest in ancient times, partly born of curiiosity, but also out of a need for historicak identity. There are many reasons to attempt to preserve an accurate record of earlier times, and no one, least of all an archaeologist, should assume that they are uniquely privileged in their interest.

We may all share an interest in the past, but we think of it, and use it, in different ways, just as we have different perspectives on time.

While it is true that archaeology is the only method Western science has of studying cultural change through time, that does not give archaeologists unique authority over the past. In many societies, history is a valued cultural commodity, in ways that are fundamentally different from those of the archaeologist. The transmission of knowledge about ancient times lies in the hands of respected elders, who take pains to preserve the accuracy of oral traditions. Such traditions are of vital importance, and they are carefully controlled, for they define and preserve a group's identity from one generation to tne next. The past is vested not in science, but in household, community, kin groups, and territory.

Among the Yolngu Aborigines of Australia's Northern Territory, for example, only the oldest clan members aare repositories for the most important historical knowledge. As both Australian Aborigines and Native Americans have pointed out, there is a fundamental incompamental between Western science and its prespectives on the past and those of other societies. In part, this incompatibility revolves around the nothion of linear time.

Westerns think of the passage of the human experience along a straight, if branching, highway of time. The great nineteenth-century German statesman Otto von Bismark called this the "stream of time," upon which all human societies ride for a time. We have a sense of linear, unraveling history that goes back through 5000 years of recorded history to early Egypt and Mesopotamia. Ancient Egypitian civilization began in 3100 B.C.E.; Rome was founded 753 B.C.E.; Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492; and teh Declaration of Independence dates to July 4, 1776. These are landmarks along the ladder of historical chronology, which continues to unfold inexorably every day, month, and year, as we live out lives.

An unfolding, linear past is not the only way of conceptualizing ancient times. Many non-western societies, ancient and modern, think of time as a cyclical phenomenon, or sometimes as a combination of the linear and the cyclical. The cyclical perspective stems from the passage of seaons and of heavenly bodies, from the close relationships between foragers and village farmers and their natural environments.