GLOBAL HISTORY. WEEK 1 The Palaeolithic Periods

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1 GLOBAL HISTORY Scope of the course: Long-term human history, with the entire human story as our subject rather than nation-states (which are very new) The thematic (big picture) history: concept and ideas rather than details à be ready with examples of your choice when you make arguments in tutes or in written assignments history is based on evidence Evidence à written, material, and comparative/anthropological (general vs. specific) WEEK 1 The Palaeolithic Periods Geology The Pleistocene Era: 2.6 million to 12, 000 YBP The Holocene Era: 12, 000 years ago present Archaeology Archaeology begins when people start making tools it is a discipline, just as history begins when there are written records, such as 5,208 years ago Archaeology covers around the last 2.5 million years because that is when people started making tools Lower Palaeolithic, 2.5 million to o What is in the lowest part of the ground o Early tool using Middle Palaeolithic, to 40, 000 o Corresponds roughly to the emergence of anatomically modern humans and more complex tool making Upper Palaeolithic, to 10, 000 o Neanderthals go extinct o Cave art, Venus figurines o Much more complex tools o In 12, 000 BC the world population was 10 million people were Foragers, they were hunter gatherers, they subsisted off what the land would provide for them, they did not cultivate the land etc. o Foragers were 100% hunters o Impacted their environment to change it e.g. aboriginals in Australia who moulded the environment to suit their needs i.e. they were hunters, they did not cultivate the land up until the time of European arrival in 1788 o Tendency to romanticise about foragers, how they were happy on their diet, life was simple etc, it is made fashionable for the Palaeolithic lifestyle e.g. Palaeolithic diet o Vast majority of humans lived through foraging in human history o Agriculture originated between 7 and 12 places at the end of the Palaeolithic period o First major transition from foraging to agriculture does not happen overnight o By 1960 there are only few areas in the world that remain as foragers e.g. Australian desert and parts in Canada we are now an industrial society (second major transition) o These two changes really stick out as the things that made life more unrecognisable for people before and after them o Foraging à Agriculture à pre-industrial agricultural society à Industrial

2 Do not think of this as a one way era of progress It is not people just waiting to evolve there is no straight line of evolution across societies, there are places in the world where we can watch cultural developments from foragers to agricultural villages, due to a process of warfare etc, eventually states emerge However there are also examples societies who resist any attempts to be incorporated into larger political units e.g. Bulgaria from 1000BC to 1BC all the cultures around, the Greeks in the north, Celts in the south, all develop states, however the Thracian state does not develop forward In certain environments people fight tooth and nail to avoid evolving Also places in the world where societies become chiefdoms, and then evolve but then fail and go backwards à evolution collapses Once you become a state, it can still fall apart, evolution is not absolute The Upper Paleolithic: a foraging population The Upper Paleolithic is the Late Stone Age, from ca. 50,000 10,000 years ago ( depending what part of the world you are in) Paleolithic hunter gatherer bands range from people each; larger clans of people meet occasionally for trade and exogamy Difficult to feed such large bands, so they break up into smaller bands Bands tend to be mobile within a set territory e.g. Aboriginals had specific rituals in order to go to different territory Humans need ca. 30 square km each, ca for a typical group people in all of Europe; world population was approx 5 million Population low, but interaction continues; a web of genes and technology reaches most parts of the world interesting things happened to groups that ended up isolated e.g. aboriginal indigenous people of Tasmania As the Paleolithic period develops, people begin to become more advanced, they develop tricks to get food out of the environment Reconstruction of a Palaeolithic tent

3 0 is present day In the Pleistocene we have dramatic peaks and drops ice ages and the warm periods There are long periods of very cold temperatures the peaks are relatively small and short, while the ice ages are a lot longer à this happens because in a series of geological terms, it has to do with north and south America joining up and the Atlantic ocean becoming a lot colder In an ice age, the planet becomes covered in a lot of ice sheets, reflecting light into space, staying iced for longer The upper Paleolithic period happens during one of these ice ages, years after the deepest part of the glacial maximum of the last ice age that occurred The Holocene is a period of relatively warm climate ^^ Agriculture develops during the period of climatic instability which drives agriculture

4 The warmer the global climate, the wetter the climate is in the last glacial maximum, the climate was very dry and most of the world, it is the dryness that has had the most impact small areas of forest, too much water locked up in the ice Warmer climates produce more diverse ecosystems colder climates tend to be less productive, less biomass and fewer species of flora and fauna more homogenous ecosystems can be quite fragile Cold, Dry and much less productive ecosystems at this time Sea levels were 100m lower, land levels much bigger and wider Sea levels have fluctuated quite a bit How do we know this? We know this information because Palaeoecologists go to a flat land (old drained lake) and dig out parts of the quarry and find samples of what kind of plants were growing in those areas, going back around years à shows periods of deforestation and afforestation Palaeolithic artefacts Lower Czech republic has best preserved artefacts People and animals moved to warmer areas E.g. Mammoths Pleistocene animals included horses, rabbits, birds and reindeer which all evolved and survived Also had cave bears which evolved onto all fours The Upper Palaeolithic I Châtelperronian(35 29ka) o In central and south western France, extending also into Northern Spain and into Italy (Uluzzian) o Ornamentation, backed points o Mousterian origins, late Neandertals? Aurignacian(39 28/26ka)

5 o In Europe and southwest Asia. Some of the oldest figurative art o (40-35ka) We separate upper palaeolithic period because human culture becomes more diverse, we start seeing teeth more developed, as well as a wider range of tools e.g. tiny lithic artefacts with seraded edges, in contrast to a large speer with a sharp point à tools now had different components e.g. wooden half with a horned tip The Upper Palaeolithic II Gravettian (28 22 ka) o Small pointed restruck blade with a blunt but straight back, a carving tool known as a Noailles burin. o Hundreds of Venus figurines, which are widely distributed in Europe and Russia. Solutrean (21 17 ka) o Relatively finely worked, bifacial points made with pressure flaking rather than cruder flint knapping. o This permitted the working of delicate slivers of flint to make light projectiles and even elaborate barbed and tanged arrowheads o Heat treatment of flint to improve flaking quality. The Upper Palaeolithic III Magdalenian (18 10 ka) o Blade industries of the late Upper Paleolithic of EuropeAssociated with Reindeer Hunting and other large mammals present in Europe towards the end of the last ice age. o Divided into six phases: Early Phase: blades and specific varieties of scrapers. Middle phases marked by the emergence of a microlithic component (particularly the distinctive denticulated microliths) Later phases by the presence of 'harpoons' made of bone, antler and ivory

6 Everyday life in Paleolithic foraging societies Dolni Vestinice Mammoth processing site ca YA skins used to make huts, ate a lot of it and used the bones for tools Flaked stone blades: Gravettian tools ( YA) the wooden tools haven t really survived unless in very wet environments Also made compound tools- wood and arrow heads, tools made of mammoth tusks Textile impressions people have tailored clothes by this time, we know this Geneticists can look at the genetic code of an animal and figure out when it split off from its ancestors e.g. humans and chimpanzees last split off from each other They figured this out to around years ago Textile impressions

7 Upper Paleolithic period is where we have the first clear evidence of ritual burials for the first time, few earlier examples but the further back you go the more controversial it gets There is also Venus configures, this is the oldest example of ceramic in the world The Venus of Dolni Vestinice About fertility fingerprints have been traced, arguing that these configures were made by children around 10 years old, more like Paleolithic Barbie dolls à this is controversial however There are many interpretations of Gravettian art e.g. man and woman with heads touching might be about their burial

8 Agriculture impacted health, illness and diet enamel hypoplasia can be caused by illness (Severe fever) or malnutrition, seen on teeth People in their huts are depicted as naked, because modern hunter gatherer societies e.g. Inuits, living in their igloos etc, are so much warmer, so it is almost universal that they would be naked because it is warmer cultural anthropology The Kalahari Desert A lot of what we assume about the Paleolithic hunter gatherers, is what we take from the Kalahari desert and the people who lived there Made by observations of modern anthropologists, and how the bands broke up at certain times, and joined together at other times and how many people would have survived WEEK 2 The Neolithic Revolution: The Mesolithic / Epipalaeolithic / Final Neolithic Humans begin to exploit local environments more intensively Wandering of groups becomes more regular, with seasonal returns to specific places After about 12,000 BC, change in the Near East accelerates & spreads In unusually rich areas, groups establish permanent settlements These societies and cultures are starting to extract more resources out of the ecosystems that they are becoming intimately familiar with e.g. processing certain plants that are mildly poisonous Cultures are making the most out of the area they travel to à as a result don t have to travel as much, move less, and start targeting certain ecological zones à start to learn what to get out of these, become more familiar, extract more food Highlands around Mesopotamia we see settlements forming based on exploitation Process continues with wandering becoming more regular until some environments have sedentary foraging societies are established à first permanent settlement in Europe Often marine resources like this that support foraging societies Most recent examples is northwest Indians Marine mammals around Canada did a lot of wailing These groups supported themselves through rich marine and riverine resources, hunting and gathering complements them Wet season and dry season mild marine/temperate rainforest climate mild, wet and rainy which allowed them to settle there PART 1 à The Neolithic Revolution 10, 000 4, 000 BC in the Near East (dates vary) Rainfall fed agriculture in the Ancient Near East (10, 000 6, 000 BC) Foragers begin to exploit flora and fauna in specific areas = allow for settlement leading to invention of agriculture Multiple inventions of agriculture around the world simultaneously o We are looking specifically in South West Asia in the Mesopotamian

9 o o o Some of the forager settlements become dependent on wild grasses Other areas of the world relied in marine resources but here it consisted of wild grasses wry, barley and the ancestors of the domesticated grains that we have today They would go out and collect these wild grasses go out and collect them, plant and harvest them, in a cycle of continuously doing this in different places resulting in a spread The climate drove some of these environmental changes Foragers were moving less and then fairly quickly the environment becomes much warmer and wetter and much more productive and it is at this point that people began to permanently settle down because the grasses they relied upon became more reliable when the climate got wetter à 12, ,8 000 Late Glacial Interstadial These conditions improved dramatically, resulting in later grains growing However, it then becomes dryer and colder 10, 000 BC and the settlements at this point fall apart and they go back to having to wander more, but as part of the response to this stress and pressure put on these societies they began to take the grains that they relied on as a settled society and took it to plant as they moved around à mix of foraging and serial agriculture Complicated transition, driven as a human response to environmental change to an extent it is the moving and then planting the seeds, and then coming back at a certain stage Societies went from foragers à settled à mix of foragers and settled à settled Domesticated plants are dramatically different from their wild forbearers

10 Epipalaeolithic / Neolithic transitions Transition to rainfall-fed agriculture o Itinerant foragers, 20,000-12,300 BC (Ohalo) o Settled foragers, 12,300-10,800 ( Ain Mallaha / Abu Hureyra) o Itinerant agriculturalists / foragers, 10,800-9,600 (Late Abu Hureyra) o Settled agriculturalists, 9,600-6,000 (Jericho / Gobekli Tepe) Change from foraging to farming not one-way or irreversible; cf. the American Southwest in the 12 th -13th centuries AD) Life in a Neolithic Town Settlement becomes permanent structures built of durable materials Large population increase; town of several hundred houses, several thousand people 100 times the size of a foraging band Mediterranean agriculture store surplus from wet years to survive droughts (large bins at Jericho for storage) initially storage done at the village level, later it becomes more private/individual/household-level Dependent upon intensively exploited environment within a one-to-two hour walk of the village Diet cereal grains, legumes, more rarely meat (sheep, goats, pigs, cattle) Bread consumption dominated at first (tooth wear), replaced later by gruel/porridge later (carries) Health back-breaking work, high level of degenerative disease in skeletal remains e.g. women spent a lot of time carrying water and grinding-grain on saddle querns Remarkable burst of symbolic representation in the Neolithic (architecture, statuary, sculpture, painting) Effects of Agriculture Population increases, nucleates, permanent settlement more common Economics accumulation of goods, clear evidence of private property, households become more self-sufficient over time, limited specialization Social complexity some inequality and hierarchy emerges (limited) Power village communities autonomous, self-organizing, organic units, divided into lineages with ad hoc, charismatic leaders of the village and a big man society Early West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean Increase in difference within society (economic specialization, social inequality, political hierarchy) Increase in interaction and exchange within and between societies Ceramics invented in the 7 th millennium BC resulting in the increasing of technological change

11 Evidence of Archaeology Suggests that you have to work a lot harder to be an agriculturalist lower quality of life, more diseases due to deficiencies in diet In some parts of the world this is definitely the case forager societies have a much more wider variety of food compared to agricultural societies e.g. Irish potato famine shows it can be prone to failure We do see in the archaeology of early agriculturalists a lot of wear and tear on early skeletons, quite a few injuries amongst foragers that are a result of wild animals It looks like agriculturalists have a lot less free time somewhat controversial More diseases amongst diseases b/c not moving away from their own faeces drinking water becomes contaminated crowd diseases and faecal-oral diseases Mixed evidence about the level of violence (varies from place to place and culture to culture) Agriculture can feed more people but takes up more work and labour PART 2 à Hydraulic agriculture in Mesopotamia ( , 000BC) -

12 Hydraulic Agriculture ( BC) Alluvial/hydraulic agriculture o Builds on earlier developments o First irrigation and flood-control works ca BC o Spreads from north to south, from uplands down Tigris and Euphrates valleys o Reaches alluvial plain by 5000 BC o Difficult but potentially rich o Fosters migration and exchange o Complex society (at least middle range chiefdom) emerges Represents one path towards intensified agriculture ( BC) o Alluvial, irrigated agriculture (Asia / Egypt river valleys) o Mediterranean triad (diversified agriculture in the Mediterranean basin based upon cereals, vines, and olives) o Secondary Products Revolution (Europe / Asia maybe?) Quality of life and agriculture Agriculture can feed more people, but with much greater labour input per person and lower quality of diet Less free time (Richard Lee s study of the!kung Bushmen) More disease ( crowd diseases ; faecal oral diseases) Mixed evidence about the level of violence (varies from place to place and culture to culture) Why switch to farming then? Demographic increase and environmental change most likely motivation for changing but may also have been competition within societies and the quest for status Review the original affluent society Hunter gatherers do not struggle constantly against an unyielding environment Their wants are few They knowledge of the environment allows them to meet their wants with relatively little work (say, 2 3 days per week to gain a protein rich diet of calories/day) From the outside, they appear to have low standards of living, but from the viewpoint of an insider, they enjoy material plenty Review: Critical questions about the original affluent society Is Sahlins overgeneralising, ignoring the diversity of the hunter gather experience? Are ancient foraging societies comparable with recent ones? Is the evidence Sahlins cites adequate (were observation times too short, and did they occur only during times of abundance)? Are these societies really egalitarian (e.g., men vs. women, little accumulation of surplus or differentiation of wealth)? Have the terms involved ( work, leisure, affluence, etc.) been correctly defined? Is their a difference between leisure and forced idleness? How does Sahlins know that the people he is studying have their wants fulfilled? Why has this thesis been adopted so quickly and widely on limited evidence, especially by anthropologists who do not specialise in the study of foragers?