About it

• Prehistory is the longest period of human history and is where the emergence of the human species occurred.

• This period has 2 phases: Paleolithic and Neolithic.

The Paleolithic Period

• The Paleolithic -a term meaning "ancient stone age"- began with the appearance of the first hominids and ended 12,000 years ago, the approximate date of the development of agriculture. The human being of the Paleolithic lived with a fauna that was different from today. People didn't produce food. Therefore, their existence depended on hunting and fishing animals and gathering fruits, vegetables, and roots. Thus, humans led a nomadic life.

Division

• The Paleolithic has three periods: Lower, Middle and Upper.

  • Lower: Transition to sharper, more angular chipped stone tools. Hunting in groups was improved, and humans slept in the open air.

  • Middle: Tools were refined. Humans began to live in caves, used personal adornments, and practiced burial rituals, initiating the first manifestations of religious life.

  • Superior: it begins with the birth of H. sapiens and the end of our biological evolution. It featured a rich collection of carefully crafted ivory objects, bones, horns, and blades. Humans began to create clothing from animal skins with the needle. The first paintings, sculptures, and engraved symbols also appeared.

• Around 40,000 years ago, painting began to develop remarkably well in caves and was called cave art.

• At the end of the Paleolithic period, the European Mesolithic began, the last ice age and the transition moment to the Neolithic. With the retreat of the glaciers, the megafauna of the glacial period disappeared. The tundra landscape gave way to conifers, deserts appeared, and coastal, riverine, and forest cultures emerged.

The Neolithic period

• The Neolithic period occurred between the years 7000 B.C. to 2500 B.C. and was characterized by numerous transformations among the hominids, such as sedentarism and agricultural production.

• Agriculture, in turn, required knowledge about floods and harvests, which favored the emergence of the calendar and astronomy.

• In addition, the need to store grain contributed to the development of pottery. The polished stone ax also appeared, which was a milestone of the Neolithic era.

• Thus, planting and storing food, settling in residences, and sedentarization became easier for humans. Therefore, between 10 and 6 thousand years ago, the first demographic explosion occurred, when the human population jumped from 100,000 to 3.2 million individuals.

The end of Prehistory

• With the advance in agriculture and its techniques, there is a growing surplus in production. The surplus made trade possible, together with the increasing number of people working in secondary and tertiary activities.

• The development of agriculture led to a phenomenon called the Urban Revolution or Second Neolithic Revolution occurred. In other words, the rise of cities and social complexification.

• Another mark of the end of the Neolithic is writing, which first appeared in Mesopotamia. The appearance of writing is a highly complex phenomenon, a moment when the human mind increases its capacity for abstraction and the association of a symbol with meaning.

• Writing appears, therefore, as an instrument of control, administration, and ordering of society.