Notes on Early Humans and Emergence of Civilizations

Origins of Humankind

  • Religion and ideology grew to central importance, enabling the cohesion of increasingly large groups of people, even when individuals did not know each other personally.

  • The long arc of human history is shaped by how people organize, produce, and believe; ideology helps bind diverse individuals into shared communities.

Hunter-Gatherers

  • For most of human history, people subsisted by hunting, fishing, and gathering edible plants; diet depended on local environments.

  • Ice age Europe: cold climate meant scarce plant food but abundant large game like bison and mammoth on open steppes; warmer climates favored plant-based subsistence.

  • The oldest known representations of humans are the 20,000
    –30,000 year-old mother-goddess figures; the Willendorf Venus (a ~11 cm limestone statue) is a well-known example from Europe.

  • Some groups persisted into modern times as hunter-gatherers, e.g., the San people in southern Africa, moving in small family groups and meeting for seasonal feasts that form social ties and help form new families.

  • Gendered roles in hunter-gatherer societies often show men roaming large areas for hunting and fertility-symbol roles, while women tend to children and gather edible plants nearby; though exceptions exist with some groups where women were prominent hunters.

  • Views of early hunter-gatherer life have shifted: earlier depictions as peaceful and egalitarian in close harmony with nature are challenged by evidence of competition over land and women, even without material property; major ecological impact included the extinction of large mammals (e.g., mammoths, cave bears) due to human predation.

  • Cave paintings (often deep inside caves) dated roughly 15,000
    –30,000 years ago provide glimpses into early belief systems and relationships to animals; most likely connected to religious ceremonies.

  • Common themes across early art include human relations to animals and the natural world.

  • Early social organization: some evidence of groups organized under a chieftain or leader, as seen in large collective burial sites and monument construction.

The First Farmers (Neolithic Revolution) and Independent Origins of Agriculture

  • Agriculture and animal domestication emerged at multiple centers independently, between roughly 8000
    –2000 BCE, as shown on maps of independent origins.

  • Key agricultural milestones:

    • Wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent ($\approx 9000$ BCE)

    • Rice in East Asia (Yangtze River valley, $\approx 7000$ BCE)

    • Maize (corn) in Mesoamerica ($\approx 6000$ BCE)

    • Potatoes and quinoa in the Andes ($\approx 5000$ BCE)

    • Millet in Northern China ($\approx 6000$ BCE)

    • Sorghum in Sub-Saharan Africa ($\approx 3000$ BCE)

  • This revolution led to settled communities, population growth, and the development of more complex social structures.

  • Domestication of animals like sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle provided new sources of food, labor, and materials.

  • Impact of agriculture:

    • Increased food supply allowed for larger populations.

    • Permanent settlements led to the formation of villages and eventually cities.

    • Specialization of labor emerged as not everyone was needed for food production.

    • Development of new tools and technologies (e.g., plows, irrigation systems).

    • Changes in social organization, including hierarchies and the emergence of leaders.

    • Environmental modification, such as deforestation and soil erosion, began to occur.