Global Prehistory Notes (30,000 BCE to 500 BCE)

Unit 1: Global Prehistory

Timeframe

  • 30,000 BCE to 500 BCE

Chronology

  • BC = BCE (Before Christ = Before the Common Era)
  • AD = CE (Anno Domini = Common Era)

Earth's History

  • A tiny slice of Earth's history is covered in this unit, but a huge slice of human history.
  • Homo Sapiens Sapiens (modern humans) appeared roughly around 100,000 years ago.

Prehistoric Definition

  • Relating to or denoting the period before written records.
  • Writing was invented around 3400 BCE in Sumer (Mesopotamia) with cuneiform script on clay tablets.
  • Egyptian hieroglyphic writing also emerged around the same time or a little later.

Overlapping of Writing and Prehistory

  • The "prehistoric" unit overlaps with the invention of writing because writing was invented in different places at different times.

Early Human History

  • Earliest rock art: inscribed lines.
  • Homo sapiens sapiens: anatomically modern humans.
  • Origin: Africa, 100,000 - 60,000 years ago.

Timeline

  • Lower Palaeolithic
  • Middle Palaeolithic
  • Upper Palaeolithic
  • Mesolithic
  • Neolithic
  • Bronze Age
  • Iron Age
  • Roman Invasion 43AD

Evidence of First Art

  • Patterned stone and ostrich eggshell.
  • Personal ornamentation: seashells suspended on twine.
  • Some sites are 8,000 km and 40,000 years apart but remarkably similar, suggesting an innately human behavior.

Global Phenomenon

  • Rock art found in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America.

Key Time Periods

  • Paleolithic: 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 BCE.
  • Neolithic: 10,000 BCE to 3000 BCE.
  • Bronze Age and Iron Age start at different times in different parts of the world.
  • Lithic: having to do with stones.
  • Paleo: old; Paleolithic: older part of the Stone Age (primitive tools).
  • Neo: new; Neolithic: newer part of Stone Age (settlements, agriculture, domesticated animals, etc.).

Cody Cassidy's "Who Ate the First Oyster?"

Key Points
  • Distinguishes between "peoples" vs. "people," focusing on individuals in prehistoric discoveries.
  • Researched prehistoric people by interviewing experts, reading books and papers, experimenting with ancient tools, and visiting archaeological sites.
  • "Rolling logs do not inevitably transition to wagons": Technological change occurs in fits and starts, driven by individuals.
  • "Their survival depended upon an encyclopedic understanding of their environment": Prehistoric people needed extensive knowledge of plants, animals, and seasons.
  • "Prehistoric" means that their names and stories went unrecorded, not that their lives were unremarkable.
  • Modern science has illuminated our ancient past through DNA analysis and paleolinguistics.
  • Human universal: desires that transcend culture and time (e.g., body decoration).

Apollo 11 Cave Stones

Key Facts
  • Dates: c. 25,500-25,300 BCE
  • Location: Namibia, Africa
  • Materials: Charcoal on stone (brown-grey quartzite)
  • Oldest example of art from the African continent and oldest example of figurative art from the African continent
  • Images: animal figures drawn in charcoal, ocher, and white pigment (naturalistic shading).
  • Discovered in 1969 by W.E. Wendt, who named the cave after NASA's Apollo 11 mission; found in a Middle Stone Age deposit (100,000-60,000 years ago).
  • Art mobilier: small-scale, moveable art, a "human universal."

Hall of Bulls, Lascaux

Key Facts
  • Location: Lascaux, France
  • Period: Paleolithic Europe
  • Date: c. 15,000-13,000 BCE
  • Medium: Rock painting
  • Drawing is not an “invention” but an “instinctual ability”, and it is also considered a human universal
  • Artist might have had apprenticeship and/or school training
  • Light and sound conditions in the cave would have caused the art to dance in shadow
  • Surface – crevassed limestone, that created perspective and motion
  • Depicts animals, but doesn’t depict humans, trees, mountains or landscapes of any kind
  • Pablo Picasso’s quote after touring the cave was “They invented everything”
Details
  • One of 350 similar sites.
  • Walls of white calcite (non-porous/dry).
  • Range of cave spaces (Great Hall of Bulls can hold 50 people), with adjoining tunnels.
  • Images of prehistoric wildlife, with one humanoid.
  • Includes both figurative and abstract art.
  • Some lines are incised into the wall.
  • Pigment powder blown onto the wall by mouth or hand stencil.
  • Charcoal and ocher are used for solid and blended colors; bumps and curves of the walls are incorporated into the depictions.
  • Twisted perspective: bodies in profile, horns frontal (also called composite pose), also seen in Ancient Egyptian art.

Camelid Sacrum in the Shape of a Canine

Key Facts
  • Location: Tequixquiac, Mexico
  • Date: 14,000-7000 BCE
  • Medium: Bone
  • Found in 1870, in the Valley of Mexico
  • An engineer found it at a depth of 12 meters (about 40 feet) when he was working on a drainage project
Context
  • Camelid: related to camels, llamas, and alpacas.
  • Sacrum: the large triangular bone at the base of the spine. Name signifies the importance of the reproductive process
  • Sculpture: subtractive, not additive.

Running Horned Woman

Key Facts:
  • Location: Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria
  • Date: 6,000-4,000 BCE
  • Medium: Pigment on rock
  • One of the richest rock art concentrations on Earth.
  • Uses ocher and white pigments.
  • Found on an isolated rock, on one of the highest mountains in the region, in a shelter too small to have been a dwelling.
Visual Elements
  • Woman with horns on her head.
  • Covered with dots (possibly scars).
  • Wearing armlets and garters.
  • Suggestion of movement created by body position, diagonal lines, and moving strings.
  • Abstract or figurative and stylized or naturalisitc
Historical Context:
  • Tassili’s rock walls were commonly sponged with water in to make the images easier to see, which had a devastating effect on the art
  • Tassili N’Ajjer was made a National Park in 1972 and a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982

Beaker with Ibex Motifs

Key Facts
  • Location: Susa, Iran
  • Date: 4200-3500 BCE
  • Medium: Painted terra cotta
Description
  • Found in a tightly packed cemetery
  • Terra-cotta: "baked earth,” any kind of fired clay but generally, a kind of object, made from fairly coarse, porous clay that when fired assumes a color ranging from dull ochre to red and usually is left unglazed.
  • Additive or subtractive
Design
  • Figurative art and abstract
  • references reality and non-figurative
  • Most were shaped by hand and Some pieces were made on a potter's wheel – an ancient technology
  • Motif: a decorative design or pattern
  • Purpose?
  • holds almost one gallon of liquid
  • Too large for drinking: probably meant for display
Structure:
  • the images on the exterior of the beaker are divided into horizontal bands or registers.
  • Top band: repetitive abstract drawings of long-necked birds
  • Next band: abstracted images of dogs, one after another.
  • Largest band: an ibex, or mountain goat, whose horns curve in a wide around a cross-hatched and chevron motif.
  • Last band: very thin lines then a very thick band.

Anthropomorphic Stele

Key Information:
  • Location: Arabian Peninsula
  • Date: 4000-3000 BCE
  • Medium: Sandstone
Description
  • Probably associated with religious or burial practice likely used as a grave marker in an open-air sanctuary. Funerary art
  • Stele: An ancient, upright stone monument is called a stele. Many stelae were carved with inscriptions and used as grave markers
  • Anthropomorphism means attributing human characteristics to something that is not human, or vice versa.
  • Subtractive: both sides sculpted.
  • Figurative, Composed of non-figurative geometric shapes, and stylized

Jade Cong

Key Information:
  • Location: Liangzhu, China
  • Period: Neolithic Asia
  • Date: c. 3300-2200 BCE
  • Medium: Carved jade
Historical Context:
  • Huang He (Yellow River). Yangzi River. Liangzhu Culture, c. 3200-2200 B.C.E.
Description
  • Jade cong is a square hollow tube decorated with lines, circles, and faces.
  • Funerary art? Found in graves
  • Interlocking square and circle may have symbolized the joining of different realms
  • Jade: very, very hard, cannot be cut, abraded with sand and water. Extremely time-consuming to produce
  • FOR OPENWORK DESIGNS, SMALL HOLES WERE BORED THROUGH THE JADE WITH DIAMOND-ENCRUSTED TOOLS

Stonehenge

Key Information:
  • Location: Wiltshire, England
  • Period: Neolithic Europe
  • Date: c. 2500-1600 BCE
  • Materials: sandstone and blue stones
  • 97 feet in diameter, 24 feet high, megaliths
Construction Phases
  • c. 3100 BCE Great circular ditch, A “henge” 6 feet deep, 360 feet in diameter. Within the henge 56 pits 3 feet in diameter filled with upright stones or wooden beams
  • c. 3000 BCE. inner circle of wooden posts, maybe a roof, burials
  • c. 2700 BCE circle of megaliths, inside face smoother than outside, curved to emphasize the circle, Upright stones were gently widened toward the top makes their mass constant when viewed from the ground
  • post and lintel
  • lintels fitted to posts: mortise and tenon joint techniques still used in modern wood-making
  • inner horseshoe
  • smaller ring of bluestones brought from another site

The Ambum Stone

Key Information:
  • Location: Ambum Valley, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea
  • Date: c. 1500 BCE
  • Medium: Greywacke (hard stone)
  • 8 inches tall
Description
  • Pestle?
  • Greywacke stone is a hard stone and must have been very hard to create with stone age tools Sculpture: subtractive.
Context
  • Unknown purpose; later used as a ritual object
  • Stylized: no clear animal source, maybe something extinct, or imaginary.

Tlatilco Female Figurine

Key Facts
  • Location: Central Mexico
  • Date: 1200-900 BCE
  • Medium: Ceramic
  • 9.5 cm (under 4 inches)
Context
  • Found in graves: funerary art
  • Little interest in the hands or feet
  • Hairstyles treated with great care and detail
  • Few men.
  • Many women with very wide hips
  • Some are naturalistic and some aren’t

Terra Cotta Fragment

Key Information:
  • Object: Terra cotta fragment
  • Culture: Lapita people
  • Location: Reef Islands, Solomon Islands
  • Date: c. 1000 BCE
  • Medium: Terra cotta (incised)
Descrption
  • Clay and sand
    Shaped by hand, no potters’ wheel
    Incised details
    Dried in open fires
    Used for serving food and storage, not cooking
Context
  • Lapita people’s territory covers 1000s of miles
  • Sophisticated seafarers
  • Shards help historians understand more about when these people colonised in this area
  • Consistent decoration across territory

Vocabulary/Concepts

  • BCE and CE, BC and AD
  • Paleolithic vs. Neolithic
  • Prehistory vs. history
  • Figurative vs. non-figurative (abstract)
  • For sculpture: additive vs. subtractive
  • Veristic, Naturalistic, Realistic, Stylized, Idealized
  • Twisted perspective (composite pose)
  • Horizontal registers
  • Hierarchy of size
  • Incised lines
  • Art mobilier
  • Necropolis
  • Funerary arts