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The Agricultural Revolution_ Crash Course World History #1.mp4Ice Age.mp4Human societies have existed for a long time. But humans did not begin to write until around 3200 BCE. The period before humans invented writing is called the Prehistoric Period. Because there are no written sources from the Prehistoric Period, scholars today have to learn about it by studying the items that people left behind.
Where and when was writing invented?
The first writing that historians know about comes from present-day Iraq. Around 3200 BCE, a civilization called the Sumerians (su-MER-ee-uhns) invented a kind of writing called cuneiform (kyoo-NAY-uh-form).
Cuneiform writing was originally pictographic, meaning it used pictures to represent words and ideas. For example, the Sumerian word for "wheat" was represented by a picture of a wheat stalk. The Sumerians used this writing to help them keep track of goods that they were buying and selling.
The Prehistoric Era is divided into two main periods: the Paleolithic Period, or "Old Stone Age," and the Neolithic Period, or "New Stone Age."
The timeline shows that the Paleolithic Period began around 2,600,000 BCE. It shows that the first Neolithic Period began about 11,000 BCE. In BCE dates, larger numbers mean the event happened longer ago. So, the Paleolithic Period began before the Neolithic Period.
The timeline also shows dates for several different Neolithic Periods. For example, in Southeast Asia the Neolithic Period began around 9500 BCE, and in Europe it began around 6500 BCE. So, the Neolithic Period began at different times in different places around the world.
The earliest human societies began during the Paleolithic Period. Early humans are often referred to as hunter-gatherers, or people who relied on hunting and gathering to get their food. In hunter-gatherer societies, people worked together to get food. People then shared the food that they collected, so that everyone in the group would have enough to eat.
Was life better during the Paleolithic Period?
Some people today argue that life was better during the Paleolithic Period. These people sometimes follow diets and lifestyles based on those in the Paleolithic Period. It's true that life during the Paleolithic Period had its advantages, but it had its disadvantages as well.
People who eat "Paleolithic diets" today often eat meat, vegetables, and a few fruits.
Some types of diseases were less common, such as certain types of heart disease and diabetes. This is because people ate healthier food, such as fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Also, people in the Paleolithic Period had to move from place to place to find their food. This exercise helped keep them healthy.
In the Paleolithic Period, people didn't know that they needed to clean cuts to prevent them from getting infected.
But people in the Paleolithic Period didn't live very long. Even though people were generally pretty healthy, they didn't know how to cure even simple medical problems. As a result, many people died from illnesses that are easily cured today.
The first hunter-gatherers lived in Africa. However, about 100,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers left Africa and moved to other parts of the world. In the Chauvet (show-vay) Cave in southern France, hunter-gatherers painted elaborate works of art on the cave's walls.
What other kinds of art did people in the Paleolithic Period make?
In addition to creating beautiful cave paintings, people in the Paleolithic Period also carved human-shaped figurines. Most Paleolithic figurines were made of stone, but sometimes they were carved from other materials, such as animal bone. This image shows the head of a human figurine, which was carved from a mammoth tusk!
The end of the Paleolithic Period is sometimes called the "Ice Age." During the Ice Age, many humans traveled to new places. The map shows the different routes that early humans took and how many years ago they traveled these routes.
During the Ice Age, the Earth's temperature was much colder than it is today. Many parts of Europe and North America were covered in glaciers, which are large bodies of ice that form on land. Other places that are really hot today, such as the Middle East and North Africa, were cool and pleasant, with lots of grass and big lakes. The sea level was also much lower than it is today, creating a land bridge that connected Asia and North America! This land bridge allowed people to migrate from Asia to North America around 12,000 years
How do scientists know who migrated where?
Researchers use Paleolithic skeletons to learn where and when ancient humans migrated. Researchers study these bones to learn how long ago the people died. By comparing bones found along paths of migration, researchers can tell where people came from and how long ago they traveled.
Scientists can also learn about early humans by studying the DNA of people alive today. Genes that were present in early humans were passed down to their children and grandchildren, and (eventually) to us! Our DNA can help scientists learn who our ancestors were and where they came from.
Around 11,500 years ago, the environment started to change. The climate slowly became warmer, which caused many glaciers to melt. As the climate warmed, the Ice Age ended. Then, as the Ice Age ended, the Neolithic Period began. The Neolithic Period began when people began producing their own food, instead of relying on hunting and gathering. In order to produce their own food, communities needed to domesticate plants and animals. Read the definition of "domesticate."
domesticate \duh-MES-tih-kayt\ verb to breed a wild species in order to change it so that it benefits humans
For example, people in the past bred wolves so that they would be more loyal and obedient and less aggressive. Over many generations, these wolves became domesticated dogs.
How does domestication actually happen?
Imagine that there is a farmer named Maura. These are the steps she would take to domesticate a new type of sweet corn:
Maura wants to grow corn that is really sweet.
Maura tastes all of the corn types that she can find to decide which are the sweetest.
She breeds the sweetest corn together by putting the pollen from one type of sweet corn onto the ear of another type of sweet corn while it is growing.
The next generation of corn is a little bit sweeter than the previous generation.
After repeating this process many times, Maura has created a new type of sweet corn!
The map below shows some of the different places where plants and animals were first domesticated.
How do we learn about domestication during the Neolithic Period?
Almost everything that we know about domestication during the Neolithic Period comes from archaeological discoveries. Archaeologists excavate, or carefully dig up, material that is underground. This material often contains the remains of plants and animals. Archaeologists find remains from different points in time and compare them to see how the plants and animals changed.
The domestication of plants and animals led to agriculture, or farming. The first agricultural societies began in the Middle East. Agricultural societies in the Middle East domesticated barley and wheat, which are two types of grain. They also domesticated animals, such as sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. Look at the timeline of plant and animal use in the Middle East.
How did pigs live in the desert?
Pigs were among the first animals domesticated in the Middle East. Since pigs prefer to live in muddy environments, the dry climate of the Middle East does not seem like a natural habitat for pigs!
But in the Paleolithic Period, the environment of the Middle East was different than it is today. At that time, the Middle East was wet and swampy. Because pigs prefer to live in that kind of environment, many wild pigs lived in the Middle East. So, once the Neolithic Period began, the Middle East was an ideal place for people to domesticate pigs.
Although many animals were domesticated in the Middle East, horses were first domesticated in central Asia. Some of the earliest evidence of horse domestication comes from objects found in cemeteries in central Asia. These objects can sometimes help archaeologists learn about the things a person might have used when they were alive.
Look at the list of contents found inside a large grave in a cemetery in central Asia.
one male human skeleton
two horse skulls
the leg bones of two horses
two chariot wheels
one copper spearhead
one stone spearhead
one knife
chariot: a two-wheeled cart
Did early civilizations always use horses to pull chariots?
Actually, no! People in the past used many different kinds of large, four-legged animals. For example, the animal shown in the image is actually called an onager (ON-uh-jer). An onager is a wild animal that is closely related to a donkey. These animals lived all across Asia for millions of years.
Do onagers still exist today?
Yes! Although the type of onager shown in the ancient artwork is now extinct, other types of onagers still exist today in certain parts of Asia.
Around the world, people domesticated different types of grains. They selected these grains based on the geography and climate of their local environments. Read about two river regions during the Neolithic Period in China, which began about 10,000 years ago.
Two large rivers ran through ancient China. The Yellow River ran through northern China. The soil near the Yellow River did not have much nitrogen, an element that is necessary for growing certain kinds of grain.
The Yangtze (YAHNG-zuh) River flowed through southern China. Southern China received more rain than northern China. This rain made the land around the Yangtze River swampy.
Early agricultural societies in Central America also domesticated different grains based on their local environments. These societies domesticated corn, which is another type of grain. But Central America's environment made farming corn difficult. For example, rainforests covered most of Central America. Rainforests are thick forests with many tall trees and lots of rain. These forests created two major challenges for corn farmers:
tall trees blocked the sunlight
there were so many trees that there was not enough space to plant crops
What other crops came from the Americas?
Corn is not the only crop that people domesticated in the Americas. More than 5,000 years ago, people in South America domesticated potatoes. Potatoes were high in calories and were able to survive in the many different environments found in the Andes Mountains.
Tomatoes were also domesticated in South America! Later, they were taken to Europe by Spanish explorers. Today, both potatoes and tomatoes are some of the most popular foods around the world!
Agriculture was not the only major change that happened during the Neolithic Period. During the early Neolithic Period, some people started to live year-round in villages. People settled in villages for many reasons. Some of these reasons were push factors, or bad things pushing them away from hunting and gathering. Some of these reasons were pull factors, or good things pulling them toward settling in villages.
Pottery also emerged during the Neolithic Period. To make pottery, people had to bake clay at a high temperature until it hardened. Baked clay could handle very high temperatures without breaking. Compared to unbaked clay, baked clay was much stronger, thicker, and less likely to leak.
The invention of storage
The ability to successfully store food was one of the most important developments during the Neolithic Period. Today, most houses have kitchen cabinets or pantries to keep food safe and dry. But during the Neolithic Period, people had to worry every day about their stored food. This food could be destroyed by natural events, such as floods, or by small animals, such as rodents. So, inventing baked clay and building secure places to store food saved many families from starvation. Even today, we continue to build secure places to store food!
Archaeologists argue that new kinds of religious practices began during the Neolithic Period. At a Neolithic site in present-day Jordan called Ayn Ghazal (pronounced AH'EEN guh-ZAL), archaeologists discovered some of the ways that people were buried during the Neolithic Period. Read the passage below about burial practices at Ayn Ghazal.
Early in the Neolithic Period, the people living in Ayn Ghazal buried the skulls of family members underneath the floors of their houses. Sometimes, they covered the skulls in a type of baked clay called plaster. Then they placed shells over the dead person's eyes. During the late Neolithic Period, the people at Ayn Ghazal stopped burying the skulls of dead people underneath the floors of their houses. Instead, people were buried in pits along with other individuals.
At the site of Çatal Höyük (CHAHT-al hoo-YOOK) in present-day Turkey, archaeologists uncovered even more information about the religious beliefs of some people who lived in the Neolithic Period. At this site, people built shrines, or places for worshipping gods, inside their houses.
Bulls in ancient religions
Bulls were an important part of the religious practices at Çatal Höyük. They also continued to be an important part of other ancient religions.
Some ancient Egyptians worshipped a bull-god named Apis. Ancient Egyptians believed that sometimes the god Apis would live inside an ordinary bull. Ancient Egyptians then treated that bull like a god, and they gave him a special place to live in Apis's temple. When the bull died, his worshippers showed him respect by giving him a funeral.
On the ancient Greek island of Crete, there is evidence that some people participated in a sport called "bull leaping." In bull leaping, an athlete would run and jump over a bull that was running toward him or her. Many historians believe that this sport was part of a religious ceremony dedicated to bull worship.
By the late Neolithic Period, some groups started to have more power and resources than others. Below is a list of events that shows one way a family might have gained more power by the end of the Neolithic Period.
A group of hunter-gatherer families settle down and begin to farm. At this point in time, all of the families have the same amount of resources.
One of the family's farms is successful. The family stores their extra grain, and their farm grows. Now, this one family has more grain than the other families.
Because that family has extra grain, the family hires other people. These people work in exchange for grain.
The extra workers help the family's farm become more successful, so the farm gets bigger. The family eventually owns most of the land in the village. Because the farm workers rely on the family, the family has power over their workers.
The workers have to obey the family, because the workers rely on the family for food.
The technologies that people developed in the Neolithic Period began to benefit wealthier members of society. Read the passage about the invention of smelting technology.
Smelting is the process that people use to separate metal from rock. This process allows people to use pure metal to make metal objects. At the end of the Neolithic Period, people learned how to smelt copper. But copper was hard to find and few people knew how to smelt it, which meant that copper objects were extremely valuable.
Only the wealthiest and most powerful families could afford copper objects. As a result, copper objects became symbols of wealth and power. If someone owned copper objects, other people assumed that he or she was rich and powerful.
What kinds of metal objects did people smelt?
During the Neolithic Period, some people smelted copper objects to help show their higher social status. One of the most impressive discoveries of Neolithic copper objects came from a cave in present-day Israel, called Nahal Mishmar. Inside this cave, archaeologists discovered over 400 copper objects!
Many of the objects, like the ones pictured here, were mace heads. Mace heads were weapons that people often used to hit their enemies on the head. But archaeologists believe that these mace heads were used in ceremonies as symbols of strength.
As certain people became more powerful, they began to control other members of their societies. However, the amount of control that they had was still pretty small and did not extend beyond their own local communities.
Look at the illustration of an agricultural village at the end of the Neolithic Period. It includes some of the things that powerful people might have been able to do by that time.
Feasting in Neolithic villages
Even though some villagers relied on wealthy families for food, wealthy families still needed to treat their workers well. Sometimes wealthy families in Neolithic villages would bring all of their neighbors together to work on one big building project. As payment, the wealthy families would provide a large feast for everyone that came to help. A lot of food and drinks were needed for this type of feast. If people had a good time at the feast, it would give the wealthy family a good reputation in the village. As a result, people in the village were more likely to work for the wealthy family again.
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