I. Anthropology is the study of "man," which is to say human beings and their cultures.
II. Anthropologists believe that societies pass through certain stages, but the date at which society a passes through a given stage might be different than the date when society b passed through that stage (imagine an encounter between a modern person and a stone-age tribe in the Amazon jungle: stone age meets vcr and microwave).
III. Paleontologists (who study ancient time periods) theorize that over the last 800,000 years the earth has undergone periods of warming and cooling. It seems that an Ice Age occurs cyclically, every 90,000 years. This is like an oscillation. There have been 9 such cold periods in the last 800,000 years (see the Encyclopedia of World History, Peter Stearns, general editor, 6th edition, 2001, p. 5). There was a brief warm period 128,000 years ago, followed by the Wurm glaciation 118,000 years ago. (Wurm is the name of a glacier in Europe). The last Ice Age is referred to as the Pleistocene, and it lasted more or less until about 15,000 years ago. The Ice Age was especially intense about 75,000 years ago, but there was a brief warming trend 40,000 years ago, followed by more cooling. About 15,000 years ago the cold moderated, and our current warm period set in. The current warm age is called the Holocene. During the last Ice Age sea levels fell 300 feet, because so much of the water was "locked up" as ice, and Asia and North America were joined by a "land bridge" called the Bering Land Bridge. With the arrival of the Holocene, there was a period of abundant rainfall (for a while). A period of abundant rainfall is referred to as a pluvial. The Sahara of North Africa became a woodland with rivers, lakes, fish, aquatic birds during the pluvial, but dried out again as one approaches 5,000 BC.
a. Paleolithic
(old) (stone)=
old stone age
2.5 million years ago to 10,000 B.C.
b. Mesolithic
middle stone age
(in Europe, 7000 BC-2700 BC)
c. Neolithic
new stone age
(8000 BC- 4500 BC)
d. Chalcolithic
copper age (4500 BC)
e. Bronze age (began about 3000 BC in Egypt and
Mesopotamia, 2000 BC in Europe). As new discoveries are made, dates get
pushed back in time.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Tin makes
the copper harder (hence a better tool or weapon).
f. Iron age (thought to have begun in Asia Minor, or Anatolia [modern-day Turkey] 1300 BC.
V. THE OLD STONE AGE was characterized by chipped
or flaked stone tools.
in new stone age, tools more polished.
in old stone age, little or no use of metal.
VI. During the gathering phase, humans invented sickles to slash plants.
In hunting and gathering societies, men usually hunted and women gathered fruits, grains, vegetables.
VII. In Africa, during the Stone Age, humans in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Lake Victoria, Lake Edward) in Zaire, at villages of Katanda and Ishango, developed societies based on fishing. Ancient harpoons have been found that date to 25,000 years ago (Charles S. Finch, "Nile Genesis: continuity of Culture from the Great Lakes to the Delta," in Van Sertima, Egypt: Child of Africa, p. 36-37). They are made of bone, and sharpened. The use of harpoons seems to have spread north to Khartoum (modern day Sudan) in the Nile Valley and into the ancient lakes of the Sahara before it dried out. But archaeologists Alison Brooks and John Yellen think that the harpoon culture of the Ishango site may actually be as much as 68,000 to 70,000 years old. If so, this would be some of the oldest evidence of "civilization" ever found.
The harpoons have a spear-like point, and are barbed. The Africans could hurl the harpoon at fish in shallow water, and also use nets to trap fish.
VIII. the Neolithic follows the end of the last Ice Age, perhaps 9000 BC (11,000 years ago).
IX. IN THE NEW STONE AGE, generally, there is the invention of:
a. baskets (shows deliberate gathering of food: shows forethought, planning ahead for winter or dry season).
b. pottery: for storage of food, water.
c. a change from hunting and gathering to herding and domestication of animals (cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, dogs, cats).
herding of animals is called pastoralism.
d. the Agricultural Revolution:
there was a change from merely gathering and collecting food as it is immediately needed (let’s get what we need for today) to deliberately planting it, weeding, selecting varieties for taste, size, durability, whether it produces lots of seeds, etc.
Hypothetical example of fruit. One type of apple is big and bitter, another is small and sweet. Mix pollen, try to get a hybrid that is big and sweet too. Or wheat that has big stalk and lot of seeds versus little stalk. Humans want bigger stalk. So they plant the seeds of the one with bigger stalk.
As humans move toward agriculture, they settle into camps or towns. This is a step toward permanent occupation of a location instead of roaming around or being nomadic. There is evidence of a permanent base camp, at Abu Hureyra, in the Euphrates Valley (Iraq) from 10,500 BP. They had homes built of mud brick, and hunted gazelles. By 8,000 BP they had domesticated sheep and goats. Settling into towns is called urbanization.
One of the earliest sites of agriculture was Jarmo, in the mountains of Iraq, near Iran. They grew einkorn wheat. Eventually they used plows, and eventually animals to pull the plow.
At certain strata of the earth, fossilized remains of pollen of plants increases in frequency, and usually increases geometrically. This is evidence of human intervention. Botanists argue that the pollen of domesticated plants and hybrids differs from the pollen of wild ancestral varieties.
Another early site of human occupation was Jericho, in Israel-Palestine. It was inhabited as early as 6500 BC, and has the distinction of being the oldest continuously occupied town on earth.
e. Debate over diffusion theory
Scientists debate about whether knowledge of agriculture started one place and then diffused (spread) to most other places on the earth, or if there were multiple, independent discoveries of agriculture.
The Chinese were growing rice as early as 7,000 BC. By 6000 BC, wheat and barley were being cultivated in Egypt, and at Mehrgarh on the Indus River in India-Pakistan.
Did the Africans in the savanna learn about agriculture from Mesopotamia? Wheat does not grow well in sub-Saharan Africa, because there is not enough rainfall through the year to sustain it. So they grow cereal grasses (grains) such as sorghum and teff instead, or plant yams.
Did the people in India and China have to learn about agriculture from Mesopotamia? They grow rice.
What about Aztecs, Olmecs, Toltecs in new world?
Diffusion theory cannot explain agriculture in ancient new world.
Sub-Saharan Africans could not use bulls or oxen or even horses to pull plows because the tsetse fly bites animals and kills them.
The tsetse fly is a biting fly. In the saliva of the tsetse fly is a parasitic micro-organism called a trypanosome. It causes trypanosomiasis, or "sleeping sickness." The end result is a condition, the swelling of the brain, called encephalitis (many diseases can produce this condition). The person or animals lapses into coma., and dies. A plow is next to useless without an animal to pull it. The soil in the savanna is hard, so it is easier to dig with a hoe than to plow. Traditionally, Western scholars have characterized sub-Saharan Africa as backward because it did not use plow agriculture.
Sub-Saharan Africans were not "backward" because they didn’t use the plow and draft animal. They COULDN'T use draft animals to pull plows because the animals died from trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness caused by the tsetse fly). The sub-Saharan Africans adapted to their environment, and cultivated what will grow there.
In the highlands of Ethiopia, where the climate is cooler and milder and there is no tsetse fly, Africans DID use plow and draft animal, inn ancient times, and grew a cereal grain called teff (like wheat). Pastoral groups in east Africa (such as the Maasai) herd cattle, and are more successful in regions where there is no tsetse fly.
In west Africa, they grew fonio (a grain, like millet). Fonio is grown only in west Africa. Could west Africans have "gotten it’ (fonio) from Mesopotamia, where it is unknown and doesn't grow?
Yams were grown in Africa 4,000 years ago (Robert July, A History of the African People, p. 19), and guinea rice by 1500 BC.
Guinea was a name for west Africa (from an Arabic word).
X. PRE-DYNASTIC EGYPT
With respect to the Nile Valley, scholars have found more than 15,000 burials from the pre-dynastic period (about 5,000 -3,000BC). They notice the distinctive style of pottery from the burials, and the style of the graves.
For the record, the oldest anatomically modern Egyptian found so far dates from 55,000 BP, at Taramsa, near Dendera (Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, p. 25).
POTTERY
The earliest distinctive pottery is from the town of Badari. This style of pot is called Badarian. Some 600 or so graves have been found at Badari, dated to 4400-4000 BC. The Badarian style features a bowl with a ripple design. This same style is found at Neolithic sites in the Sahara and as far south as Khartoum (in modern Sudan) (Oxford, p. 42). The Badari site also gives evidence of goats and sheep. Furthermore, the Badari culture had sea shells from the Red Sea (suggesting trade) and copper (Oxford, p. 43).
The pottery (vases, pots) is associated with the town of Naqada, and its cultural style seems to have spread through much of Egypt. Examples of the early Naqada style of pottery were found at the town of el Amra. Therefore this style is now called Naqada I or Amratian. It dates from 4,000-3,500 BC (Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, p. 479). The later style (Naqada II) is called Gerzean, after the town of el-Gerza, where examples of the later style were first found. The Gerzean style dates from 3,500-3,200 BC). Sometimes the Naqada style is described as plumware, because the clay used for the pottery has the color of a red plum. The top of the vases are painted black, and the vases are adorned with pictures of animals. After 3200 BC we enter the Naqada III period, also called Dynasty 0
BURIALS
The Naqada (Amratian, Gerzean) burials are also distinctive. The individual is buried in a pit. He or she may be clothed in a loincloth. They are buried on top of a funerary bed. The body is in a contracted position, like a fetal position, with the legs folded. The body is laid on its left side. And body faces to the left (the west). And the head is positioned facing the south. A tumulus or mound of earth is then piled over the pit. This burial practice was also found among the ancient people of Kerma, and Nubia (A group, C group). In the Gerzean period, bodies begin to be placed in wooden coffins, and wrapped in strips of linen (a precursor to mummies) (Oxford, p. 53).
In some of the early PRE-DYNASTIC burials (BEFORE 3100 BC), presumably of local kings or chieftains, there is evidence that the retainers or servants, and "favored" animals, were killed to accompany the royal personage into the afterlife. However by the beginning of dynastic Egypt, 3100 BC, this practice has ceased. It is a myth that the court officials and queens and servants of the pharaohs "died" with pharaoh (were killed), so that they could accompany him to the afterlife, throughout the Pharaonic Period..