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PRE-HISTORY – PALEOLITHIC, NEOLITHIC & MEGALITHIC CULTURES
Paleoarcheologists, paleobotanists, and other scholarly disciplines have
contributed to our knowledge of the gathering and hunting cultures, (or
foraging a term now used too) that began hundreds of thousands of years
ago. Dates for the beginning of the Paleolithic, which means old stone
indicating some of the raw materials used to make tools and weapons, range
from 1 million to 250,000 years ago. While it is generally agreed that the
genus homo came from Africa, when the genus became Homo sapiens
sapiens is still being debated, but archaeological evidence suggest that
Homo sapiens sapiens came out of Africa about 150,000 years ago. There is
also the Neantherdal genus that was contemporary during this last date up
until about 30-45,000 years ago when the Cro-Magnon Man & Woman
emerged, the people most scientists view as modern humans.
Dating
methods are now sophisticated enough to allow for more concrete answers
to what has been a fascinating field of study.
Life in Paleolithic time meant that people needed relatively large areas
to support themselves, so restricted the size of their communities, and made
settlement in one area impossible since the group or clan had to follow their
food supply, moving in conjunction with vegetation cycles and animal
migrations. By about 50,000 B.C.E. there is world-wide evidence of artistic
development such as painting, sculpturing, and carvings out of variety of
materials that have been found in caves, on rock outcroppings, and
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archaeological digs. Most of the 3-d artifacts are of women, ranging from
virginal narrow-waisted maidens to full-breasted mothers and old women.
Once dismissed casually as fertility goddesses, i.e. Venus of Willendorf
(Victorian nineteenth century early archaeologists named them this), are
now recognized as more general symbols of womanhood and/or goddesses.
Spiritual beliefs are now thought to be present where burial of their dead
was sometimes done with symbolism and ritual. Some bodies were painted
with red ocher. This was true of some Neantherdal burials as well. Famous
cave paintings of mainly animals are found in Spain and France.
The next significant period of prehistory was the Neolithic age, and
again scholars postulate various starting dates ranging from 10,000 B.C.E.,
but all Paleolithic clans did not become Neolithic. Neolithic is Greek for New
Stone, and the name comes from the precisely carved and polished stone
tooks It was always thought that the earliest Neolithic societies appears first
in the Near East, ca 8000 B.C.E., and then later in other areas such as China
circa 4000 B.C.E., India ca 3600 B.C.E., and much later in Europe.
Domestication of plants and animals occurred during the Neolithic centuries,
and many scholars refer to this change as the Agricultural Revolution that
had major implications for a radical new lifestyle. Dogs, as direct
descendants of wolves, were the first to be domesticated, followed by goats
and sheep. Later cattle and water buffalo were domesticated when more
strength was needed to plow the fields, in areas where the soil was heavier.
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Why would mankind change to food producers from food gatherers, to be
under a work ethic which imposed a longer and harder work schedule? It is
estimated that Paleolithic labor for food only involved from ten to twenty
hours per week, whereas in Horticultural and Pastoralist societies many
more hours were involved working from dawn to dusk for much of the year,
where clearing the land, planting, weeding, and harvesting were timeconsuming responsibilities. While there are many hypotheses presented by
scholars, there is no consensus on the primary reasons. We do know that
the weather changed due to the melting of the glaciers, causing coastal
flooding, creating shallow bays, estuaries, and marshlands, where a vast
number of fish and wild fowl made their home. So probably initially people
could obtain food without migrating, but once they settled down, it triggered
a chain of events such as: population growth, increased sense of one’s own
territory, interference with others’ hunting grounds, and the enslavement of
the less powerful by the more powerful. Whether important inventions
occurred during the Neolithic Era or later, there was a succession of creative
new tools that led eventually to what historians call civilizations. Weaving of
linen made from flax and later wool from sheep, led to the textile trade
evolving, and some scholars suggest that obtaining more needed workers,
especially women, led to war over the capturing of the females.
Different plants were domesticated around the world. Wheat appeared
in India and the Near East, Millet in Africa and Northern China, and Rice in
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China and other places in Southeast Asia. Corn, beans, and squash were
domesticated in Central and South America. An early vegetable, the fathen, which today is regarded as a useless weed, was once a valuable
vegetable, and the precursor of spinach and cabbage. Other items that
Neolithic society used long before they were credited with them were the
opium poppy, and hemp or cannabis sativa. Fascinating research is
currently being done in England in Hampshire at the Butser Ancient Farm
Project. They are utilizing ancient farm tools and ancient crops to replicate
how mankind may have lived thousands of years ago. According to their
research tools were invented to ease the burden of work, thereby
establishing a new cliché, “easing of work load rather than necessity was
mother of invention.” Stone ards or ploughs were used, slash and burn to
clear forest land, and even managed woodland are thought to be introduced
in the Neolithic period. The Birch was the first tree to gain foothold after the
last cold age ca. 8000-10,000 years ago, and the temperature changed to
nearly what it is today. Then the pine and hazel trees came next followed
by the oak, elm, and lime trees. Oak in England was human-managed in
plantations thousands of years ago.
Another important Neolithic invention was pottery. It is a great source
of information for archaeologists because it is almost imperishable. Once
cultures started to make pottery, they leave behind a trail of broken shards,
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with often distinctively decorated and thus datable information. Neolithic
pottery has been found world-wide.
In Africa, the Neolithic Era spread to the Nile valley maybe as far back
as 7000-5000 B.C.E. Irrigation by control of the flooding of the Nile River
started at this time. African people also lived in the Saharan region too,
which did not become an uninhabitable desert until after 3000 B.C.E., when
the desiccation of the Sahara occurred. These people carried their Neolithic
skills with them in migrations to Central and Western Africa, though huntinggathering cultures persisted in many areas.
It was once thought that the Neolithic Age in India dated from ca.
3000 B.C.E., but now it is put back to 7-8000 B.C.E. like the Near East. It
was centered in Northwest India, which was then well watered and wooded.
Today it is almost a waterless desert. In China the Neolithic Era began
about 6000 B.C.E. with three separate Neolithic cultures. Each culture had
its distinct and characteristic pottery ware.
Megalithic cultures developed during the Neolithic period world-wide,
where large stone structures were built out of stone. Unfortunately, there
are no written records to substantiate why these were built, but numerous
hypotheses have been posited such as communal gathering places for feasts
and festivals, calendars, healing sites, burial mounds, and religious shrines.
Included in these megalithic designs were stone circles, hills, henges,
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worship sites, and burial mounds. One of the oldest so far found and
partially excavated is Gobeki Tepe in Southeast Turkey. A vast number of
these Megalithic structures have survived, especially in the British Isles.
Many date from 5000 B.C.E. to 2500 B.C.E., thousands of years older than
the pyramids in Egypt, but most were built about the same time as the
pyramids and ziggurats in Mesopotamia.
Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England is perhaps the
most famous of the megalithic stone circles or henges. It is wrong to think
that the Druid priests of the Celts were responsible for erecting Stonehenge,
but they did utilize them centuries after they were built and continually
remodeled. The stone and their lintels line up in such a way that the sun
rises over the peak of the middle altar stone on the Summer and Winter
Solstices. If Stonehenge had been built twenty miles away this alignment
would not have occurred. The oldest part is 5000 years old and the present
structure is 3500 years old. Missing stones were taken in the Middle Ages
by farmers building fences and houses. The number of long barrows close to
it with tombs of chieftains and aristocrats suggest Stonehenge might have
been the Westminster Abbey of its day as a place for worship for pilgrims
and a burial site for prominent people from England the Continent. Recent
research indicates that people chipped small bites of stone from the gigantic
ones for healing purposes.
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Very near Stonehenge is the biggest sanctuary or gathering place of
its kind in Europe, covering an area of about thirty acres. Inside it is the
Village of Avebury. There is a double aisle of standing stones over one-half
mile leading to the site. Well into the nineteenth century people used to
dance around a Maypole in the circle, perhaps unconsciously echoing dances
and rituals performed thousands of years before. Another Megalithic site in
England is called the Rollright Stones, with a King Stone aside from the
circle. It may have been a marker used by approaching travelers to the site.
Barren women used to press their breasts against the King Stone in hope of
conceiving a child.