UNIT 1: Technological and Environmental Transformations
To c. 600 B.C.E
Where did we come from?
Key Concept 1
• The term Big Geography draws attention to the global nature
of world history. Throughout the Paleolithic period, humans
migrated from Africa to Eurasia, Australia, and the Americas.
Early Humans were mobile and creative in adapting to
different geographical settings from savanna to desert to Ice
Age tundra. By making an analogy with modern hunterforager societies, anthropologists infer that these bands were
relatively egalitarian (e·gal·i·tar·i·an) Humans also
developed varied and sophisticated technologies (Like what?).
Objective 1.01 (Big Geography and the Peopling of the Earth)
1. Archeological evidence indicates that during the Paleolithic era, huntingforaging bands of humans gradually migrated from their origin in East
Africa to Eurasia, Australia, and the Americas, adapting their technology
and cultures to new climate regions.
A. Humans used fire in new ways: to aid hunting and foraging, to protect against
predators, and to adapt to cold environments.
B. Humans developed a wider range of tools specially adapted to different environments
from tropics to tundra.
C. Economic structures focused on small kinship groups of hunting-foraging bands that
could make what they needed to survive. However, not all groups were self-sufficient;
they exchanged people, ideas, and goods.
Locating world history in the environment and time
TOPIC 1
ENVIRONMENT
Five Themes of Geography
Relative location – location compared to others
Physical characteristics – climate, vegetation and
human characteristics
Human/environment interaction – how do humans
interact/alter environ
Leads to change
Movement – peoples, goods, ideas
among/between groups
Regions – cultural/physical
characteristics in common with
surrounding areas
Role of Climate
End of Ice Age 12000 BCE –
large areas of N. America, Europe, Asia became habitable
big game hunters already migrated
Geographical changes
3000 BCE Green Sahara began to dry up, seeds to
forests
 Effect on humans – nomadic hunters didn’t move so
much
 Settle near abundant plant life – beginning of
civilization
 Sedentary life w/ dependable food supply
 milder conditions, warmer temperatures, higher ocean
levels
What are some barriers to human expansion?
Paleolithic Age in Brief
•
•
•
•
•
•
Means Old Stone Age from 3 million to 10,000 BC
Characterized by simple stone tools
Hunters and Gathers
Equality amongst the group
Most of human history
Early Humans move out of Africa during this time
What ends Paleolithic Age? Why?
What so special about Hunting and Gathering?
East Africa
750,000 years ago started to move out of Africa
moving in search of food
Why is fire important?
FIRE
Demography
Major population changes resulting from human and
environmental factors
2 million people during Ice Age
 allowed for growth
 big game gone
 more usable land available
 50-100 million by 1000 CE
 Regional changes altered skin color, race type, quantity of body hair
Time
 Periodization in early human history
 Early Hominids – humans 3.5 million years ago
 Australopithecus – Lucy – found in Africa
 Bipedalism
 sizable brain
 Larynx – voice box
 3 million – homo habilis – handy human – crude stone tools
 1 million - homo erectus – upright human
 First to migrate
 Clothed selves – skins/furs
100,000 to 250,000 – homo sapiens – wise human
social groups
permanent, semi-permanent buildings
100,000 to 200,000 – homo sapiens, sapiens
Out of Africa – started in Africa and migrated
Multiregional thesis – all developed independently
Stone Age
 First period of prehistory - Tool use separates hominids from ancestors
 Paleolithic – Old Stone Age – 10,000 to 2.5 million years ago
 Crude tools – clubs, axes, bones for shelter, protection, food, cloth
 Natural shelters – cave/canyons
 Began tent like structures/huts
 Wooden/stone structures by Mesolithic
 1 million years ago – fire
 Warfare – rocks, clubs – food preparation tools used for combat
 Weapons found in bones
Clothes from hides/furs and later plant fibers
Dying cloth for color
Families, clans, tribes
Select sexual partners – not seasonal
Long term sexual bonds – emotions + child rearing
Family units created clans
Neolithic – New Stone Age – 5,000-10,000 years ago
Social Organization During Paleolithic Age
• Family Unit
• Extended families clustered together, forming clans
bound by ties of kinship.
• Larger groups such as bands and tribes.
• Social groups sustained themselves by hunting and
gathering (foraging).
• Most hunter-gatherer societies were mobile or nomadic.
• Coordination and teamwork were needed to hunt large
creatures and wage war.
Social Organization During Paleolithic Age
• Gender Division of Labor
• Men hunted, made war, and performed heavy labor.
• Women gathered nuts, berries, and plants; prepared
food; maintained home; and tended children.
• Some historians believe women and men were
basically equal.
Religion of Paleolithic Societies
•
•
•
•
•
Worshipped gods or deities.
Practiced a variety of religious rituals.
Buried their dead.
Nature oriented deities
Performed various ceremonies
How do we know?
Religion of Paleolithic Societies
• Oldest cave
paintings
discovered to
date are 32,000
years old.
Paleolithic Age: Old Stone Age
Natural Shelters like
caves. Homo
Erectus learns to
make fire.
Cooperative Hunting
Very Primitive Stone Tools
Organized into
clans by family
groups
Pleistocene Ice Age
• The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with
the retreat of the last continental glacier. It
also corresponds with the end of the
Paleolithic age used in archaeology.
What is the most common source of change:
connection or diffusion versus independent
invention?
Connection/diffusion – due to interaction vs.
invented something new or used it in a new way
Diffusion – ironwork – Assyrians to Kushites
Invention – Nok people of Nigeria – smelting iron
Farming of certain crops – diffusion – Middle East >
India > Europe > Nile
Others independent – sub-Saharan
Africa, Southeast Asia, China, Americas
After emergence of civilization, diffusion
takes over – exchange of techniques,
seeds, crops
Why Change?
• Most evidence
suggests that huntersgatherers resisted
agriculture as long as
they could.
• Why?
WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?
What are the issues involved in using "civilization"
as an organizing principle in world history?
World historians
 more broad view – importance of
human creativity/connectivity
 Interaction of human beings in
creative manner
 What is a civilization (for our
purposes)
 Food surplus
 Advanced cities
 Advanced technology
 Skilled workers
 Complex institutions –
government, religion
 System of writing/record
keeping
Which of the following best explains life in
communities prior to the Agricultural Revolutions?
A. Agriculturalists and pastoralists competed and
often fought over land.
B. The only role for women was to bear and raise
children.
C. Groups were defined by the geographic region of
origin.
D. The foraging lifestyle supported only small,
nomadic groups of people
E. Specialization of labor resulted in important
technological advances.
Answer D
• Though large enough to defend themselves, huntergatherer communities rarely exceeded around fifty
people so as to not exhaust the food supply in their
area.
Which one of the following reasons do most
historians cite as the cause of the Agricultural
Revolutions?
A. People migrated to regions that could finally
support agriculture.
B. A cooling period around 6000 B.C.E. allowed
people to settle in one place year round.
C. Climate change drove people to abandon foraging
in favor of agriculture.
D. Foraging groups grew so large that they could no
longer function as nomadic societies.
E. Major river valleys stopped flooding, which allowed
people to settle along their banks.
Answer C
• Global warming ended the last Ice Age around 9000
B.C.E. As the climate changed in different regions,
people adapted to the environment. As a result,
people created settled communities in those regions
best suited for agriculture.
Discussion Questions
• Characteristics of pastorialism versus nomadic
societies.
• Why were the arts developed?
• Describe hominid evolution.
• Why did certain species survive and others didn’t?