Prehistoric Beginnings

Blogging Will Durant’s History of Civilization

Immense volumes have been written to expound our knowledge, and conceal our ignorance of primitive man.

I wonder what it was like in Europe 20,000 years ago as Neanderthals battled Cro-Magnons for survival. If mere racial differences arise to prejudices in our era, what was it like when humans were divided into different sub-species?

Neanderthals may not have had the same brain capacity but they still had communities, tools, and ceremonies. Durant laments that only a small fraction of pre-historical artifacts survive. Since there was no writing we know about from this period, we can only speculate from scant evidence of human achievements and struggles.

Durant's Brief Outline

1. Paleolithic Culture
2. Neolithic Culture
3. The Transition to History

- From Introduction, Chapter IV.

---

I believe that this series is one of the great works of modern history literature. Its material is essential knowledge.

The Agricultural Age, 10,000 - 3,000 BC

At the beginning of this age, the the planet has warmed from the Ice Age to the temperatures of today. In Alaska, the ice prison has broken up and the humans began migrating to the rest of the continent. In northern Africa, the lush plains of the Sahara turned into the desert of today. To the retreating peoples, the Nile River valley beckoned.

Climate change caused large stands of wild grain grew thoughout the Middle East. Around 8000 people in northern Iraq began to deliberately plant these grains. The nearby Tigris and Euphrates Rivers provided irrigation. After harvest, the grains were ground into flour which kept for long periods of time.

Historians call this age "The New Stone Age" or in Latin the "Neolithic Age". I don't think that advances in stonework was the determining factor in this era. It was warming of the planet and the subsequent development of farming.

Agriculture provided stability. It supported more people. It allowed people to congregate into cities. City folk were able to perform specialized tasks. Organization for defense and for commerce was needed. And people's imaginations were freed to pursue academic pursuits. Agriculture is the foundation that allows workers of other skills to prosper.

Jericho (yes, the one of the Bible) may be the world's oldest city, dating back to 8000. Posessing all of 10 acres and 2,500 people, it was the must-see metropolis of 7500. By 6000, pottery was developed. In the Far East, humans independently developed the farming of rice.

In the Sixth Millenium, the Sumerians took over the Iraq region and established a network of cities. In 4000 they founded the city of Ur and made it into the largest city in the world.
Egypt united under its first ruler in 3100. The Chinese established their first cities along the Yellow River about this time. Cities began in the Indus River Valley.

Towards the end of this era, the lands around the eastern Mediterranean began civilizations. In 4000 world population reached the unprecedented number of 85 million people. They lived in isolation from other civilizations but this was about to change.

---

Here's a related article.

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Warming Age, 20,000 - 10,000 BC

Immense volumes have been written to expound our knowledge, and conceal our ignorance, of primitive man.
- Will Durant

The attempt to wrap one's mind around pre-historic periods requires one to confront a bewildering array of jargon. Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic describe the development of humans in terms of Stone Ages. Pleistocene and Holocene describe geological periods. As I say in my article on The Age of Agriculture, I don't think that the attributes that these terms highlight are the most important.

The warming planet and the retreat of the great ice sheets may have been indiscernable to the humans of the time. Authorities seem to agree that the process was gradual, rather than the global warming trends of today. In any case, the habitats of such Ice Age animals as the Great Wooly Mammath and the Sabertooth Tiger shrunk and led to their extinction.

The Earth's typography was still substantially different than today. There was no Black Sea; it was dry. The flood waters from the Mediterranean came later. The North Sea filled up. The Sahara in northern Africa with its lush savanas was a center of human activity.

One wonders how the equator regions - the Amazon River - differed from today. Why didn't an equivalent to Egypt in the next area arise along the Amazon? Maybe it did. An ancient civilization lays under the jungle bed just waiting to be found.

Humans did use stone and fire. They domesticated animals, though the horse wasn't domesticated until late in the next age (around 4500 BC). And they painted. A lot of these artifacts were found in caves, thus giving rise to the image of early man living in caves. The supply of available caves would have severely limited the population and restricted them to hilly/mountainous areas. Caves may have just preserved things more than the shelters constructed out in the open. Were the 20,000 BC paintings in the Alamira Cave the work of an amateur while the really good stuff got lost by the wear of time?

---

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Ice Age, 110,000 - 20,000 BC

It’s difficult to imagine living on a planet where the weather was so cold, that ice sheets covered much of North America, Europe, and Asia. Thankfully, the configuration of the continents did not permit the extension of the southern ice sheets too far north. In the higher elevations of the continents, great glaciers grew independent of the polar ice. So much of the planet's water was in the great sheets of ice that sea levels dropped. Thankfully, humans knew how to make fire.

Here’s a link to a Wikipedia map of the Ice. (There's no use trying to pop up these maps here. The blogs pages are too small to see the details.)

And here’s a map of the planet’s vegetation. While it is hard to read, here’s a few noticeable items:

• There is no Black Sea
• the Mediterranean is now two lakes; the Italian Peninsula is now an isthmus going all the way down to Africa
• the Red Sea is now a small lake
• land connects Siberia to Alaska
• Australia includes Guinea and the Solomon Islands; and if it doesn’t connect to SE Asia, is sure comes close.

The descriptions of the kind of land are mostly bad; the few good colors can hardly be seen; the only one that seems decent is “Savannah”. Was this where most of the humans lived during this time?

During this age there were 3 species of humans:

1. Homo Erectus had been around for 1.8 million years but died out around 70,000. They had survived previous ice ages; they didn’t survive this one.


2. Neanderthals had been around for 350,000 years but when the great ice sheets disappeared, so did they.


3. Modern Man started around 200,000 years ago. This ought to not be confused with Cro-Magnon Man which appeared 40,000 and died around 10,000. The Cro-Magnons were a subgroup of Modern Man.

This map shows where the three groups lived during the Ice Age. The most interesting feature in this is that the only one of the three groups that migrated was Modern Man.

About 50,000 Modern Man commenced an unprecedented level of cultural and technical achievement in a short period of time. They developed sophisticated hunting techniques (such as using trapping pits or driving animals off cliffs), made clothing out of hides, carefully buried their dead, and even painted their caves.

Neanderthals also had tools and fire but they did not innovate. As the Ice Age ended, the last communities of the Neanderthals died out in Gibralter. The future belonged to Modern Man.

---

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Early Man, 200,000 - 110,000 BC

It’s 200,000 years ago and another ice age has just started. Two species of humans continue as before. Neanderthals had been around for 150,000 years; while the older group, Homo Erectus has been around for a couple of million years. But now a new group of humans appears: Modern Man – us.

Humanity has fire, which is a necessity to survive an ice age. They have simple stone tools and weapons.

They face fierce predators. This is the golden age for very large mammals: mammoths, sabertooth tigers, mastodons, and many others. The large size may have protected them from the cold.

Fast forward 70,000 years. Between 130,000 and 110,000 there is an inter-glacial period. The ice sheets recede. The climate approaches what it is like in historic times.
20,000 years may not seem like such a long time compared to the time scales we discuss here but consider that our own civilization goes back only 5,000 years. For 20,000 years, those early humans had plenty of time to develop the same kind of civilization that we experience now. So why didn’t they?

---

Pictured is a Homo Erectus, the most primitive of the 3 groups of humans. Source: Wikipedia.

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Mammals, 65 MYA - 200,000 BC

In the aftermath of the great comet, the small survived. Hot blooded creatures, the mammals dominated. As time went by, the evolved larger and larger. Some animals returned to the sea and evolved into giants. The whales and dolphins started out as amphibians.

Climate slowly grew cooler as the millions of years passed by. Part of this was caused by the drift of the continents.


Antarctica drifted south, all the way to the South Pole. Australia, having split from it during the Age of the Dinosaurs, drifted north. India had also split from Antarctica and moved north, colliding with Asia 55 - 45 MYA. Arabia collided with Asia, too, 35 MYA. All this activity affected Europe, too. It went from being groups of disparate islands to a continent. The collisions caused the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathian Mountains. The North and South American continents closed enough that a land bridge connected them.

2.5 million years ago, the poles began to ice over. This marked the appearance of the first homos erectus – precursors of humans.

---

Above is a map of Earth 50 million years ago. Source: Wikipedia.

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Dinosaurs, 250 MYA - 65 MYA

Ah, yes! The dinosaurs. Animals were big; the weather was hot; their blood ran cold. Little warm blooded mammals eeked out their living on the fringes of the biomass.

The dinosaurs marked the high point of life on Earth before Man. As predatory as lions, tigers, and bears became in the later age, it is difficult to see how any one of them could have fared against the giant T-Rex or the flying Raptor. The movie, “Jurassic Park” probably gives us more the flavor of the age than any monograph can.

The Earth looked vastly different during these times. Here is a map of the planet as it was around 100 million years ago.

The great southern continent of Godwanna had just broken up. India is drifting north; the eastern part of Godwanna drifts north north east and will split up into Australia, Guinea, New Zealand, and other islands. On the other side of the world, North and South America are drifting together.

65 million years ago a comet crashes. A cataclysmic ending to a dramatic age.

---

Source of map: Wikipedia.

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Animals, 400 MYA - 250 MYA

Before the dinosaurs, (if the logic of evolution is to be believed), the animals were less evolved. Scientists posit that the first aquadic life to come to land were those that had developed legs like spiders, scorpions, and primitive insects. What a golden age these first pioneers must have experienced! Continent after continent filled with plants that had millions of years to establish themselves, lay before them. The atmosphere was far more oxygen rich than later. Good times! But then came others from the sea, looking for meat.

The superior species seemed to be the reptile, with mammals living on the edges of life. In fact, the reptile's greatest age was next.

---

MYA = Million Years Ago
BYA = Billion Years Ago

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Fish, 650 MYA - 400 MYA

It is surprising that the earliest microbes appeared just as the Earth was beginning the last fourth of it's 4.5 billion year existence.

In this period, the planet's atmosphere was poison; plants appeared toward the end and transformed the bare continents as well as the atmosphere. Plant photosynthesis takes in carbon monoxide and puts out oxygen.

Meanwhile, in the oceans, the microbes evolved into giant sea monsters, while others made their first tentative presence on the shores.

---

MYA = Million Years Ago
BYA = Billion Years Ago

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Geology, 4.6 BYA - 600 MYA

For 4 billion years, the most advanced form of life on Earth was single celled organisms. From the standpoint of life, this seems like a boring period but the planet was undergoing massive changes. The outer crust was settling; the atmosphere was forming; meteors (maybe even whole planets) crashed down from the sky. Mountains formed. Weather changed.

The greatest ice age in the planet's history occured. Ice and snow covered the entire planet. Then the climate warmed.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.
-Genesis 1:20

---

MYA = Million Years Ago
BYA = Billion Years Ago

Previous Age

Master List

Next Age

The Age of Cosmology, 20 BYA - 4.6 BYA

Cosmology is the study of the origins of the universe. General opinion is that the universe started with a big bang. 100 years from now, who knows what general opinion will be then. As for when it, happened 20 billion years ago, 12 billion years ago or maybe some other time. We really need to be humble here.

Other stars began billions of years before the cosmic gasses in our neighborhood coalesced into our solar system. This period closes with the formation of planet Earth.

---

MYA = Million Years Ago
BYA = Billion Years Ago

Master List

.

Next Age

Green Sahara

Time: 7,000 – 5,000 B.C.
Place: Sahara, North Africa
Top Picture: Landsat satellite picture of the Sahara Desert
Bottom Picture: Rock layer underneath, revealing black channels cut by the meandering of an ancient river. Taken by Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour on April 16, 1994.



It is rainy, kind of – 3 times the amount of today. The Sahara Desert is no more. Since the rains came, it is a savannah. Fish swim in the rivers. In the thousands of miles of grasslands, Buffalo, Elephants, and other large animals graze. And humans follow and they thrive.

The total world population is around 5 million; a significant part of it lives here. Small towns begin. Small farms lay beyond. With pottery, people can dine on soup, fish, and porridge. Cows lo on the farms; dogs wander the streets of the towns. If we could time-machine the Plains Indians of the American Mid-West from the days of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to these times and this region, they would fit right in.

To the east, the lower Nile River rages from flood waters from the mountains far to the south. The settlements struggle against the floods.

Times change; climate changes. The rains slow down; the rivers dry up; the grass disappears; the desert returns. To the east, the Nile’s floods moderate. People begin to leave. In Egypt, one of the world’s first civilizations begins.

The desert sands blow over a way of life.

More information: National Geographic, Wikipedia.

Dinosaur True Colors Revealed

Time: 122 million years ago
Place: NE China
Picture: This dinosaur's size.

This is Sinosauropteryx. This is because scientists have analyzed a million year old feather and found the organic materials that tell them the color of it. For the first time, a scientifically accurate color picture of a dinosaur can be produced.

I got this story from the National Geographic Magazine. Since the pictures are copyrighted, you'll have to click here to see it. The public domain pictures of this fascinating creature are now obsolete.



This story reminds me of an interesting facet of the Age of the Dinosaurs: the birds lived then and survived. Indeed, Sinosauropteryx was a feathered dinosaur, himself!

More information: Time Line, Sinosauropteryx.

The Moon Begins

Time: 4.5 billion years ago.
Place: Earth.

It is hot, thousands of degrees hot. We float on red, molten rock. The entire planet is an ocean of molten heat. We look up to a black sky. There is no atmosphere, hence no sound. We are about to be hit by a planet the size of Mars.

If we had been alive and if we had a history to this point, this would seem like the end of time. For eons, we had dwelled in a nebula of gas and dust. Lost in legend were stories of a super nova, which originated our nebula. The nebula was comfortable and seemingly eternal. But gradually it had grown smaller. Gravity pulled it together.

When the gas at the center had ignited, that had seemed the end of time. Other bits of the nebula had formed around the center, angular momentum carrying them into orbits around the new star.

So, we float on the surface of this new thing, a planet and ponder our lost sanctuary. Wham! A giant meteor crashes. It must have been only a 100 miles away. Then another, and yet another. The semi-liquid rock beneath us shifts violently. The sky above is filled with falling objects.

In one corner of the sky, one star-like object catches our attention. It seems to be much bigger, than the last time we saw it. It was just a prick of light, like any star. Now it is a small disk. It seems to grow, even as we watch.

Now, it is the biggest object in the sky. We see parts of it are dark and other parts light. Almost no time at all has passed. Now it fills a quarter of the sky. We see a dark surface that bubbles towards us. Things seem distorted. We realize that our planet’s gravity is creating tidal effects on it. The violence around us tells us that our planet’s surface is being gravitationally pulled, too.

Now it fills half of the sky. It slowly blots out the rest of it. We wonder how liquid rock can appear to have a hurricane for it is not like water. A volcano erupts. It appears like we can reach out and touch it. The plume does not fall but seems to keep coming as the Earth’s gravity now pulls on the smaller planet as much as the planet’s own gravity does.

It is but an instant as we see an entire planet just 100 miles above us. Then it crashes.

If we had been anything but literary devices, and if we could have lived through this, we would be experiencing the most violent event in the history of the Earth, save possibly for the planet’s end, eons in the future. We, ourselves fly into space as the Earth’s surface breaks up. Down below, the Earth’s innards remain intact, though the other, smaller planet has broken up, entirely. Pieces of it remain on the surface; pieces vaporize; pieces bounce into suborbital paths that then land again in faraway regions throughout the globe. Over there is the planet’s heavier iron core. It falls to the Earth and gets buried in the goo. Eventually, it will join the Earth’s own core. In a short time, Planet Earth is 10% more massive than before.*

The rest of the debris stays in orbit. Gravity causes the smaller chunks of rock to fall into the larger chunks. Before a century has passed, a moon has formed. Billions of years later, people - real people - us, will look up at it and wonder how it got there.

More Information: Wikipedia, SPACE.com.

* My 10% number comes from the History Channel's episode "The Moon" from their series "The Universe", season 1.