Hunter-Gatherer Culture
OVERVIEW
History began when humans first passed stories from one
generation to the next. Prehistory, then, covers events that occurred so long ago that
no oral or written stories about them exist. Scholars must construct the history of
prehistoric humans based on the physical evidence they left behind.
The earliest human artifacts consist mainly of human skulls and bones and stone
tools. Starting around 40,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age),
human settlements—as opposed to the random skeletal remains of earlier times—
begin to appear in the archaeological record. Such evidence becomes more plentiful
for the Neolithic Age (New Stone Age), which began about 10,000 years ago.
What Paleolithic Artifacts Tell Us
Archaeologists have discovered many artifacts from the Paleolithic
Age that point to developments in human culture. Stone tools, piles of animal bones scarred from butchering, split stones, piles
of stone shards from toolmaking, human burial sites, and paintings on the walls of caves indicate that Paleolithic people were
inventive and capable of abstract thought.
Many of the artifacts from those periods show advances in technology, including standardized arrowheads and stone blades
with long cutting edges. Such stone tools could be used for a variety of purposes, like cleaning and poking holes in animal hides
and boring holes in bones, wood, or softer rocks. Archaeologists have also found bone tools, like needles for sewing clothing,
harpoons for catching big fish, and javelins and spear throwers for hunting.
The abundance of tools for working with animal hides indicates that animals
were used for clothing and shelter as well as for food. Tools found in modern-day France, made
by humans of the Solutrean culture of about 20,000 years ago, were particularly well crafted.
The high quality and elaborate decoration of those tools lead archaeologists to believe that they
may have been displayed as prized possessions or used as gifts to help create alliances
between different groups.
Small human communities probably moved around to follow the herds of horses, reindeer, bison, woolly rhinoceroses, and
mammoths that they hunted. Scientists speculate that the domestication of horses and reindeer may have developed out of that
pattern of following the herds to hunt them. In addition to a diet of meat, it is likely that Paleolithic humans ate fruit, seeds,
shoots, and roots where and when they were available. Because of those two main methods of acquiring food, humans living
during this time are often called hunter-gatherers.
Although no tools like spoons, ladles, or cooking pots from the Paleolithic Age have been found, there is evidence of the use of
fire, so it is certainly possible that cooking was done without using containers or that the cooking containers were made of
perishable or even edible materials, like woven reeds, leaves, or fruit peels.
Caves provided an obvious source of shelter, and humans may have used mammoth tusks to prop up doors made of animal
skins. Archaeologists have also found evidence of a conical tent with a hearth near the center. Tools were found near the
hearth, with food and domestic trash just outside the tent area. Refuse piles not far away included flint shavings, bones of
animals, and split stones.
Cave Paintings
Art in caves began to appear in the late Paleolithic Age with simple engravings. Around 30,000 BC,
the first known "paintings," created by blowing pigment over a hand held between a person's mouth
and the cave wall, were made in present-day southern France. Paleolithic humans also engraved
designs on bones and produced sculpted figurines and carvings. Those artifacts are called
"moveable art" because they could be carried around as the community moved from camp to
camp.
Cave paintings discovered at three different European sites indicate that by
about 15,000 BC, Paleolithic people had highly developed symbolic forms of communication. The
caves at Altamira (in Spain), Lascaux, and Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc (both in France) are stunningly
beautiful and complex.
The excavations at Altamira, begun in 1879, yielded many tools made of stone and bone, which
helped to form the foundation of modern understanding of prehistoric human life. The cave also
presented a variety of painted and engraved decorations: bison, wild boars, horses, a deer,
human-shaped figures, and handprints.
The cave paintings at Lascaux (discovered in 1940) and Chauvet (discovered in
1994) in France primarily show animals, along with some hunting tools and human figures. Many images
are full of motion and harmony and seem to tell the story of a hunt, depicted in a series of images going
from left to right. More than 2,000 paintings and engravings have been uncovered at Lascaux and more
than 300 at Chauvet. Using carbon-14 dating analysis, scientists have determined that some of the
paintings at Chauvet are at least 31,000 years old, which makes them the oldest known paintings on
Earth. Unlike those at Altamira, the French caves do not contain any other remnants of human
habitation, which leads some archaeologists to theorize that they were used only for purposes related to
the paintings, like religious or magical rituals.
Cave paintings provide evidence of the development of complex belief systems in Paleolithic cultures.
Many images are layered over previous images, which indicates that the end result was not as important
as the act of creating the image. In any case, the very creation of two-dimensional signs for living things demonstrates the ability
to think in abstract terms—a major characteristic of human culture.
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ID: 1184461
CITATION: MLA STYLE
"Hunter-Gatherer Culture (Overview)." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 21 Aug. 2010.
<http://www.ancienthistory.abc-clio.com>.
Cultivating Crops, Domesticating Animals
OVERVIEW
A reconstructed olive press in the courtyard of a dwelling at the archaeological site in Hazor in present-day Israel. Olives were first
crushed in a basalt basin, then placed in a press, where the oil was extracted with the help of weights hanging from a long wooden
lever. [Pictorial Library of Bible Lands]
For most of human history, people fed themselves on edibles they were able to gather in fields, forests, and marine areas, and
by hunting or even scavenging the kills left by other predators. Then, around 10,000 years ago, humans in the region known as
the Near East began cultivating selected varieties of wheat and barley and domesticating sheep and goats. Over time, the
people of this and nearby regions expanded their agricultural and domesticating practices to a widening range of crops and
animals. By about 7500 BC, farming developed in China, where they domesticated the pig and planted rice, millet, and
soybeans. By 3500 BC, in various parts of the Americas, humans were planting beans, corn,
potatoes, squash, and sunflowers.
Food production did not replace hunting and gathering in all human
societies the world over, nor did it become widespread overnight in the regions where it was
adopted. To settle permanently in one place and engage in the labor intensive tasks
demanded by an agricultural way of life was a dramatic departure from what humans were
used to. While archaeologists and scholars continue to debate and seek definitive answers to
the question of why many human societies switched from hunting and gathering to food production, they have developed
theories that point to a number of environmental, geographical, demographic, and cultural factors.
The Oasis Theory
The prominent 20th-century scholar V. Gordon Childe theorized that at the
end of the Pleistocene epoch, the Near East experienced a serious drought. During extended
dry periods, plants tend to grow primarily around such water sources as river valleys and oases.
Humans and animals in turn would have gravitated to those same areas, each competing for the
same resources. In order to survive, he suggested, humans first observed and then developed
strategies to control the plant and animal resources around them.
Initially proposed by Childe in 1929, that theory, known as the "oasis theory," seemed
reasonable at the time; however, in the years since Childe's research, scientists have determined that no drought occurred in the
Near East following the ice age.
Natural Habitat Zone Hypothesis
In the 1950s, Robert Braidwood emerged as one of the predominant
archaeologists in the study of early agriculture. He hypothesized that plants easiest to cultivate
would be those that grew well in the wild, and therefore farming probably began in habitats
where conditions allowed wild food to grow naturally and in abundance. His research in the hilly
regions of what is now northern Iraq uncovered evidence of an early farming village, which
supported his "natural habitat zone hypothesis" (also known as "the nuclear zone hypothesis" or
"hilly flanks theory"). He further contended that human knowledge at that point in time was such
that people were technologically ready to experiment with planting. For example, in the area known as the Fertile Crescent,
people had already developed important tools, including sharply polished sickles for gathering wild grain and highly polished
grinding stones that could process it into flour.
More recently, physiologist and evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond has argued that agriculture developed in the areas where
environmental factors most favored it—that is, wherever the geography, climate, and migration routes supported a large diversity
of plants and animals that were easily controlled, productive, and suitable as food. That development may include such plants
as barley, rye, and wheat, and such animals as goats, pigs, and sheep .
Demographic Pressures, the Marginal Zone Hypothesis, and Cultural Factors
Although environmental factors certainly played a role, many scholars resist the notion of "environmental determinism."
Observing the few hunting and gathering societies that exist in modern times, anthropologists note that they spend relatively little
time acquiring food and have a lot of leisure time. That fact might suggest that humans would have made the shift to food
production (which requires hard work every day) only if and when they were forced to do so—especially if they lived in areas
where wild foods and animals were abundant. Increased population, possibly combined with declining sources of wild foods and
animals, are considered likely factors that could have forced the change in practices for
obtaining food.
In the 1970s, archaeological theorist Lewis Binford developed what he called
the "marginal zone hypothesis." He contended that population increases led groups to migrate
to areas that were already inhabited by other groups. When tension and competition for
resources resulted, successful hunter-gatherers and nomadic peoples forced less successful
newcomers into marginal zones where wild plants and animals were not plentiful. To overcome
their food shortages, those groups were forced to produce their own food.
In the past 20 years, some scholars have suggested that because humans are complex creatures with equally complex social
relationships, other factors besides climate and population need to be considered. There is a growing belief that because food
products are useful for trade, hunter-gatherers with a surplus would have an elevated status in their society. This might create
competition that would motivate humans to find new ways of creating more surpluses.
As no conclusive evidence has been found to prove or disprove the most likely theories, the
research continues.
Domesticating Animals
While those theories apply equally to explaining animal domestication, there
is also a more specific theory to consider. Some scholars assert that there is a natural symbiosis
between humans and animals. For example, during the hunting stage, dogs were likely used as
retrievers and would then be fed with the scraps. Archaeological evidence from the Natufian site in present-day Israel indicates
that dogs were probably the first animals to be domesticated.
The concept of a symbiotic relationship applies to other species of animals, too. Animals that tend to be easily herded could be
led to areas with more resources for their survival, while they, in turn, provided food products (like milk and meat) for the humans
herding them. Archaeological evidence indicates that the first animals to be domesticated in the Near East were sheep and
goats; in China, pigs were the first to be domesticated; reindeer were first domesticated in northern Eurasia; and llamas were
first domesticated in South America.
Consequences of Sedentism and Agriculture
While the reasons that motivated humans to live permanently in one place (sedentism) and begin cultivating crops and
domesticating animals remains uncertain, the consequences are clearly evident. While some of the consequences created new
opportunities for people, others created a new set of problems.
Advantages of the new way of life included a relatively stable food supply (if
weather and insects didn't damage the crops) and the opportunity to store surpluses. Towns and
cities grew up around the agricultural areas, enabling large numbers of people to exchange their
knowledge and skills. People could then develop pottery-making techniques—since pottery was
needed to store food surpluses—and create more sophisticated, larger tools. (Pots and large
tools would have been difficult to carry when constantly on the move.) That, in turn, created opportunities for economic
specialization, which—for better or worse—allowed for the accumulation of wealth.
Disadvantages accompanied the transition to food production as well. Compared to hunting and gathering, farming is harder
physical work, more time consuming, and offers a more limited variety of foods. Year after year of growing the same crop in the
same plot of land leads to soil depletion. In addition, diseases that arose from living in constant proximity with other humans and
animals posed a new threat. That proximity also required the development of efficient and hygienic methods to dispose of
human and animal waste.
Despite the disadvantages, the move to a settled, agricultural way of life transformed human societies into what has been called
the most significant "revolution" in human history.
ID: 1184470
CITATION: MLA STYLE
"Cultivating Crops, Domesticating Animals (Overview)." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 21 Aug. 2010.
<http://www.ancienthistory.abc-clio.com>.