From Prehistory to Civilization, 3000-1200 B.C.

·         “Language, Religion, Art, Technology, Farming, Family Life, and Village Communities- all these basic features of human existence originated in prehistoric times.”

·         Prehistory is the millions of years in which human beings appeared on the earth, spread across the planet, and advanced in organization and skills.

·         This earliest development led around 3000 B.C. to the rise of the first civilizations. 

·         The achievements of these first civilized people began to spread to their neighbors.

·         In these ways, by 1200 B.C., there came into existence and international region of civilization, with many local versions of Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions.

·         Compared with the age of the human race, civilization is a very recent development.  The beginnings of the prehistoric era can be only approximately dated, for prehistoric began with human race itself.

·         Excavations of fossils showed that the earliest human like species appeared in East Africa. 

·         Over hundreds of thousands of years, new species evolved that gradually took on the various physical features and mental capacities that are unique to the human race.

·         Humans began to walk on two legs, thereby releasing their hands to make and use tools and weapons. 

·         Human’s body hair began to thin out and their digestions weakened, so that they needed clothing, cooking, and fire. 

·         Their brains grew larger, making language and abstract thoughts, as well as complex manual and physical skills.

·         About 200,000 years ago, probably in southwest Africa, there appeared a human species that seemingly possessed more of these features than any other, and over tens of thousands of years it replaced all of them.

·         As the various human types developed and spread, their tools were mainly chipped from durable stone, so many of them have survived more or less undamaged down to the present. 

·         The earliest and longest prehistoric period is called the Paleolithic Age.

·         This era began with the earliest human types.

·         Neolithic Ages the time when stone tolls became stronger, sharper, and more specialized for different jobs.

·         Throughout the Paleolithic Age, all human beings lived as migratory, hunters, fishers, and gathers of edible plants, sheltering in caves, in temporary huts, or in open if the climate was favorable. 

·         To find food, protect themselves, and rear their children, they would usually have combined into small bands of perhaps twenty to thirty people. 

·         Most likely there was a rough division labor between men and women.

·         Men would have been mainly responsible for hunting, for making the tools and weapons.

·         Women would also have been mainly responsible for taking care of young children.

·         As well as struggling to provide food and shelter for themselves and their offspring, early humans seem to have sought to understand and explain the natural and their own destiny.

·         The Neolithic advances in tool making were only part of much wider alterations in human ways of life.

·         Agricultural revolution is the giant step involved in cultivation of plants, the taming of animals, and the appearance of many new skills and technologies.

·         The agricultural revolution took place several places throughout the world. 

·         Looking for crops required permanent settlements, and around 6000 B.C. the first agricultural villages appeared in southwestern Asia.

·         Each house with its living and storage space would have belonged to a family group of men, women, and children. 

·         The equipment, animals, plants, and supplies also had sections of field.

·         Polytheism is the belief in many gods. 

·         Villagers from smaller settlements would come to pay their respects to the powerful gods and goddesses.

·         Neolithic villages grew the organized governments of later times, and far-flung networks of Neolithic village’s trade and travel provide the routes along which civilization would one day spread.

·         Study of traditional farming societies also suggest that the agricultural revolution was accompanied by a lasting shift in the pattern of relations between men and women.

·         Men were the main suppliers of food.

·         Women worked in households.

·         Domesticated animals were a far more important resource than wild ones.

·         This change obliged women to concentrate on tasks that could be accomplished in and around the home and that could be combined with looking after young children.

·         Within village communities, women from prominent families could expect deference from men of humbler families.

·         Agricultural revolution spread outward from its region of origin including to Europe.

·         Humans were ready for the next cultural leap.

·         The earliest known civilizations was the land of Mesopotamia and Egypt in 3500 B.C.