Prehistory, sometimes referred to as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared years ago. The adoption of writing across the globe was a gradual process, so that the end of prehistory occurred at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. The period when a culture is written about by others but has not developed its own writing system is often known as the protohistory of the culture.
Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology but also in the way it deals with the activities of archaeological cultures rather than named nations or individuals. Restricted to material processes, remains, and artefacts rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that prehistorians use, such as "Neanderthal" or "Iron Age", are modern labels with definitions sometimes subject to debate. In most cases however, and in particular as one goes back further in time, these assigned labels are the only way of distinguishing groups of prehistoric peoples and conveying information about them in the present.
By definition, there are no written records from human prehistory, which can only be known from material archaeological and anthropological evidence: prehistoric materials and human remains. These were at first understood by the collection of folklore and by analogy with pre-literate societies observed in modern times.
History of the term The notion of "prehistory" emerged during the Enlightenment in the work of antiquarians who used the word "primitive" to describe societies that existed before written records. The word "prehistory" first appeared in English in 1836 in the Foreign Quarterly Review.
The geologic time scale for pre-human time periods, and the three-age system for human prehistory, were systematised during the nineteenth century in the work of British, French, German, and Scandinavian anthropologists, archaeologists, and antiquarians. OCLC 1379265149. An early conception of "prehistory" arose suggesting that without written records there could be no history and no way to speak meaningfully about the people who left behind no writing. The most common conception today is that history is based on a wide range of evidence, and while some historians have been uncomfortable with using prehistory as a term, the concept of prehistory has been questioned but not discarded. Archaeologist in particular view the term as a meaningful and necessary distinction of the type of work they do and the stories they can convey about the past.
Means of research The main source of information for prehistory is the archaeological record, frequently studied in context with research from other disciplines such as the natural sciences.The Prehistory of Iberia: Debating Early Social Stratification and the State edited by María Cruz Berrocal, Leonardo García Sanjuán, Antonio Gilman. Pg 36.Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Edited by Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, Sian Jones. p. 8.ISBN 9780415518888Through the Ages in Palestinian Archaeology: An Introductory Handbook. By Walter E. Ras. p. 49.ISBN 9781563380556
The primary researchers into human prehistory are anthropologists (archaeologists and physical anthropologists) who use excavation, geologic and geographic surveys, and other scientific analysis to reveal and interpret the nature and behavior of pre-literate and non-literate peoples. Human population geneticists and historical linguists are also providing valuable insight. Cultural anthropologists help provide context for societal interactions, by which objects of human origin pass among people, allowing an analysis of any article that arises in a human prehistoric context. Therefore, data about prehistory is provided by a wide variety of natural and social sciences, such as anthropology, archaeology, archaeoastronomy, comparative linguistics, biology, geology, molecular genetics, paleontology, palynology, physical anthropology, and many others.
The key step to understanding prehistoric evidence is dating, and reliable dating techniques have developed steadily since the nineteenth century.Graslund, Bo. 1987. The birth of prehistoric chronology. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. The most common of these dating techniques is radiocarbon dating. Further evidence has come from the reconstruction of ancient spoken languages. More recent techniques include forensic chemical analysis to reveal the use and provenance of materials, and genetic analysis of bones to determine kinship and physical characteristics of prehistoric peoples.
Definition
Beginning and end The beginning of prehistory is normally taken to be marked by human-like beings appearing on Earth.Renfrew, Colin. 2008. Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind. New York: Modern LibraryFagan, Brian. (2007). World Prehistory: A brief introduction New York: Prentice-Hall, (Seventh ed.), Chapter One The date marking its end is typically defined as the advent of the contemporary written historical record.
Both dates consequently vary widely from region to region. For example, African prehistory begins million years ago, while prehistoric Asia date back to 1.8 million years ago; and European prehistory begins million years ago upon the first arrival of humans to the region. Depending on the date when relevant records become a useful academic resource, its end date also varies. For example, in Egypt it is generally accepted that prehistory ended around 3100 BCE, whereas in New Guinea the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently, in the 1870s, when the Russian anthropologist Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai spent several years living among native peoples, and described their way of life in a comprehensive treatise. In Europe the relatively well-documented classical cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome had neighbouring cultures, including the Celts and the Etruscans, with little writing. Historians debate how much weight to give to the sometimes biased accounts of these protohistoric cultures found in Greek and Roman literature.
Time periods
In dividing up human prehistory in Eurasia, historians typically use the three-age system, whereas scholars of pre-human time periods typically use the well-defined geologic record and its internationally defined stratum base within the geologic time scale. The three-age system is the periodization of human prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their predominant tool-making technologies: Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. In some areas, there is also a transition period between Stone Age and Bronze Age, the Chalcolithic or Copper Age.
In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached their end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. The three-age division of prehistory into Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age remains in use for much of Eurasia and North Africa, but is not generally used in those parts of the world where the working of hard metals arrived abruptly from contact with Eurasian cultures, such as Oceania, Australasia, much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of the Americas. With some exceptions in pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, these areas did not develop writing systems before the arrival of Eurasians, so their prehistory reaches into relatively recent periods; for example, 1788 is usually taken as the end of the prehistory of Australia. For the prehistory of the Americas see Pre-Columbian era.
Stone Age
The concept of a "Stone Age" is found useful in the archaeology of most of the world, although in the archaeology of the Americas it is called by different names and begins with a Lithic stage, or sometimes Paleo-Indian. The sub-divisions described below are used for Eurasia, and not consistently across the whole area.
The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. It was followed by the Copper Age, then the Bronze Age. Because of its enormous timescale, the Stone Age encompasses 99% of human history.
Palaeolithic
"Palaeolithic" means "Old Stone Age", and begins with the first use of stone tools. The Paleolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene BP (before the present period).
The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Paleolithic (as in excavations it appears underneath the Upper Paleolithic), beginning with the earliest stone tools dated to around 3.3 million years ago at the Lomekwi site in Kenya. These tools predate the genus Homo and were probably used by Kenyanthropus.Harmand et al., 2015, p. 315. Evidence of control of fire by early hominins during the Lower Palaeolithic Era is uncertain and has at best limited scholarly support. The most widely accepted claim is that H. erectus or H. ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP in a site at Bnot Ya'akov Bridge, Israel. The use of fire enabled early humans to cook food, provide warmth, have a light source, deter animals at night and meditate.
Early Homo sapiens originated some 300,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle Palaeolithic. Anatomic changes indicating modern language capacity also arise during the Middle Palaeolithic.Race and Human Evolution. By Milford H. Wolpoff. p. 348. During the Middle Palaeolithic Era, there is the first definitive evidence of human use of fire. Sites in Zambia have charred logs, charcoal and carbonized plants, that have been dated to 180,000 BP. The systematic burial of the dead, music, prehistoric art, and the use of increasingly sophisticated multi-part tools are highlights of the Middle Paleolithic.
The Upper Paleolithic extends from 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, with the first organized settlements and blossoming of artistic work.
Throughout the Palaeolithic, humans generally lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer societies tended to be very small and egalitarian,Vanishing Voices : The Extinction of the World's Languages. By Daniel Nettle, Suzanne Romaine Merton Professor of English Language University of Oxford. pp. 102–103. although hunter-gatherer societies with abundant resources or advanced food-storage techniques sometimes developed sedentary lifestyles with complex social structures such as chiefdoms, and social stratification. Long-distance contacts may have been established, as in the case of Indigenous Australian "highways" known as songlines.
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age (from the Greek mesos, 'middle', and lithos, 'stone'), was a period in the development of human technology between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic.
The Mesolithic period began with the retreat of glaciers at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, some 10,000 BP, and ended with the introduction of agriculture, the date of which varied by geographic region. In some areas, such as the Near East, agriculture was already underway by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short and poorly defined. In areas with limited glacial impact, the term "Epipalaeolithic" is preferred.