My
last two classes here at NDNU were about religion and their philosophy. It was interesting to know the past of each
religion of the world, however, world history is what interests me. Religion is part of history and this textbook
will also touch on religion and perhaps what I learned in my previous class. I have for many years been curious of
how parts of the world were established.
So it brings me to Chapter 3.
“How did it get started?”
Did
Agriculture Revolution get civilization started? According to our readings it brought more people and more
people needed to eat, so they needed to produce more food. Agriculture also brought more
languages. It seems that
agriculture technology was able to feed the growing population. But as you know from our readings in
the first chapter the “First People” hadn’t known or started any
agriculture. The Hazda of Tanzania
is one of the last gathering and hunting societies known to man. These people collected food, but did
not produce food. In high school
these people were known to me as the “old stone age” era. I don’t recall them being presented
with to me the name Paleolithic.
If they were, I don’t remember.
But I do remember the Stone Age name. How and why would these people be ignored of being around
200,000 years ago? According to
our book, archaeology shows a great deal about them. They are the first to settle on this planet. They are the first to have created a
society.
It
should not matter if there are no writings left by them to show us that they
existed. All other things found
shows that they did exist. There
are many people alive now that don’t know who their ancestors are or really
where they came from and these people can’t dismiss that they are here on this
earth solely by magic, right? Some
things happen and we can’t always explain it, but we can hope one day we will
find out more about it in the future.
I have read other history books and everyone is always telling history a
different way on how it started.
When I think of the Paleolithic era, I sense the more simple not
stressed life as we have today. I
am sure they had stress, but I wonder how many people lived and survived with
very little technology. But they
did. As the years went on, and they
migrated to eastern and southern Africa, they too were able to create a new
innovation, such as stone and bone tools.
What
I find even more interesting in my readings was the human migration into Middle
East, which happened around 40,000 years ago. Evidence shows that they settled in southern France and
northern Spain. These people
created new techniques in hunting and even developed new hunting
behaviors. The most fascinating
thing I read about them was the cave paintings. I wonder how many more of these caves are hidden and no one
has found them yet.
When
the book talks about “The Ways We Were,” brings me to how when I was growing up
seem small and simple too. I too
grew up in a small town, where the population was slowly growing. Not much really happened in my small
town, and work was very limited.
It doesn’t seem any different from the First Human Societies. They had bands of 25 to 50 people, and
their population grew very slowly.
For survival, they too needed to be mobile to exploit plants and
animals. That is why they could
not accumulate goods. These things
would be a burden on them while traveling from place to place. When you hear people say to travel
light, the first humans give a whole new definition of traveling light.
These
three chapters of our reading were more then I expected. Each chapter of our readings kept me
wanting to read more and more. I look
forward to learn more of human civilization as each week progresses.
