Before we could leave the class
on the first day we had to memorize and say the five major eras of the world
(Paleolithic, Neolithic, Ancient, Classic, and Modern). These eras are very important to human kind
because they portray a very wide picture of how the humans started populating
the planet. When reading chapter one of “Ways of the World” by Robert Strayer,
one can see the description of how humans have evolved and how long it has
taken for us to develop the knowledge, the abilities and the skills to survive
and create a whole different world for ourselves. In the beginning, the purpose
of humans was simply of “gathering and hunting”, but then I asked myself how
historians can tell weather that was the only thing our ancestors did or did
not; in the book, it is explained that historians came to that conclusion by
studying the Paleolithic era.
In this Era, anthropologists have
found many drawings and cavern paintings that have been clue to the discovery
of such conclusion. In the drawings, our ancestors portrayed scenes of men and
women using tools, made with stones, to be able to hunt and to fight bigger
animals. A very interesting description given in the book is that during the
Paleolithic era, our ancestors had very closed relationships. I was amazed at
the fact that they did not have any kind of hierarchy even though they had
chores divided between men and women. Both genders helped their group by
providing the food and all enjoyed it.
The Paleolithic era accounts for
95% of humankind history and it has very significant importance in our study of
history. It is also important to mention that even though a lot of facts are
given in the book, they are more of speculations rather than actual facts, but
still very well described according to evidence. So after studying the
beginnings of humankind and the many Paleolithic societies that develop from
that time, we jump (figuratively speaking) into the Neolithic era which
happened 10,000 BC – 3000 BC.
The significance of this era is
the birth of the agricultural beginnings and revolution, which “represented a
genuinely revolutionary transformation of human life all across the planet and
provided the foundation for almost everything that followed” (p36). The
agricultural era happened due to the end of the Ice age. The weather was just
perfect to start planting and it also helped Homo sapiens to start moving
around the globe, which allowed the spreading of humans to different
territories.
I personally think that the
agriculture has been one of the most important discoveries for humankind, but
at the same time, it has also been the one reason men started hierarchies and
the creation of social classes. In the beginning, humans used agriculture as a
way to feel both animals and themselves, but the more land they started
acquiring and the more they were cultivating, the more they saw the opportunity
for growing and exchanging the products. Nowadays societies used the same idea
of having more and more to be able to sell and have more wealth than others;
this idea of having more than others created gap between societies, the ones
that were more “civilized” and the ones that were not. The earliest
civilizations that emerged were in three places, “one was called the Cradle of
the Middle East, the Mesopotamia and the Sumerian” (p56). All these
civilizations “represent a new and particular type of human society, made
possible by the immense productivity of the Agricultural Revolution” (p56).
Matthew Cochran
World History
Notre Dame de Namur University
May 25, 2016
