Week One Blog Post

Until reading the prologue of Ways of the World, I had no idea what a cosmic calendar was. It was pretty interesting to read about how it can tell the history of the universe, when this or that happened. The universe has been around a pretty long time and every life form that has been a part of it has history. But humans are egocentric and focused history on us. At the end of the prologue, there was something called "The 3 C's of World History", which I am going to try and apply to everything I learn in this class. The 3 C's are: change, comparisons, and connections. I feel like if I think about these three things as I learn and read, I will feel like the material is more relevant to me. :)

The first era of humankind was the Paleolithic era, or the old stone age. It was called this because humans only used stone tools at the time. This was a time before agriculture, where hunter-gatherers roamed around looking for their next meal. The next era was the Neolithic era, or the new stone age. A lot of history books tend to skip the first two eras of human history because not much has been documented from this time. But that doesn't lessen their importance. In fact, up to 95% of our history is accounted for in these two eras. 

*A cool fact that the author said was that B.C. is actually starting to be referred to as B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and A.D. is becoming C.E. (Common Era). This change is to help history become less Eurocentric and Christian-based!*

Most early humans originated in Africa, but overtime, they branched out to different places, which changed culture and technology for humans. As they migrated, they created state and city based civilizations that gave way to new ways of life and innovations. This leads us into the Neolithic or the Agricultural Revolution.

Humans migrated from Africa to various places like the Middle East, Europe, Asia, then onto Australia, the Americas, and the Pacific. The Ice Age played a major role in connecting some land masses and promoting migration. Australian migration was notable because early humans came from Indonesia on boats, a major innovation. Settlement of the Americas and the Pacific took significantly longer than the other places, mostly because it took a while for people to penetrate eastern Siberia. Migrating to the Pacific required the use of boats and some navigational skills. It blows me away that early humans were able to find their way around the world with some knowledge of how to navigate the oceans. What is also remarkable is that agricultural people traveled to the Pacific, both men and women. Humans travelling to the Pacific must have known they wanted to colonize these new lands.

Let's backtrack to the Paleolithic era. It was cool reading about the way early humans lived and how that way of life compares to our way of life nowadays. The first human societies were small and personal, with a strong sense of kinship. They were nomadic, mainly relying on the land and animals to decide whether or not they should stay in a certain place. They didn't have any sort of system for trading or exchanging of goods. Early societies were egalitarian and free of repression. There was a sense of equality between the sexes. Humans during this era would engage in "sex play" whenever they wanted. There was no concept of virginity, rape, wife beating, or anything of that sort. Their societies were both polygamous and monogamous. It might sound peaceful and nice, but violence among people in these societies were common and life was dangerous. There were also rules, though they weren't written down like rules today. These rules included governing sexual behavior, who could hunt or gather in specific territories, etc. In this hunter gatherer society, people worked fewer hours to meet their needs than in an agricultural or industrial society. This is mostly due to the fact that these early societies didn't need much in general. Life expectancy back then was quite low. Though there isn't a lot of evidence to tell us about religion and spirituality in these societies, these people probably had some type of spiritual life. This can be inferred from their many rock and cave art. Some societies were polytheistic and others were monotheistic. They probably didn't have any type of formation to their religion, so that means no priests. Instead, there were probably shaman, or people that could get in touch with the spiritual realm.

After the Ice Age came a period of gradual warming, which affected humans heavily. First, animals and plants that couldn't grow in the Ice Age began to grow again. Human population grew. As people got more comfortable, the need to migrate all the time winded down and they started to settle down. Suddenly, the egalitarianism that was present in Paleolithic times stopped as people began to get luckier in terms of land and food.

It was fascinating to learn about early people in the Paleolithic era since high school World History classes tend to skim over it. I'm excited to find out more!