Chapter 3 Chapter 2 Humans - Food Gatherers
The study and description of the past; an outstanding achievement of modern man, though its importance has not been fully appreciated.The ancients knew very little about what happened before them.Thucydides, the most unbiased of the Greek historians, began his study of the Peloponnesian War by saying that nothing significant had happened before his time.His ignorance of history prevented him from realizing the incomparable contribution and glory of Athens.Our age, by contrast, is more historically focused than any previous age.We know more about the early history of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese than they did themselves.Moreover, scientists in the fields of geology, archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, and biology have applied our knowledge to the prehistoric period before the recorded history of civilization.This is of great importance, since humans only learned to write about 5,000 years ago, yet the origins of our ancestors, hominids, date back about 2 million years.In this chapter we will study the hundred thousand years before the history of civilization.The real formation of the human race took place during this long period.However, people at that time did not make a living by farming like their descendants; but, like other animals around them, they made a living by looking for and collecting plants everywhere.
The earth we live on is an asteroid constantly revolving in a small Milky Way. Compared with the whole universe, it is surprisingly small, just like a speck of dust in the Pacific Ocean.The earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and the earliest life, that is, the original single-celled organisms, appeared on the earth about 1.5 billion years later.People have always believed that there is a qualitative difference between living things and non-living things; however, scientists now no longer accept this idea of completely separating living things from non-living things, and regard living things as being naturally evolved from non-living things.They classify all substances according to the classification level of the organization; non-living things are transformed into living things at a certain level of this organization.To be more specific, electrons, protons and neutrons are combined to form various atoms; various atoms are combined to form various molecules; biology.
Organisms continue to evolve from low-level to high-level: from microorganisms to primitive plants, such as seaweed; then to invertebrates, such as jellyfish and worms; and then to vertebrates.These vertebrates, together with some invertebrates and plants in their collateral lineages, began to successfully adapt to life on land about 300 million years ago.Amphibians were the first to adapt to life on land, followed by a large number of reptiles in prehistoric times, birds, and finally mammals.Mammals have dominated the earth's biological world for 60 million years.
Scientists agree without a doubt that humans belong to the animal kingdom—specifically, to the order primates; along with humans, tree shrews, lemurs, tarsiers, Monkeys and apes.Several fields of research provide substantial evidence for this claim.Anatomists have found that, on the whole, there are many basic similarities between human beings and other advanced animals in terms of bone, muscle and organ structure.Embryologists have noticed that human embryos show some characteristics of lower organisms at different growth stages, such as semicircular gills at one month of embryos, and underdeveloped tail at two months of embryos.Anthropologists point out that the study of human fossils proves that humans evolved from common apes.Other scientists have also found many similar signs of the connection between humans and other animals, such as: the chemical composition of ape blood is very similar to that of humans; apes and humans share common parasites; apes and humans learn way is also similar.
The evolution of human ancestors occurred in the Pleistocene era with four great ice ages and three interglacial periods.The drastic environmental changes at that time forced all animals to constantly adapt to new environments.The key to adaptation does not depend on brute force, nor on the ability to withstand cold, but on the continuous growth of intelligence, on whether it can use its intelligence to better adapt itself to the needs of the environment.Of course, this is the secret why human beings can occupy the indisputable first place on earth.First, human talents are multifaceted.Humans are different from gibbons or polar bears: gibbons have soft and slender arms and are only adapted to forest life; polar bears have thick white fur and are only adapted to arctic environments; and humans are by no means adapted to only one environment. On the contrary, humans adapt to the environment. Through their own brains, humans use their own brains to adapt to all circumstances.
At one time, it was assumed that humans and great apes arose from a common ancestor, and the task of anthropologists was to find the "transitional link" between them.It is now unanimously agreed that among the ancestors of human beings, that is, the proto-humans with a similar human shape, some have been able to use simple stone tools and weapons; and human beings are the product of many generations of proto-humans after long-term natural selection.The earliest hominids were the now extinct primates.It is generally believed that they first appeared in the tropical grasslands of eastern and southern Africa, about 2.5 million years ago.However, recent findings in southern Ethiopia suggest that this date can be pushed back, to about 4 million years ago.The pelvis and legs of this primate are very similar to those of modern humans, but its brain volume is only one-third of that of humans, and it is hardly as large as that of existing apes.Thus, the locomotor system of the human-like biped was combined with the ape-like brain.The level of intelligence is low, and the level of language and creative tools is naturally correspondingly low.The significance of this finding is that it shows that the human brain did not begin to create human culture; the result of.
The African savannah is an ideal environment for primates at this level of development.The climate is mild there, even if there is a lack of clothes and clothes.And live well.Moreover, the vast savannah, unlike dense forests and desolate deserts, has water sources and edible animals.Therefore, although the tools of the Pleistocene primates are very simple, just some stone tools with a sharp end and a thick blunt end, their food is very rich, including eggs, crabs, turtles, birds, and rodents such as rabbits and mice. , and the duiker.The duiker lies motionless in the grass when in danger, so it is an easy prey animal.
Homo erectus, the direct ancestor of humans, replaced the Pleistocene primates about 500,000 years ago.Their brains were twice the size of their predecessors and two-thirds those of modern humans.The commonly used stone tool is the hand axe, which is more complicated than the stone tools of the past and is the earliest well-designed tool.They are usually almond-shaped, six to eight inches long, several inches wide, and an inch thick.The Bing end is round and can be grasped in the palm; the other end is pointed, and one side of the tip is sharp.This hand ax has many uses.Can be used as a hand axe, knife, scraper, or as an awl.The tool's effectiveness is attested to by the extensive excavation of the remains of large butchered animals—deer, rhino, pig, elephant, buffalo, hippopotamus, horse, antelope, and gazelle.The large-scale hunting of big animals also reflected the high efficiency of group organization and collective action as well as the level of language communication at that time.Another sign of social life is that at that time there was an expression of respect for the dead.Some ocher or hematite is often seen on the soil covering the dead.Almost certainly this represented some sort of religious funeral.The concept of decoration also began to sprout, and some pore beads, perforated animal teeth and shells are often seen in fossils.And most importantly, at that time, they had learned how to make fire by hand, as evidenced by the black circles five to six inches in diameter on the dirt floor.
The control of fire had a fundamental and far-reaching impact.The human ancestors were liberated from the shackles of their own extremely limited energy supply, so that the human ancestors were able to survive the ice age.The use of fire greatly increased food sources by cooking a large number of previously inedible roots and plant seeds.The use of fire also made it possible for hominids to rush out of the warm steppes that they could not leave in the past and disperse across the globe. —The widespread and far-reaching effects of the use of fire are still felt today.
Human ancestors finally completed their entire evolution process about 35,000 years ago, and transformed into human beings—"human beings capable of thinking".In many ways, this transition can be seen as the second major turning point in the development of events on Earth; the emergence of life from inorganic matter was the first major turning point.After the extremely important first major turning point, the evolution of various organisms is realized in the process of adapting to their respective environments through mutation and natural selection, that is to say, through the adaptation of genetic factors to the environment; This was particularly evident during the Pleistocene period of dramatic climate change.However, with the advent of humans, the evolutionary process turned in the opposite direction.It is no longer genetics that adapt to the environment—it is the genetics of humans changing the environment to suit themselves.Today, the third epoch-making turning point is approaching.With the deepening of human understanding of the structure and function of genetic factors, it will soon be possible to change one's own genetic factors while modifying the environment.
Human beings, and only human beings, can create the predetermined environment, which today is called culture.The reason for this is that only human beings can imagine or represent things and ideas that do not exist in the reality here and now.Only humans laugh, only humans know they are going to die.Only human beings desperately want to know the universe and its origin, and want to know their position in the universe and their future situation.
A painting from an American museum: a Neolithic village in Denmark circa 2700 BC.
Humans are able to cope well with their surroundings without undergoing biological mutations due to their unique ability to radically change their environment.Living in the arctic is inseparable from fur, living in the desert requires water, and living in water depends on fins; all these can be solved through the culture created by human beings, that is, through new non-biological ways.Specifically, human culture includes tools, clothing, ornaments, institutions, languages, art forms, religious beliefs, and customs.All of this enables humans to adapt to their natural environment and relationships with each other.In fact, the history described in the following chapters is also the cultural history created by human beings from the birth of the Paleolithic Age to the present day.
Just as Homo erectus made more effective tools than their predecessors, the Pleistocene primates, humans have developed a so-called "stone knife technology" with their superior intelligence.They removed long, sharp flakes, or "stone knives," from the stone core by pressing, and made various new types of tools and "tools for making tools."The degree of technological progress can be illustrated by the following values: stone tools made by Pleistocene primates have an average blade length of only 5 cm per pound of flint; stone tools made by Homo erectus have an average blade length of 100 cm per pound of flint; The stone tools made by people in the later period have an average blade length of 300 to 1200 cm per pound of flint.
Some new tools were made of different materials, such as spears tipped with bone, horn or flint and scrapers with bone or wooden handles and stone edges.At this time there were also new inventions of projectile mechanisms, such as ropes with a heavy ball attached to one end for catching cattle, catapults, spear throwers, and bows and arrows.These new inventions were relatively ineffective at first, but as they were continuously improved, they finally became the most formidable weapons before the invention of modern firearms.In Upper Paleolithic cultures there were other inventions such as awls made of bone and ivory, limited bone needles, fasteners for belts, and even buttons. —All this shows that the ape-men of the Magdalenian period had trousers of hides and jackets with fitting sleeves.
Although the technology of the Upper Paleolithic was much more advanced than that of the Early Paleolithic 500,000 years earlier, it was still primitive due to low productivity.People lived a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence by gathering wild plants and catching animals.Under normal circumstances, their subsistence is only sufficient to maintain themselves and their relatives, and there is nothing left for other purposes.This is extremely important because it places food-gatherer cultural development within impenetrable limits.
For example, it is absolutely impossible to establish a complete political organization without sufficient manpower and material resources.In fact, there really wasn't any formal political institution with a full-time leader.Hunters are usually combined into autonomous groups in groups of about 20 to 50 people.However, in areas with abundant food sources, such as the Magdalenian period in the Northwest America, which was rich in inexhaustible salmon, and in the Dordogne Valley in southern France with large reindeer herds, there were also more people. group.Judging from the hunting groups at that time, in the Paleolithic Age, the power of group leaders was strictly limited. At that time, there was no mandatory power established by the system and recognized by everyone.The leaders came into being naturally due to their special purpose: old people who are familiar with religious ceremonies are elected as masters of ceremonies, while young people with outstanding hunting skills are elected as leaders of hunting groups.But the most important thing is that all these leaders fulfilled their duties not by using power but through their own influence, because there was no system at that time for anyone to impose his will on others.
Social organization at this stage is as simple as political organization, if the two can be distinguished at all.The basic unit of social organization is the family, which consists of father, mother and their underage, unmarried children.Polygamy is usually allowed, but in practice such families are rare.Relationships within and between families depend on kinship.Each has responsibilities to others and has the same rights and privileges.They help each other in finding food, shelter from wind and rain, and defense from enemies.Sometimes tribes fought with each other over personal feuds and over hunting and fishing territory.However, because Paleolithic societies lacked the human and material resources necessary to sustain large-scale warfare, large-scale warfare did not become possible until the introduction of agriculture, greatly improved productivity, and a corresponding increase in population.In short, the essence of Paleolithic social organization was collaboration.Fundamentally, families and cliques are cooperative groups that together engage in an uphill struggle for survival.
Mutual cooperation is evident not only in social activities but also in economic affairs.There is no need for any special division of labor among hunters other than a division based on sex.Every man and woman has all the knowledge and skills appropriate to his gender and plays his role accordingly.During the Early Paleolithic, women gathered fruit, nuts, grains, and digging roots and insects, while men hunted small animals and fish.Since the forage economy was dominant at the time, there was little difference between men and women.However, as tools improved, men were able to organize large hunting groups and kill large animals, while women remained close to their settlements to gather, care for children, and cook food.This greatly enhanced the status of men as food providers.Perhaps it is because of this, coupled with their increased physical strength, aggressiveness, and high hunting skills during the hunting process, that men occupied a dominant position over women at the end of the Paleolithic Age, just as they are prevalent in Australian scholars today. The scene among the inhabitants.
Now, turn our discussion of social institutions and customs to beliefs in general.We find that primitive man has basically no historical, developmental attitude towards himself and society.They imagine that the future will be the same as the present, just as the present is the past.Thus, there is no idea of change in their minds, nor any thought of criticizing or interfering with existing institutions and customs.In their view, everything in the universe, including themselves, their culture, and their dwellings, was created earlier and will surely continue unchanged into the future.The creation myths of the hunter-gatherers, including their demigod heroes, are strikingly similar.These heroes create natural environments, arrange animals for hunting, breed humans, and teach them various arts and customs.
The following Andaman Islanders myth about the origin of the world is a fairly typical example:
Primitive man knows a great deal about the conditions of nature.They cannot live without caring about everything around them.However, they only know what is happening in the natural world, but not why; if they encounter floods, droughts, or cannot catch many animals and fish, they cannot explain it from the natural world itself.That is, they do not know how to deal with nature by naturalistic means, and end up turning to supernatural beings, turning to magic, and spending a great deal of time and effort foolishly beseeching nature to enrich their lives. .Primitive people believe that by using every useful animal or plant as the totem of the group, by setting up various idols, symbols and performing imitative dances, various animals can multiply and food sources will be abundant; as long as the relevant totems are strictly followed According to the various regulations, their group can grow, and the source of food can be guaranteed.
At first it seemed that all group members participated in religious ceremonies, but by the end of the Paleolithic there appeared witch doctors or wizards who were not yet completely out of productive activities.Primitives believe that food is the most important thing in the world they live in; whether the source of food is abundant, whether they can be free from disease and disaster, and have good luck are all at the mercy of certain divine powers, while witch doctors or wizards have nothing to do with these Divine power has a special connection.Witch doctors and wizards are increasingly separated from the special activities of producing food and making tools. Their duty is to perform witchcraft and pray for the benefit and happiness of everyone.Today, where food-gathering cultures have survived, shamans are still found among the nomadic Himans of South Africa, among the Eskimos and among the Australian Aboriginals.The painting "Wizard" in the cave of San Freres in France is the earliest painting depicting a wizard.The painting is now being called a "terrible masterpiece" of the Paleolithic.The painting depicts a man dressed in deerskin, with a pair of stag horns on his head, a face like an owl, two wolf ears, upper limbs like bear arms, and a horse's tail.There are other paintings near this painting; these paintings show that this cave was a place where a wizard gathered clan members and held religious ceremonies. His listeners braved the dangers.
However, in the Paleolithic Age, due to the very low productivity, like the later hierarchical monk ruling group, they could not afford to support them at that time.That is, it was not yet possible to produce a theology with great social cohesion.People focus on personal fantasies and have a vague idea of God and spirits.Religion has not been used as a tool to control society.People's interests are not determined by personal conduct, but are inhibited by supernatural phenomena.This is clearly shown by the words of an Eskimo to Arctic explorer Nout Rasmussen.He said: "We trust our witch doctors, our magicians. We trust them because we want to live longer, because we don't want to be threatened by famine and starvation. We trust them because Make our lives safe and our food secure. If we do not trust the magicians, the animals we hunt will disappear. If we do not heed their advice, we will get sick and die."
The fear of inexplicable supernatural phenomena and the desire for humans to control them was reflected not only in religion but also in art.The most outstanding exponents of Paleolithic art are the extraordinary cave paintings; the best of these are found in southern France and northwestern Spain.Cave paintings often feature large game such as bison, bear, horse, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and wild boar.The picture is rich and colorful, and the image is lifelike and full of vitality.The cave paintings were clearly created for a practical purpose, despite the artist's remarkable artistic talent.Primitives generally lived in the front of the cave, near the entrance of the cave, but these paintings were drawn deep in the cave, in the darkest and most dangerous place.And these paintings often overlapped each other, obviously when the painters painted them, they did not think of preserving their works.It would seem that Paleolithic painters went deep into caves to paint as realistically as possible the animals they hunted, in the belief that they might thereby endow themselves with some sort of magic.
Two cave paintings from prehistoric France
Using images to express what one desires is also very popular among contemporary primitive people.The German anthropologist, Professor Leo Frobenis, saw this astonishing image in person during his 1905 expedition in the Congo led by a group of Pygmies.He said:
Desperate to know what preparations they had made, I left camp before daybreak and crept quietly through the bushes towards the open high ground they had chosen the night before.When it was daylight the pygmies came, and the woman among them.A few men squatted down, pulled out the weeds in a small plot, and smoothed the ground with their hands.One of them drew something on the clean ground with his forefinger, while his partner whispered a spell beside him.Then there was a waiting silence.As the sun rose above the horizon, a man sat down on the edge of the flat with his arrows on the bowstring.After a few minutes, the sun's rays fell on the pattern at his feet.At that very moment, the woman spread her arms towards the sun, and shouted something I could not understand, and the man with the bow shot the arrow, and the woman shouted again.After the shout, the three men skipped away through the bushes while the woman stood for a few minutes, then turned and walked slowly towards our camp.As soon as she was out of sight, I ran forward and looked down at the pattern on the flat sand; I saw a painting of an antelope about four hands wide, with a pygmy stick stuck in its neck. arrow.
After seeing the painting in the sand, I turned back to camp to get my camera; intending to snap it before the men came back.But when the woman found out, she understood my intentions, and there was a lot of trouble, so I had to give up my plan to take pictures.That afternoon, the hunters returned with a large "Korala" with an arrow stuck in its neck.They handed over the booty and turned back toward the hill behind us, carrying handfuls of chamois wool and a gourd full of chamois blood.Two days later, they caught up with us again.Of the three pygmies; the oldest seemed to trust me the most.In the evenings, when we drank frothy toddy together, I asked him for advice.He told me that he and two other companions had gone back to the place where the pre-hunt had been prepared, in order to smear the painting on the ground with the fur and blood of the antelope, to retrieve the arrow, and to wipe out the whole thing without leaving a trace.What they meant by this I don't know, but I guess they must have thought that if they didn't, the blood of the slain antelope would ruin them all. "Elimination of traces" must also be done at dawn.The pygmy begged me not to tell the woman, who had mentioned it to me.He seemed very terrified of the consequences of his talk, for he was gone the next day, along with his partner.
Finally, there are many aspects of Paleolithic culture that are extremely interesting.In the Paleolithic age, because the warm bond of kinship permeates and determines the entire social relationship, the relationship between people is completely equal.Everyone has clear obligations and rewards that are recognized by everyone.While neither could be sure or predict their own prospects, they did not feel worried or alienated from each other.To this day, the life of the Aboriginal Australian is passed like this: he takes a piece of broken glass, fashions it expertly into an arrowhead or spear point, attaches it to a spear thrower or a bow that is already strung, and sets off to Shoot the prey.Upon return, dinner is prepared with proper ritual.Start telling stories after dinner, tell the adventures of the day to those who rarely leave home, and end the day with the sound of stories.Thus the Paleolithic hunter became fully human; moreover, to a degree of completeness that no man since the Agricultural Revolution has approached.
But the bonding force of kinship that held Paleolithic society together was both comforting and oppressive.The individual is completely subservient to the group or tribe.The group or tribe is seen as a never-ending procession of the dead, the living, and the unborn, blessed with all the unseen powers of the spirit world.The individual belongs entirely to this vital team.Undoubtedly, the vast majority of people do not have a feeling of being chained, but see themselves as participants in the process.The fact remains, though, that while there is a sense of security in the ranks, that comes with a stagnation of development.The Paleolithic lifestyle can satisfy people's spiritual needs, but it is a dead end.In Arunta, Australia, there is no institutionalized authority of any kind, but elders can negotiate with tribal enemies to kill those who do not live according to tribal traditions.
It is this tradition, this seemingly absurd and obligatory tradition, that constitutes another very important aspect of Paleolithic society.Today, human life styles are usually divided into two types: the "progressive way of life" in the modern industrialized West and the "traditional way of life" in the underdeveloped agricultural non-Western regions.The latter is indeed "traditional" compared with the former; but it is by no means traditional compared with the primitive tribal society which it replaced after the Agricultural Revolution.
As we shall see later, the Agricultural Revolution set off a chain reaction of urbanization, class differentiation, and social fragmentation that fundamentally undermined the remarkable equality of primitive societies.However, in the process, the day-by-day confinement caused by the conformity of tribal society was also eliminated; thus, for better or worse, human beings began to develop from hunting grounds to big cities, from relying on their own strength to mastering atomic power. this significant progress.Before examining the Agricultural Revolution, however, it is important to examine how Paleolithic man was dispersed across the globe and the resulting effects, which are still felt today.
It is often thought that the population explosion is a phenomenon unique to our times, but it is not.Each of the spectacular population booms occurred when there was a major breakthrough in production technology.The reason is obvious: the development of technology leads to an increase in productivity, which allows a huge increase in the number of people that can be supported.From the Early Paleolithic to the Late Paleolithic, technology actually advanced a lot, which resulted in a dramatic increase in the population.It is estimated that at the beginning of the Paleolithic Age, the population of Proto-humans was 125,000, and by the end of the Paleolithic Age 10,000 years ago, that is, on the eve of the Agricultural Revolution, the human population had increased to 5.32 million.The population has increased by more than 42 times, which is comparable to the population explosion that followed the subsequent technological revolutions.
Another demographic pattern that follows from the Paleolithic (and which has since been repeated many times) is that the growth of the population at the head of the technological revolution was uneven, causing the population to disperse wider area.This pattern has held true since the emergence of life on Earth, and has been associated with the anthropologist M. D．Sahlins and E. R．Consistent with the following laws of cultural domination proposed by Seves.The latter argues: "...a cultural system that can more effectively develop energy in a certain environment often sacrifices a system that develops less efficiently in order to gain its own expansion in that environment. ...The characteristic of advanced systems is that they can exploit a variety of resources more effectively than lower institutions, and therefore in most circumstances they are more effective and operate on a wider scale."
At any time, the most adaptable species, that is, the species that make the most efficient use of the natural environment, are those that predominate in, and continually extend, their range.Thus, only primitive pebble tools, poorly clothed Pleistocene primates were unable to extend their range of activities beyond the warm savannah.And Homo erectus, who holds good tools, wears clothes, and can control fire, can expand his range of activities from Africa northward to the temperate zone of Eurasia-the widely dispersed Javanese ape-man, Peking Man and Homo unearthed. Fossil remains of Heidelberger man attest to this.Human beings have mastered more complex technologies, so they are more adaptable to nature. They can not only go south into the tropical rain forests of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also go north into the tundra of Siberia.
After crossing these areas, humans crossed one land bridge into Australia and another into Alaska, thereby occupying the remaining continents.Once humans entered the American continent, they migrated in a fan shape in all directions, but at different speeds.The movement toward the south was relatively rapid. From about 15,000 BC to 8,000 BC, humans advanced from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.However, the eastward movement was quite slow. Due to the harsh environment in the Canadian Arctic, humans did not reach Greenland until around 4000 BC.So far, human footprints have covered all continents except Antarctica, and together with dogs, which are inseparable from humans, they have become the most widely distributed animals in the world.
While human beings were scattered to various places, there were gradually racial differences, and various so-called races appeared with distinctive features in skin color, hairstyle and facial shape.It is generally believed that the formation of these races was mainly due to the adaptation of various geographical groups of human beings to their different environments and their relative isolation from each other.Regarding the differences in races, it is very important that the differences in races occurred very late, after the appearance of human beings.The modern races, therefore, descend from the same ancestors who were fully developed as human beings.This explains why Europeans were able to interbreed with the races of all the regions they found; and why the extant races of man do not differ very much from each other in their natural intellect--which has in fact been the case. All anthropologists agree.A primitive man of the Upper Paleolithic or a contemporary Australian Aboriginal had as much hope of attaining a university degree as a member of any other race, if given the opportunity.
The exact circumstances under which the races of the various regions were formed are not known, and probably never will be.It will suffice, however, to note that by about 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Glacial Age, the races had a generally recognized distribution over the globe.Caucasians are distributed in Europe, North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, and are penetrating into India and Central Asia; The Himans, unlike their later situation, are distributed in the rest of Africa; there are also some Pygmies, the little blacks, who live in the forest areas of India and Southeast Asia, while India, the remaining vast areas of Southeast Asia, and Australia are Occupied by people of Australian race; those distributed in East Asia and North and South America are people of Mongolian race.
Although this distribution is roughly similar to what we know, Figure 3 "Global Ethnic Distribution" shows that by 1000 A.D., the distribution of various ethnic groups in the world has undergone fundamental changes, which have intensified until today.As we will see later, these changes were a direct result of subsequent technological revolutions.The real reason why the Bushmen, Pygmies, and Australians will disappear, and the number of American Indians in most parts of the Americas will decrease, is that their development speed cannot keep up with the technological revolution.In other words, 1,000 years ago, the population of Caucasians and Bushmen was about the same, but today, Bushmen account for only 1/100,000 of Caucasians, and this is the actual reason.
As noted in the previous chapter, differences in technological development, and consequently in population size, do not reflect corresponding differences in the natural talents of the various races.The former difference is mainly due to the different distribution areas of various races: Mongolians and Caucasians are located in the center of Eurasia, blacks are distributed in areas of Africa susceptible to Eurasian influence, while Bushmans and The Pygmies were unlucky enough to be isolated in remote parts of Africa, and the Australians were isolated on remote islands.地理位置的不同使各种族的发展速度有快有慢，从而决定了人类大家造今天的成员组成、各成员的地位及相互间的关系。
A painting from an American museum: a Neolithic village in Denmark circa 2700 BC.
Humans are able to cope well with their surroundings without undergoing biological mutations due to their unique ability to radically change their environment.Living in the arctic is inseparable from fur, living in the desert requires water, and living in water depends on fins; all these can be solved through the culture created by human beings, that is, through new non-biological ways.Specifically, human culture includes tools, clothing, ornaments, institutions, languages, art forms, religious beliefs, and customs.All of this enables humans to adapt to their natural environment and relationships with each other.In fact, the history described in the following chapters is also the cultural history created by human beings from the birth of the Paleolithic Age to the present day.
Just as Homo erectus made more effective tools than their predecessors, the Pleistocene primates, humans have developed a so-called "stone knife technology" with their superior intelligence.They removed long, sharp flakes, or "stone knives," from the stone core by pressing, and made various new types of tools and "tools for making tools."The degree of technological progress can be illustrated by the following values: stone tools made by Pleistocene primates have an average blade length of only 5 cm per pound of flint; stone tools made by Homo erectus have an average blade length of 100 cm per pound of flint; The stone tools made by people in the later period have an average blade length of 300 to 1200 cm per pound of flint.
Some new tools were made of different materials, such as spears tipped with bone, horn or flint and scrapers with bone or wooden handles and stone edges.At this time there were also new inventions of projectile mechanisms, such as ropes with a heavy ball attached to one end for catching cattle, catapults, spear throwers, and bows and arrows.These new inventions were relatively ineffective at first, but as they were continuously improved, they finally became the most formidable weapons before the invention of modern firearms.In Upper Paleolithic cultures there were other inventions such as awls made of bone and ivory, limited bone needles, fasteners for belts, and even buttons. —All this shows that the ape-men of the Magdalenian period had trousers of hides and jackets with fitting sleeves.
Although the technology of the Upper Paleolithic was much more advanced than that of the Early Paleolithic 500,000 years earlier, it was still primitive due to low productivity.People lived a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence by gathering wild plants and catching animals.Under normal circumstances, their subsistence is only sufficient to maintain themselves and their relatives, and there is nothing left for other purposes.This is extremely important because it places food-gatherer cultural development within impenetrable limits.
For example, it is absolutely impossible to establish a complete political organization without sufficient manpower and material resources.In fact, there really wasn't any formal political institution with a full-time leader.Hunters are usually combined into autonomous groups in groups of about 20 to 50 people.However, in areas with abundant food sources, such as the Magdalenian period in the Northwest America, which was rich in inexhaustible salmon, and in the Dordogne Valley in southern France with large reindeer herds, there were also more people. group.Judging from the hunting groups at that time, in the Paleolithic Age, the power of group leaders was strictly limited. At that time, there was no mandatory power established by the system and recognized by everyone.The leaders came into being naturally due to their special purpose: old people who are familiar with religious ceremonies are elected as masters of ceremonies, while young people with outstanding hunting skills are elected as leaders of hunting groups.But the most important thing is that all these leaders fulfilled their duties not by using power but through their own influence, because there was no system at that time for anyone to impose his will on others.
Social organization at this stage is as simple as political organization, if the two can be distinguished at all.The basic unit of social organization is the family, which consists of father, mother and their underage, unmarried children.Polygamy is usually allowed, but in practice such families are rare.Relationships within and between families depend on kinship.Each has responsibilities to others and has the same rights and privileges.They help each other in finding food, shelter from wind and rain, and defense from enemies.Sometimes tribes fought with each other over personal feuds and over hunting and fishing territory.However, because Paleolithic societies lacked the human and material resources necessary to sustain large-scale warfare, large-scale warfare did not become possible until the introduction of agriculture, greatly improved productivity, and a corresponding increase in population.In short, the essence of Paleolithic social organization was collaboration.Fundamentally, families and cliques are cooperative groups that together engage in an uphill struggle for survival.
Mutual cooperation is evident not only in social activities but also in economic affairs.There is no need for any special division of labor among hunters other than a division based on sex.Every man and woman has all the knowledge and skills appropriate to his gender and plays his role accordingly.During the Early Paleolithic, women gathered fruit, nuts, grains, and digging roots and insects, while men hunted small animals and fish.Since the forage economy was dominant at the time, there was little difference between men and women.However, as tools improved, men were able to organize large hunting groups and kill large animals, while women remained close to their settlements to gather, care for children, and cook food.This greatly enhanced the status of men as food providers.Perhaps it is because of this, coupled with their increased physical strength, aggressiveness, and high hunting skills during the hunting process, that men occupied a dominant position over women at the end of the Paleolithic Age, just as they are prevalent in Australian scholars today. The scene among the inhabitants.
Now, turn our discussion of social institutions and customs to beliefs in general.We find that primitive man has basically no historical, developmental attitude towards himself and society.They imagine that the future will be the same as the present, just as the present is the past.Thus, there is no idea of change in their minds, nor any thought of criticizing or interfering with existing institutions and customs.In their view, everything in the universe, including themselves, their culture, and their dwellings, was created earlier and will surely continue unchanged into the future.The creation myths of the hunter-gatherers, including their demigod heroes, are strikingly similar.These heroes create natural environments, arrange animals for hunting, breed humans, and teach them various arts and customs.
The following Andaman Islanders myth about the origin of the world is a fairly typical example:
Primitive man knows a great deal about the conditions of nature.They cannot live without caring about everything around them.However, they only know what is happening in the natural world, but not why; if they encounter floods, droughts, or cannot catch many animals and fish, they cannot explain it from the natural world itself.That is, they do not know how to deal with nature by naturalistic means, and end up turning to supernatural beings, turning to magic, and spending a great deal of time and effort foolishly beseeching nature to enrich their lives. .Primitive people believe that by using every useful animal or plant as the totem of the group, by setting up various idols, symbols and performing imitative dances, various animals can multiply and food sources will be abundant; as long as the relevant totems are strictly followed According to the various regulations, their group can grow, and the source of food can be guaranteed.
At first it seemed that all group members participated in religious ceremonies, but by the end of the Paleolithic there appeared witch doctors or wizards who were not yet completely out of productive activities.Primitives believe that food is the most important thing in the world they live in; whether the source of food is abundant, whether they can be free from disease and disaster, and have good luck are all at the mercy of certain divine powers, while witch doctors or wizards have nothing to do with these Divine power has a special connection.Witch doctors and wizards are increasingly separated from the special activities of producing food and making tools. Their duty is to perform witchcraft and pray for the benefit and happiness of everyone.Today, where food-gathering cultures have survived, shamans are still found among the nomadic Himans of South Africa, among the Eskimos and among the Australian Aboriginals.The painting "Wizard" in the cave of San Freres in France is the earliest painting depicting a wizard.The painting is now being called a "terrible masterpiece" of the Paleolithic.The painting depicts a man dressed in deerskin, with a pair of stag horns on his head, a face like an owl, two wolf ears, upper limbs like bear arms, and a horse's tail.There are other paintings near this painting; these paintings show that this cave was a place where a wizard gathered clan members and held religious ceremonies. His listeners braved the dangers.
However, in the Paleolithic Age, due to the very low productivity, like the later hierarchical monk ruling group, they could not afford to support them at that time.That is, it was not yet possible to produce a theology with great social cohesion.People focus on personal fantasies and have a vague idea of God and spirits.Religion has not been used as a tool to control society.People's interests are not determined by personal conduct, but are inhibited by supernatural phenomena.This is clearly shown by the words of an Eskimo to Arctic explorer Nout Rasmussen.He said: "We trust our witch doctors, our magicians. We trust them because we want to live longer, because we don't want to be threatened by famine and starvation. We trust them because Make our lives safe and our food secure. If we do not trust the magicians, the animals we hunt will disappear. If we do not heed their advice, we will get sick and die."
The fear of inexplicable supernatural phenomena and the desire for humans to control them was reflected not only in religion but also in art.The most outstanding exponents of Paleolithic art are the extraordinary cave paintings; the best of these are found in southern France and northwestern Spain.Cave paintings often feature large game such as bison, bear, horse, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and wild boar.The picture is rich and colorful, and the image is lifelike and full of vitality.The cave paintings were clearly created for a practical purpose, despite the artist's remarkable artistic talent.Primitives generally lived in the front of the cave, near the entrance of the cave, but these paintings were drawn deep in the cave, in the darkest and most dangerous place.And these paintings often overlapped each other, obviously when the painters painted them, they did not think of preserving their works.It would seem that Paleolithic painters went deep into caves to paint as realistically as possible the animals they hunted, in the belief that they might thereby endow themselves with some sort of magic.
Two cave paintings from prehistoric France
Using images to express what one desires is also very popular among contemporary primitive people.The German anthropologist, Professor Leo Frobenis, saw this astonishing image in person during his 1905 expedition in the Congo led by a group of Pygmies.He said:
Desperate to know what preparations they had made, I left camp before daybreak and crept quietly through the bushes towards the open high ground they had chosen the night before.When it was daylight the pygmies came, and the woman among them.A few men squatted down, pulled out the weeds in a small plot, and smoothed the ground with their hands.One of them drew something on the clean ground with his forefinger, while his partner whispered a spell beside him.Then there was a waiting silence.As the sun rose above the horizon, a man sat down on the edge of the flat with his arrows on the bowstring.After a few minutes, the sun's rays fell on the pattern at his feet.At that very moment, the woman spread her arms towards the sun, and shouted something I could not understand, and the man with the bow shot the arrow, and the woman shouted again.After the shout, the three men skipped away through the bushes while the woman stood for a few minutes, then turned and walked slowly towards our camp.As soon as she was out of sight, I ran forward and looked down at the pattern on the flat sand; I saw a painting of an antelope about four hands wide, with a pygmy stick stuck in its neck. arrow.
After seeing the painting in the sand, I turned back to camp to get my camera; intending to snap it before the men came back.But when the woman found out, she understood my intentions, and there was a lot of trouble, so I had to give up my plan to take pictures.That afternoon, the hunters returned with a large "Korala" with an arrow stuck in its neck.They handed over the booty and turned back toward the hill behind us, carrying handfuls of chamois wool and a gourd full of chamois blood.Two days later, they caught up with us again.Of the three pygmies; the oldest seemed to trust me the most.In the evenings, when we drank frothy toddy together, I asked him for advice.He told me that he and two other companions had gone back to the place where the pre-hunt had been prepared, in order to smear the painting on the ground with the fur and blood of the antelope, to retrieve the arrow, and to wipe out the whole thing without leaving a trace.What they meant by this I don't know, but I guess they must have thought that if they didn't, the blood of the slain antelope would ruin them all. "Elimination of traces" must also be done at dawn.The pygmy begged me not to tell the woman, who had mentioned it to me.He seemed very terrified of the consequences of his talk, for he was gone the next day, along with his partner.
Finally, there are many aspects of Paleolithic culture that are extremely interesting.In the Paleolithic age, because the warm bond of kinship permeates and determines the entire social relationship, the relationship between people is completely equal.Everyone has clear obligations and rewards that are recognized by everyone.While neither could be sure or predict their own prospects, they did not feel worried or alienated from each other.To this day, the life of the Aboriginal Australian is passed like this: he takes a piece of broken glass, fashions it expertly into an arrowhead or spear point, attaches it to a spear thrower or a bow that is already strung, and sets off to Shoot the prey.Upon return, dinner is prepared with proper ritual.Start telling stories after dinner, tell the adventures of the day to those who rarely leave home, and end the day with the sound of stories.Thus the Paleolithic hunter became fully human; moreover, to a degree of completeness that no man since the Agricultural Revolution has approached.
But the bonding force of kinship that held Paleolithic society together was both comforting and oppressive.The individual is completely subservient to the group or tribe.The group or tribe is seen as a never-ending procession of the dead, the living, and the unborn, blessed with all the unseen powers of the spirit world.The individual belongs entirely to this vital team.Undoubtedly, the vast majority of people do not have a feeling of being chained, but see themselves as participants in the process.The fact remains, though, that while there is a sense of security in the ranks, that comes with a stagnation of development.The Paleolithic lifestyle can satisfy people's spiritual needs, but it is a dead end.In Arunta, Australia, there is no institutionalized authority of any kind, but elders can negotiate with tribal enemies to kill those who do not live according to tribal traditions.
It is this tradition, this seemingly absurd and obligatory tradition, that constitutes another very important aspect of Paleolithic society.Today, human life styles are usually divided into two types: the "progressive way of life" in the modern industrialized West and the "traditional way of life" in the underdeveloped agricultural non-Western regions.The latter is indeed "traditional" compared with the former; but it is by no means traditional compared with the primitive tribal society which it replaced after the Agricultural Revolution.
As we shall see later, the Agricultural Revolution set off a chain reaction of urbanization, class differentiation, and social fragmentation that fundamentally undermined the remarkable equality of primitive societies.However, in the process, the day-by-day confinement caused by the conformity of tribal society was also eliminated; thus, for better or worse, human beings began to develop from hunting grounds to big cities, from relying on their own strength to mastering atomic power. this significant progress.Before examining the Agricultural Revolution, however, it is important to examine how Paleolithic man was dispersed across the globe and the resulting effects, which are still felt today.
It is often thought that the population explosion is a phenomenon unique to our times, but it is not.Each of the spectacular population booms occurred when there was a major breakthrough in production technology.The reason is obvious: the development of technology leads to an increase in productivity, which allows a huge increase in the number of people that can be supported.From the Early Paleolithic to the Late Paleolithic, technology actually advanced a lot, which resulted in a dramatic increase in the population.It is estimated that at the beginning of the Paleolithic Age, the population of Proto-humans was 125,000, and by the end of the Paleolithic Age 10,000 years ago, that is, on the eve of the Agricultural Revolution, the human population had increased to 5.32 million.The population has increased by more than 42 times, which is comparable to the population explosion that followed the subsequent technological revolutions.
Another demographic pattern that follows from the Paleolithic (and which has since been repeated many times) is that the growth of the population at the head of the technological revolution was uneven, causing the population to disperse wider area.This pattern has held true since the emergence of life on Earth, and has been associated with the anthropologist M. D．Sahlins and E. R．Consistent with the following laws of cultural domination proposed by Seves.The latter argues: "...a cultural system that can more effectively develop energy in a certain environment often sacrifices a system that develops less efficiently in order to gain its own expansion in that environment. ...The characteristic of advanced systems is that they can exploit a variety of resources more effectively than lower institutions, and therefore in most circumstances they are more effective and operate on a wider scale."
At any time, the most adaptable species, that is, the species that make the most efficient use of the natural environment, are those that predominate in, and continually extend, their range.Thus, only primitive pebble tools, poorly clothed Pleistocene primates were unable to extend their range of activities beyond the warm savannah.And Homo erectus, who holds good tools, wears clothes, and can control fire, can expand his range of activities from Africa northward to the temperate zone of Eurasia-the widely dispersed Javanese ape-man, Peking Man and Homo unearthed. Fossil remains of Heidelberger man attest to this.Human beings have mastered more complex technologies, so they are more adaptable to nature. They can not only go south into the tropical rain forests of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also go north into the tundra of Siberia.
After crossing these areas, humans crossed one land bridge into Australia and another into Alaska, thereby occupying the remaining continents.Once humans entered the American continent, they migrated in a fan shape in all directions, but at different speeds.The movement toward the south was relatively rapid. From about 15,000 BC to 8,000 BC, humans advanced from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.However, the eastward movement was quite slow. Due to the harsh environment in the Canadian Arctic, humans did not reach Greenland until around 4000 BC.So far, human footprints have covered all continents except Antarctica, and together with dogs, which are inseparable from humans, they have become the most widely distributed animals in the world.
While human beings were scattered to various places, there were gradually racial differences, and various so-called races appeared with distinctive features in skin color, hairstyle and facial shape.It is generally believed that the formation of these races was mainly due to the adaptation of various geographical groups of human beings to their different environments and their relative isolation from each other.Regarding the differences in races, it is very important that the differences in races occurred very late, after the appearance of human beings.The modern races, therefore, descend from the same ancestors who were fully developed as human beings.This explains why Europeans were able to interbreed with the races of all the regions they found; and why the extant races of man do not differ very much from each other in their natural intellect--which has in fact been the case. All anthropologists agree.A primitive man of the Upper Paleolithic or a contemporary Australian Aboriginal had as much hope of attaining a university degree as a member of any other race, if given the opportunity.
The exact circumstances under which the races of the various regions were formed are not known, and probably never will be.It will suffice, however, to note that by about 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Glacial Age, the races had a generally recognized distribution over the globe.Caucasians are distributed in Europe, North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, and are penetrating into India and Central Asia; The Himans, unlike their later situation, are distributed in the rest of Africa; there are also some Pygmies, the little blacks, who live in the forest areas of India and Southeast Asia, while India, the remaining vast areas of Southeast Asia, and Australia are Occupied by people of Australian race; those distributed in East Asia and North and South America are people of Mongolian race.
Although this distribution is roughly similar to what we know, Figure 3 "Global Ethnic Distribution" shows that by 1000 A.D., the distribution of various ethnic groups in the world has undergone fundamental changes, which have intensified until today.As we will see later, these changes were a direct result of subsequent technological revolutions.The real reason why the Bushmen, Pygmies, and Australians will disappear, and the number of American Indians in most parts of the Americas will decrease, is that their development speed cannot keep up with the technological revolution.In other words, 1,000 years ago, the population of Caucasians and Bushmen was about the same, but today, Bushmen account for only 1/100,000 of Caucasians, and this is the actual reason.
As noted in the previous chapter, differences in technological development, and consequently in population size, do not reflect corresponding differences in the natural talents of the various races.The former difference is mainly due to the different distribution areas of various races: Mongolians and Caucasians are located in the center of Eurasia, blacks are distributed in areas of Africa susceptible to Eurasian influence, while Bushmans and The Pygmies were unlucky enough to be isolated in remote parts of Africa, and the Australians were isolated on remote islands.地理位置的不同使各种族的发展速度有快有慢，从而决定了人类大家造今天的成员组成、各成员的地位及相互间的关系。