Technology of the Ancient World

Technology of the Ancient World — page 7 — r1 e t p a h C STONE AGE TECHNOLOGY T he identiﬁcation of the history of tech nology with the history of humanlike species does not help in ﬁxing a precise point for its origin because the estimates of prehis torians and anthropologists concerning the emergence of human species vary so widely Animals occasionally use natural tools such as sticks or stones and the ancestors of humans doubtless did the same for hundreds of mil lennia before the ﬁrst giant step of fashioning their own tools Even then it was an intermi nable time before they put such toolmaking on a regular basis and still more aeons passed as they arrived at the successive stages of stan dardizing their simple stone choppers and pounders and of manufacturing them that is providing sites and assigning specialists to the work A degree of specialization in toolmaking 12

Technology of the Ancient World — page 8 — RIGHT RUNNING HEAD 13 13 Arrow points and spearheads excavated from the Czech Republic

Technology of the Ancient World — page 9 — Technology of the Ancient World was achieved by the time of the Neanderthals 70,000 BCE more-advanced tools requiring assemblage of head and haft were produced by Cro-Magnons perhaps as early as 35,000 BCE while the application of mechanical principles was achieved by pottery-making Neolithic New Stone Age 6000 BCE and Metal Age peoples about 3000 BCE EARLIEST COMMUNITIES For all except approximately the past 10,000 years humans lived almost entirely in small nomadic communities dependent for survival on their skills in gathering food hunting and ﬁshing and avoiding predators It is reasonable to suppose that most of these communities developed in tropical latitudes especially in Africa where climatic conditions are most favourable to a creature with such poor bodily protection as humans have It is also reason able to suppose that tribes moved out thence into the subtropical regions and eventually into the landmass of Eurasia although their coloni zation of this region must have been severely limited by the successive periods of glaciation which rendered large parts of it inhospitable and even uninhabitable even though human kind has shown remarkable versatility in adapting to such unfavorable conditions 14

Technology of the Ancient World — page 10 — STONE AGE TECHNOLOGY THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION Toward the end of the last ice age some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago a few of the communities that were most favoured by geography and cli mate began to make the transition from the long period of Paleolithic or Old Stone Age savagery to a more settled way of life depend ing on animal husbandry and agriculture This period of transition the Neolithic Period or New Stone Age led eventually to a marked rise in population to a growth in the size of com munities and to the beginnings of town life It is sometimes referred to as the Neolithic Revolution because the speed of technologi cal innovation increased so greatly and human social and political organization underwent a corresponding increase in complexity To understand the beginnings of technology it is thus necessary to survey developments from the Old Stone Age through the New Stone Age down to the emergence of the ﬁrst urban civili zations about 3000 BCE Stone The material that gives its name and a techno logical unity to these periods of prehistory is 15

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