A Brief History of Humanity: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century

Chapter 2 The Fishing and Hunting Period
[-]. The story of the stone
There was a very long historical period for rough stone humans. During this period, humans could not write and could only use some stones as weapons and tools.Therefore, if we want to understand the bits and pieces of the period of human beings who drank blood, we can only find answers from those scattered stones-this history has no written records.In addition to using stones, humans also used other tools, such as sticks, leather goods, and wooden spears.But these objects do not survive as long as stone.

Imagine a hungry bear dragging its weary footsteps to attack a human cave. The owner would have quickly grabbed the stone and thrown it at the beast with all his strength.He will also collect many similar stones before another beast strikes, and put them in the most prominent place.At that time, in order to obtain food, humans could only throw stones at some wild animals or birds. Slowly, he learned how to throw stones more accurately.If he found some nuts, he would break them open with a stone.He also uses a wooden spear or a pointed rock to help him when digging up plants like carrots and potatoes.

During that long period, humans could only rely on hunting and fishing for a living, so we call the initial period of human history the "fishing and hunting period".Man needed to hunt game and birds as well as fish—fishing in much the same way as hunting—and gathering fruits, nuts, and roots.These are very important foods.At that time, humans knew neither domestication nor cultivation of land.They only know to live on wild food - game, fish and plants.

Because the tools and weapons used were made of stone, and because only through stone can we know that distant history, we call this period of fishing and hunting the Stone Age.Most of the time the Stone Age was in the Paleolithic period, and the later period we call the Neolithic period.

Shaped Stone At first, humans could only use unprocessed stones, but later they learned to process stones according to their own wishes.They make stones according to the shape of their hands and their needs.People split or grind a stone, sharpening its edges for cutting and digging food, or sharpening one side for chopping trees or skulls, and smoothing the other side so that the hand can Hold tight.For us who study history, this is a very lucky thing.These formed stones are of great significance to us.Perhaps the heavy stone that trips us up was used by the ancients to fight other animals and enemies.But we cannot find information from these unformed stones.But maybe a stone with traces of human processing that we accidentally found can help us find information to interpret human history from it.Of course this work is very difficult, because these polished stones are not very good "teachers".

Very few other objects made or used by humans during the Stone Age survive, but thousands of stone tools or weapons survive.Although they have experienced the baptism of time, they still retain their original appearance, and there are many exquisite products among them.Where we find these forming stones, we also find human skeletons, and sometimes the bones of long-extinct animals.These skeletons are often called "fossils."In addition to stones and bones, the caves inhabited by early humans contain some extremely old colored pictures, carvings and paintings, which can help us further understand the history of the Stone Age.

Therefore, processed stones, human and animal bones, and those simple ancient paintings can let us understand that period of history more or less, and can discover many shining points.We can learn from it what weapons and tools people made, what animals they captured, and what kind of things they were interested in and afraid of.However, we cannot learn from these materials the thoughts, languages, and social backgrounds of humans at that time.

Written records can tell us about the language, thought, and society of that era.However, in order to fully understand the past of mankind, we must understand the story of stones as we learn the stories in textbooks.And the story of humanity is our own history.So far, our human history is only a small part of the whole story, but we are still working hard, trying to find more facts, to discover more facts.Every year historians make new discoveries that enrich and clarify the human story.

Unrecorded History Some historians often confine history to the fifty or sixty centuries that have been recorded.In this book, we will not draw this dividing line, but we will speak of two histories.Any history that has written records is called recorded history.And the other, the older history—a patchwork of stones, bones, and other historical relics—we call unrecorded history.

In the days of hunting and fishing, the story of the stone is unrecorded history, which teaches us and moves us.Stones and bones, weapons and tools, temples and tombs, caves and paintings, all enrich our knowledge and help us understand that chaotic period.The story of the stone is a very long one.As mentioned earlier, the recorded history is limited to the last fifty or sixty centuries, while the unrecorded history, that is, the story of the stone, probably goes back thousands of centuries.

There are two things we can conclude: (1) Humans have been on Earth for a long time; (2) No one knows how long that time was.

Estimates of the age Although we cannot determine the specific year of the fishing and hunting period, we can use a rough figure to estimate it, so as to remember how long and long this unrecorded historical period is.The method historians use to infer the year is interesting.To give an example: In the Nile valley, digging down from the soil surface, tools used by humans were found at a depth of sixty feet.We know that for nearly 3000 years, the Nile has deposited soil at an average rate of about four inches per century.On this basis, it would take 180 centuries to deposit sixty feet of soil.Therefore, the tools found are about 8000 years old.

But how can we be sure that the sedimentation rate of the soil must be four inches per century?If, as some people claim, the Nile River had already had a thick layer of silt in the early days, then this 8000-year history estimate would have to be shortened.Some historians are inclined to subtract six or seven thousand years from this period of history; others are against it, and who can say for sure?
This is not the only way of counting years in unrecorded history, but it gives us an idea of ​​how much we have to think about and require many sides of speculation in understanding this long period.

Dawnstone and Paleolithic Across Europe, many polished flint fragments have been found that look as if they were made by hand.But these stone tools were so rough that it was once doubted whether they were really made by humans, but there are also some strong evidences that they came from the earliest period of human beings, that is, the dawn of human life.Those flint fragments that have been used are called dawn stone tools, that is, stone tools of the dawn period.

With the improvement of the technology of making flint by human beings, the stone tools produced by human beings at this time can be easily identified by us among thousands of stones.These tools also marked the arrival of the Paleolithic age.We currently have no way of knowing whether this era really lasted a thousand centuries.But we can say with certainty that it is the longest period in the entire history of mankind. If we compare the period from the discovery of the American continent by Columbus to the present with the tens of thousands of years that people have made flint as tools and weapons, it is nothing but In the blink of an eye.

[-]. The hunter who hunted the giant beast
Fighting with wild beasts The life of Paleolithic humans was very hard, and not all prey were so easy to catch.There are rhinos with horns three feet long and thick hides; there are huge brown bears; saber-toothed cats with teeth no less than tusks;In addition, there was a "monster" called the mammoth, which had strong, curved ten-foot tusks, was covered with long hair, and had the size of an elephant.

It may be easy to shoot such beasts with the current rifles, but it is not so easy to kill them with stone axes.A stone ax four or five inches long, pointed at one end and rounded at the other, is held in the hand and is usually used for digging, knocking bones, cutting trees, or fighting with humans and animals.I believe you would not be willing to use this weapon to deal with a ferocious saber-toothed tiger, would you?The odds against a tiger or a grizzly bear alone with a stone ax are next to zero, let alone such behemoths as rhinos and elephants.More often, it is often a group of men and boys fighting together to attack a beast.They hurled stones, and pierced it with spears--points ground from bone--could drive the beast into pits and pits.Even so, it is dangerous, and often when a tiger or elephant is killed, two or three predators are dying or dying.

In the era of fishing and hunting against the cold, there was a period of time when the climate in Europe became colder and colder.People in ancient times noticed that rhinos, tigers, elephants, and most birds migrated south.Glaciers—huge chunks of ice that slowly drift down from the north, engulfing forests and rocks wherever they go.Along with the glaciers came a herd of polar animals adapted to live in the colder climates—quick reindeer, woolly mammoths, shaggy Siberian rhinos, musk oxen, and others.Parts of Scandinavia and northern Europe are buried under a thick crust of ice.The same is true in North America.The world has entered a centuries-long "winter".This cold age is often called the "ice age", that is, an ice age.It had a profound impact on the life of Paleolithic people.

Settlements and caves Many stone axes were found along the river, so it can be inferred that ancient humans lived there.On the one hand, it is because the river bank has sufficient water sources, and on the other hand, it is because it is convenient to hunt those animals that come to the river to drink water.During the Ice Age, humans had to find a shelter to cope with the colder climate, or they would freeze to death.Fortunately, there are many natural caves in the limestone, and these caves have saved mankind.If human beings had not found such a suitable refuge at that time, perhaps today's human beings would cease to exist.Even so, many people were frozen to death.

Fortunately, during the Stone Age, mankind made its greatest discovery - fire.The use of fire not only made human life more comfortable, but also saved their lives during the Ice Age. Fire also brought more tools, weapons and food to human beings, and delivered iron to human hands in time.

On the front of a famous building in Washington, the following lines are inscribed, which are very insightful:

Fire: the greatest of all human discoveries

enabling humans to adapt to different climates

make a lot of food and force
The forces of nature are at their service
It is fire, which brings light into dark caves in a different way.

We know that ancient humans used fire in caves, as evidenced by the ashes left in the caves.Perhaps they also used fire in settlements along the river, but wind and rain took away their traces, and only stone axes survived.

In caves and in the rubbish heaps of campsites we find many remains of skeletons, mostly of animals—often large beasts.Some huge bones have been knocked open, and we speculate that humans used the essence of the bones as food.Therefore, it is not difficult to see that humans in the Stone Age have gradually become the top of the food chain.

In an unearthed cave, hunters found the remains of a sleeping human in a pile of dust, lying peacefully there.A stone ax leaned quietly beside him, and his clansmen and friends laid a pile of neatly hammered flints under his head.His people may have thought that he might need these flints as weapons in his afterlife.This youth or teenager, most likely the earliest human being in history, seems to be there silently waiting to deliver a message to us.If he could still speak, he would definitely tell us about hunting, bonfire parties, love stories, or wars in that era!
Some contemporaneous remains have also been found in Belgium, France and Spain.They were all of that broad and thick build.Anthropologists call them Neanderthals because the bones were first found in the Neander Valley in Germany. "Neander" translates to the meaning of Neander Valley.

Although humans have lived in the same cave for generations, we have not found more human skeletons in this cave. Instead, we often find tens of thousands of stone tools and piles of animal bones. Of course, this also requires A very long time to get.These stone tools, fragments, bones, and other kinds of rubbish were scattered in the cave, and as time went by, they were gradually submerged in dust.Stone chips from the cave roof also fell on them from time to time.In this way, these stone tools, bones, garbage, dust, and stone chips slowly piled up layer by layer.

The layers of Cro-Magnon man after the Neanderthals are yet another unsolved mystery of human history, but one that can reveal some dark secrets.On top of the Neanderthal layer, we often find another layer of different types of bones, which of course belong to later humans.These people are tall, 5.1 to 6.04 feet.Their foreheads were more protruding than those of Neanderthals, and their brow ridges were less pronounced, so that their brains were large—even larger than the modern average.Because such remains were first discovered in the Cro-Magnon caves in France, these tall races are known in academic circles as the Cro-Magnon people.Similar remains have been found elsewhere in France and in other countries.

Did these tall races invade Neanderthal territory, occupy their caves, and drive out the squat Neanderthals?We even have a cruel picture in our minds. Various races wield sticks, wooden spears, and stone axes to fight each other. Neanderthals bravely defended their groups, territories, and hunting grounds, but unfortunately ended in failure. .We don't know if those children were adopted by the victors?I don't know if those women were robbed as wives?If we could know exactly what happened, we could write a bleak and tragic epic story.

The skills of the hunter

Fire and stone fire started as an accidental discovery.Later, the emergence of methods of striking rocks and drilling wood to make fire made it a skill.For example: using fire to cook food, burning pointed wooden spears, or building canoes from empty giant logs are all skills that hunters learn through fire.Of course, using flint to make stone axes or other tools is also a skill, especially in the late Stone Age.If anyone doubts that making stone tools is not a skill, let him try to make a stone ax or an arrowhead.

Neanderthals made stone tools and weapons that were vastly improved in quality and appearance over those made by humans before them.They chose the sharp and razor-sharp flint, discarded the heavy stones, and polished the edges of the stone tools with great care to make sharp edges and points.Flakes of this type have been found in most countries around the Mediterranean Sea.

From Neanderthal stone tools, some stone knives that seem to be used to scrape leather have also been found.From this, it is speculated that they are likely to live in leather clothing like the Inuit.

Bone and Horn In the late Paleolithic period, that is, 5000 years ago, the Cro-Magnon people gradually entered Western Europe.This period lasted about seven to eight thousand years.

This period has obvious characteristics: the improvement of stone tool manufacturing methods, the increase in the use of bones and animal horns, the production of paintings, the use of bone sewing needles, and the invention of bows and arrows.

The Cro-Magnons, like others of their time, made stone arrowheads, stone knives, and stone spatulas, perfecting their methods of making stone tools.They also invented a new method for polishing the edges of stone tools.It is to pad the stones first, then increase the pressure on the edge, and knock down hard, and the broken stones can be knocked down neatly. This method has a better effect than hitting directly with another stone.

In addition, the Cro-Magnons had begun to use bone and ivory to make tools and weapons.They could make bone spears, hammers and chisels, bone needles, hairpins, drills, spoons and whistles, and even bone paint tubes.The most used material is reindeer horns, so we call this period the reindeer era.Anthropologists call it Upper Paleolithic, or Upper Paleolithic, because its history is found in the upper layers of Paleolithic dust.

Cave Paintings While our attention is on the dust on the cave floor, don't forget to look up.One day, while a man was digging flint and bone in a cave in Spain, his youngest daughter inadvertently glanced at the ceiling and found a brightly colored painting from long ago.This is the Altamira Cave.There, people can still see vivid pictures of hairy red bison, wild horses, wild deer and a wild boar hunted by wild animals.In other caves, some paintings have also been found.On many bones, ivory and antlers, as well as on the stone walls and roofs of caves, there are very detailed carvings or etchings. Most of the pictures are about various wild animals that humans hunted, ate, fought or feared at that time.This little girl's unintentional discovery opened up a new field of ancient art for historians.

BETTER WEAPONS The first Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon man to split the end of a hard wooden stick and fasten his handaxe securely in it made the first hammer.With this hammer, the next time he encounters a bear or tiger, he can deliver a fatal blow.His historical merit is no less than that of the first man who made a spear to assist his companions in fighting wild beasts.Yet the man (or boy) who made the first bow and arrow was the great benefactor of their group.This weapon, together with fire, started man's attempt to conquer beasts and nature.From the beginning, the bow and arrow have been considered the great inventions of mankind.It was not only widely used in the late Paleolithic age, but also existed in human hunting and war for a long time, and was used as one of the main weapons.Until it was replaced by modern firearms.

In the tens of thousands of years ago paintings found in caves, there have been pictures of people holding bows and arrows.This also directly proves the long history of bows and arrows.

(End of this chapter)