by Michael G. Lamoureux, March/April 2009
Introduction
Surviving art and artifacts can tell us quite a bit about the stone age, from the dawn of our distant ancestor homo habilis (as far back as 2,400,000 years ago) to the dawn of homo sapiens (as far back as 250,000 years ago), the bronze age, which began (for the most part) in prehistoric societies about 6,000 years ago, and the iron age, which started about 3000 years ago, in the early days of history of most early civilizations.
The surviving artifacts from the stone age, which help us divide the stone age into the Paleolithic -- which itself is divided into the lower, middle, upper, and sometimes late Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, tell us a lot about early man who live in primitive hunter gather tribes until the invention of agriculture in the Neolithic, which led to the formation of cities, the ability for a small group of people to produce enough food to feed a larger group of people, and then the rise of dedicated craftsman. These craftsman would go on to discover bronze, an alloy of copper and tin that could be melted and shaped at high temperature and usher in a new age of society that would begin to be technologically based. A few thousand years later, Hittite craftsman in Northern Turkey, circa 1500 BC, in an area now known as Armenia, would discover iron and change the face of technology, and warfare, until the fall of the Hittite empire a couple of hundred years later which would lead to the widespread adoption of iron as the metal of choice.
The Stone Age
Surviving artifacts tell us that our distant ancestors, homo habilis, emerged as far back as 2.4 Million years ago and that early homo erectus, identified as homo egaster by some scientists, appeared approximately 1.8 Million years ago. Homo egaster evolved into homo antecessor and then homo rhodesiensis which split into homo neanderthalis and homo sapiens, as far back as 250,000 years ago in the lower Paleolithic.
The archaeological records tell us that homo sapiens slowly evolved from very primitive hunter gatherer bands that entered the middle Paleolithic into complex agricultural societies that exited the Neolithic into the bronze age about 6,000 years ago. Development was slow at first, with rapid advancement occurring during the last 9,000 years of the stone age, starting in the Mesolithic when the glaciers of the last ice age began to retreat northward.
The Paleolithic
In the middle Paleolithic, early homo sapiens were primitive hunter-gather societies that were nomadic by nature. They hunted game animals for food and lived in make-shift seasonal camps that usually followed the migration path of the herd. Whenever they were available, they would use caves or natural rock-shelters for their camps, and when they weren't, they would use naturally occurring materials to construct simple shelters. The early nomadic peoples of the barren tundra of the Ukraine near modern Moldova would construct shelters out of mammoth hides that were held up by branches and weighted down by mammoth bones. The early peoples of Africa would build mud huts with thatched roofs of branches and straw.
The early homo sapiens of the Paleolithic were technologically unsophisticated. Their most advanced tools were chipped stone scrapers, for working hides and later wood, Archeulean hand axes for hunting, and simple stone "knives" for butchering and cutting. Their garments were made from unstitched animal hides, their sacks were made from animal stomachs, and most of their (non-stone) tools were organic in nature.
Probably the most significant development of the upper Paleolithic was made by our close evolutionary cousins, homo sapiens neanderthalensis, who started to bury their dead as far back as 70,000 years ago. Observations of this custom by our distant ancestors likely lead to the first burials by modern homo sapiens in the upper Paleolithic.
The upper and late Paleolithic saw minor technological advancements as well as the beginnings of a more sophisticated society that learned how to process and store food, which allowed a band of people to stay put for longer periods of time or return to preferred shelter locations, and create art.
In the upper Paleolithic, homo sapiens first started to line their hearths with stone, use a spear for hunting, and create the earliest examples of art, which took the form of cave paintings and rock paintings. The earliest paintings were usually of game animals. Some also featured humans and depicted the hunt, and a few featured simple geometric figures. The development of art is considered to be of prime importance in the development of modern human society as some anthropologists believe that it corresponded with the development of language. Shortly after early humans started painting, they started carving wood, ivory, and bone with their sharpened flint blades.
In the late Paleolithic, homo sapiens discovered the bow and arrow, the sewing needle (which was originally carved from bone), and an early form of the oil lamp (which would have used animal fat). More importantly, they learned to store food and defer the consumption of the animals they hunted. Archaeological evidence indicates that the processing techniques likely included the large-scale filleting of carcasses (using simple chipped stone scrapers), which was followed by drying, smoking, and storage of the meat.
The Mesolithic
Although the Mesolithic, which started during the end of the last ice age and bridged the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, lasted for a mere 5,000 years, homo sapiens made rapid advancements during this time. Although the advancements in stone-age technology were limited, as the tools were still made from chipped stone, this is the period in time where homo sapiens started to actively manage the landscape and domesticate animals.
Recent palynological evidence indicates that Mesolithic hunters in Europe were burning and clearing forest to encourage secondary growth as this improved feeding conditions for the game animals, such as red deer in Europe, that they relied on. This paved the way for the integrated systems of hunting, fishing, and gathering that sustained complex and sedentary communities in the Neolithic.
It was during the Mesolithic that homo sapiens first started to domesticate dogs and goats. Fossil remains of dogs have been found in human occupied camps as far back as 14,000 years ago and evidence suggests that goats may have been domesticated in the Middle East as far back as 12,000 years ago.
The Neolithic
In the Neolithic, or new stone age, our ancestors move from chipped stone to ground stone technology, which allowed for the production of new, and better, microlithic tools and blades, started to use pottery, and developed agriculture, which allowed, for the first time, societies to stay in the same place year round, year after year.
Somewhere around 8,000 BC in northern Iraq, our ancestors learned how to cultivate grains like wheat and barley. Within 3,000 years agriculture, which was now common in parts of Mesopotamia, had spread to Western Europe. This not only led to the formation of complex societies, but also allowed world population to increase to levels that would be unsustainable otherwise. Agriculture also led to the invention of beer, which was a core part of the Neolithic diet in some communities. Beer was originally made from bread that was crumbled into water, mixed with yeast and perhaps a few other substances, and then simply allowed to ferment. Once fermented, it was strained. Beer making was an efficient way to use stale bread and surplus grain and preserve food.
In the Neolithic, we also see clear examples of the ideology of kingship in societies that some anthropologists, who follow the teachings of Ed Tyler, point to as the beginning of modern civilization, including the early Egyptian civilization. The Abydos royal cemetery provides a clear example of the adoption of the ideology of kingship before the Bronze Age began. This is further reinforced by Zoser's funerary complex that used stone instead of mud brick in the development of a step pyramid superstructure to the shaft containing the king's burial chamber that required both a massive workforce, as the largest structure of its day in ancient Egypt, and ultimate adherence to a king.
The Bronze Age
Bronze, which may have been used as early as 4500 BC near Ban Chiang, Thailand, supplied the most useful metal known during the third and second millennia BC. It replaced (primarily cold-hammered) copper and stone as the metal of choice for tools, weapons, and art and allowed for the construction of tools and weapons that were harder and longer lasting than their stone and (cold-hammered) copper predecessors.
The Bronze Age started with the widespread use of bronze and saw the birth of the early great civilizations of the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean -- including the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians, the Minoans of Crete, the Hittites of Asia Minor, and the Mycenaean civilization of ancient mainland Greece, is the period where humanity left pre-history and entered into history with the formation of modern society.
Evidence indicates that bronze had spread to Minoan Crete by 2500 BC and Mycenaean Greece around 2000 BC. By 1500 BC, bronze was in heavy use as the metal of choice for swords and spear-points and by 1400 BC, Mycenaean metalsmiths had mastered the art of casting bronze plates which they then hammered into helmets and body armor. The Mycenaean's also used bronze for plowshares, sickles, ornaments, and vessels for drinking and cooking.
Surviving Greek art from the Bronze age that depict battle scenes tell us that the horseman used his spear for a downward thrust, often overhand from the shoulder. Furthermore, the spear was not couched in the armpit for the charge, since the impact would probably knock the stirrupless rider off of his horse. If the spear was lost, the horseman would then rely on the sword tied to a scabbard at his waist.
It was in the Bronze Age that Greeks developed their own, elaborate, burial customs that revolved around their belief that the sight of a dead body would offend the Olympian gods and that the dead person's ghost would not be allowed to enter the underworld until the body had been covered.
The Iron Age
The earliest known occurrence of iron making was near Northern Turkey circa 1500 BC by the Hittites in what is now known as Armenia. At first the technology was kept secret and monopolized by the Hittite overlords, but after the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1200 BC, ironworking quickly spread through Mesopotamia, Europe, and eventually Egypt as it was not only cheaper and easier to acquire than bronze, but made stronger tools and weapons. Iron began to replace bronze as the metal of choice for swords, spear points, axe heads, hammer heads, and other cutting and striking tools in mainland Mycenaean Greece around 1050 BC. The preferred cavalry sword of the time was a saber with a curved cutting edge designed to slash downward rather than stab.
Ancient iron forging involved repeated heating and hammering of the metal in order to refine it, weld it into a workable quantity, and finally shape it into a tool or weapon. This was a sharp contrast to the casting of molten bronze that was in use at the time.
Art reached its peak in ancient Greece during the iron age when artisans learned how to produce high quality marble and bronze sculptures. By 400 BC, Greek sculptors would attain a realism in their portrayal of human forms that would not be equaled until the Italian Renaissance 2000 years later. Greek sculptors were the first to invent a method of casting molten bronze around a wooden core that allowed them to create a hollow metal figure instead of a solid one. This new methodology allowed for greater realism in the rendering of musculature, clothing, and such fine details as beards and hair.
It was also during the Iron Age that the ancient Greeks bequeathed a tremendous legacy to subsequent centuries of Western civilization with their development of the beginnings of modern architecture. The three "orders" that developed between 700 BC and 300 BC remain central to architectural design even today and can be seen on the exteriors of such modern neoclassical public buildings as banks, museums, libraries, and city halls. These orders, known as the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, all describe variations on buildings where a solid upper structure (entablature) is supported by vertical columns.
The Doric and Ionic orders (both older than the Corinthian order) emerged shortly after 700 BC and were used specifically in the construction of the temples of the gods, which, for the first time, were being built out of stone. Previously, cult buildings had generally been constructed of less permanent materials such as wood, thatch, and mud-brick.
The earliest known all-stone building is the Temple of Artemis at Corcyra (modern Corfu), completed around 590 BC. This temple was built of limestone -- which was cheaper, more readily available, and easier to carve than marble -- even though marble became the material of choice in later centuries. Although only the building's foundations and parts of its western pediment survive today, modern scholars can reconstruct its probable appearance. The heart of the temple was a walled, rectangular, roofed structure (the naos, or cella) that housed the cult statue of the deity. The cella's single doorway was typically in the east, perhaps with two columns in the entranceway. The roof extended on all four sides around the cella and was supported on each side by at least one row of columns.
Conclusion
Surviving art and artifacts from the stone age tell us that early homo-sapiens were very primitive hunter-gatherer tribes who probably didn't even develop language skills until about 35,000 years ago when cave art first appeared in Africa. Then, starting in the middle Paleolithic, homo sapiens as a race started to slowly advance towards society, starting with the construction of simple shelters (which replaced natural shelters they used before that time) and Archeulean hand axes for hunting and simple stone scrapers for butchering.
In the upper and late Paleolithic, homo sapiens made minor technological advancements which included the lining of hearths with stone, the spear, the bow and arrow, and the oil-lamp. They also learned how to process and store food, which originally took the form of the smoking of meat, and create art, which at first took the form of cave and rock paintings and simple wood figurines of animals and the "Venus" of Willendorf.
Then, as the glaciers started to retreat at the end of the ice age, homo sapiens started to advance rapidly in the Mesolithic where hunter-gather tribes learned that burning and clearing forest to encourage secondary growth improved feeding conditions for game animals and that dogs and goats could be domesticated. In the Neolithic, our ancestors learned how to grind stone and cultivate grains. The invention of agriculture led to the first permanent settlements and eventually villages, cities, and city states as well as to the discovery of beer. This paved the way for the early Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations, which established the concept of kingship.
A few thousand years later, bronze was discovered, probably near Ban Chiang Thailand, and was rapidly adopted by civilizations as the metal of choice as it was harder and longer lasting than cold-hammered copper. The Bronze Age saw the birth of the Minoan, Hittite, and Mycenaean civilizations and is the period where most of humanity left pre-history and entered into history with the birth of societies that had developed systems of writing almost from their birth.
Then iron was discovered, and quickly spread through Mesopotamia, Europe, and eventually Egypt. As a much stronger metal than bronze, it was quickly adopted as the metal of choice for tools, weapons, and armor, and enabled the civilizations who adopted it first, such as the Mycenaean Greeks, to quickly expand their empire. As the great civilizations spread, so did rapid advances in technology and art. By 400 BC, Greek sculptors would attain a realism in their portrayal of the human form that would not be equaled until the Italian Renaissance 2000 years later.
Artifacts from the stone age, which consist mostly of stone, bone, and early pottery, bronze age, and iron age allow us to trace the development of modern man from his first appearance as a hunter-gatherer in the lower Paleolithic to his meteoric rise to civilization in the early bronze age.