I'm very interested in human prehistory. I've been reading a lot about it in just the last few days.
I've previously learned that Neolithic man (still stone age, but after the development of agriculture) was highly developed. They lived in comfortable houses in nice villages and towns, and even though they only had non-metallic tools, they had a very versatile set of tools, pottery, clothing, etc. This Neolithic culture started in the fertile crescent, and spread into Europe, India, China, and Africa fairly quickly. All of this started about 10-12,000 years ago. The early Indus and Sumerian civilizations actually developed large cities in the stone age, before the start of the bronze age.
What I've been learning just recently is that various well developed cultures existed long before the development of agriculture. In fact, it was over 300,000 years ago that the advanced Levallois technique was developed for making more precise stone edges. The Aurignacian culture came into being about 45K years ago, and then was replaced by the Gravettian culture about 26K years ago. These both extended from western Europe to central Asia, and had highly advanced stone age technology in a hunter-gatherer context. We think of them as primitive, because pretty much all hunter gatherer stone age people that Europeans have encountered in recent centuries were primitive, but these people had a common culture that spanned hundreds of miles, and they had an aural tradition going back centuries.
The human cultures hit a rough spot starting about 20K years ago, as the ice age reached its peak. After the ice age receded, the surviving humans recovered and almost immediately developed agriculture, pottery, fabrics, domestication of the horse, the wheel, and other useful things. It's been less than 200 human lifetimes since the end of the ice age, and here we are reading forum posts on the internet.
Those times are forever lost in the mists of time, from before the time of writing. Archeology can only reveal limited information about that time. However, I believe there was a surprisingly sophisticated and interconnected society in existence back then. It was a stable period in human history that lasted for millennia. It was probably remembered as the Garden of Eden once the money grubbing high-tech bronze age came in, with the writing, and the giant new cities, and the god kings and their armies trying to build empires.
I've always viewed this period from a science fiction point of view. Scifi usually focuses on future technology, but from the point of view of people from that time, the new stone age technologies and the new systems of human cooperation and trade were huge changes and breakthroughs. I can imagine being a chief of a tribe in a good spot with two or three high value food sources and trade good sources in my immediate area, and building a huge bustling community, having the biggest stone hut with the best furs, eating the best food, having the best women for my harem... You know there were guys who achieved exactly this life.
These guys were living in a village by the sea, eating wild game meat, the whole dream. Soy hadn't even been invented yet.
Most don't know this.
I've considered writing fiction in a setting like this. I hope the movie is the kind of thing I can imagine it could be.
I've previously learned that Neolithic man (still stone age, but after the development of agriculture) was highly developed. They lived in comfortable houses in nice villages and towns, and even though they only had non-metallic tools, they had a very versatile set of tools, pottery, clothing, etc. This Neolithic culture started in the fertile crescent, and spread into Europe, India, China, and Africa fairly quickly. All of this started about 10-12,000 years ago. The early Indus and Sumerian civilizations actually developed large cities in the stone age, before the start of the bronze age.
What I've been learning just recently is that various well developed cultures existed long before the development of agriculture. In fact, it was over 300,000 years ago that the advanced Levallois technique was developed for making more precise stone edges. The Aurignacian culture came into being about 45K years ago, and then was replaced by the Gravettian culture about 26K years ago. These both extended from western Europe to central Asia, and had highly advanced stone age technology in a hunter-gatherer context. We think of them as primitive, because pretty much all hunter gatherer stone age people that Europeans have encountered in recent centuries were primitive, but these people had a common culture that spanned hundreds of miles, and they had an aural tradition going back centuries.
The human cultures hit a rough spot starting about 20K years ago, as the ice age reached its peak. After the ice age receded, the surviving humans recovered and almost immediately developed agriculture, pottery, fabrics, domestication of the horse, the wheel, and other useful things. It's been less than 200 human lifetimes since the end of the ice age, and here we are reading forum posts on the internet.
Those times are forever lost in the mists of time, from before the time of writing. Archeology can only reveal limited information about that time. However, I believe there was a surprisingly sophisticated and interconnected society in existence back then. It was a stable period in human history that lasted for millennia. It was probably remembered as the Garden of Eden once the money grubbing high-tech bronze age came in, with the writing, and the giant new cities, and the god kings and their armies trying to build empires.
I've always viewed this period from a science fiction point of view. Scifi usually focuses on future technology, but from the point of view of people from that time, the new stone age technologies and the new systems of human cooperation and trade were huge changes and breakthroughs. I can imagine being a chief of a tribe in a good spot with two or three high value food sources and trade good sources in my immediate area, and building a huge bustling community, having the biggest stone hut with the best furs, eating the best food, having the best women for my harem... You know there were guys who achieved exactly this life.
These guys were living in a village by the sea, eating wild game meat, the whole dream. Soy hadn't even been invented yet.
Most don't know this.
I've considered writing fiction in a setting like this. I hope the movie is the kind of thing I can imagine it could be.
I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I'm funky like a monkey. Sky's the limit and space is the place!
-Randy Savage