What is prehistory?
- Alphabets started being created around 4,000 years ago.
- Methods for hunting, crops and food preparation started around 10,000 years ago.
- Also 10,000 years ago, the nomad lifestyle gave space to a sedentary one.
- Small societies became larger. This caused a higher level of social organization and led to hierarchical politics.
What is prehistoric research?
Its aim to analyse the prehistoric man according to its lifestyle, its social organization and its cognitive abilities. Archaeological studies deal with artifacts created by the prehistoric man and the relations between these artifacts to where and how they were discovered. Archaeological findings are the only way to analyse life in prehistory.
What is a prehistoric site?
Examples are:
- Caves
- excavations
- rock shelter
What is a prehistoric discovery?
How to treat the discoveries?
Many different fields of knowledge can be used in the analysis of prehistoric discoveries, among them are: Geology, Sedimentology, Archaeobotanics/Paleobotanics, Archaeo-zoology/Paleo-zoology, Physical Anthropology, Paleo-genetics, Ethnography/Ethno-Archaeology, 'Hard Sciences'. The latter are a combination for different methods from various fields used in order to identify materials and vessels found. The locations of the layers at the place of a archaeological finding is crucial.
What is Paleontology?
What is Archaeology?
What is Micro-archaeology?
How to study prehistoric animals?
A list of questions to be asked:
- Types of animals: its environments, its nutrition
- methods of hunting different animals
- decision making
- seasonality
- the cycle of plants and crops
Wood artifacts
Sediments
Cognitive abilities of the prehistoric man
Physical anthropology
Taxionomy
Phylogenesis
Evolution
What is an anthropological finding?
Ancient DNA
Prehistoric art
Ethnography of contemporary hunters and gatherers
There are still hunter and gather people, like the Inuits, the Chukchis, indigenous to the Chukchi peninsula at the Bering strait, and the Arandas, an aboriginal Australian people. Those peoples usually live in small groups and keep a nomad or half-nomad style. Their existences are based on the hunter and gather system. They manufacture tools from raw natural materials.
How time is divided?
Archaeological periods of the Land of Israel
Relative and absolute chronology
Ice ages
Basalt in prehistory
Obsidian in prehistory
Flint in prehistory
The Paleolithic - Stone cutting in prehistoric times
Methods of stone cutting in prehistory
Fracture mechanics in archaeological findings
Artifacts
Usage of tools
Usage of tools by chimps
Usage of tools by other animals
Building tools
Prehistoric time divisions
Neolit
Epipalaeolithic
Late stone age (upper paleolithic)
Middle paleolithic
Lower paleolithic
Where?
Africa:
- Hadar
- Gona
- Bouri
- West Turkana
- Omo - small quartz pebbles
- Kanjera
- Oldowan - stone artifacts using a hammerstone
- Makaamitalu
- Lokalalei
When?
Three million years ago
Who?
- Australopitecus afarensis
- Homo sapiens
- Kenyanthropus platyops
Cognitive capacity at the time of the materials' choice
Preference for curved contours is shared by humans and apes. Humans started having episodic memory, which made it possible for them to remember the past and plan for the future. The need for a certain type of tool was the drive for its production. Humans developed procedural memory and it helped them to remember the steps in the production of a certain tool. This type of memory is related to a intermediate type of cognitive complexity.They also started to create ways to deal with accidents in the production. Different types of corrections show us the different stages of human cognition. Plain, side, and unipolar corrections are considered as simple ones, whereas bipolar, centripetal or crossed flake scars require more complex thinking. It was by the time of creating stone and wood tools that it became important the 'hand specialization', i.e. being left or right handed interfered on how the product would come out. Probably, before they had the need to build specific tools, ir made no difference to humans which hand they would use or if they could function better with one or the other hand. But in the case of manufacturing specialized tools the usage of their most dextrous hand influences on the outcome. And a good tool might be the difference between tearing up a prey or not being able to eat it at all. First, humans had to learn how to hunt. But together with this knowledge they had to acquire another one: the knowledge to tear up, slice and prepare the meat of the animal they had hunted. All these new steps could only be done after humans reached certain levels of cognition. But maybe those levels of cognition might have been reached especially due to the challenges faces.
The production of tools developed human motor abilities. The more able humans became to control their motor activities the better and more precise became their tools. It was also safer. With more motor control and abilities, there were less flakes which could injured humans and damage the raw material, making it unsuitable for tool production. The ability to improvise and deviate from a fixed procedure was also helpful in the manufacturing of tools. Problem solving was also a challenge that increased human cognitive abilities. The flexibility in the decision making process was good in the finding of different solutions for problems. Learning from imitation and the ability to understand and follow instructions was also needed. They were necessary in order to determine what type of tools to produce, when to make them and how.
Who?
- Homo aff., Homo abilis
- A. ghari
- P. aethiopicus