CHAPTER 1

The Development of Human Societies

175,000 B.C.–3000 B.C.

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Chapter 1: 1.1 Discovering
Prehistory
• Geologic and Archaeological Time
• While Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, Homo sapiens has existed for
only about the last 200,000 years.
• Scientists base this date on finding fossils and artifacts belonging to this species.
• Fossils are the remains of organisms that lived long ago, such as bones and teeth.
• Paleontologists study fossils in order to learn the history of life on Earth.
• Artifacts are human-made objects, such as stone tools.
• They provide clues to prehistory, which is the time before there were any written
records.
• The scientists who study artifacts are called archaeologists.
• Archaeologists and paleontologists may use geologic techniques to find out
how old artifacts and fossils are.

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Chapter 1: 1.1 Discovering
Prehistory
• Origins in Africa
• It is widely accepted that Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa.
• In 1967, a team of paleontologists discovered two Homo sapiens skulls in
the Great Rift Valley of East Africa.
• Scientists have determined that all human beings share a single female
ancestor. Her DNA has been found in people who live today.
• Homo sapiens lived during the Paleolithic Age, a period that began around
2.5 million B.C. and ended around 8000 B.C.
• This period is also called the Old Stone Age, because people living then made simple
tools and weapons out of stone.
• This was a time of dramatic change in geography and climate when modern human
development and history began.
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Chapter 1: 1.2 The Elements of
Culture
• What is Culture?
• Studying the culture of Homo sapiens in the Paleolithic Age helps reveal how
people lived.
• Culture is a big part of human development.
• It is all the elements that contribute to the way of life of a particular group of people.
• Language, clothing, music, art, law, religion, government, family structure.
• Culture is passed down from parents to children.
• Culture greatly affects our behaviors and beliefs.
• Culture influences people to do things in a particular way, such as eating or avoiding
certain foods.
• Culture unifies a group and sets it apart from others.

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Chapter 1: 1.2 The Elements of
Culture
• Language, art, toolmaking and religion are the most important elements in
defining early cultures.
• Studying the culture of Homo sapiens in the Paleolithic Age helps reveal how people
lived.
• Early Homo sapiens communicated through speech, created cave paintings,
made and used tools, and buried the dead.
• Different groups did things slightly differently.
• These differences reflect each group’s technical knowledge, artistic styles, and available
natural resources.

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Chapter 1: The Elements of
Culture
• Why Study Culture?
• Cultural behaviors are passed down from generation to generation.
• Also, cultural behaviors can change over time or be nearly lost altogether.
• One reason scientists study prehistoric cultures is to learn how they differ
from modern cultures and also to see what they have in common.
• Information about modern cultures is often provided by scientists called
anthropologists.
• Anthropologists study artifacts. Artifacts help to piece together a picture of early
humans’ cultural behaviors and daily life.
• Anthropologists compare artifacts from different sites and different time periods to help
explain how people have changed and developed.

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Chapter 1: 1.3 Changing
Environments
• Finding New Homes
• About 100,000 years ago, the climate in much of Africa was very unstable.
• Climate change forced Paleolithic people to move to new places and develop
new tools to survive.
• Archaeologists discovered that East Africa suffered a terrible drought, a long
period of dry, hot weather, between 100,000 and 75,000 years ago. However,
areas like the Sahara became an oasis, an area where plants can grow.
• About 10,000 Paleolithic people were living in East Africa at the time.
• These environmental changes may have led some of them to begin their
migration, or movement.

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Chapter 1: 1.3 Changing
Environments
• Adapting to New Conditions
• As people migrated, they used technology to respond to some of the challenges
of their new environments.
• Technology is the application of knowledge, tools, and inventions to meet people’s needs.
• Fire was an especially useful technology that provided warmth and light, scared away
enemies, and drove animals into traps.
• Cooking meat with fire made it easier to digest and killed bacteria.
• Paleolithic people also used technology to develop tools that helped them adapt
to new environments and climates.
• Homo sapiens refined earlier, simple tools.
• A hard stone called flint was especially useful.
• Over time, tools grew increasingly advanced and specialized, which helped people to
survive in a wide range of habitats and climates.

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Chapter 1: 1.4 Moving into New
Environments
Early Human Migration: 100,000 – 14,000 years Ago
• Between 70,000
and 10,000 B.C.,
Paleolithic people
migrated from
Africa and settled
throughout the
world.

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Chapter 1: 1.4 Moving into New
Environments
• Spread of Early Humans
• Paleolithic people migrated outside of Africa.
• 70,000 years ago: migrated to Southwest Asia.
• 50,000 years ago: migrated from Asia to Australia.
• 40,000 years ago: migrated to Europe.
• 30,000 years ago: migrated to Siberia.
• Between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago: a series of migrations to the Americas.
• Scientists think the Ice Age led to migration to the Americas.
• Around 20,000 years ago, the Ice Age trapped so much water as ice that sea level was nearly 400
feet lower than it is today. This created land bridges, which allowed humans to walk from one
continent to another.
• There is a theory that humans crossed the Beringia land bridge, which connected Siberia and North
America.
• Around 12,000 years ago, there was a period of glacial melting. At this time, people pushed
southward through Central America and South America.

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Chapter 1: 1.4 Moving into New
Environments
• In Search of Food
• People migrated to places in pursuit of animals to eat.
• Some of these creatures were megafauna, which means “large animals.”
• Megafauna included the woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, and saber-toothed cat.
• These megafauna became extinct, or died out about 11,000 years ago.

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 Chapter 1: 1.5 National Geographic Explorer Amanuel
Beyin:
Exploring Early Human Migration and the Beginnings of Diversity

• Out of Africa
• National Geographic Explorer
Amanuel Beyin wanted to
discover the routes early
modern humans took as they
migrated out of Africa.
• Beyin says there are two widely
accepted migration routes out
of Africa.
• According to Beyin, the
southern route would have been
the safer passageway and would
have provided people with fresh
water and abundant seafood.

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 Chapter 1: 1.5 National Geographic Explorer Amanuel
Beyin:
Exploring Early Human Migration and the Beginnings of Diversity

• Spark of Creativity
• Beyin is also fascinated by what happened after early humans moved all over
the planet, which laid the roots for modern human diversity.
• According to Beyin, if humans had remained in one geographic region, many
of the cultural and biological features that distinguish us from each other
would never have developed.
• Beyin also studies early human cultural innovations, including ancient
technology, such as the variety of stone tools ancient people left behind in
coastal Eritrea.

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Chapter 1: 1.6 Cave Art
• Ancient Artists
• Cave paintings reveal much about Paleolithic people and their world.
• Art is an important part of culture. It shows a capacity for creativity.
• Around 35,000 years ago, a great artistic innovation occurred: humans began painting
detailed images on cave walls.
• The subjects of these cave paintings include images of animals such as woolly
mammoths and horses.
• There are everyday scenes, such as deer being hunted by men with spears. Other images
consist of lines, circles, and geometric patterns.
• One type of image that appears all over the world is considered by many to be one of
the most moving: handprints.

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Chapter 1: 1.6 Cave Art
• Glimpse into an Early World
• Lascaux Cave in France has cave paintings created about 17,000
years ago.
• In Australia’s Kakadu National Park, cave and rock paintings show
details of daily life and reflect the spiritual beliefs of Aborigines, the
earliest people in Australia.
• In the Tassili-n-Ajjer mountain range, paintings show wildlife and
grasslands of the now barren Sahara.
• In Argentina, the Cave of the Hands contains a wall of handprints.

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Chapter 1: 2.1 Nomadic Hunter-
Gatherers
• Moving with the Seasons
• Humans lived as hunter-gatherers—they hunted animals and gathered
wild plants to eat.
• Most hunter-gatherer groups were small. The men hunted. Women and young
children gathered fruits and nuts.
• Scientists have learned about hunter-gatherers by studying the body and
possessions of a hunter, known as the Iceman, whose frozen body has been
found.
• As animal herds moved with the seasons, so did people who moved from
place to place called nomads.
• As hunter-gatherers traveled outside of Africa, they learned to adapt to their
new environments—especially the cold.
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Chapter 1: 2.1 Nomadic Hunter-
Gatherers
• Following the Herds
• Nomadic hunter-gatherers followed herds that migrated with the seasons and
entered new environments created by the changeable Ice Age climate.
• It took intelligence, teamwork, and special tools to kill an animal as big as a
woolly mammoth.
• As humans spread around the world, various human groups competed for
resources.
• Conflict would have been most common during cold periods, when food and
shelter were scarce.
• Interaction helped spread new ideas and paved the way for a remarkable new
stage in human development.

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Chapter 1: 2.2 The Beginnings of
Domestication
• Changing Climate
• Around 14,000 years ago, Earth grew warmer, and the ice sheets melted.
• These changes raised sea levels, created freshwater lakes, and increased
global rainfall. Land bridges disappeared, and coastal waters formed that
were full of fish.
• Animals moved, adapted, or died as their habitats, or environments, changed.
• These environmental changes began to transform the ways that hunter-
gatherers lived in some areas.
• The warmer, wetter climate led to the growth of forests and grasslands.
• In time, people learned to raise plants and animals. This development, called
domestication, led to the beginning of farming.

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Chapter 1: 2.2 The Beginnings of
Domestication
• Taming Plants and Animals
• Hunter-gatherers grew plants by scattering seeds in wet ground, and returned
to harvest the plants the following year.
• At about the same time, humans began to tame animals.
• The earliest domesticated animals were dogs.
• Other animals were domesticated for food: first sheep and goats, then pigs and cattle.
• Most humans remained nomadic, but the warmer climate provided certain
areas with abundant resources allowing some hunter-gatherer groups to
settle down.
• Settling down to live permanently brought about a great change that allowed
humans to make their next big leap forward.

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Chapter 1: 2.3 A New Bond with
Animals
• Early humans had
long painted and
carved images of the
animals they saw
every day. Once
people began to
domesticate
animals, the
relationship
between humans
and animals
changed.

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Chapter 1: 2.4 The Agricultural
Revolution
• Fertile River Valleys
• Humans settled down and farmed along river valleys and developed new farm
tools and methods.
Domestication of Plants and Animals, 5000–500 B.C.

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Chapter 1: 2.4 The Agricultural
Revolution
• The shift from hunting and gathering to farming ushered in a period called the
Neolithic Age, which began somewhere between 10,000 B.C. and 8000 B.C.
• During this time, people discovered that they could live all year on what they farmed,
rather than on what they found.
• This shift in the way people lived is called the agricultural revolution.
• Agriculture is the practice of growing plants and rearing animals for food.
• In the early stages of the Neolithic Age, people began to build farming villages.
• Many of the earliest farming villages were in an area called the Fertile Crescent.
• The Fertile Crescent stretches from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. It includes
the fertile, flat floodplains along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Southwest Asia.
• The fertile soil there encouraged the growth of crops and plants. It provided a steady
food supply. People were able to settle down and enjoy a much more comfortable
lifestyle.
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Chapter 1: 2.4 The Agricultural
Revolution
• New Farm Tools and Methods
• Neolithic people developed specialized tools, such as hoes for digging and
plows for planting.
• Farmers used domesticated animals to make their new tools more efficient.
• They tied cattle to plows and led them up and down the rows of a field.
• The cows left behind manure that fertilized the soil.
• Neolithic people developed new technology for the home.
• They made clay pots and hardened them in kilns, or ovens.
• They also used kilns to heat and melt metal from rocks—a process called smelting. The
liquid metal was then cast in molds to create metal tools, which eventually replaced
stone tools.

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Chapter 1: 2.5 Studying the Past
• Scientific Data
• The story of human history is revealed through objects and artifacts. Archaeologists,
historians, and other specialists gather these pieces of evidence and study them.
• Historical Sources
• A primary source is a document or object created by someone who either lived
through or witnessed a historical event. Letters, maps, paintings, and tools are
examples of primary sources.
• Secondary sources are documents or other objects created after an event by
someone who did not see it or live during the time when it occurred. History books
and biographies are secondary sources.
• Oral history is an unwritten account of events often passed down as stories or songs.
• New evidence is continually being discovered, which means history is always
changing.
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