How much of human prehistory do we really know?

The earliest fossil evidence for Homo sapiens appears 200,000 years ago. The earliest appearance of a written record appears 5,000 years ago.
2.5% of human existence has been documented - our wars, our discoveries, our technological achievements, our golden ages, our civilizations.

A lot has happened in the 2.5% of our existence. Many events unfold in even a single generation. What of the unwritten stories that have occurred in hundreds of millennia? Will we ever come to know?

 

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I think a little bit more in our lifetimes...unless we collapse too.

But I myself wonder how many civilizations have come and gone that we don't know about? We get little hints, like the 10k old town on a lke bed that Google Earth turned up in Russia...

It has been determined that we invented clothing about 70,000 years ago...because that's when body lice began evolving according to genetics analysis... so that's likely when we started being somewhere cold...

 

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Their have been found cave paintings as old as 32 000 years . I've always found it odd to see some of the details they put into the animals and the generally lack of detail they put in the people often you can't see if the figure is male or female, they also don't show any clan markings or picture people any other way then their hand or them hunting. They also don't picture any of their homes.
So their is older historical evidence but it's hard to understand it

 

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I would interpret that art symbolism as meaning they were still in touch with natural human animal instinct but they had not yet differentiated the modern human consciousness, since being human is draw as a blur.

Let me give an example. Say you started to get hungry. The modern person will become aware of the hungry feelings, but will have a choice to eat now or put it off to later. The unconscious mind says it is time to eat; stomach grumble. But the conscious mind, says I am aware my body is getting hungry, but I will to eat later. There are two POV; instinct and choice.

The lack of clarity of the humans within those drawings means, when their body said hungry, like any animal, they will get into motion to do their gathering thing without choice or question. But on the other hand, the goal of that instinct was very clear; clearly drawn animals. They were still on the cruise control of natural human instinct, with its goals clear in their mind. The lion knows what its meal is suppose to be and follows its instincts.

Once pictures of humans gain clarity, this would reflect humans are beginning to see themselves (via the secondary center) with more clarity, with this new center distinct from human instincts, offering subjective choices and not just the cruise control of objective instinct.

 

clearly it's a form of art as it tells more about yourself them abouth the subject.

The blurry people as you call them could also be a religious thing even now it's forbidden to depict some gods and many ceremonie masters in the past wore masks. Perhaps it's to underline the importance of the group in general. Hunthing together and all the hands overlapsing.

 

That explanation amounts to the same thing. The individual human was not yet the focus. The focus was the group hunt. Try to get a bunch of ego-centric people to work together as a selfless team. Their subjectivity would be a constant source of hold-ups, until one is able to break that down.

But like any good team, the individual must sacrifice themselves for the group so they can assume their position as a cog in the well oiled machine. But in this case, the individual was not yet differentiated (blur), so the team was very easy to creates, since common instinct would sense the common goal and the value of the team. No words are needed, like a pack of dogs, just body language.

 

Mud huts, wooden bowls, records made of knotted ropes, fired wooden plows/digging sticks...I've handled fishing spears from ecuadorian natives. Those suckers are hard.

The Hopewell culture seems to have left behind not a whole lot of large artefacts, but at one time they had a bustling community of 10, 000 people...they just built out of wood.
Build from wood or rammed earth and you don't leave behind ruins. Or cut turf for that matter.

I would argue that just because 9500 BC is the earliest we've so far found durable evidence...doesn't mean there's not evidence still to be found of older stuff, or that would-be archaeological finds weren't destroyed by the activities of later settlements or subsidence into water, since good spots are A)next to water and B) usually used by many.

Can I prove it? naah. But I strongly suspect it.
I mean, wouldn't you take the cut rocks you found already done to make your house? I would. I'm lazy.

Maybe it depends on what you call civilization...I figure if there's a subgroup of people within a given population who don't have to grow or hunt their own food and they're all stationary, then it's civilization.


The Inca, btw, dealt with their mountainous terrain and lack of draught animal power in an interesting fashion...in order to make sure everyone got a nutritious diet they moved the people around...instead of trying to move the food.
And they used knotted ropes for records, which the conquistadores burned.

Anyway, I'm rambling now.

 

The transitions from foraging create the chicken or the egg paradox. Did the human mind have to change first, or did changing the social environment alter the human mind?

The main thing about farming, it is not conducive to immediate gratification, since farming takes months of hard work before fruition. It is also subject to chance, since there can be problems such drought, floods, insects, animals and plant disease; no guarantee of success. Mobile foraging is quick and can satisfy hunger much faster in a more reliable way, since it had become efficient over tens of thousands of years. Why leave a more sure thing for a low probability and all that sacrifice?

One simple scenario is connected to the ability to abstract and project. Say the seedlings were no longer perceived as seedlings, but abstracted/projected as babies. This is out of touch with the cause and effect of sensory input but could occur in the imagination. Being imaginary babies, the parental instincts will require that you stay and protect them, even of it brings sacrifice and hardship to themselves. It is possible, others would continue to forage, bringing home the bacon, so the surrogates could care for their imaginary young.

A modern analogy would be a gold prospector. In his imagination, he visualizes the big vein of gold in the mountain. He may be so convinced, others will initially offer support. He may dig and dig for decades and never find anything like the gold he imagined, constantly ignoring the cause and effect around him, being obsessed by the image of fortune to point of ignoring instincts.

But in the case of this pre-human transition of farming, it is not so much fortune as good parenting with the obsession inducing support in those who remain connected to the old instincts since it exhibits the body language of parenting.

 

The problem is, our theories based on archaeological evidence are skewed toward artifacts that persist over time. Stone tools are in the forefront, even though more tools must've been made of wood, fibers, baked clay, etc... What we are creating is a history based on the evidence that survives (which is natural), but it means our view must be incomplete.

A greater tragedy in my opinion is the loss of so much written history. The books and scrolls that have burned and wasted away over the years ... it's difficult to think about sometimes. We have mere fragments and secondary mentionings of some of the greatest human minds to ever ponder our existence. Then, think about the architecture and art lost to fires, to bombers in WWII, to negligence.

All of humanity is as fleeting as a dream. Those in the present will always be like that stumbling buffoon in the shower, scrambling for some purchase on the awesome dream they vaguely remember having the night before, but all recollection of it quickly spiraling down the drain...

 

Another reason for the paucity of atifcts prior to 10,000 BC is that the seas rose about 100 meters following the melting of the Ice Age glaciers, and all the near-shore communities/huts/tribal gathering places, etc. are now well below sea level, with much artifact destroyed by pounding surf prior to complete submersion.

 

Bingo.

and

Double bingo.

 

sure, our understanding of history is limited, just like our understanding of the universe is limited. but it evolves and changes and our perspectives broaden and our ways of perceiving our history and the universe expand.

 

For the most part mainstream archaeology, rather oddly ignores both fact I highlighted that others posted here. Even though they acknowledge an end of the Ice age, they refuse to believe any settlements of significance MAY have existed at that time, cause they can't dive and dig the ocean floor.

 

have you noticed what coastal settlements are made of?

Wood

that kinda rots after 10'000 years

DM

 

1% surely and defferently, we don't even really know when did humens became as "modern" humans, in "evolution" or how old is the oldest civilisation wich differently not egypte, or china, or babylon, or whatever, but, lost ones, some appear in mythes, that all the world share the same myth, "atlantis", and, other prehistoric ruins, dates thousands and thousands of years ago, or even 10 thousands of years ago, easy, we don't know nothing, we only know about, the near prehistoric, anyway, the rest is not clear and dark,

 

on the contrary i think we know 100% of everything we can know

because we cannot know what we do not know.

we know everything we can know but that everything is continually expanding

just a thought

DM

 

There are two sources of evidence.
1. That we can see.
2. That which we can infer.

Obviously, item 1 is much more reliable. In pre-agricultural days, the only evidence that is worth considering is that which can be dug up by anthropologists. Things like myths and legends are far too unreliable. Most of what can be dug up well preserved is stone.

Fraggle asked when the first knots happened. I suspect a long time ago. The thing is that cord and rope does not last. It rots. However, we know of stone axes dating back over 100,000 years ago that might have been tied to wooden handles. Of course, they might also have been hand wielded, but the wooden handle seems to fit the axe head design better. If so, they would have been tied by cord to that handle.

The Maori people of my country had a very technologically backward society. Stone, wood and bone tools. No pottery. No wheel. No bow and arrow. No writing. However, they had extremely well developed cordage and good ropes. Knots were a basic and vital tool to them. They had well developed stone axes and adzes which were tied by strong cord to wooden handles. This is probably a technology that developed early in human, or even pre-human history.

Developing cordage and knots requires very little in the way of advanced technology. Just a plant leaf with strong fibres. The fibres can be twisted into cord between your hands, which implies it was first done a long time ago. In the same way, I suspect that weaving flax is a very old technology. Woven flax mats, baskets etc. too will not preserve since flax rots.

The other technology which appears to be very old is the use of fire.

 

no. 1 is preferable but barring Jurassic Park it is impossible

DM