I'd like to start a discussion on human time line.
An interesting subject.
First off
Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq, during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages, and arguably the first civilization ...
Wikipedia
Period:Late Neolithic - Middle Bronze Age
Dates:c. 4500 – c. 1900 BC
That was the first known civilization that possessed some form of writing (early cuneiform in their case). We still have some of their records and know something (not a great deal) of their history.
There was a long and hugely interesting period prior to that called the '
neolithic' (the 'new stone age') that didn't possess writing (and hence was 'prehistoric'). These weren't stereotypical 'cavemen', though. The neolithic extends back to at least 7,000 BCE and perhaps thousands of years earlier in some places, closer to the end of the last ice age.
It was a revolutionary period in human life. Many of them lived in settled villages, some quite large (several thousand inhabitants). In the dry Middle East these closely resembled the Indian pueblos in the American southwest. In Europe, they were thatched roof wooden villages.
What defines the 'neolithic' was possession of agriculture and domestic animals (apart from dogs, which seem to have been with humans longer). These were garden-farming communities, not large scale commercial agriculture, farmed with hoes not plows. Pastoral nomadism dates from the same period. (Pastoral nomadism seems primitive, but it depends on domesticated animals.)
Although they didn't have writing, these weren't simple people. The neolithic is defined by possession of agriculture and many of the farm crops familiar today originated in this time. In the Middle East (where their settlements are better preserved than the European wooden villages) their settlements sometimes had multiple stories with interior stairways, whitewashed interior walls with painted decorations, and furniture. They tended to be located in small valleys in hilly areas, where creeks and streams had water all year. Remains of their villages are found in what is now Turkey and Iran, not Iraq and Mesopotamia. Settlement of the desert flatlands required large-scale irrigation projects and the appearance of larger cities. (Enter the Sumerians.)
The neolithic invented textiles (a revolutionary development) and fired ceramics. They even experimented with copper metallurgy (mostly used for jewelry). There's increasing evidence of long distance trade among these groups, since groups are found to have used materials (amber, particular kinds of stone or whatever) only obtainable many hundreds of kilometers away. ('Otzi', the late-neolithic Ice-man, was murdered while crossing the Alps.) Their main materials were still stone and wood. They no doubt had elaborate intellectual lives, probably passed on by bards, poets and professional story-tellers, and probably organized into little loosely organized kingdoms, though as there was no writing, we have no record of the details. Much of the world still had this style of life when the Europeans arrived. These populations provide evidence that societies like this can have very elaborate traditions of art, myth and dance.
http://www.iceman.it/en/the-iceman/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ötzi
The exceedingly long period that came before this is usually lumped together as the
paleolithic period, the 'old stone age'.
The 'paleolithic' is typified by hunter-gatherer ways of life. This period dates back from maybe 10,000 BCE all the way to the early hominids and the little known origins of human beings. (So there isn't really a fixed date for the beginning of the paleolithic, but it predates the appearance of anatomically modern humans and probably extends back millions of years.) Paleolithic ways of life survived until recently among a few relic populations such as the Australian aborigines.
Historians and anthropologists usually distinguish between vaguely defined early and late paleolithic cultures. The late paleolithic (the last few tens of thousands of years) seems to have domesticated dogs, possessed bows and arrows and spear-throwers (they could take down mammoths), had art of a sort (cave paintings and small carved figurines) and probably huts and technologies to prepare skins and furs as garments. Most of their technology was probably in wood (biodegradable) and hasn't survived, so they may have been more sophisticated than we think. (Imagine hunter-gatherer cultures in more recent times.) It's probable that they had story-tellers, shamans, rituals and elaborate traditions of myth that they told around their campfires.
The earlier portion of the old stone age gets us closer to the origins of man. It includes things like
Homo erectus as well as early modern humans. There were likely multiple varieties of human alive at the same time in those earlier years. Neanderthals were seemingly the last surviving alt.humans, though there's recent evidence of others surviving until comparatively late in parts of Asia. (There are even speculations that some might still survive today in remote areas, 'bigfoot' and 'yeti' sightings continue.) The early paleolithic populations probably had spears and axes. They were capable of traveling long distances and populated all of Eurasia. This is probably when human language appeared in all of its complexity, and our modern human powers of conceptualization along with it. There are indications that religious ideas may have originated in the very early period. Some of these groups (including
Homo erectus) occasionally collected human skulls for some reason and Neanderthals seem to have sometimes engaged in burial rituals.) These very early populations had tamed fire and had the ability to cook their food.
Humans are said to go back to about 200,000 years old
Anatomically modern humans. Other varieties (the alt.humans, technically referred to as 'hominins') are much older.
Homo erectus dates back to as early as 1.9 million years ago.
