The Super Summary of World History

by Alan Dale Daniel

  (All dates approximate)

  Note, the New Stone Age brings in agriculture; and this was the greatest advance in the long history of humanity.

  In prehistory there is no writing, and this makes investigating the era especially hard. We do have bits of physical evidence left by prehistoric peoples and it tells us a lot. People lived in groups, learned to build houses with hearths and shelves, and often buried their dead in cemeteries. Some graves contained bodies along with jewelry and clothing. Other burials involved cremating the body and placing the ashes into urns, followed by a burial of the urn (the Urnfield culture). Artistry included brightly colored realistic pictures inside caves, impressive carvings, and pottery. Our ancestors constructed very simple to very sophisticated stone tools, consumed a large variety of animals, grains, nuts, fish, and fowl from the areas they inhabited, and they eventually developed trade with other sets of people outside their area. Archeologist have found woven and died clothing dating from 26,000 BC, and clay cooking pots from 12,500 BC. These assertions are based on solid physical evidence from archeological sites, accordingly, there is little speculation about the fundamental facts; however, some books and articles on prehistory are based on the surmises of those studying the period, and this guesswork is not fact.

  Figure 1 Neolithic Cave Painting 30,000 BC

  (See front cover for color)

  Let us discuss an illustration of speculation. Beautiful cave paintings found in France (Lascaux) and Spain date from 30,000 BC. The paintings are far inside the caves in all but inaccessible places. Animals and animal life are the main subjects, and some are painted with what appear to be spears or arrows in the animals. The infrequently depicted people are poorly drawn stick figures. Nearly everyone writing about the paintings classify them as high art or art with a ritual purpose. The best paintings are beautiful, containing well-executed color usage and lifelike qualities for the animals; however, are they the Rembrandts of their era? Could the paintings be graffiti placed there by wayward youths? After all, graffiti in large cities is often well executed, colorful, and generally pleasing except for its location.

  Most textbooks explain that the paintings were spiritual in purpose, and played a vital part in tribal customs; however, without writing we do not know why these paintings came to be, and explanations telling us why are speculation.[5] Thus, student of history, beware of those telling you what no one can possibly know.

  The history of the human race is short in comparison to its prehistory. If we start with Homo erectus there are well over one million years in prehistory, and about five thousand years for history. In addition, the world’s most important inventions and discoveries take place in prehistory. The invention of agriculture, animal husbandry, the wheel, the discovery of how to make and use fire, how to mine and refine metals, the invention of language, and the invention of writing all take place in prehistory. It was in the prehistoric era that humans began burying their dead, establishing early cities, and developing new ways of living together. Every foundational theme underlying the human race began in prehistory.

  During the prehistoric era humans must have engaged in mass migrations that eventually led to Homo sapiens covering the globe by about 9,000 BC. Anthropologist theorize that modern humans originally migrated out of Africa into the Middle East and Europe, thereafter into Russia, India, China, Indochina, the Pacific Ocean area, including Australia, and finally across the Bering Sea to North and then South America[6]. Great disagreements exist over the timing of the crossing to North America with the old theories claiming a 10,000 BC crossing, but newer theories putting the migration at 16,000 BC or earlier. No one is certain what happened because time covers up a lot of evidence; thus, the activities and movements of the earliest humans are largely unknown. Another set of facts lost to time is how humans developed into three races. As early humans are so few it seems they had to start as one race, separating out thereafter; however, all our explorations have failed to find a widely accepted explanation for racial differences in humans.

  Figure 2 Cave Painting 30,000 BC, Valtorta Cave

  There are certain fundamental processes that identify the human race. Wherever Homo sapiens have wandered we find important fundamental traits—here is a list of 10 important ones:

  Ten Human Traits

  1. Art—Homo sapiens constantly create beautiful things. Rock carvings and paintings, statuettes, antler carvings, flutes, bead necklaces, and rope adornments of all kinds. This is not an exhaustive list, but art is a common commodity with modern humans. Not so with proto humans as we find almost no art from their era, and the few samples we do find are not sophisticated.

  2. Buildings—Humans like to construct shelters. Some of the most impressive structures were the mammoth bone houses put together by early hunters. As time went forward the buildings became more elaborate. Some proto-humans managed to construct long houses and huts, but only modern humans construct monuments like the Mayan pyramids in Meso-America or the skyscrapers of Chicago.

  3. Machines—mankind has moved forward using machines. Some machines are very simple like the bow and other extremely complex like a moon rocket, but only machines allowed people to advance from the caves to the stars. The invention and use of ever more impressive machines is the hallmark of human kind. There are six basic machines: the wheel and axial, the lever, inclined plane, wedge, pulley, and screw. From these seemingly easy ideas men reached the moon and sent machines beyond our solar system.

  4. Governments—wherever humans go, at least since the advent of writing, we find governance. For good or evil people organize. Groups form and leaders emerge. Then the leaders assume the task of making sure the group prospers. Once government is in place it never goes away, unless by annihilation through disease, disaster, or enemy action—after which it soon returns.

  5. Communication—people not only organize they communicate with one another in various ways. The spoken word for communication purposes (language) starts about 250,000 BC. The fact that humans organized into groups leads to speculation that language was required; however, it is nearly impossible to know when true language use started. What is clear is that the development of language with its ability to transfer exacting ideas between people was a key turning point in human development (Hey, that’s my chicken!). Homo sapiens would have problems moving beyond the caves without language because ideas would remain locked away in the individual’s head. Sharing knowledge and ideas moves us forward.

  6. Social Organizations—before written history people grouped themselves together by kinship, family and tribe, at least as far as anyone can tell from ancient indications of kinship. The earliest humans and proto humans buried their dead, often in cemeteries and sometimes placing more than one individual into a grave. This might indicate kinship. After writing developed we see that clans, tribes, and kin are the basic organizational units of society. From what we can tell, this has been true for 50,000 years or more.

  7. Warfare—From the start killing other humans was common. Early on the fights were most likely small, but as soon as large civilizations came about large wars became common. The more organized the civilization the larger the wars.

  8. Religion—is a constant with Homo sapiens. Even proto humans buried their dead with what appears to be personal items. As soon as writing begins we read references to gods. Strangely, from many early human societies we find that the gods demand blood sacrifice. In some cases the preferred blood was human. Even in Meso-America, far away in time and distance from Europe and Mesopotamia, blood was necessary to appease the gods. Why this is part of early religion remains a mystery.

  9. Desire for more—this is another constant with Homo sapiens. Somehow, what is there is never enough. Humans were always going forward to the next horizon both physically and mentally. Of course, not all fit into this category, but it is a most common human trait. Only people seem to have this kind of desire. Ants and bees build and they search for other locations for their habitation;
however, they simply reproduce what has gone before. Humans want to make what has gone before obsolete, just like the computer you bought yesterday.

  10. Time—it seems humans have always recognized the concept of time. Early monuments tract the sun and calendars are early inventions of many civilizations. The knowledge that time moves, things change, and people die has a profound effect on human thinking, and human thinking is the key stuff of history.

  Neolithic Revolution—Agriculture 8,500 BC

  After modern humans established themselves the world over they were still hunters and gatherers. In Europe during the Neolithic Age, bands of people were settling into at least semi-permanent dwellings, using bones and hides of the woolly mammoth to cover living areas that contained fire pits and storage. Graveyards start appearing near the ancient villages. In some burials all the heads are facing in the same direction, beads often cover the body, and the corpse often had personal items such as hairbrushes, shoes, bows, spears and the like, buried with it.

  In Europe farming was slow to develop, however, in the warmer regions of the world a new farming lifestyle was starting about 8,000 BC on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the Middle East, the Nile River in Egypt, and the Indus River on the Indian subcontinent. People began founding permanent living places with cultivated crops grown in the rich soils of these river valleys, and they acquired herd animals for meat, hides and milk. The crops might have been growing wild in these areas and humans developed the idea of planting the seeds of these wild plants so they could control their growth. By planting the seeds at a certain time of year they would all come to ripeness at the same time thereby allowing the people to harvest them all at once, and giving the farmers a great surplus of food. By somehow storing the extra grain (maybe in clay pots) they could survive the winter (non-growing) season. With goats or cattle for milk, meat, and hides the stationary folks could build a nice life without the necessity of following the herds as a hunter-gatherer society must. By abandoning the nomadic life people could build permanent structures to live in, accumulate more goods, and have a lot more to eat. By constructing irrigation systems the sedentary types could increase their crop yields and the amount of land under cultivation. Their biggest problems may have involved how to store the surplus so it would not spoil. Much of this is speculation because it all happened in prehistory; accordingly, we cannot know the true sequence of events. What we do know is these permanent communities grew in size to become the first cities.

  Around 8,500 BC at the walled city of Jericho, in the Jordan Valley of modern day Israel, domesticated cereals made their appearance. Jericho was a 10 acre walled citadel where we find the first evidence of settled farming based on domesticated corps.

  The most important event in the existence of humanity was the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry, which started about 8,500 BC. I cannot emphasize this enough. Food was and is the underpinning of every human activity. Western society is currently awash in food, and we do not think of it as the foundation for all we see around us. The discovery of agriculture made an abundance of food possible. Before farming, people in hunter-gatherer groups spent their time hunting or preparing to hunt. Meat is hard to store for long periods without refrigeration (or even with it), thus, tribes had to follow the herds if one wanted to stay near the grocery store, so to speak.

  With agriculture and animal husbandry creating a food surplus people could sit out harsh times and survive. A surplus of food allowed the specialization of work, as some people could do work unrelated to hunting or farming. Now the person who excelled at making shoes could do that and the farmer could use his surplus to purchase the shoes. The net result was the farmer had food and very good shoes, and the shoemaker had food, very good shoes, and could spend his time doing what he did best. Others could use their time to trade with far away peoples who had resources, such as metal, the locals did not have. Refining metal ore into copper, bronze, or iron was a time-consuming task and required a lot of skill. People busy hunting all day would have problems mining the ore and refining it, not to mention the movement from area to area would prevent the investment in tools or skills needed to mine and refine the ore. Once people acquired permanent homes a few people could invest their time in mining and developing the skills to make copper or bronze objects because the metal items would sell at a high price, thus giving the metalworker a good return on his time and resource investment. In fact, the development of metallurgy was vital to the advance of stationary civilizations. The foundations of a modern specialized economy started prior to written history with the growth of cities and specialization of work.

  The growing towns soon had permanent structures, specialists in many crafts, and built-in incentives to invent new ways of working and living. One of the new ideas involved writing, and that was the start of history because people began keeping track of what was going on around them. People may have tried putting things in writing as far back as 6,000 BC, but the real development took place in the Middle East in the Euphrates River area about 3,500 BC in Sumer. It was a big step toward the modern world.

  Meanwhile, in Europe, prehistory went on except with a twist. Even though Europe seemed to lag behind in many skills of civilization—including writing—they managed to build massive stone structures about the same time as Mesopotamia and Egypt were constructing enormous structures. Erecting stone circle megaliths, such as Stonehenge, took place about 2,600 BC. The first signs of construction at Stonehenge are from nearly 8,000 BC. There are thousands of these stone structures with a geographic range from the Mediterranean through France, Spain, Denmark, England and Scandinavia. Discovering the purposes for these massive stone works has proved elusive, but they resemble nothing else from that period found anywhere else on earth. It is clear, or as clear as prehistory can be, that the idea for these stone monuments arose from inside Europe. Europe remained in the non-writing, or prehistoric, stage for many centuries after writing developed in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, China, and India. Why Europe beyond the Mediterranean took so long to enter the historic era is hard to explain, especially when the European tribes had shown themselves capable of constructing the colossal megaliths.

  These large stone circles may have had ritual purposes or may have been solar calendars; however, it is very hard to discern the reasons for the construction because of the lack of written records. There is a wide “road” connecting Stonehenge to a nearby site; thus, these two sites may have a complex ritualistic connection. It is fair to say that whatever the purpose for the construction the effort involved was gigantic, and required an organization of community talent and creativity that was remarkable for the time.

  Africa spent nearly all of its existence in the pre-writing or prehistoric “era,” with the notable exceptions of Egypt and Carthage in North Africa. This is difficult to imagine, since humanity itself is said to have originated in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa seems locked in the moment without the need to develop writing. Our history will largely ignore Africa, South America, the Pacific Ocean areas, and Central Asia (Siberia and the lands east of the Ural Mountains). No one recorded what happened in these vast areas; thus, there is no “history.” The final analysis involves impact on history, and the high civilizations developed in the Middle East, Egypt, India, China, Greece, Rome, and the nearby surrounding areas had the real historic impact. Africa, northern Europe, the interior of Asia from Mongolia to the Urals, the Pacific Ocean areas, and all of the Americas have little or no impact on history before AD 1000, and many of these areas (Africa, South America, the Pacific) had little impact right up to the modern era.

  Differing Views of History

  Before we get too far in our story, we need to point out that we can view history in at least three fundamentally different ways. We will start with the cyclic view. Modern historians and many great civilizations, such as India, support this idea. In the cyclic view history moves like a great wheel, constantly repeating itself. The cycles are not exactly the sa
me each time, but much like the seasons they repeat consistently even though the details may differ. The second great idea is history moves like an ascending line. In this view history is advancing somewhere, even though that somewhere may be unknown. Thus, history has a purpose. Christian theology sees history this way, as do the Jews, Muslims, and several philosophers such as Karl Marx. Under this way of thinking, history will reach a climactic moment after which all will stabilize or completely end. The Mayans of Central America also saw history this way, and thought it would all end in disaster in December of 2012. Many of these concepts about history purposefully advancing somewhere revolve around an end of the world scenario, such as the return of Jesus Christ or a cataclysmic end of everything like the Maya. Under the theories of Marx, the world was advancing to a worker’s utopia. Of course, there is also the Chaos (Post-modern) view shared by overburdened, coerced, history students and the indefatigable Homer Simpson who imagine history as a stack of irrelevant, unconnected, and meaningless events unworthy of notice—much less a grade. To quote Homer Simpson, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.” While Homer is making it sound funny, in fact the Post-modern view is quite prevalent. In this view, history has no turning points, shows no purpose, displays no repeating patterns, and there is really no such thing as progress. This is the Post-modernist view of no mega-narratives, that is, no over arching pattern or theme. History is a series of “fractured narratives” (The Times History of the World, Overy, page xvii).

  Arguing any of these theories presents little challenge. History, as we know it in 2010, fits none of the categories perfectly. Those claiming repetition have an endless number of past civilizations as proof, and those saying history is advancing to an end must await that event because there is no other way to know if they are right. Saying history is a bunch of stuff that happened, without patterns or themes, is another idea that will have to wait for a non-end. Hard to do.