Mankind and the very origins of life on earth
From the earliest days, the human species was present across the whole surface of the Ancient World. Essentially, then, the early history of the Mediterranean and the early history of mankind went hand in hand from the start. This history moved slowly, so slowly that its chronological stages are measured not even in millennia – which would be meaningless – but in tens and hundreds of millennia. It is not easy for us even to begin to understand the dimensions of such a fabulous, unthinkable stretch of time.
There were probably ‘three stages in human evolution, starting from our hominid ancestors: Australopithecus, Pithecanthropos and the Hominoidae’. Pithecanthropos, who is found all over the Ancient World, is often called Homo erectus: in other words, the emergence of the human species is traced back to this stage. But on what criteria, and at what stage can we see mankind beginning? The use of tools was once regarded as the defining moment, but we now know that Australopithecus, who is found all over Africa, was already able to fashion tools out of stone and to use them, possibly as many as three million years ago. That takes us to the beginning of the quaternary era. Before that, the hominids of the miocene and pliocene eras, ancestors of Australopithecus, were links in a chain of primates and, like them, were in turn related to other species. In this endless sequence of evolution, ‘mankind’ was just an accident, an infinitely precious one in view of what was to follow, but certainly belated and of small significance if viewed on the scale of the earth’s existence. One prehistorian famously used a telling metaphor to describe it: if we imagine the entire biological evolution of life on earth as contained within the cycle of one solar year, with the very first signs of life appearing on i January, the earliest prehominid species would appear at about five thirty on the afternoon of 31 December; Neanderthal man would show up at about twenty minutes to midnight; and the entire existence of Homo sapiens, from the stone age to our own time, would be contained in the last few minutes of the year.
A misty past with very uneven chronological divisions
For our present purpose, we shall be concerned with mankind only from the point at which the species had embarked on its human destiny, had converted to walking upright on two legs (Homo erectus) and thus had full use of its hands, making it possible to pit its intelligence and the tools it could now handle against the combined obstacles of a hostile natural environment. These tools, made from crude stone, whether hewn, split or much later polished, offer us almost the only clue as we trace the steps of a long technological journey, with recognizable stages at very long intervals.
We are faced with a huge time-span: at least a million years.1 How are we to find any bearings in this vast expanse of time? Traditionally,history has used the terms Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times. We can distinguish a similar tripartite division in prehistory: the paleolithic (the old stone age); mesolithic (middle stone age); and neolithic (new stone age). But these three ages are of enormously uneven lengths. The paleolithic runs from at least a million years BC to 10,000 or 8000 BC.2 Over the next four or five millennia came the decisive ages of the mesolithic and neolithic, varying greatly between regions however, and eventually leading to the bronze age, which broadly corresponds to the age of writing. This disproportion in duration is of capital importance. The paleolithic lasted a very long time indeed: 99 per cent of human existence so far took place then.
Logically, then, scholars have taken to distinguishing several periods within the long paleolithic era: lower, middle and upper. Here too, the difference in time-scale is fantastic: in round figures about one million years for the old or lower paleolithic; 40,000 for the middle,3 less than 30,000 for the upper. Nothing indicates more clearly the late appearance of progress. First came an empty monotonous age, marked only by the very slow evolution of the species; then the process speeded up, punctuated by new developments and by what can almost be called events, especially after the crucial emergence of Neanderthal man in about 100,000 BC, and of Homo sapiens, who may have appeared at about the same time, but who became widespread only in about 30,000 BC.
But it is above all the tools that these early humans made, and their successive refinements, which have become markers for the traditional chronological divisions. Here we shall have to use a terminology which may seem odd to the layman, and lacking any obvious logic, since the stages in prehistoric tool-making have been named after the archaeological sites where the first characteristic discoveries were made. Since France was the location of many finds, and since numerous pioneers of prehistorical studies were French, many of these names come from French sites: Abbeville, Saint-Acheul, Levallois, La Gravette, Solutre, La Madeleine – but there are English ones too (Clacton-on-Sea) as well as variants found in North Africa, Palestine, etc. A table in Appendix I lists this long series of names, which is not repeated here; rather we need to understand its symbolic meaning. It would certainly be preferable to have some kind of systematic typology synthesizing all the finds. But is that possible? It would mean jettisoning the scientific language which has now been used regularly for over a hundred years.
The endless paleolithic era
The lower and middle paleolithic, which many specialists prefer not to separate, consisted first of all of countless ages when a mere split pebble with one or two cutting edges was the only implement (the so-called Pebble Culture). After that we can begin to speak of the Abbeville, Saint-Acheul, Clacton, Levallois or Mousterian periods. Each of these refers to a different kind of stone-age technology: double-sided hand-axes, made by chipping both sides of a large lump of flint to reduce it in size and narrow it to a triangular piercing point; choppers cut by the same method, but ending in an edge not a point; and then all the tools based on splinters of flint. With the Mousterian-Levallois period, which corresponds to a long plateau in the middle paleolithic, improved techniques made it possible to obtain flakes rather than splinters of flint. The two-sided all-purpose tools came to have a more regular and functional shape. The splinter-tools were refined by fine bevelling, giving them sharp edges and making them into specialized items. This skill would soon enable Neanderthal men, who flourished in the middle paleolithic, to combine wooden handles and stone tools: by fixing a stone arrow-head to a wooden stake, they could arm themselves more effectively against wild beasts.
But this breakthrough, heralding the crucial advances made during the upper paleolithic (sometimes known as the leptolithic or ‘light’ stone age), was a late development. For long ages, the primitive tools used by the human species meant that men were ineffective predators, poorly equipped hunters who had to be content with catching slow or immature animals; they sometimes fell prey themselves to wild beasts who were stronger and faster. Fishing, gathering or scavenging, human beings were nomads, living in tiny groups constantly on the move from one hunting-ground to another, subject to hunger since they had few reserves, and only occasionally meeting other groups of humans with whom they might fight or barter a few objects.
As time went by, these small bands of people began to travel very far afield. Although we cannot reconstruct even approximate itineraries,we know that their possessions, especially stone tools with their easily recognized manufacture, must have been carried over fabulous distances. We can detect the same ‘civilization’ or rather the same method of stone-cutting all round the Mediterranean at periods which more or less concur, at least in the early stages of the lower paleolithic: tools of the Abbeville or Saint-Acheul type have been found in North Africa, Spain, Syria and the Balkans. Later, especially from the upper paleolithic onwards, there would be irregular developments, with some regions forging ahead while others lagged behind. The western Maghreb seems to have been a region slow to develop in the late paleolithic or early neolithic age, although the experts are not all agreed on this.
Certainly the working of small flints, the microliths which developed in Europe at the end of the paleolithic and especially in the mesolithic, as well as the use of a wh
ole range of small tools each devised for a special purpose, can be attested everywhere, from Scotland to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Atlantic to the Vindhya mountains in India, or to the Mongolian desert, over areas far exceeding the bounds of the Mediterranean. The taste for ornament – shell necklaces and bracelets, ochre body-paint – seems to have been very marked and was no doubt linked to belief in magic. We know that ornaments travelled long distances, since amber from the north has been found in the Pyrenees.
Sooner or later, all the accessible regions round the rim of the Mediterranean would witness the arrival of these tiny groups of primitive hunters. They have left traces almost everywhere of their passage or settlement. Corsica and Sardinia, as islands far out to sea, may have had to wait until the third millennium to be inhabited by seaborne settlers, but if so they were the exception that proved the rule.4 Twenty or thirty years ago, it was thought that the immigrants who brought the ‘neolithic revolution’ to the Greek archipelago had also landed on soil previously untouched by human habitation. The Abbe Breuil was one of the sceptics: ‘Seek and ye shall find’, as he put it. And indeed now that systematic excavation has been set in train in Greece, paleolithic sites have one after another come to light. The hunting people of the early stone age did not leave many regions unexplored. Only wide expanses of sea could stop them.
Their presence almost everywhere was in fact achieved over time, over an almost unimaginable stretch of time, millennia after millennia. The early stone age culture had plenty of time to work its way round the Ancient World, spreading in waves of identical nature. It was only when progress began to be made (relatively) quickly at the end of the paleolithic and above all the neolithic that serious time-lags began to create privileged areas, introducing differences in the degree of development. But as is always the case, these imbalances were to result in increased compensatory exchanges between zones, leading in turn to further progress.
Was the climate the source of change?
In this slow-motion past, there was one forceful, or at any rate dominant feature, capable of upsetting everything: the climate. For reasons still uncertain (see below) it was subject to constant change. From the beginning of the Villefranche period at the start of the quaternary era, it was the cause of many upheavals. This was the most dramatic aspect of these far-off millennia. Geology has made it possible to detect past climatic change and almost to map its effects, but here, too, we should remember that these awesome fluctuations occurred over very long time-spans, with change accumulating long before its presence becomes visible.
The most spectacular sign of these worldwide disruptions was the accumulation, at four different periods, of enormous masses of ice to the north of the Ancient World and America, giant glaciers like those which still cover Greenland and the Antarctic today, up to two or three kilometres deep. The advance and retreat of these monster glaciers, the inlandsis, were traumatic. When they expanded, it meant that the cold landmasses and fronts of polar air moved southwards towards the Mediterranean. At such times, the sea must have been subject to very low temperatures. At the same time, the cold northern air also displaced towards the Mediterranean almost all the cyclonic Atlantic depressions. Colder weather was accompanied by long periods of heavy rain, so the Mediterranean must have experienced several cold ‘rainy periods’, alternating with comparatively warm dry periods when the glaciers retreated northwards again. Rushing torrents in the valleys, frosts cold enough to split stone on the peaks – all these phenomenaof the past are recorded in the ancient alluvial deposits of the paleolithic era.
But this general explanation is probably not sufficient to account for all possible climatic variation, since the Sahara also witnessed alternate periods of drought and humidity, which do not exactly match the chronology of those in the Mediterranean. Experts have suggested that another system of winds, temperatures and rainfall was responsible, a monsoon system centred on equatorial and tropical Africa, which may also have moved north and south by turns. Its moisture-laden influence may have been extended northwards at the time of the third interglacial period, creating the anomalous Saharan landscapes of ‘Lake Chad and the hippopotamus’; then there may have been an extension even further north at the end of the ice ages, which would explain the extraordinary flowering of the Saharan neolithic age, with its pastoral peoples, probably black, its remarkable cave-paintings of giraffes, elephants and gazelles, and its surprising agricultural achievements, short-lived miniature Egypts on the banks of the rivers flowing through the desert.
It is naturally tempting to link such climatic crises with changes in the destinies of living organisms, whether humans, flora or fauna, and with the disappearance or evolution of different species. But caution is more appropriate: these climatic shifts, while certainly dramatic for Europe, where they must have had an impact on human evolution, were virtually unknown in other parts of the world. And while it is true that plants, animals and humans would all have suffered from these devastating and invariably long-lasting shifts in the climate, the human race has a ‘tendency to disobey’; in any case, all living things react and often adapt when faced with obstacles, sometimes simply moving away to escape them. So changes in the fauna do not inevitably provide incontrovertible evidence about climate change.
It is all the same surprising to find that there were reindeer in western Europe well before the last great ice age (the Wtirm) and particularly strange to think of them in the Paris basin or on the plateaux of Castile; it is equally amazing to find the ‘beady-eyed mammoth’ in cave-paintings at Rouffignac in the Perigord in France. These are not isolated cases. What are we to make of the remains of northern birds, and of a giant penguin, at Romanelli near Lecce on the heel of Italy, or, coming from the other direction, remains of hippopotami in the Pontine marches? It is true that the ‘woolly hippopotamus’, now extinct, was adapted to a cold climate! The history of the elephant (Atlantic, Asian and African), with quite separate species corresponding to different climates, is an example of the possibility that any living creature could adapt. The remains of ancient elephants on Delos proves that the island was once attached to the mainland. In Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, Cyprus and Malta, the bones of dwarf elephants point to the degeneration of an ancient species, literally trapped when the islands broke away. In 1960, excavations at Larissa in Thessaly brought to light ‘mammoth and hippopotamus bones as well as tools made of flint and bone of the Levallois-Mousterian type’. And there are plenty of similar examples: in 1940, cave-paintings were discovered in La Baume-Latrone, probably from the Aurignac period: a frieze of elephants and rhinoceros, depicted schematically, almost like a comic strip.
But animal remains can sometimes provide almost unbroken evidence about past climatic changes. On Mount Carmel in Palestine, archaeologists have been able to trace the alternating fortunes of the gazelle, which thrives in a dry climate with plenty of sunshine, and the roe deer, ‘which is suited to living in forests’ and to the damp and temperate climate of the rainy periods. An entertaining graph showing this seesaw relationship has been compiled from traces of both species in different archaeological layers. As the climate altered, each species, true to its nature, sought refuge further north or south, in search either of warmth or of moisture. But these involuntary migrants were faced with the barrier of the Mediterranean. When the ice spread south, the ‘cold-weather species’ were pulled up short by the sea. When the ice retreated, the ‘warm-weather species’ could not easily reach the north shore and its hinterland. It was only in the vast African continent, or more likely in the great landmass of Eurasia, that large-scale migration might lead to free competition between species and to unexpected cross-breeding. This was one of several advantages of the Middle East region.
Vegetation and its combinations could also provide evidence that may be clearer and less disconcerting, although not without complications. But the fascinating science of paleo-botany is still in its infancy. We shall have to wait, but there are surely surprises in store her
e.
Rivers and coasts
Over the surface of the globe, water in all its forms, liquid, solid and vapour, forms a constant mass. The amount of water locked up in glaciers is therefore related to the overall sea level. The latter falls when the glaciers advance, and rises when they melt. The difference may be as little as ten metres, a hundred at most. But this is enough to cause major change to coastlines all over the globe, change which can be charted with some accuracy. Thus the Adriatic, which was once partly dry land, prolonged the Po valley as far as Ancona; the Gulf of Lions, similarly, was a shelf attached to the mainland; Corsica and Sardinia formed a single island landmass, possibly even a peninsula; the low-lying Suez isthmus (only 15 metres above sea level) has several times been flooded by the sea, turning Africa into an island; the Aegean was a landmass throughout the paleolithic (Asia Minor being joined to Greece); and the Black Sea was a lake, linked by a narrow channel to the Caspian. But the Strait of Gibraltar, where the water is comparatively deep, has apparently never been a corridor of dry land. It is also doubtful whether Tunisia was ever linked to Sicily, though the latter was certainly once joined to Italy. These observations explain why some islands were settled in very ancient times, as well as some odd features of their flora and fauna. Above the present-day level of the Mediterranean, ancient sea shores mark what were once high sea levels and beaches. All those bell towers halfway up hills on the Genoese riviera, forming a sort of amphitheatre looking down on the sea, trace the shoreline of onetime beaches, where villages now perch as if on a balcony.
The Mediterranean in the Ancient World Page 6