The Paleolithic Period WHAP/Napp

Objective:Identify and explain significant characteristics of the Paleolithic Period

Reading – Paleolithic Culture:

“Communities numbering about 25 to 50 persons typically migrated seasonally, pursuing animal herds or moving where favorite plant foods ripened. Need for mobility and their physically stressful lives kept birthrates low and life expectancies short. A woman who reached physiological maturity at age 16 to 18 would have her first birth about a year later. Before dying at 30 or 40, a woman on average bore not more than 4 or 5 babies. Of those, half died before age 5, leaving 2.25 surviving. The bare replacement level for a couple, man and woman, required a minimum of two, not allowing for incidentally catastrophes of war, accident, famine, or epidemic. A band of 40 persons might have 8 or 9 women of childbearing age. With unrestrained fertility, each might have two or more children under age 7, making the total number of children for the group 16 to 18, a whole nursery school, which a fast-moving band could hardly fetch along! Consequently, migratory groups applied rigid rules restraining births. Extended suckling periods of 3 or 4 years constituted one technique of restrained. Protracted breast-feeding induced partial infertility for many months. Partial abstinence from intercourse and deliberate efforts to prevent conception, such as coitus interruptus, were others. Infanticide also was commonplace.

Diets were certainly adequate. Lean game meats combined with foraged carbohydrates made Paleolithic peoples tall and healthy, attaining heights not approached in all of history until the mid-20th century, and then only in affluent societies. Dental and ossuary remains show little sign of malnutrition, starvation, or chronic diseases. Short life expectancy therefore resulted from the stress and dangers of hunting-gathering existence. Many died from violent blows or wounds received in battles – as many as 40 percent of adult male skeletons at some sites. Women had even shorter lives, due to the stresses of multiple childbirths and hauling household goods and infants from camp to camp.

The grim realities of demography were partly counterbalanced by the pleasant tone of life that many anthropological studies present. Hunting men occasionally ranged far from camp, but their searches did not take much time. Even in foraging societies that today occupy arid, remote places, men hunt only every third day or so, sometimes only for five or six hours. Women breast-feeding infants, caring for toddlers, or in late pregnancy remained close by camp, as did old or crippled persons. So mostly women and children foraged vegetative foods nearby. Studies of today’s foraging societies find that women gather more calories than men produce by hunting, and Paleolithic diets show the same, although less so in the vegetation-scarce subpolar regions. Women did not work much either, gathering perhaps five hours per day, although over more days than men hunted…

Some anthropologists describe Paleolithic culture as the ‘original affluent society.’ They needed little and provided it readily, with little labor. Yet life was short and precarious, and population growth hung at nearly zero.”

~Experiencing World History

Main Points of Passage:

Notes:
  1. The Origin of Man
  1. Some 5 to 7 million years ago, ancestors to modern humans diverged from African apes and the line leading to chimpanzees
  2. 20/30 different species of hominid or humanlike creatures developed
  3. In eastern and southern Africa
  1. Bipedalism
  1. All hominids were bipedal
  2. Bipedal = To walk upright on two legs
  1. Mary Leakey
  1. In 1976, Mary Leakey uncovered in what is now Tanzania a series of footprints of three such individuals, preserved in the cooling volcanic ash about 3.5 million years ago
  2. Two of the hominids appeared to be holding hands
  1. Then Homo Habilis
  1. About 2.3 million years ago, one hominid’s brain grew larger
  2. Scientists believe this brain growth was due to extreme and rapid climate change that required the ability to adapt
  3. Homo Habilis or “Handy Man” had evolved
  1. Homo Sapiens
  1. Some 250,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged in Africa
  2. And sometime after 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began to migrate out of Africa

  1. Eventually settled every habitable region
  1. Paleolithic or Old Stone Age
  1. 95% of humanity’s time on earth
  2. Food-collecting or gathering and hunting way of life
  1. Foraging societies
  1. Small groups, mobile, nomadic
  1. Inability to store food
  2. Few personal belongings due to nomadism
  3. Did not build permanent settlements
  1. But development of spoken language
  1. Ability to make simple tools out of stone
  2. Ability to control and use fire
  3. Ability to adapt to a multiplicity of environments
  1. Homo Sapiens = Wise Humans
  1. Stone Agefrom 2.5 million years ago to 5,000 or 6,000 years ago
  2. But three phases of the Stone age
  1. Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic
  1. Stone Age Periodization
  1. Paleolithic (“Old Stone Age”)
  1. ending 12,000 years ago and overlapping with the Great, or Pleistocene, Ice Age
  1. Mesolithic (“Middle Stone Age”)
  1. lasting from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago
  1. Neolithic (“New Stone Age”)
  1. beginning around 8000 BCE
  1. Social Organization
  1. Based on family unit
  2. Extended families formed clans bound by ties of kinship
  3. Clans formed bands and tribes
  1. Social Divisions
  1. Men = Hunted
  2. Women = Gathered
  3. But men’s roles were not necessarily seen as superior to women’s roles
  4. And because there was no massive accumulation of goods, there were no social classes
  1. No rich class, No poor class
  2. Greater social and gender equality than with the development of farming

Write Ten Essential Questions from the Notes:

Craft an Argument:

What will you prove about the Paleolithic Age?

Write a Thesis Statement:

Multiple-Choice

1. Paleontologists
(A) study the physical, cultural, and social characteristics of humans
(B) study the physical remains and fossils of animals and plants
(C) study the objects and buildings created by humans
(D) study astronomy
(E) study ancient urban centers
3. In what ways were the earliest hominids and their descendants more advanced than earlier primates?
I. bipedalism
II. a large brain
III. use of agriculture
IV. larynx
(A) I, II, and IV
(B) I, III, and IV
(C) I and III only
(D) II and IV only
(E) III only
4. Hunting and gathering societies were marked by
I. widespread specialization of labor
II. a subsistence lifestyle
III. limited trade
IV. little specialization of labor
(A) I and III
(B) II and IV
(C) I, II, and III
(D) II, III, and IV
(E) IV only / 2. The "Out of Africa" thesis
(A) argues that modern humans appeared throughout the world at the same time
(B) proposes that modern humans emerged in Africa
(C) submits that only the Neanderthal emerged in Africa
(D) argues that crops were first cultivated in Africa
(E) proposes that only the most primitive human behavior originated in Africa
5. The earliest period in which humans began expressing themselves in both art and music is thought to be
(A) the Mesolithic era
(B) the Neolithic era
(C) the Paleolithic era
(D) the Bronze Age
(E) none of the above
6. Which statement about early humans do most scholars today agree is accurate?
(A) Humans originated in Asia, then spread to Africa.
(B) Humans originated in Africa, then migrated to other continents.
(C) Antarctica was inhabited by early hominids.
(D) Humans appeared simultaneously throughout the world.
(E) none of the above.

Point of View: Jared Diamond

“Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture's glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us?”

Point of View Analysis:

To What Extent Do You Agree or Disagree: