Gilgamesh Facts and Images

Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh was probably a real king who ruled over the ancient Sumerian city-state of Uruk sometime between 2700 B.C. and 2500 B.C. As the years passed, he became a figure of legend. People described Gilgamesh as one-third man and two-thirds god. Stories of Gilgamesh and his adventures were passed on as oral tradition for centuries before being written down in about 2500 B.C. Today people still read about this hero.

Read more »

Early Agriculture Diversity in Stone Age

Diversity in Early Agriculture
Around the world early people domesticated a wide variety of plants and animals. Agriculture in southwestern Asia was based on growing wheat and barley and on raising sheep, goats, and cattle. In the Nile Valley in northern Africa, farmers raised wheat, barley, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. Far to the east, people settling the river valleys of present-day Pakistan and China raised grains such as rice and millet and kept pigs, chickens, and water buffaloes.

In the Americas early farmers also began growing crops. Farmers in what is now southern Mexico grew chili peppers, squash, and other vegetables. In the mountain valleys of what is now Peru, farmers raised beans and chili peppers. Potatoes were a major crop in what is now Bolivia. Later, Native Americans would also grow maize, or corn. Maize would be important throughout American history.

At its beginning, agriculture simply offered another way besides hunting and gathering for people to subsist, or survive. Once people began to depend on farming for their subsistence, they were less likely to move. They needed to stay near their fields so that they could care for the crops. In many places, agriculture gradually led to year- round villages and more complex societies.

What were the main food crops raised in northern Africa? in the Americas? in southwestern Asia?

Read more »

Use a Parallel Time Line Skills

Use a Parallel Time Line

1.    Why Learn This Skill?
Just as maps help you understand where something happened, time lines help you understand when something happened. Time lines let you put events in sequence.
Some time lines are simple to read and understand. Others, such as the one below, are more difficult. It is important to look at complex time lines carefully to be sure you understand them fully.

2.    Think About Time Lines
The time line you see on this page is a parallel time line. It is really several time lines in one. Parallel time lines are useful if you want to show related events. You could show when the same kind of events happened in different areas. Or you could also show events that happened in different places at the same time.

Each section of this parallel time line is divided into spans of 2,000 years, begging 8000 B.C. and ending at A.D. 2000.

The abbreviation B.C. stands for "before Christ." A.D. stands for anno Domini, a Latin phrase meaning "in the year of the Lord." This abbreviation tells how many years have passed since the birth of Jesus Christ. Some time lines are labeled B.C.E. and C.E. rather than B.C. and A.D. The abbreviation B.C.E. stands for "before the Common Era" and C.E. stands for "Common Era." The terms B.C.E. and C.E. refer to the same years as B.C. and A.D.

No one knows exactly when some events happened long ago. Therefore, a date on a time line sometimes is approximate, or not exact. This usually means that the earliest evidence, or proof, is from about that time. Approximate times are often shown after the Latin term circa, or c., its abbreviation. The term circa means "about."

The time line on page 70 shows when agriculture developed during the Stone Age in different geographic regions. The Stone Age is divided into two parts. The Paleolithic period, or Old Stone Age, is the time before 8000 B.C. The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is the time from 8000 B.C. to as late as the present day. j    During the Paleolithic period, all people were hunters and gatherers. During the Neolithic period, people began to domesticate plants and animals.

3.    Understand the Process
Look down the left-hand side of the time line. Find the top bar labeled Africa. What is the first date that is highlighted on the top bar? If you said 6000 B.C., you are right. Under that date are the words Northern Africa. This means that agriculture began in northern Africa about 6000 B.C. Now look at the other bars on the time line. In which regions of the world did people develop agriculture at about the same time?

4.    Think and Apply
Make a parallel time line comparing important events in your life with events in the lives of family members or friends. Make sure that your time line has a bar for each person and a title. Write three questions for a classmate to answer using your time line.

The following suggestions will help you make your time line:
•    Identify the events you want to show.
•    Determine the length of time over which the events took place.
•    Make the time line, divide it into equal parts, and mark the years on it.
•    Add the events you want to display. It is always a good idea to double-check the dates of events to be sure your information is accurate.
•    Give your time line a title that explains its contents.

Read more »

Skara Brae: The Story of a Prehistoric Village

Skara Brae
The Story of a Prehistoric Village
written and illustrated by Olivier Dunrea
Skara Brae was an early farming village on an island off northern Scotland. Shortly before 2400 B.C. a sudden storm covered the village in sand. It remained covered for more than 4,200 years. Then, in A.D. 1850, a powerful windstorm stripped the sand from the dunes and uncovered the stone walls of the village. What archaeologists know about life in Skara Brae comes from studying the stone huts and the objects the early people left behind. Through careful study of this evidence, archaeologists were able to piece together the story of this village of long ago.

Read now about what life may have been like in Skara Brae and in other farming villages long ago. Think about how life in these early settlements compared with life in hunter- gatherer societies and with our lives today.

By 3500 B.C. farmers and herders had reached a group of islands to the north of Scotland the Orkneys.

They found the Orkneys an ideal place to live. There were gently rolling hills, open grasslands for their sheep and cattle, and wide, sand-fringed bays. The islands had no predatory animals that would attack their livestock. It was a good area to settle.
Orkney was a strange place to these early settlers. They were accustomed to trees and forests. In Orkney there were far fewer trees.

But though there was very little wood, there was plenty of fuel. Mosses and other plants had decayed in bogs to form peat. The peat could be burned like coal. The settlers could keep warm and cook their meat around a peat fire.

Most of all, there was a great abundance of stone on the islands. Stones were everywhere on the beaches, on the grasslands, and on the hills. The herders and farmers chose these stones to build their permanent homes and monuments.
In time the Orkneys became more populated. New masses of migrating people reached their shores. Several generations of settlers came and went, and some ventured off to the smaller and less populated islands.

One band of settlers, seeking better grazing land for their animals, moved farther out on the main island. Making their way to the farthest west coast, they explored the land for a suitable place to live.

As they marched northward along the rugged cliffs and inlets, they came to a Orkney was a strange place to these early settlers. They were accustomed to trees and forests. In Orkney there were far fewer trees.

beautiful wide bay the Bay of Skaill. There were sand dunes, open grassland, and no other settlers to compete for the land's resources. It was here the band decided to make their new home.

There were twenty people in the group: four small families. Together they owned a flock of sheep, a small herd of cattle, and a few pigs.

After surveying the land around the bay, they chose the southwest corner in which to erect their temporary shelters. The women and older children put up the tents, using wooden poles they had brought with them. These tents made of skins would protect them from rain and wind.

It was the task of the older children to tend the livestock, even though the animals mostly fended for themselves and found food wherever they could.

During this period, settlers lived off their animals. To their diet of meat and milk they added wild foods foraged1 from the land and sea birds and eggs, fish, shellfish such as limpets,2 and wild grains. The men sometimes brought in the meat of deer and other wild animals as well.

Through the summer, autumn, and winter the band continued to live in their tents. During the winter months they started construction of a new village that would have proper houses for all the families.

While they built the permanent stone houses, everyone worked. The men gathered the larger stones needed for the foundations and walls. The women and children also gathered stones to be used in the construction of the huts.

Everyone worked together on all the houses. One partly completed house was used as a shelter for the cattle, sheep, and pigs. The band continued to live off their animals as well as the land and sea.

There were plenty of stones on the beach around the bay, and collecting them went quickly. The stones could be easily split to make straight, uniform surfaces for building.

The houses were small when completed, measuring only twelve feet long by six to nine feet wide in the interior. The plan of each house was basically square, with rounded corners. In one of the corners, there was a small, beehive-shaped cell, used either for storage or as a latrine.4

The walls were built by piling stone upon stone. A few feet above the floor the stones began to project a little toward the inside of the hut. This overlapping construction is called corbelling.5

Each hut was big enough to allow room for a central hearth,6 a stone bed set into the wall on either side of the hearth, and a stone dresser built into the rear wall.
The mother and small    the children slept in the bed to the left of the hearth; the father slept in the bed to the right.
The stone beds were filled with heather7 and skins, making them comfortable and warm for sleeping.

There were one or two small recesses for keeping personal possessions in the wall above each bed.

Within a few weeks the little huts were completed.
And so began the occupation of the village. It was around 3100 B.C.
As they went about the routine of their daily life, the villagers allowed their refuse to pile up against the outside walls of their huts. Shells, broken bones, fragments of pottery, sand, and everything no longer used was heaped around the structures.

This refuse, called midden, helped to insulate the huts. It kept the cold winds from blowing through the chinks in the stones. Over the years these midden heaps mixed with sand and became a claylike covering from which grass grew.

The exterior of the cairn was covered with earth, and in time grass grew over it. It looked like a hill in the landscape.

There was also time for the villagers to practice their various crafts. The women made pottery. Sometimes they made engraved or raised designs on their pots. But the people of Skara Brae, unlike many Neolithic peoples, were not especially skilled at this craft.

The men spent hours carving strange, intricate patterns on stone balls.
The teeth and bones from sheep, cattle, and whales were used to make beautiful beads and necklaces.

For a long time the life of Skara Brae continued uninterrupted. Then, around 2400 B.C., when the village had settled into its way of life, a terrible catastrophe occurred that caused it to be abandoned forever.

As the villagers went about their daily tasks of collecting food and tending their herds or practicing their crafts, a sudden and violent storm arose. The storm came so unexpectedly and with such severity that the inhabitants fled without being able to collect all their belongings.

In her haste to escape, one woman broke her string of beads as she squeezed through the narrow doorway of her hut. The necklace fell to the floor of the passageway, and there it remained.

In another hut an old man was gnawing a choice bit of mutton when the storm took him by surprise. He dropped the bone by his bed and fled the hut in panic.

Then the wind-driven sands quickly filled all the stone huts burying the necklace and the half-eaten bone for the ages.

The storm raged with a fury the villagers had never experienced before. They fled the village in blind terror.

The sea pounded in the bay, and to the prehistoric people of Skara Brae it must have seemed that the world was coming to an end.

The villagers abandoned their village in the hilly dunes. Several times a small number of them returned and camped under the remaining exposed walls of the huts. And then they never returned again. Over the centuries the sand continued to drift in, until nothing was visible.

Although the name Skara Brae remained, memory of the village itself vanished.

Read more »

Agriculture and Farming in Stone Age

Effects of Change
Agriculture, the raising of domesticated plants and animals, changed human societies forever. Agriculture provided a reliable food source. In fact, agriculture allowed farmers to grow more food than they needed. This extra amount could be traded for other resources the farmers needed or wanted.

As early people turned to agriculture, the size of their communities began to grow. With more food available, more people could live in one place.

As the size of societies increased, not everyone needed to spend the day farming. Because of this, a division of labor began. Different members of a society were able to do different tasks based on their abilities and the group's needs. Some people still farmed, but others made tools, sewed hides for clothing, or built shelters. Still others served as leaders.

The leaders of farming societies made important decisions for the community. Duties may have included deciding what crops to plant, where to plant them, and who would care for them. Leaders may have also been responsible for deciding how much food would be used at certain times. Leaders might have also come up with ways to protect their community against the dangers of nature or other people.

One common means of protection was the building of walls. Some societies built walls around their villages to prevent attacks from other societies. Others built walls to keep floodwaters from reaching their settlements. One of the oldest known walled villages was built at a site in southwestern Asia known today as Jericho. The people lived in mud-brick huts grouped inside stone walls. The village walls were 20 feet (6.1 m) high and 6 feet (1.8 m) thick.

The ruins of another early farming community can be found in present-day Turkey. This community is known today as Catal Huyuk (chat»AHL hoo»YOOK). As many as 6,000 people lived side by side in ancient Qatal Huyuk. The community of Qatal Hiiyiik looked more like a sprawling apartment complex than a village. Its people built mud houses right next to each other. They came into and left their homes through holes in the roof. To reach the holes, residents used ladders. Outside the village in every direction lay the farmers' fields.

Agriculture made more food available, but it also brought new concerns. Farmers faced threats to their crops such as insects, plant disease, and flooding. When crops failed for any reason, the whole community suffered. In addition, the need for fertile soil on which to grow crops caused some fights over land.

Sometimes the ways in which early people farmed had consequences for their environment, or surroundings. For example, many farmers cleared land for crops by cutting and burning the wild plants that grew there. Although new crops could be grown, wild plants that supported herds of wild animals were lost. Also, after years of growing the same crops, the land was no longer fertile. It could not be used for a period of time. Many early societies were often unaware of such consequences. It took farming communities a long time to learn the best ways to farm and to raise livestock.

What were some advantages and disadvantages of agriculture?

Read more »

Early Farmers in Stone Age

Early Farmers
Aearly societies grew, many bands of early people :ound that they could no longer depend on hunting and gathering for their needs. This method did not always bring in enough food. For a more steady supply of food, some early societies began to change from food collecting to food producing growing crops and raising animals.

Producing Food
About 10,000 years ago some hunter-gatherer societies began to produce some of their food. This change meant that people no longer depended just on what they could find or hunt. Instead, people learned to domesticate plants and animals. To domesticate living things means to tame them for people's use.

Women probably did most of the food gathering in early societies and may have been the first to domesticate plants. They probably began this process as they cared for wild plants. They learned that seeds from fully grown plants produced new plants. As time passed, they most likely began planting seeds from carefully selected wild plants.

They chose seeds from plants that were plentiful, grew fast, and tasted good. Over time some societies came to depend less on wild plants and more on crops grown in small gardens by early farmers. Wheat and barley were among the first crops to be domesticated. Growing crops also meant staying in one place, however. Planting, caring for, and harvesting crops took many months.

Once the crops were harvested, they needed to be stored. Early farming societies built year-round shelters and grew crops on the land around their small villages.

Their economy the way people use resources to meet their needs became based mainly on their crops.

No one place can claim to be the birthplace of farming. Farming started independently at different times in different parts of the world.

Early people in southwestern Asia, southeastern Asia, northern Africa, and South America all made the shift to farming without learning about it from elsewhere in the world. In each part of the world, word of farming passed from one person to another.

The shift to farming did not happen suddenly either. The change from a hunting-and gathering society to a farming society took place over a long period of time. Animals remained an important resource. Some societies that farmed also continued to hunt. At the same time, people began to domesticate some animals. Dogs had long been tamed and used for hunting. Now people began to domesticate wild sheep and goats as well. These newly domesticated animals provided a ready supply of meat, milk, and wool. Some early people came to depend less on raising crops and more on raising livestock. The term livestock refers to domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, and pigs.

Some of the early people who cared for livestock were nomads, people with no settled home. They moved from place to place with their herds to find pasture and water. Like hunting-and-gathering nomads, those who herded livestock did not build year-round settlements. Instead, they lived in temporary shelters and traveled in bands.

In settled societies herders and farmers grew to depend on one another. Each raised something that the other did not. Together they worked to supply their society with important resources.

Not all people took up a new way of life as farmers or herders. Some went on hunting and gathering their food. Even today, a few small groups of people still meet their needs by hunting and gathering. These groups live much the same way as their ancestors did thousands of years ago.

What major change took place in the way early people got their food supply?

Read more »

Early Cultures and Societies in Stone Age

Early Cultures and Societies
All early people hunted animals and gathered wild plants. However, each group had its own unique culture. A culture is a way of life. A group's culture is made up of its beliefs, customs, language, and arts.

In part, early cultures varied because of each group's location and available resources. Each culture lived in a unique place. This led each culture to make different kinds of clothing, live in different kinds of shelters, and make different kinds of artifacts, including tools. For example, in the far north of Europe, individuals may have carved tools from reindeer antlers. People in the ancient Americas may have used caribou or elk antlers and bones. Ancient people living in rocky areas may have made great use of stones for tools.

Early cultures also varied because each was made up of unique individuals, all with their own ideas. Different cultures, therefore, came up with different solutions to problems and different ways to meet their needs.

Over time, all cultures change. New ideas and new ways of doing things cause some changes. Shifts in climate or changes in the land may affect a culture as well. Contact with other cultures also may lead people to change their way of life.

The increased use of language helped early people further develop their own cultures. Older band members passed on customs and knowledge to younger members. The spoken word also helped people share new ideas, warn of dangers, and work together as a team. Language helped early people join together to become a society.

A society is an organized group of people living and working under a set of rules and traditions.
In some ways people today are very different from those who lived long ago. In other ways they are still much the same. Modern people look much like early Homo sapiens. It is the differences in society and culture that set them apart.

How is a culture different from a society?

Read more »

Survival Skills in Stone Age

Survival Skills
Most of what we know about ancient Homo sapiens comes from the work of archaeologists and other scientists. To do their work, archaeologists choose a place where they believe humans once lived. This place is called a site.

When excavations are underway, a site is often referred to as a dig. At their site, archaeologists begin by tying string in a pattern of squares called a grid. Then they dig through the soil layer by layer. As they dig, they carefully sift through the dirt, looking for fossils and artifacts, or human-made objects.

Archaeologists record the square and the layer each fossil or artifact was found in. This important information will help them later as they examine their findings. A careful examination might reveal such information as a fossil's age or the purpose of a piece of pottery or other artifact.

One way that experts judge the age of fossils is through radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating tells how much carbon remains in a once-living person, animal, or plant. All living things contain radioactive carbon. After death, however, the radioactive carbon begins to decay.

By measuring the amount of carbon left in a fossil, experts can identify its age. Radiocarbon dating can only be used for fossils 50,000 years old or younger.

Archaeologists and other scientists have uncovered many important facts about Homo sapiens. Like the early people before them, the first Homo sapiens lived together in bands. Usually the bands were made up of related families. About 20 people lived in each band. Band members worked together to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. Without such cooperation, individuals probably would not have survived.

The small bands spent many hours of their days searching for the food they needed to survive. Much of their diet consisted of wild fruits, nuts, roots, and seeds. They also caught and ate fish, turtles, birds, and small rodents. Experience taught them which plants and animals could be eaten without an unwanted consequence, or effect, such as illness.

These early people also hunted large animals. Many of these animals, such as giant oxen, woolly rhinoceroses, and the elephant-like mammoths, are now extinct, or no longer living. Other common prey, such as reindeer and bison, still exist. All these animals provided meat for food, bones for tools, and skins for clothing and shelter.

To kill large animals, early hunters needed special tools. Unlike Homo erectus, Homo sapiens made different kinds of tools for different needs. These people sharpened stones, animal bones, antlers, or tusks to make spears and knives for hunting. They also made needles for sewing animal skins together and hooks for fishing.

Because early bands were always on the move, they had no permanent year-round settlements. Instead, they set up seasonal camps in caves or rock shelters near places where plants and animals were plentiful. When food was no longer available in one place, bands moved on to the next place. Usually, bands traveled around a particular area as they searched for food. By following a regular seasonal pattern of migration, or movement from one place to another, bands of hunters and gatherers found enough to eat.

Why was cooperation important for early hunters and gatherers?

Neanderthals
In 1856, workers digging for stone made an unusual discovery in a buried cave in Germany's Neander Valley. They found an odd-looking human skull along with leg and arm bones. Later, British biologist Thomas Huxley identified the discovery as an early Homo sapiens fossil, the first ever found. The fossil soon gained the name Neanderthal, after the valley in which it was found. Scientists now know that while Neanderthals are Homo sapiens, they are not our direct ancestors.

Read more »

First Footsteps and People of the Stone Age

People of the Stone Age

First Footsteps
Imagine digging through layers of rocks and sand to find out about people and places of the past. That is what scientists do to help us learn about the world's prehistory. Prehistory is history that happened before the invention of writing. To find out about prehistory experts must look at evidence, or proof, rather than written words. They must search for clues to piece together the puzzle of the distant past.

Fossil Finds
Many different kinds of scientists work to uncover facts about the past. Together, they find out how, where, and when early people lived. Among these detectives of the past are archaeologists and paleoanthropologists. Archaeologists locate and study the things left behind by people. Paleoanthropologists study the ancestors of modern people. They carefully look at fossils (FAH»suhlz), or remains of once-living things.

For more than 100 years, people have been searching for the fossils of early human ancestors, or hominids. In 1896 Eugene Dubois (dyoo»BWAH), a Dutch surgeon, dug beneath a river in Indonesia in southeastern Asia. He uncovered what he believed to be the remains of a human ancestor.

He named his find Homo erectus, meaning "human who stands upright." Other scientists laughed at Dubois's claims. However, in 1927 another hominid was found near Beijing, China.

At about the same time, a South African scientist named Raymond Dart found a still earlier human ancestor in his home country. He had unearthed fossils of an australopithecine (aw • stray • loh • PIH • thuh • syn). Later,more australopithecine fossils were found in southern Africa. Then, in 1959 Louis and Mary Leakey found australopithecine fossils at Olduvai (OHL«duh»vy) Gorge in Tanzania (tan»zuh»NEE»uh), eastern Africa.

Soon after these discoveries, the Leakeys found other early hominid fossils. One of these hominids appeared to have been round-headed and smallboned. Louis Leakey believed this hominid to be a direct ancestor of modern humans.

He named it Homo habilis (HAH»buh»lis), a Latin term meaning "handy person." He gave it this name because he also found stone tools nearby.

Louis and Mary Leakey's son Richard continued his parents' work. He has found dozens of hominid fossils while searching at Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Among these are remains of Homo habilis from about 2.5 million years ago, the time when toolmaking began.

Other scientists have also made astonishing finds. Near the Awash (AH»wahsh) River in Ethiopia, paleoanthropologist Don Johanson unearthed a 3-million- year-old australopithecine. Johanson and his team nicknamed their find "Lucy."

"I just can't believe it!" Johanson cried out upon making his 1974 discovery of Lucy. He was surprised to find almost half of an ancient skeleton. Usually paleoanthropologists are not that fortunate. Often they find just a small piece of ancient life, such as a jawbone or part of an arm bone, as they excavate a site. Excavate means to uncover by digging.

In 1994 University of California scientist Tim White revealed that, while excavating in Ethiopia, he had found an even earlier australopithecine than Johanson's. This African hominid may have walked the Earth as much as 4.5 million years ago.

(Review) How have Don Johanson and the Leakeys contributed to the search for early hominids?

Read more »

Hunters and Gatherers of Stone Age

Hunters and Gatherers
Most experts believe that Africa was not only the cradle of human ancestors but also the home of the world's first modern people-people like us. According to these experts, the earliest Homo sapiens lived in tropical Africa at least 200,000 years ago. By about 150,000 years ago, some Homo sapiens had migrated to the eastern and southern parts of Africa.

Homo erectus and Homo sapiens probably lived side by side for some time. Then Homo erectus died out while Homo sapiens continued to exist. Today all people on Earth are Homo sapiens. The name Homo sapiens means "wise human," and this tells us why Homo sapiens lived on. The early Homo sapiens had larger brains than the early hominids did. They were able to make better tools and communicate more easily using language.

Biography LUCY
The name Lucy might seem unusual for an ancient hominid. Don Johanson tells how Lucy got her name. At the time of the discovery, a tape recorder in Johanson's camp was playing the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." As Johanson explains,

"At some point during that unforgettable evening . . . the new fossil picked up the name of Lucy, and has been so known ever since."

Back in the United States, Don Johanson and Tim White rebuilt Lucy's skeleton from tiny bone fragments. When she was alive, Lucy stood just about 4 feet high. She was 19 to 21 years old when she died. Lucy walked on two feet and probably spent much of her time in open country rather than in forests.

Read more »