Page 70 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-10 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

The smallest human societies that we can identify either among living groups or among the populations
of prehistory do not live up to the romantic images we sometimes paint of them... [but they] do
surprisingly well if we compare them to the the actual record of human history rather than to

more of the era of foragers, our ancestors created a were doubling approximately every eight thousand to
remarkable variety of new technologies and new lifeways. nine thousand years. This rate of growth can be com-
Indeed, the relatively sudden replacement of Acheulian pared with an average doubling time of about fourteen
stone technologies by more varied and precisely engi- hundred years during the agrarian era and eighty-five
neered stone tools in Africa from about 200,000 years years during the modern era.
ago is one of the most powerful reasons for thinking that
modern humans existed by that date. Many of these new Technological Change
stone tools were so small that they may have been hafted Rates of growth during the era of foragers are striking in
(bound to handles), which would have greatly increased two contradictory ways. Insofar as population growth is
their versatility and usefulness. an indirect sign of technological innovation, it provides
The technological creativity of our foraging ancestors evidence for innovation throughout the era and some
enabled them to explore and settle lands quite different signs that innovation was accelerating. However, by com-
from those in which they had evolved. Indeed, this cre- parison with later eras of human history, rates of growth
ativity is one of the most decisive differences between our were extremely slow. This difference is partly because
species and other species, including our closest relatives, exchanges of information were limited by the small size
the great apes.As far as we know, the great apes have not and the wide dispersion of foraging communities.
managed to modify their behaviors enough to migrate Indeed, change occurred so slowly that a person could
into new habitats. This fact is precisely why we do not hardly notice it within a single lifetime, and this fact may
customarily think of these species as having histories in mean that ancient foragers, like modern foragers, had lit-
the way that humans have a history. In contrast, the his- tle sense of long-term change, seeing the past mainly as
tory of our species during the era of foragers is a story of a series of variations on the present.
many unrecorded migrations into new environments, Migrations into new environments requiring new tech-
made possible by tiny technological changes, the accu- nologies and new skills probably began quite early dur-
mulation of new knowledge and skills, and minor adjust- ing the era of foragers, while all humans still lived within
ments in lifeways. the African continent. Unfortunately, studying techno-
As humans spread over more and more of the Earth, logical change during the earliest stages of human history
human numbers surely increased. Estimates of popula- is difficult because surviving objects tell us little about the
tions during the era of foragers are based largely on technological knowledge of those who made them.Today
guesswork, but one of the more influential recent esti- we depend upon objects such as cars and computers,
mates by demographer Massimo Livi-Bacci suggests that which embody a colossal amount of specialized knowl-
thirty thousand years ago just a few hundred thousand edge. However, modern anthropological studies suggest
humans existed, whereas ten thousand years ago there that among foragers knowledge was primarily carried in
may have been as many as 6 million. If we assume that the head rather than embodied in objects.Thus, the tools
approximately 500,000 humans existed thirty thousand that foragers left behind can give us only the palest
years ago, this implies a growth rate between thirty thou- impression of their technological and ecological skills.
sand and ten thousand years ago of less than 0.01 per- Nevertheless, the evidence of change is powerful.The
cent per annum, which implies that human populations first piece of evidence that humans were migrating into
new environments is the fact that human remains start
For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
appearing in all parts of the African continent. By
Afro-Eurasia p. 44 (v1)
100,000 years ago some groups had learned to live off
Migrations p. 1247 (v3)
the resources of seashore environments, such as shellfish;
Population p. 1484 (v4)
whereas others were adapting to lifeways in other new