Page 72 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-12 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

By providing a coherent, intelligible account of the past, [history] satisfies a
profound human yearning for knowledge about our roots. It requires no
justification other than that. • THEODORE S. HAMEROW (b. 1920)

humans, increasing the probability that they were caused continents and new environments are one expression of
by humans. that acceleration. However, new technologies and tech-
Similar extinctions during recent centuries, such as the niques also proliferated. Stone tools became more precise
extinction of the large birds known as “moas” in New and more varied, and many may have been hafted. Peo-
Zealand, offer a modern example of what may have hap- ple made more use of new materials such as bone,
pened as humans with improved hunting techniques amber, and vegetable fibers. From about twenty thousand
and skills encountered large animals who had little expe- to thirty thousand years ago, new and more sophisticated
rience of humans and whose low reproduction rates tools appeared, including bows and arrows and spear
made them particularly vulnerable to extinction. The throwers.
loss of large-animal species in Australia and the Americas Foragers in tundra (level or rolling treeless plain that
shaped the later histories of these regions insofar as the is characteristic of arctic and subarctic regions) regions
lack of large animals meant that humans were unable to used bone needles to make carefully tailored clothes
exploit large animals as beasts of burden and sources of from animal skins; sometimes they covered their clothing
foodstuffs and fibers. with elaborate ornamentation made from animal teeth or
shells.The remains of prey species show that hunters, par-
Fire-Stick Farming ticularly in cold climates, became more specialized in
A second example of the increasing environmental their hunting techniques, suggesting increasingly sophis-
impact of early foragers is associated with what the Aus- ticated understanding of different environments. Cave
tralian archaeologist Rhys Jones called “fire-stick farming.” paintings and sculptures in wood or bone began to
Fire-stick farming is not, strictly, a form of farming at all. appear in regions as disparate as Africa, Australia, Mon-
However, it is, like farming, a way of manipulating the golia, and Europe.
environment to increase the productivity of animal and
plant species that humans find useful. Fire-stick farmers Affluent Foragers
regularly burn off the land to prevent the accumulation Accelerating technological change accounts for one
of dangerous amounts of fuel. Regular firing also clears more development that foreshadowed the changes that
undergrowth and deposits ash. In effect, it speeds up the would eventually lead to the agrarian era. Most foraging
decomposition of dead organisms, which encourages technologies can be described as “extensive”: They
the growth of new shoots that can attract grazing animals allowed humans to occupy larger areas without increas-
and the animals that prey on them. ing the size of individual communities. Occasionally,
Humans systematically fired the land on all the conti- though, foragers adopted more intensive techniques that
nents they settled, and through time the practice proba- allowed them to extract more resources from a given
bly transformed local landscapes and altered the mix of area and to create larger and more sedentary communi-
local animal and plant species. In Australia, for example, ties. Evidence for such changes is particularly common
fire-stick farming through tens of thousands of years from about twenty thousand to fifteen thousand years
probably encouraged the spread of eucalyptus at the ago and is best known from the corridor between
expense of species that were less comfortable with fire, Mesopotamia (the region of southwestern Asia between
creating landscapes very different from those encountered the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and Sudan—the region
by the first human immigrants. that links Africa and Eurasia. Anthropologists have long
been aware that foragers living in environments of par-
Picking up the Pace ticular abundance will sometimes become less nomadic
From about fifty thousand years ago the rate of techno- and spend longer periods at one or two main home
logical change began to accelerate. Migrations to new bases. They may also become more sedentary if they