WORLD HISTORY

Overview

 Scholars define prehistory as events that occurred before the existence of written
records in a given culture or society.
 History refers to the time period after the invention of written records in a given
culture or society.
 Archaeologists have discovered written records in Egypt from as early as 3200 BCE,
which is the accepted date at which history "begins" there.
 Written records give historians resources to deal with that are more detailed in some
ways than other records, such as archaeological or biological remains.

The scope of history

 Historians currently think that anatomically modern humans have been around for
between 200,000 and 300,000 of the planet’s 4.5 billion years. And even though
200,000 years is less than one 20,000th of the history of the planet, it is still a very
long time!
 For context, 200,000 years would represent at least 6,000 generations of your
ancestors (your grandparents are only 2 generations from you). 200,000 years is also
nearly 1,000 times as long as the United States has been a country. It is 100 times as
distant in the past as the time of Jesus and the Roman Empire. It's also 40 times as
distant in the past as the earliest written records we have found.
 Think about the scope of what must have happened during that time: adventures,
sorrows, environmental change, and the rise and fall of civilizations. As historians, we
have the privilege of exploring this vast expanse of human experience.

Written records

 Our main tool as historians is what has been written by those who came before us. In
fact, this is what formally defines history and sometimes sets it apart from
archaeology and anthropology. For example, the oldest written records archaeologists
have discovered in Egypt are from over 5,000 years ago; the date when they were
 created is the currently accepted date at which formal history (as opposed to
"prehistory") begins in that part of the world. Of course, we might one day find older
records!
 Even with written records, though, we have to be careful and thoughtful. The writing
may be in a dead language that we know little about. If one tribe conquers another, we
might only get the biased, one-sided story of those who won and wrote about it.
 Many times, narratives are only written down after generations of being transmitted
orally, through speech, with every transmitter of the story consciously or
unconsciously changing the specifics. Even for events that happened yesterday, two
direct observers could have two completely different perceptions of what happened,
how, and why.
 You can imagine that things get even tougher for prehistory, or the events that
occurred before the existence of written records. But we still have many tools.
Archaeologists can excavate ancient structures and burial sites and begin to infer how
the people lived from fossils (like human remains) and artifacts (human-made items).
Archaeologists can estimate the age of fossils and artifacts through several techniques.
 Carbon dating measures the amount of radioactive carbon in fossils to place them in
time. Age can also be determined by identifying the age of the layer of rock that the
artifacts are buried in. This is called stratigraphic dating, from the Latin word stratum,
meaning "layer." (Know about more methods used by Archaeology which is the
subset of anthropology, Paleontologist)
 Linguists can often piece together possible human migrations and connections based
on similarities in modern, living languages.
 Similarly, geneticists can piece together how humanity may have spread and
intermingled based on genetic similarities and differences in populations today.

Uncertainty remains

 By putting all of these pieces together, we can construct surprisingly rich narratives of
the distant past. But we should never let the tools and knowledge we have make us
overconfident. After all, every piece of historical evidence needs to be closely read,
sourced, interpreted, contextualized, and compared with other available sources.
These kinds of thinking and questioning are the historians' toolkit.
  Even today, we can only piece together a tiny fragment of all that has occurred. And a
lot of that understanding could very well be wrong because it is inevitably partial and
incomplete. Many things that historians take as a given today will be questioned by
future historians armed with new tools and new evidence.

Homo sapiens and early human migration-

 Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid
predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for
language about 50,000 years ago.
 The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-
100,000 years ago.
 Humans are the only known species to have successfully populated, adapted to, and
significantly altered a wide variety of land regions across the world, resulting in
profound historical and environmental impacts.

Where do we begin?

Before we tell the stories that make up world history, it is useful to ask: where do we begin?
Where did our human stories start?

Homo sapiens is part of a group called hominids, which were the earliest humanlike
creatures. Based on archaeological and anthropological evidence, we think that hominids
diverged from other primates somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million years ago in eastern and
southern Africa. Though there was a degree of diversity among the hominid family, they all
shared the trait of bipedalism, or the ability to walk upright on two legs.

Hominidae (The family of human like)

Homininidae Pongidae

Gorilini Hominini Gens Pongo- Orangutans

 Gorillas Pan (Chimpanzees and bonobos) Homo (Latin Human)

Last time we had a common ancestor with what would eventually become chimpanzees was
about 5 million years ago. At that time, the creatures that would one day become human
beings were arboreal simians. They were ape-like or monkey-like creatures that lived in
trees. Paleontologists have reconstructed their diet (mostly fruit) and they largely were
quadrupeds. They got around on 4 legs or they knuckle-walked, similarly to how gorillas and
chimpanzees today rest some of their body weight on their knuckles as they locomote, as they
move around. At some point though, the arboreal simians, these tree-dwelling creatures, came
down from the trees and began walking on the ground. In fact, not just walking on four legs,
but eventually walking on two. This is called bipedalism. By studying the dental remains of
early hominins we can determine that they ate a lot of nuts and seeds and fruits. So, why did
they have to come down from the trees?

There's this idea called the Aridity (dry) or Savanna hypothesis, there was a climate event or
a change in the climate that led to trees being less prevalent in the part of Africa. So, proto-
humanity leaves the trees and begins walking upright. One of the most notable examples of
this is Australopithecus afarensis (southern ape) in what is today Ethiopia which is where the
original specimen was found. The most famous Australopithecus afarensis is a woman named
Lucy, who was found in 1974, and is supposed to be about 3 million years old.

Something happened between Paranthropus aethiopicus and Home erectus. It was a couple of
things, tools and fire. Homo erectus was a Hominid species that learned how to create stone
tools and play with fire.

The earliest Homo sapiens had been spreading on the African continent for about 500,000
years. It wasn't until about 100,000 years ago that they crossed into Eurasia and started
spreading into Europe and into Asia and to the Indian subcontinent. about 70,000 years ago
and then down through Southeast Asia. Eventually making their way to Australia by about
50,000 years ago, up to New Guinea by 30,000 years ago, eventually through Micronesia
about 1,500 years ago making our way all the way to New Zealand. About 25,000 years ago,
our human ancestors

9:20began making their way up into the interior

9:22of the Eurasian steppe and then crossing

9:26what was either an iced-over land bridge

9:28or using tiny boats to make their way

9:31across the Bering Strait into North America.

9:33This would have been about 15,000 years ago.

9:36Then variously making their way

9:39into the North American interior

9:41and again, hugging the coastline

9:43and bouncing their way down rapidly expanding

9:46into Central and South America.

9:48This would have happened around 15 to 14,000 years ago.

9:52This was like a rapid expansion

9:54of just people bouncing down the coast and exploring.

9:58This is a map of Homo sapiens migration in pink,

10:02but there were also other hominids

10:06that were living on the planet.

10:10This blue represents Neanderthal man,

10:13which is another Homo genus species.

10:17If red is Homo sapiens,

10:20then blue is Homo neanderthalensis.

10:24Just because Homo sapiens was the only hominin species

10:26to survive into the modern age,

10:28that doesn't mean Homo sapiens is best.

10:30It just means we were really dang lucky.

10:33We're not certain why it is

10:35that spreading throughout the African continent

10:38around 200,000 years ago,

10:39and then groups of humans leaving the African continent

10:43100,000 years ago

10:43why that took place.

10:45We're not sure, but scientists and historians surmise

10:49that it had something to do with resource scarcity

10:52similar to the aridity hypothesis

10:54that took our hominin ancestors down from the trees

10:58and onto the grassland where they had to stand upright.

11:01It seems likely that some other kind of resource disaster

11:06forced human beings, forced these early human beings

11:09out of their comfort zone to look for food elsewhere.

11:14How did they do it?

11:16It was a combination of ingenuity, luck, tools and language.

11:21As hominid brains increased in size

11:24early human acquired the ability

11:25to communicate with each other

11:27and form complex social groups.

11:29You can't organise a group of 15 people

11:31to build a raft with you and sail to Australia

11:34or skirt the coastline of the Americas

11:36without some method of communication.

11:38Sure, the ancestors of lemurs,

11:40which today are only found on Madagascar,

11:43certainly those ancestral lemurs made it

11:45to Madagascar without language

11:47and without tools,

11:50but paleontologists surmise that they got there

11:52via this thing called random rafting events.

11:55If you can imagine a couple of lemurs

11:56caught in a storm

11:58clinging to a tree branch that gets swept out to sea,

12:01that's how they crossed the strait of Mozambique

12:03a lot of scientists think.

12:05In order to journey with a small band of human beings,

12:08island hopping in this way takes intentionality

12:12and it takes a command of the environment around you

12:15and it takes communication and cooperation.

12:19Walking upright, wielding fire,

12:21shaping stone and wood into tools,

12:23these developments enabled human beings

12:25to people the earth,

12:26reaching pretty much everywhere

12:28that wasn't a polar region.

12:31What would they do once they got there

12:32and settled down?

Evolution

Scientists have several theories about why early hominids evolved. One, the aridity
hypothesis, suggests that early hominids were more suited to dry climates and evolved as the
Africa’s dry savannah regions expanded.
The savannah hypothesis, early tree-dwelling hominids may have been pushed out of their
homes as environmental changes caused the forest regions to shrink and the size of the
savannah expand. These changes, according to the savannah hypothesis, may have caused
them to adapt to living on the ground and walking upright instead of climbing.

Hominids continued to evolve and develop unique characteristics. Their brain capacities
increased, and approximately 2.3 million years ago, a hominid known as Homo habilis began
to make and use simple tools. By a million years ago, some hominid species,
particularly Homo erectus, began to migrate out of Africa and into Eurasia, where they began
to make other advances like controlling fire.

Homo habilis Homo erectus Homo Sapiens

The cranium is shallower than Homo Sapiens skull

Though there were once many kinds of hominids, only one remains: Homo
sapiens. Extinction is a normal part of evolution, and scientists continue to theorize why
other hominid species didn’t survive. We do have some clues as to why some species were
less successful at surviving than others, such as an inability to cope with competition for
food, changes in climate, and volcanic eruptions.

Migration and the Peopling of the Earth

Between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began migrating from the African
continent and populating parts of Europe and Asia. They reached the Australian continent in
canoes sometime between 35,000 and 65,000 years ago.

Scientists studying land masses and climate know that the Pleistocene Ice Age created a land
bridge that connected Asia and North America (Alaska) over 13,000 years ago. A widely
accepted migration theory is that people crossed this land bridge and eventually migrated into
North and South America.

How were our ancestors able to achieve this feat, and why did they make the decision to
leave their homes? The development of language around 50,000 years ago allowed people to
make plans, solve problems, and organize effectively. We can’t be sure of the exact reasons
humans first migrated off of the African continent, but it was likely correlated with a
depletion of resources (like food) in their regions and competition for those resources. Once
humans were able to communicate these concerns and make plans, they could assess together
whether the pressures in their current home outweighed the risk of leaving to find a new one.
Homo neanderthalensis is reflected in orange in what is Europe and the Middle East today,
and Homo erectus is represented in yellow in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Adaptation and effects on nature

When humans migrated from Africa to colder climates, they made clothing out of animal
skins and constructed fires to keep themselves warm; often, they burned fires continuously
through the winter. Sophisticated weapons, such as spears and bows and arrows, allowed
them to kill large mammals efficiently. Along with changing climates, these hunting methods
contributed to the extinction of giant land mammals such as mammoths, giant kangaroos, and
mastodons. Fewer giant mammals, in turn, limited hunters’ available prey.

In addition to hunting animals and killing them out of self-defense, humans began to use the
earth’s resources in new ways when they constructed semi-permanent settlements. Humans
started shifting from nomadic lifestyles to fixed homes, using the natural resources there.
Semi-permanent settlements would be the building-blocks of established communities and
the development of agricultural practices.