- 60,000 years ago, a first wave of migrants journeyed from Africa to Australia, leaving pockets of population scattered en route along the coasts of Pakistan, India, and the islands of Southeast Asia.
- 50,000 years ago, as this coastal clan reached China, a second wave left Africa, settled in the Levant, and followed the steppe highway eastward.
- 35,000 years ago, these steppe migrants reached southern Siberia and entered China from the north.
- At the same time, a separate group of the steppe clan (the Cro-Magnon people) travelled west from central Asia into Europe.
- 20,000 years ago, the steppe clan that was still travelling northeast crossed the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska and then, 15,000 years ago, expanded south into North, Central, and South America.
- Only 4000 years ago did descendants of the coastal clan who had settled in Southeast Asia venture across vast expanses of the Pacific to colonise Polynesia.
Because they survived by hunting large animals, their lifestyle was chiefly nomadic. Those living near the ice in northern Europe followed the herds of reindeer and caribou. Those living in warmer climes hunted mammoths. It was dangerous work, but they were sufficiently skilled to hunt many large animal species to extinction. The Cro-Magnon people in Europe invented a lunar calendar with which to predict the migration of their prey animals. And as early as 30,000 years ago, both in Europe and Asia, our forbears entered a partnership with dogs. Still evolving from wolves, these animals helped in herding and bringing down game, and were rewarded by scavenging what their human partners left behind. Evidence of humans and dogs being buried together at a site in Israel 14,000 years ago is testimony to the deepening bond that subsequently developed and has continued between man and his best friend to this day.
Like their African ancestors, the migrants lived and moved about in small groups, finding shelter in caves and sometimes in purpose-built huts or pits dug into the earth. Rarely would one group encounter another. Mostly they had to deal only with other animals – many of them extremely dangerous. In coastal areas where they could rely on fishing, their lifestyle would have been somewhat more settled.
These nomadic or semi-nomadic groups were neither large nor complex. Kinship and proximity were the binding elements. There was no significant inequality or distinction of rank. Possessions were simple, with no real difference in wealth. War as we know it didn’t exist. While some division of labour by gender may have existed for the sake of efficiency in acquiring food, this was probably the most gender-equal time in all of history. Some women were very highly regarded, as indicated by the burial, 30,000 years ago in what is now the Czech Republic, of one who was a shaman. And it seems likely that family groups at this time followed a pattern of matrilineal descent.
A diet of meat, roots and fruit became supplemented with wild cereal grains as early as 23,000 years ago. Bananas and tubers may have been cultivated in a rudimentary form of horticulture even earlier. Nor were they slow to learn the secrets of getting high. Wine making and the consumption of hallucinogenic plants seems to have originated during this same period. The widespread use of cooking and other food-processing is reflected in a trend towards smaller teeth in humans over the last 100,000 years. Our face, jaw, and teeth today are about 10% less robust than was the case 10,000 years ago, and 25% less robust than 30,000 years ago.
The Cro-Magnon people brought with them to Europe an inventive genius previously unknown. Fishing nets, harpoons, the bow and arrow, spears that could be thrown, skilfully crafted stone blades, lamps fuelled with animal fat, tailored garments decorated with beads, sewing needles, fireplace cooking utensils, and a variety of containers, some made with wood – all these were in use 30,000 years ago.
Most impressive, however, is the art that decorated the walls of caves such as Chauvet Cave in France. Dated to 30,000 years ago, it is a veritable gallery of prehistoric art, depicting animals and humans, risky hunting scenes, creatures that are half-human and half-animal, as well as assorted symbolic shapes and patterns. There are also engravings, jewellery, animal carvings, sculptures made of bone and ivory, Venus figurines, and the oldest example of ceramic art – the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, dated to about 27,000 years ago. Artistic creations such as these reflect a new capacity for abstract thought, conceptual understanding, and spoken language. While these had been evolving gradually over time, the pace quickened during this Upper Paleolithic period. And with them would have come as well greater emotional capacities for intimacy and sympathetic response to the needs of others.
These cognitive and emotional developments, together with an awakening curiosity about the larger world and a willingness to venture into it at greater risk, correspond with what is typical of early school-age children (aged 4 – 6) – the stage of development that I call “The Curious Explorer”. It is what Jean Piaget described as the “conceptual pre-operations” stage (4-7 years), and the stage in which the key developmental task described by Erik Erikson is “Initiative versus Guilt” (3-6 years). During this stage, initiative adds the element of planning to the tasks we undertake. In learning new skills, the child is also learning to master the world around him. He learns to take initiative for the sake of achieving goals. And his growing courage and independence leads to more risky behaviour. Whether such behaviour is the child’s crossing a street on his or her own, or the early migrants venturing across the Coral Sea to Australia, it is classic exploratory behaviour that characterises this stage.
At the heart of these developments is an emerging sense of self. While still centered primarily on the body rather than being a mental-ego, the self is nonetheless now very much separate from the world and seems central to it. And with that sense of separateness comes a heightened awareness of our mortality and of the threats against which the self must now be defended. Sometime around age four in our individual development, and during this migratory era in our collective development, we awaken to the finiteness and vulnerability of our separate existence. No longer protected from the vision of our mortality, we start defending our now-separate self against death and do what we can to make it seem enduring and immortal. In short, we begin to devise the innumerable strategies of death-denial that distinguish our species, that shape our worldviews, and that lie near the heart of our religious beliefs and rituals.
Just how that was expressed for our ancestors during this particular period of our history I will put on hold until my next Post.
No comments:
Post a Comment