Prologue:
The history of everything exceeds over 13.7 billion years, which scientist now call today the "big history". Many astronomers, physicists, and others say that the earth began to shape out of the explosion of many different nuclear powers. They consider that the shaping of the earth began in the first few seconds of January 1st, according to the cosmic calendar. Human history is known to not only exists on the earth but also throughout the entire Solar System, between all the different planets. Geologists have found throughout the years of study that the movement of the earth, the formation of the land, constant changes, etc. has been occurring since 4 billion years and continues to occur in the future. Approximately 600 billion years after the earth shaped itself, for about 3 billion years the only living species was a mircoscopic single-celled organism. On the cosmic calendar, the entire history of the homo sapiens occurred at the last minutes of December 31st and the entire history of the United States occurred at the very last second. The human species has evolved more astonishingly than any other species by adapting to the different languages and cultures throughout the many different generations. And has come to be the fastest to multiply its populations and occupy a large range of environments. The biggest age was the Paleolithic Age which consists of hunting and gathering and people constructed the first human societies during this “stone-age” era. After that came the Agricultural Era which mainly consisted of farming and development of the lands with crops & animals. Soon after that came the Industrial Era which is known until today as the “Modern Age”. The development of industrializing cities began to form and the building of machines to do a man job came into play, which still continues on until today. The ability to understand change, comparison, and contrast allows us to see the development of our generations and the development of different cultures throughout the years. Understanding change allows us to see how homo sapiens have adapted into the different parts of the world and allows us to understand the different atmosphere of the things we have adapted from.
Intro to Part 1: The Big Picture
According to anthropologist and archaeologists, the closest species to our human kind has come from the evolutionary line of chimpanzees around 5-6 million years ago. Around 3.5 million years ago, a fossil that came from volcanic ash shows a series of footprints of three different individuals in which two of the individuals were walking side-by-side. it has been discovered that as time has progressed the development of the hominid species has increased with bigger brain sizes, beginning of making tools, associating with fire, and even migrating to different parts of the world such as, Africa & Eurasia. Even though the hominid species died out, the homo sapiens remains and progressed with many accomplishments such as, creating a capacity for symbolic languages that continue advance in the times today. Before the humankind began to globalize our species was only limited to the expansion in some parts of Africa and Eurasia which took place during the Paleolithic Era. The Paleolithic Era (which established around 95% of human inhabitance on earth) shows the development of when humans began to enter the life of hunting and gathering which established an early lifestyle to the agricultural era in people began to grow crops and raise farm animals for their life needs. During the Agricultural Era, homo sapiens began to develop homes and colonize places to start building societies (which has never been accomplished by any other species). This globalization began to start foreshadowing the era of technology in which humans began to embark on the usage of art, literature, religion, etc. as communities started to build, the civilizations were built on a more complex sense of society which was mostly seen in cities or government places. However, now that the majority of the world lives in these complex cities the idea of having a complex society has been considered “normal”. Even though the world has evolved through many different generations and ages, dates have also been differentiated through cultures. The Western World represents dates according to B.C.E (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) which represents a more diverse world which does not represent Christianity (B.C. or A.D) anymore. Even the Chinese culture would represent dates according to the region of the emperors and the Muslim Culture would create a calendar according to the markings of Muhammad. Allowing the development of the world to introduce the beginning to new cultures and societies.
Chapter One
Out of Africa: Scholars have evidently proven that Africa is the place where the beginning of the human revolution occurred which helped understand the way of living. Humans were able to adapt to new environments such as, forests and deserts and also create new technology advancements with tools which created new way of settlement in societies. Even communication began to advance with a powerful network connection crossing over 200 miles. As these advances began to occur, human began to move into different regions in the world such as, Eurasia, Australia, and Americas which eventually led to the expansion of the humankind. However, even during movement to different places in the world, adapting to different climates such as, The Ice Age, became a challenge. Even though humankind endured such a difficult adaption, the Ice Age glaciers created paths to the Americas from the European sea board, allowing many people to migrate to new lands and settle different parts of the world. As the adaption occurred in Eurasia, new advancements began to be discovered. The idea of hunting now started to focus more on horses and reindeer, spears, bows & arrows were now used as tools. Cave paintings of bulls and other animals became a very important factor of this adaption, the idea using human hands to paint designs on a canvas became a very important factor in history books. As the humankind migrated to Australia, the idea of hunting and gathering became widely known and was used to catch my animals such as marine animals and hunted animals. They also brought on many advancements in resources by creating rivers, waterholes, hills, etc. The Western Hemisphere was adapted much after the Easter side of the world, as people migrated to the Americas adaptions such as; camping, hunting, adapting to cold weather with fur, etc. became widely known things. Whereas, other began to live in different climates like the desert and began to use plants and smaller animals to survive in their daily lives.
The Ways We Were: As people began to migrate and travel to different parts of the world, different cultures and new idea began to develop which would eventually create different cultures and languages. During the beginning of human societies in the Paleolithic times, the societies were small with a very low population and a slower growth rate (population wise). Theses societies would move in similar patterns through the time frame and depend on wild flowers or animals for their source of food and had a lower gathering and hunting rate. However, this eventually led to highly egalitarian societies which didn’t have the wealth or power that should have come with the urban lifestyle. Between genders, males would perform the role of the hunter (which created the idea masculinity) whereas women would gather the food/plants. Sexuality and marriage between men and women was mostly monogamy (even though polygamy was allowed) since most women wouldn’t want to share their husband with other women and the idea of having a virginity was unknown between people which allowed teenagers to engage in sexual activities. After the Europeans settled within the people many years later, men would start to experience competition in a physical aspect which lead to “bloody battles” and beating of wives by their husbands. Like most societies now, even the Paleolithic Society had rules such as; division of labor according to gender (men were hunters & women were gathers), sharing of the goods (distributing the meat that was caught by men), governed sexual behaviors (incest and adultery), and particular territories according to hunting and gathering. In order to enforce these rules and regulations, societies would often choose a leader to enforce organization but without giving permanent to one individual. According scholars, the religious and spiritual dimensions of the Paleolithic culture was preformed by part-time shamans who people thought had skills to deal with the sprit world. Some societies were known to be monotheistic (only one God) whereas others saw many levels of supernatural beings, territorial spirits, spirits of dead ancestors, etc. However, Paleolithic religious believed in feminine dimension (the idea of Goddess regenerating and renewing life). They even connected the phases of the moon to the cycles of female fertility (birth, menstruation, pregnancy, new birth, and death) and believed that materialistic things (trees, rocks, etc.) had spirits and were possessed by a soul. As time passed, changes occurred and people moved into new environments which allowed populations to grow and other groups to interact with each other. Which allows lead to advancement in tools such as the arrowhead knives, scrapers, micro-blades, etc. However, the most astonishing change occurred when the last Ice Age ended, which was followed by global warming that was generated by humans that caused a cycle of repeated cooling and heating. And the plants/animals that couldn’t survive the Ice Age had now provided a more rich and diverse environment which helped the human population to expand. The Paleolithic societies in Japan began to settle by the sea which allowed them to consume both marine and land animals. The process of hunting and gathering and the need for settling down ended up taking a major turn for history and started the development from small communities to large societies.
