Development of Agriculture and Writing

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Development of Agriculture and Writing : The Paleolithic and Neolithic eras of the Stone Age.

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In this video I'm gonna use words like
eras, periods, and ages to refer to segments of time
in the human or in the pre-human past
What I wann clarify, right from the get-go
cause thats something that's confused me in the past
archaeologists will refer to eras periods and ages
in the human past, and they usually refer to
periods of 10'000 of years or 1'000 of years
but these are differents eras periods and ages
than the ones that geologists would refer to when they are talking
about geological time.
In geological time ERA means several hundred millions of years
periods and ages mean millions of years
when an archaeologists, when we are studying the human past
they are just generally talking about the long segments of human time
but not in the millions of years, usually in the thousands or
ten thousands of years.
So what I wanna do, with that out of the way
is talk about what has happened in the distant human past
or the distant pre-human past, and also
touch on some of the classifications
for these segments of time,
because they actually tell us
4 interesting developments that happened to humanity
over the 200000 years that homo sapiens have been on this planet
or that we believe that homo sapiens have been on this planet
So the longest period of time in the human past
or the category of human time and there are different ways
we can categorize. It is the Paleolithic era right over here.
and what really makes that period of time
So this begins even at pre-history or pre-human history
before homo sapiens even existed
you have the bigging of the Paleolithic era
that really begann with the development of stone tools
And as we learned in the video on Human Evolution
there were pre homo sapiens species that were using
stone tools.]
So the Paleolithic Era is really kinda signified
by 1: the stone tools,
but even more that either the pre-humans
or once you go about 200'000 years ago
the humans showd-up is kinda distinguished by
The humans being hunter-gatherers.
Which essentially mean, to survive
we used to walk around a lot, you know,
if we couldn't see something obvious to hunt,
maybe a wooly mamoth or something
If we didn't see something obvious to hunt
we would look around for snails or mushrooms or
whatever else, and that how we would survive
that how we would live
And because we were constantly adapting to our
environment based on the seasons, we would be maybe following
animals as they migrated, hunter-gatheres were
fundamentally nomadic, which essentially, which means
that they never settled in one place for a long time
they were always ready to kind of pick up,
probably their tents, and follow the herd,
or follow whatever animals they were hunting, or
follow the seasons so that they could go to
warmer climates maybe where there is more likely
to find something in the ground to eat maybe during the winter
Who knows?
So the paleolithic era is really distinguished
by that huge swash? of time in human history
and it doesn't come to an end
until you get to the advent of FARMING.
So the Paleolithic Era, we are literally talking
about over 2 mi years ago, it's when it starts,
before Homo sapiens even existed as a species
and it goes all the way to the advent of farming
that we believe,
1st came about around 11'000 to 7000 years ago
And this abreviating right here, this BP
This does not stand for Brithish Petroleum,
it stands for "Before Present", or before the present time
so, one more acronym to kind of have in your toolkit
when you see things
And obviously, if we are 11000 years before the present
that's the same thing as 9000 before Christ,
or before the common era
because Christ was, we believe, born 2000 years ago
Now, it may or may not be obvious to you,
but the advent of agriculture is a SUPER big deal.
Argueably the biggest deal in the development of
human civilization. Or in all of the human history!
And you might say,
"Hey, what's the big deal about agriculture?"
These characters over here look pretty happy,
they are able to walk around a lot, they are able to hunt
What's the big deal of all of the sudden people
plowing fields and domesticating cattle
and having chickens to lay eggs
and whateverelse
and the big deal about that, besides the fact
that it would change peoples diet,
is that for the 1st time
it allowed them to NOT be nomadic,
it allowed them to, and you could've probably had
some hunters who were somewhat settled,
maybe living near the ocean, fishing and all the rest
but for the most part,
the development of agriculture,
it forced people to stay in one place
so you have the paleolithic era,
all the way to the advent of agriculture
which was about 11'000 ~ 7'000 years ago
and beside the fact that it changed people's diet
it allowed them to settle.
So agriculture allowed human being to settle down in one area
It wasn't just that they were settling in one area
but because they were able to control their enviroment
the were able to increase the density of things
of crops that humans could consume,
of animals that human could consume
and lower the density of crops that humans can't consume
and animals that humans can't consume,
or that they don't want around,
like pests of some type.
What it allowed them to do is also settle
in more dense environments.
You can imagine,
when you just have people walking around
you need a lot of land to support
even the calory requirements of 1 human being.