Lecture 01
Scope :
This lecture summarizes the organization of Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations. First, we stress that the course is a narrative story of world prehistory--human history before humans developed documentary records--based on scientific evidence. Second, we summarize the organization of the course
into six sections, beginning with human origins and the archaic world, then describing the emergence and spread of modern humans, the beginnings of food production, and the world’s earliest preindustrial civilizations. Finally, we discuss the pervasive issues of the course, which include emerging human biological and cultural diversity, as well as our similarities; the importance of climatic and environmental change; and the consideration of prehistory as a chronicle of people, not just archaeological sites. We also stress the importance of the intangible beliefs of the ancients to the understanding of human prehistory.
Outline :
I. This course describes more than two and a half million years of the human past, from our origins among the apes in eastern Africa to the appearance of literate urban civilizations in southwestern Asia some 5,000 years ago. We also describe the early civilizations that developed in Asia and the Americas, ending our story with the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru.
A. This course is a narrative of prehistoric times, the thousands of years of preliterate history, a story that could not be told until about a half century ago, because the archaeological record was so incomplete in many places. It still is, but we can least give a preliminary account. By prehistory, we mean the human past
before written records in the conventional historical meaning of the word came into being. *1
*1 ではどのようにして、記述が不完全もしくは、ないものについての歴史を理解できるというのであろうか。
B. This is a course about world prehistory, the study of the human past on a global level, a phenomenon that has been made possible by the development of radiocarbon dating after World War II and by a massive expansion of archaeologists and archaeological research into many hitherto unexplored parts of the world since the 1950s.
*1 → radiocarbon dating
C. This course is based on research in many academic disciplines, among them archaeology, oral history, and the incomplete written records of the early civilizations. This is a narrative based on science and scientific research, much of it conducted within the past thirty years.
D. This is a course about human prehistory constructed from scientific research. It is not an account of the past based on fantasy, unsubstantiated legend, or science fiction, none of which has a place in our story.
1. Science has laid out a linear view of the 2.5 million years of prehistory, reconstructed from a jigsaw puzzle of excavations, archaeological surveys, and scientific dating methods. Such a linear chronology is the framework for our story, something very different from the cyclical visions of time espoused by many ancient and traditional societies, which were, or are, often driven by the passage of the seasons.
2. Prehistory ended at different times in different parts of the world, as early as 5,000 years ago in Egypt and Mesopotamia but as recently as the twentieth century in some areas of New Guinea. The prehistory of each area of the world runs according to a different clock and ends at different times. The chronological line is, therefore, “jagged” for the end of prehistory everywhere. *3
*3 これは、今後の我々の未来について、どのような方向に歴史が流れていくのかを考える時、マクロ的な視野でそれを考えたい場合、とても大きなヒントがあるかもしれない。
II. The course is divided into six sections, which coincide with major developments in prehistoric times.
A. Section I, “Beginnings,” describes the archaic world of the first humans. We discuss the controversial subject of human origins in East Africa, the fossil evidence for hominid evolution, the archaeological sites, and theories about early human behavior.
1. Then we discuss the evolution of later, more advanced humans and their simple hunter-gatherer societies, chronicling their spread over the Old World after 2 million years ago (mya).
2. Section I ends with archaic forms of Homo sapiens, especially the European Neanderthals of 100,000 to 30,000 years ago.
B. Section II, “Modern Humans,” begins with the controversies surrounding the origins of Homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans.
1. We then trace their spread across the Old World and into the Americas during the late Ice Age, between about 100,000 and 15,000 years ago.
2. This was a period of tremendous innovations in human society, such as new, more sophisticated technologies; the first open-water navigation; and the appearance of both art and a rich symbolic life as a new part of human experience.
C. Section III, “Farmers and Herders,” begins immediately after the end of the Great Ice Age, in about 10,000 B.C., when hunter-gatherers in Southwest Asia suddenly start cultivating cereal grasses. We examine some of the theories that seek to explain the changeover, then visit early farming sites in the region.
1. Food production also took hold in other regions independently of Southwest Asia, among them, South Asia (rice) and East Asia (cereals and rice). We analyze these developments and the first appearance of cultivation in the Americas, in about 5,000 B.C.
2. We tell the story of the spread of farming into Europe, perhaps in part the result of a great natural cataclysm, and survey the colonization of the offshore islands of the Pacific, the last landmasses to be colonized by prehistoric humans.
Scope :
This lecture summarizes the organization of Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations. First, we stress that the course is a narrative story of world prehistory--human history before humans developed documentary records--based on scientific evidence. Second, we summarize the organization of the course
into six sections, beginning with human origins and the archaic world, then describing the emergence and spread of modern humans, the beginnings of food production, and the world’s earliest preindustrial civilizations. Finally, we discuss the pervasive issues of the course, which include emerging human biological and cultural diversity, as well as our similarities; the importance of climatic and environmental change; and the consideration of prehistory as a chronicle of people, not just archaeological sites. We also stress the importance of the intangible beliefs of the ancients to the understanding of human prehistory.
Outline :
I. This course describes more than two and a half million years of the human past, from our origins among the apes in eastern Africa to the appearance of literate urban civilizations in southwestern Asia some 5,000 years ago. We also describe the early civilizations that developed in Asia and the Americas, ending our story with the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru.
A. This course is a narrative of prehistoric times, the thousands of years of preliterate history, a story that could not be told until about a half century ago, because the archaeological record was so incomplete in many places. It still is, but we can least give a preliminary account. By prehistory, we mean the human past
before written records in the conventional historical meaning of the word came into being. *1
*1 ではどのようにして、記述が不完全もしくは、ないものについての歴史を理解できるというのであろうか。
B. This is a course about world prehistory, the study of the human past on a global level, a phenomenon that has been made possible by the development of radiocarbon dating after World War II and by a massive expansion of archaeologists and archaeological research into many hitherto unexplored parts of the world since the 1950s.
*1 → radiocarbon dating
C. This course is based on research in many academic disciplines, among them archaeology, oral history, and the incomplete written records of the early civilizations. This is a narrative based on science and scientific research, much of it conducted within the past thirty years.
D. This is a course about human prehistory constructed from scientific research. It is not an account of the past based on fantasy, unsubstantiated legend, or science fiction, none of which has a place in our story.
1. Science has laid out a linear view of the 2.5 million years of prehistory, reconstructed from a jigsaw puzzle of excavations, archaeological surveys, and scientific dating methods. Such a linear chronology is the framework for our story, something very different from the cyclical visions of time espoused by many ancient and traditional societies, which were, or are, often driven by the passage of the seasons.
2. Prehistory ended at different times in different parts of the world, as early as 5,000 years ago in Egypt and Mesopotamia but as recently as the twentieth century in some areas of New Guinea. The prehistory of each area of the world runs according to a different clock and ends at different times. The chronological line is, therefore, “jagged” for the end of prehistory everywhere. *3
*3 これは、今後の我々の未来について、どのような方向に歴史が流れていくのかを考える時、マクロ的な視野でそれを考えたい場合、とても大きなヒントがあるかもしれない。
II. The course is divided into six sections, which coincide with major developments in prehistoric times.
A. Section I, “Beginnings,” describes the archaic world of the first humans. We discuss the controversial subject of human origins in East Africa, the fossil evidence for hominid evolution, the archaeological sites, and theories about early human behavior.
1. Then we discuss the evolution of later, more advanced humans and their simple hunter-gatherer societies, chronicling their spread over the Old World after 2 million years ago (mya).
2. Section I ends with archaic forms of Homo sapiens, especially the European Neanderthals of 100,000 to 30,000 years ago.
B. Section II, “Modern Humans,” begins with the controversies surrounding the origins of Homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans.
1. We then trace their spread across the Old World and into the Americas during the late Ice Age, between about 100,000 and 15,000 years ago.
2. This was a period of tremendous innovations in human society, such as new, more sophisticated technologies; the first open-water navigation; and the appearance of both art and a rich symbolic life as a new part of human experience.
C. Section III, “Farmers and Herders,” begins immediately after the end of the Great Ice Age, in about 10,000 B.C., when hunter-gatherers in Southwest Asia suddenly start cultivating cereal grasses. We examine some of the theories that seek to explain the changeover, then visit early farming sites in the region.
1. Food production also took hold in other regions independently of Southwest Asia, among them, South Asia (rice) and East Asia (cereals and rice). We analyze these developments and the first appearance of cultivation in the Americas, in about 5,000 B.C.
2. We tell the story of the spread of farming into Europe, perhaps in part the result of a great natural cataclysm, and survey the colonization of the offshore islands of the Pacific, the last landmasses to be colonized by prehistoric humans.