World Prehistory: A Brief Introduction

✍ Scribed by Brian M. Fagan, Nadia Durrani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 517
• Edition: 11
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This is an introduction to human prehistory written for complete beginners with a global perspective. It is written in a jargon-free style that covers 6 million years of the remote past from human origins to the first pre-industrial civilizations, balancing theoretical discussion with descriptions and analysis of major sites and cultural developments.

World Prehistory provides a unique and balanced narrative of what happened in the prehistoric past and why. The book is well worth acquiring, as it provides essential historical background to a wide variety of subjects, from written history and environmental studies to climate change. Chronological tables, numerous illustrations, guides to further reading, and stand-alone boxes on some archaeological methods, key sites, and some people of the past amplify much of the basic narrative.

This global prehistory is aimed at people with no background in archaeology, undergraduates at all levels, and participants in graduate seminars on a wide range of subjects. Numerous people with a general interest in archaeology and multidisciplinary history have acquired and enjoyed this book.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Chronologies and Measurements
Part I: Prehistory
Introduction: Archaeology and Prehistory
1 Introducing World Prehistory
Why Are Human Prehistory and Archaeology Important?
In the Beginning
Mythic Heroes and Vanished Civilizations: The Curiosities of Pseudoarchaeology
Prehistory, Archaeology, and World Prehistory
Major Developments in Human Prehistory
Cyclical and Linear Time
Written Records, Oral History, and Archaeology
Studying World Prehistory
Culture
Culture History, Time and Space, and the Myth of the Ethnographic Present
Context
Time
Space
Analogy and the Ethnographic Present
Cultural Process and Past Lifeways
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
Culture as Adaptation
Multilinear Cultural Evolution
Cultural Traditions and Cultural Change
Intangibles: Ideology and Interaction
Ideology and Beliefs
Interactions
Summary
Part II: The World of the First Humans
Introduction: Beginnings
2 Human Origins
The Great Ice Age (2.58 Ma to 12,000 Years Ago)
Early Primate Evolution and Adaptation
The Order Primates
Coming Down From the Trees
The Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution (ca. 6 to 1.5 Ma)
The Earliest Hominin?
Walking on Two Feet?
What is Australopithecus?
From Ardipithecus to Australopithecus
All Kinds of Australopithecines (ca. 3. 7–1 Ma)
Gracile Australopithecines: A. Africanus
Robust Australopithecines: Paranthropus Aethiopicus, Paranthropus Boisei, and Paranthropus Robustus
Australopithecus Garhi
Early Homo (From ca. 2.4 to 1.6 Ma)
Who was the First of Our Genus, Homo?
The Earliest Human Toolmakers
Hunters or Scavengers?
The Earliest Human Mind
The Development of Language
The Earliest Social Organization
Summary
3 African Exodus
Ice Age Background
Homo Erectus in Africa (ca. 1.9 to ca. 1.5 Ma)
Homo Erectus in Southeast Asia (ca. 1.8 Ma to Possibly 100,000 Years Ago)
Hominins in Eurasia and Europe
The Lifeway of Homo Erectus
The Neanderthals (ca. 430,000 to 40,000 Years Ago)
Early Homo Sapiens (From ca. 300,000 Years Ago)
Continuity, Replacement, or Something in Between?
Molecular Biology and Our Origins
Ecology and Homo Sapiens
Out of Africa
Summary
Part III: The Birth of the Modern World
Introduction: Moderns, Migrations, and Farmers
4 Diaspora
The Late Ice Age World (50,000 to 15,000 Years Ago)
The Peopling of Southeast Asia and Australia (ca. 65,000 to 15,000 Years Ago)
Late Ice Age Europe: The "Cro-Magnons" (ca. 44,000 to 15,000 Years Ago)
Subsistence
Cro-Magnon Technology
Cro-Magnon Art
Hunter-Gatherers in Eurasia (45,000 to 15,000 Years Ago)
East Asia (35,000 to 15,000 Years Ago)
Sinodonty and Sundadonty
Human Settlement of Northeast Siberia (Before 25,000 to 15,000 Years Ago)
The First Americans (by ca. 17,000 Years Ago to 13,000 Years Ago)
The Clovis People (ca. 13,200 to 13,000 Years Ago)
Summary
5 The Origins of Food Production
The Holocene (After 10,000 BC)
Changes in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Social Complexity Among Hunter-Gatherers
Models of Farming Origins
Early Hypotheses: Oases and Hilly Flanks
The Recovery Revolution
Multicausal Models
Population and Resources Models
Ecological Models
The Consequences of Food Production
Differing Dates and their Explanation
Changes in Human Life
Nutrition and Early Food Production
Summary
6 The Earliest Farmers
Domesticating Animals
Domesticating Wheat and Barley
Southwest Asian Farmers (From ca. 10,000 to 5000 BC)
Early Egyptian and African Farmers (Earlier Than 7000 to 1000 BC)
European Farmers (From ca. 6500 to 3000 BC)
Early Agriculture in Asia (Before 7000 to 3000 BC)
First Farmers in Southern China
First Farmers in Northern China
Early American Agriculture (8000 BC Onward)
Mesoamerica: Guilá Naquitz and Early Cultivation
Maize
Andean Farmers
Summary
7 Chiefs and Chiefdoms
Reciprocity and "Big Men"
Chiefs and Navigators in the Pacific (From 2000 BC to Modern Times)
The American Southwest (From 300 BC to Modern Times)
Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Pueblo
Moundbuilders in Eastern North America (From 2000 BC to AD 1650)
Adena and Hopewell
The Mississippian Tradition
Summary
Part IV: The First States: Preindustrial Civilizations
Introduction: Early Preindustrial States
8 State-Organized Societies
What is a State-Organized Society?
Cities
Models for the Origins of States
The "Urban Revolution"
Early Ecological Models
Technology and Trade
Warfare
Cultural Systems and States
Environmental Change
Social Approaches: Power in Three Domains
Factionalism and Ideology
People as Agents of Change
Collapsing States
James Scott Puts it Together
Summary
9 Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean World
Origins (From 5500 to 3000 BC)
The First Cities: Uruk
Writing and Metallurgy
The Sumerians (From ca. 3100 to 2334 BC)
Akkadians and Babylonians (From 2334 to 1650 BC)
Hittites and Sea Traders (From 1650 to 1200 BC)
The Hittites
Uluburun and Maritime Trade
Minoans and Mycenaeans (ca. 2000 to 1100 BC)
Minoans (ca. 2000 to 1100 BC)
Mycenaeans (From ca. 1750 to 1200 BC)
Sea Peoples and Phoenicians (From 1200 to 800 BC)
Assyrians and Babylonians (From 1200 to 539 BC)
Summary
10 Egypt and Africa
Predynastic Egypt: Ancient Monopoly (5000 to 3100 BC)
Dynastic Egypt (ca. 3000 to 30 BC)
Archaic Egypt and the "Great Culture" (3000 to 2575 BC)
Old Kingdom (ca. 2575 to 2134 BC)
Middle Kingdom (2040 to 1640 BC)
New Kingdom (1530 to 1075 BC)
Late Period (1070 to 30 BC)
Egypt and Afrocentrism
Nubia: The Land of Kush (3000 to 633 BC)
Meroë and Aksum
Meroë (593 BC to AD 330)
Aksum (AD 100 to 1000)
Sub-Saharan Africa (ca. 500 BC to ca. AD 1500)
West African Kingdoms (From ca. AD 800 to 1550)
Ghana (?AD 700 to ca. 1230)
Mali (ca. AD 1230 to 1440)
Songhay (ca. AD 1464 to 1550)
The East African Coast: Stone Towns and Islam (From First Century AD to 1498)
Gold and Ivory: Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe
Mapungubwe (AD 1230 to 1600)
Great Zimbabwe (Before AD 1250 to ca. 1450)
Summary
11 South, Southeast, and East Asia
South Asia: The Indus Valley Civilization (ca. 3300 to 1300 BC)
The Mature Indus Valley Civilization (2600–1900 BC)
South Asia After the Mature Indus Valley Civilization (1900 to 180 BC)
The Origins of Chinese States (2600 to 1100 BC)
The Shang
Royal Capitals
Royal Burials
Bronzeworking
Shang Warriors
The War Lords (From 1100 to 221 BC)
Southeast Asian States (AD 1 to 1500)
The Angkor State (From AD 802 to 1430)
Summary
Part V: Preindustrial States in the Americas
Introduction: Mesoamerican and Andean States
12 Lowland Mesoamerica
Beginnings: Preclassic Peoples in the Lowlands (2000 BC to AD 300)
The Olmec (From 1500 to 500 BC)
The Origins of the Maya (Before 1000 BC to AD 300)
San Bartolo, Nakbé, and El Mirador (ca. 1000 to 300 BC)
Kingship and Glyphs
Mayan Script
Political Cycles
Classic Maya (From AD 300 to 900)
The Rise of Tikal and Uaxactún
Caracol and Calakmul
Palenque and Copán
The Classic Maya Transformation
Postclassic Maya Society (AD 900 to 1517)
Summary
13 Highland Mesoamerica
The Rise of Highland States: The Valley of Oaxaca (From 2000 to 500 BC)
Monte Albán (From 500 BC to AD 750)
Valley of Mexico: Teotihuacán (From ca. 200 BC to AD 750)
The Toltecs (From AD 650 to 1200)
The Aztec State (From AD 1200 to 1521)
Tenochtitlán
The World of the Fifth Sun
The Aztec Empire
The Spanish Conquest (AD 1517 to 1521)
Summary
14 Andean States
The Maritime Foundations of Andean States
Coastal Foundations (2600 to 900 BC)
The Early Horizon and Chavín De Huántar (900 to 200 BC)
The Initial Period
The Coast (After 1800 BC)
Lake Titicaca Basin: Chiripa and Pukara (From 1000 BC to AD 100)
The Moche State (by AD 100 to 800)
The Middle Horizon: Tiwanaku and Wari (From AD 600 to 1000)
Tiwanaku
Wari
The Late Intermediate Period: Sicán and Chimu (AD 700 to 1460)
The Late Horizon: The Inca State (AD 1476 to 1534)
The Spanish Conquest (AD 1532 to 1534)
Summary
Epilogue
Glossary of Technical Terms
Glossary of Archaeological Sites and Cultural Terms
References
Index