Prehistoric Revolutions

Lecture Notes for Third Midterm

Concept of the Industrial Revolution

• Technological change leads to massive change in society, economics, and politics

• 1776 steam engine -> industrial revolution

• Rural to urban population, capitalism and wage labor, electoral politics with political parities, mass media,

Prehistoric Revolutions

• Concept proposed by V. Gordon Childe

• Neolithic and Urban Revolutions

• Neolithic Revolution: transition to plant and animal domestication, shift from foraging bands to settled villagefarming

• Urban Revoultion: development of urban life, division of the human community into an urban elite and rural peasantry

The Human Revolution

• Concept proposed by Charles Hockett

• Shift from animal life to human life, with language and symbolic thought

• Homo sapiens & Homo faber

The Human Revolution

• Australopithecus 5-2 mya

• Homo habilis 2 mya

• Homo erectus 1.5-.5 mya

• Archaic Homo sapiens 200,000 B.P.

• Modern humans, about 50,000 B.P.

Evolution

• Evolutionism vs Creationism

• Biological vs Cultural

• Unilineal vs Multilineal

• General vs Specific

Time depth in human evolution

Models for human evolution

Evolution and Revolution in Human Develpment

Societal Types in History

Neolithic Revolution (10,000 BP)

The first revolution that transformed human economy gave man control over his own food supply. Man began to plant, cultivate, and improve by selection edible grasses, roots, and trees. And he succeeded in taming and firmly attaching to his person certain species of animal in return for the fodder he was able to offer, the protection he could afford, and the forethought he could exercise (Childe 1936:59).

Neolithic Revolution (10,000 BP)

• development of plant and animal domestication and the consequences of this

• It was women, not men, that developed horticulture

• Neolithic revolutions in SW Asia and North Africa, SE Asia, and the New World

• "humanity's greatest mistake?" (Jared Diamond)

• the “ethical regression” (Gerhard Lenski)

Urban Revolution (5,000 BP)

Before the urban revolution comparatively poor and illiterate communities had made and impressive series of contributions to man's progress. The two millennia immediately preceding 3000 B.C. had witnessed discoveries in applied science that directly or indirectly affected the prosperity of millions of men and demonstrably furthered the biological welfare of our species by facilitating its multiplication. We have mentioned the following applications of science: artificial irrigation using canals and ditches; the plow; the harnessing of animal motive-power; the sailboat; wheeled vehicles; orchard-husbandry; fermentation; the production and use of copper; bricks; the arch; glazing; the seal; and - in the earliest stages of the revolution - a solar calendar, writing, numeral notation, and bronze [1951:180].

Urban Revolution (5,000 BP)

• the development of patriarchal systems of class rule

• six urban revolutions: Mesopotamia [Sumer], Egypt, Indus Valley, North China, Mesoamerica, Peru

Urban Revolution (5,000 BP)

• Up until about 1500 AD, the vanguard of cultural development was in the Eurasian ecumene, the area of high culture streching from China to North Africa.

• For most of this time, Europe was a cultural backwater.

World Imperialism 1500-2000+ AD

• Beginning about 1500 AD, Europeans began unifying the globe under their rule

• Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997)

Open notes for capitalism