This is not a history lesson. That's because history is primarily the study of written documents. Writing didn't begin until about 5,000 years ago when the people of Kemet (Ancient Egypt) began to prepare burial records to accompany their dead to the afterlife.
 
This is the story of what happened before people began to write things down. It's called prehistory and it covers 99% of the time we humans have been around.
 
 
Early Man
 
Human beings have been on earth for a long, long time. Scientists have found human-like skeletons and fossils in Africa that are 4 to 5 million years old.  In 1974 in Ethiopia, scientists discovered the remains of one of our most famous human ancestors. They called her Lucy. She is 3.18 million years old. New discoveries are being made all the time.
 
The scientists who study prehistoric fossils are called paleontologists. What we know about prehistory comes mainly from them as well as from archeologists. They study the actual things people leave behind like weapons, artifacts, tools and food remains. These are very important because how people get their food -- and eat it -- plays a major role in who they are.
 

Hunting. Fishing. Gathering.
 
All early people were hunter-gatherers. That means they hunted wild animals, fished and gathered wild food plants like berries, nuts and wild root vegetables. Some nutritionists think this is still the ideal diet.
 
Gradually, people began to make tools such as sticks to dig up wild tubers (vegetables), poles to knock fruit from the trees. Eventually, about 2 million years ago, they starting making tools out of stone. The Stone Age had begun.
 
 
The Stone Age
 
Scientists divide The Stone Age into 3 different periods.
 
The Paleolithic Period began about 2 million years ago and ended about 13,000 BC.
 
The Mesolithic Period  lasted from 13,000 BC until about 8000 BC.
 
And the Neolithic Period. which began to develop about 8000 BC and lasted until about 4000 BC in most places.  Stone Age culture still exists in some remote locations even today.
 
The first and longest period of The Stone Age is the Paleolithic. It's the period paleontologists study most. In fact, it's where they got their name.
 
If you'd like to see how Creationism can work with the findings of paleontologists and other scientists, check out this link:
http://www.nwcreation.net/ageold.html
 
 
The Paleolithic Period
 
The Paleolithic Period was a time of astonishing human development even though the climate kept changing drastically. For a long, long time, the earth was very cold. The Great Ice Age began over one-and-a-half million years ago. Geologists call this the Pleistocene Epoch. Glaciers spread over much of the world. But Paleolithic hunters adapted. They used animal hides and fur for clothing and they discovered fire.
 
 
Fire
 
Fire changed everything. It kept wild animals away which helped the people survive. Because up until then, they had been easy prey for predators. Fire kept them warm  
and it made cooking possible.
 
People learned to cook food long before they learned to grow food. They roasted meat or fish in the fire or on hot stones. Eventually, they made fireproof pots to cook in so they could prepare plant-based foods like soup, roasted cereals and porridge.
 
Cooking also brought people together. They gathered around the fire. Cooking and eating became a communal activity.
 
 
BiPedalism

Something else very very important happened during the Paleolithic Period. People began to walk upright on two legs. This is called BiPedalism.
 
Hunter-gatherers were nomads. They emerged on the savannas (grasslands) of Africa. They traveled great distances to find food in small groups of from 25 to 60 people.
 
Walking upright helped them cover long distances more quickly to hunt, to search for wild food, to find shelter and to spread throughout the world.
 
Scientists believe that early people began moving out of Africa into Europe and the near East about 700,000 years ago. About 30,000 years ago, small groups walked over the land bridge across the Bering Strait into North America.
 
 
Tools
 
Walking upright also meant that people could carry tools. As we told you, the first tools were sticks. But soon people began to make tools out of stone.
 
At first, these were just chipped pebbles or flaked stones. The same tools were used for everything. But gradually people began to develop special tools for special purposes like hunting or skinning animals. So they could use animal hides and fur for clothing.
 
During the later part of the Paleolithic period, both Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens) learned to make highly specialized tools
including needles for sewing and harpoons for fishing.
 
 
Neanderthals
(Homo sapiens neanderthalensis - "Intelligent Man")
 
Several branches of man developed during the Paleolithic Period. Among the earliest were the Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis). Neanderthals existed between 230,000 and 30,000 years ago. They were tough, adaptable people well suited to the cold of the Ice Age. They were short and very strong. They lived in caves and rock shelters during the winter and ranged widely over the countryside in the summer.
 
They made elaborate tools like stone arrowheads affixed to shafts for hunting. These tools were greatly advanced over the tools made by their Paleolithic ancestors. They were also the first people known to bury their dead.  Some even engaged in elaborate rituals involving the Cave Bear the most formidable of all Ice Age prey.
 
They died out about 30,000 years ago.
 
 
Modern Humans
(Homo sapiens sapiens -- "Modern Intelligent Man")
 
For millennia, Neanderthals lived side by side with early modern humans. The first true modern humans were the Cro-Magnons. Scientists think they emerged about 120,000 years ago. They were different from the Neaderthals but a lot like us. They were skilled hunters, sophisticated toolmakers and accomplished artists.
 
They invented the stone ax, bone fishhook and bow and arrow. We'll tell you more about Cro-Magnon culture in our next Instruction. But first we ought to say a little something about language which both the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons possessed.
 
 
Language
 
Language is one of the main things that makes humans human. Only humans have the genetic ability and facial structure for speech. Like the use of fire and BiPedalism, language emerged during the Paleolithic Period.Some time between a million and 500,000 years ago, early humans began to develop and refine language and speech.
 This helped them work together on the hunt and to pass knowledge down from generation to generation.
 
It also helped them think because language not only operates between people. It operates inside each individual. It enables us to organize and categorize our experiences to perceive ourselves and to perceive our own perception  which is human consciousness.
 
Language is also the basis for culture. Which we'll tell you more about in our next Instruction.
 
 
The Neolithic Revolution
 
The earth began to get warmer about 13,000 BC during the Mesolithic period. Then, about 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic Revolution began. Which is when agriculture and settled life -- modern life -- began. It started in the Middle East and spread to Asia, the western Mediterranean and northern Europe. As populations grew, hunting grounds filled up. People started to stay in one place like river valleys. 
 
Hunter-gatherers were expert at managing their resources. They developed excellent storage techniques for fish, plants and other foods including pounding and drying bison and salmon.
 
Agriculture may have been the next logical step. People began to cultivate familiar plants so there would always be resources to draw on. They also began to domesticate animals.
 
 
The First Domesticated Animal
 
Domestication means taming an animal for human purposes. Fossil and skeletal evidence suggests that the first domesticated animal was the dog. All dogs are descended from wolves. Paleontologists think that man began to breed the aggression out of wolves about 15,000 years ago in East Asia so they could be put to work.
They were guarding caves and campsites herding bison and mastadon in hunts and pulling loads or carrying loads on their backs. Other early domesticated animals include the ox, the prairie dog (for food) and the camel (for transportation).
 
 
Hunter-Gatherers Today
 
Agriculture and the domestication of animals spread fast. 10,000 years ago, everybody lived by hunting and gathering. By 2,000 years ago, almost everybody lived as farmers or herders. Only a few people still lived as hunter-gatherers. There are fewer still today.
 
Some hunter-gatherer societies still do exist in remote areas of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, South America, Siberia and and Canada where Nunavut, a self-governing territory the size of Western Europe, has been set aside for Inuit hunter-gatherers. They are determined to maintain their ancient way of life. But elsewhere their continued existence is in doubt.

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