1 00:00:00,094 --> 00:00:02,932 In this video I'm gonna use words like 2 00:00:02,932 --> 00:00:09,903 eras, periods, and ages to refer to segments of time 3 00:00:09,903 --> 00:00:13,039 in the human or in the pre-human past 4 00:00:13,039 --> 00:00:15,817 What I wann clarify, right from the get-go 5 00:00:15,817 --> 00:00:17,817 cause thats something that's confused me in the past 6 00:00:17,817 --> 00:00:20,898 archaeologists will refer to eras periods and ages 7 00:00:20,898 --> 00:00:22,899 in the human past, and they usually refer to 8 00:00:22,899 --> 00:00:26,039 periods of tens of thousands of years or thousands of years 9 00:00:26,129 --> 00:00:29,235 but these are differents eras periods and ages 10 00:00:29,235 --> 00:00:32,147 than the ones that geologists would refer to 11 00:00:32,147 --> 00:00:34,232 when they are talking about geological time. 12 00:00:34,232 --> 00:00:38,487 In geological time ERA means several hundred millions of years 13 00:00:38,487 --> 00:00:40,899 periods and ages mean millions of years 14 00:00:40,899 --> 00:00:44,149 when an archaeologists, when we are studying the human past 15 00:00:44,149 --> 00:00:49,069 they are just generally talking about the long segments of human time 16 00:00:49,069 --> 00:00:54,153 but not in the millions of years, usually in the thousands or ten thousands of years. 17 00:00:54,153 --> 00:00:56,817 So what I wanna do, with that out of the way 18 00:00:56,817 --> 00:01:00,514 is talk about what has happened in the distant human past 19 00:01:00,514 --> 00:01:03,068 or the distant pre-human past, and also 20 00:01:03,068 --> 00:01:06,774 touch on some of the classifications for these segments of time, 21 00:01:06,800 --> 00:01:11,003 because they actually tell us about the interesting developments 22 00:01:11,003 --> 00:01:16,172 that happened to humanity over the 200,000 years 23 00:01:16,322 --> 00:01:19,651 that Homo sapiens have been on this planet 24 00:01:19,651 --> 00:01:24,065 or that we believe that Homo sapiens have been on this planet 25 00:01:24,065 --> 00:01:27,982 So the longest period of time in the human past 26 00:01:27,982 --> 00:01:31,573 or the category of human time, and there are different ways we can categorize, 27 00:01:31,573 --> 00:01:39,166 is the Paleolithic era right over here. 28 00:01:39,176 --> 00:01:42,896 And what really makes that period of time - 29 00:01:42,896 --> 00:01:47,149 so this begins even at pre-history or pre-human history 30 00:01:47,149 --> 00:01:49,815 before Homo sapiens even existed 31 00:01:49,815 --> 00:01:52,314 you have the beginning of the Paleolithic era 32 00:01:52,314 --> 00:01:55,400 that really began with the development of stone tools 33 00:01:55,400 --> 00:01:57,574 And as we learned in the video on Human Evolution 34 00:01:57,574 --> 00:02:02,108 there were pre-Homo sapiens species that were using stone tools. 35 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:07,656 So the Paleolithic Era is really kind of signified by 1 of the stone tools, 36 00:02:07,656 --> 00:02:11,775 but even more that either the pre-humans 37 00:02:11,775 --> 00:02:13,984 or once you go about 200,000 years ago 38 00:02:13,984 --> 00:02:15,907 the humans showd-up is kinda distinguished by 39 00:02:15,907 --> 00:02:20,237 humans being hunter-gatherers. 40 00:02:20,237 --> 00:02:21,568 Which essentially mean, to survive 41 00:02:21,568 --> 00:02:24,708 we used to walk around a lot, you know, 42 00:02:24,708 --> 00:02:28,306 if we couldn't see something obvious to hunt, 43 00:02:28,306 --> 00:02:30,905 maybe a wooly mammoth or something 44 00:02:30,905 --> 00:02:32,819 If we didn't see something obvious to hunt 45 00:02:32,819 --> 00:02:35,676 we would look around for snails or mushrooms or whatever else, 46 00:02:35,676 --> 00:02:38,403 and that how we would survive, that's how we would live. 47 00:02:38,403 --> 00:02:43,825 And because we were constantly adapting to our environment based on the seasons, 48 00:02:43,825 --> 00:02:46,366 we would be maybe following animals as they migrated, 49 00:02:46,366 --> 00:02:51,229 hunter-gatherers were fundamentally nomadic, 50 00:02:51,229 --> 00:02:54,066 which means that they never settled in one place for a long time, 51 00:02:54,066 --> 00:02:56,488 they were always ready to kind of pick up, 52 00:02:56,488 --> 00:02:58,814 probably their tents, and follow the herd, 53 00:02:58,814 --> 00:03:01,076 or follow whatever animals they were hunting, 54 00:03:01,076 --> 00:03:05,237 or follow the seasons so that they could go to 55 00:03:05,237 --> 00:03:07,367 warmer climates maybe where there is more likely 56 00:03:07,367 --> 00:03:11,660 to find something in the ground to eat maybe during the winter, who knows? 57 00:03:11,660 --> 00:03:15,238 So the Paleolithic era is really distinguished 58 00:03:15,238 --> 00:03:19,147 by that huge swath of time in human history 59 00:03:19,147 --> 00:03:21,406 and it doesn't come to an end 60 00:03:21,406 --> 00:03:25,366 until you get to the advent of FARMING. 61 00:03:25,366 --> 00:03:28,235 So the Paleolithic Era, we are literally talking about 62 00:03:28,235 --> 00:03:30,405 over 2 million years ago, it's when it starts, 63 00:03:30,405 --> 00:03:32,818 before Homo sapiens even existed as a species 64 00:03:32,818 --> 00:03:35,907 and it goes all the way to the advent of farming 65 00:03:35,907 --> 00:03:42,231 that we believe first came about around 11,000 to 7,000 years ago. 66 00:03:42,231 --> 00:03:45,405 And this abreviating right here, this BP 67 00:03:45,405 --> 00:03:47,641 This does not stand for Brithish Petroleum, 68 00:03:47,641 --> 00:03:51,570 it stands for "Before Present", or before the present time 69 00:03:51,570 --> 00:03:55,149 so, one more acronym to kind of have in your toolkit when you see things. 70 00:03:55,149 --> 00:03:58,813 And obviously, if we are 11,000 years before the present, 71 00:03:58,813 --> 00:04:02,489 that's the same thing as 9,000 before Christ, 72 00:04:02,489 --> 00:04:04,486 or before the common era 73 00:04:04,486 --> 00:04:09,734 because Christ was, we believe, born 2,000 years ago. 74 00:04:09,734 --> 00:04:13,485 Now, it may or may not be obvious to you, 75 00:04:13,485 --> 00:04:17,236 but the advent of agriculture is a SUPER big deal. 76 00:04:17,236 --> 00:04:22,409 Argueably the biggest deal in the development of human civilization. 77 00:04:22,409 --> 00:04:24,573 Or in all of the human history! 78 00:04:24,573 --> 00:04:27,231 And you might say,"Hey, what's the big deal about agriculture?" 79 00:04:27,231 --> 00:04:30,069 These characters over here look pretty happy, 80 00:04:30,069 --> 00:04:32,979 they are able to walk around a lot, they are able to hunt. 81 00:04:32,979 --> 00:04:36,042 What's the big deal of all of the sudden people 82 00:04:36,042 --> 00:04:38,820 plowing fields and domesticating cattle 83 00:04:38,820 --> 00:04:41,903 and having chickens to lay eggs and whatever else? 84 00:04:41,903 --> 00:04:44,741 And the big deal about that, besides the fact 85 00:04:44,741 --> 00:04:46,366 that it would change peoples diet, 86 00:04:46,366 --> 00:04:49,987 is that for the 1st time it allowed them to NOT be nomadic, 87 00:04:49,987 --> 00:04:52,989 it allowed them to, and you could've probably had 88 00:04:52,989 --> 00:04:55,488 some hunters who were somewhat settled, 89 00:04:55,488 --> 00:04:58,400 maybe living near the ocean, fishing and all the rest 90 00:04:58,400 --> 00:05:01,702 but for the most part, the development of agriculture, 91 00:05:01,702 --> 00:05:05,153 it forced people to stay in one place 92 00:05:05,153 --> 00:05:07,157 so you have the Paleolithic Era, 93 00:05:07,157 --> 00:05:11,375 all the way to the advent of agriculture 94 00:05:11,375 --> 00:05:13,573 which was about 11,000 - 7,000 years ago 95 00:05:13,573 --> 00:05:17,237 and besides the fact that it changed people's diet 96 00:05:17,237 --> 00:05:19,649 it allowed them to settle. 97 00:05:19,649 --> 00:05:25,709 So agriculture allowed human beings to settle down in one area. 98 00:05:25,709 --> 00:05:28,153 It wasn't just that they were settling in one area 99 00:05:28,153 --> 00:05:31,150 but because they were able to control their enviroment 100 00:05:31,150 --> 00:05:33,485 the were able to increase the density of things 101 00:05:33,485 --> 00:05:36,496 of crops that humans could consume, 102 00:05:36,496 --> 00:05:38,299 and animals that human could consume 103 00:05:38,299 --> 00:05:41,067 and lower the density of crops that humans can't consume 104 00:05:41,067 --> 00:05:44,153 and animals that they can't consume, 105 00:05:44,153 --> 00:05:47,151 or that they don't want around, like pests of some type. 106 00:05:47,151 --> 00:05:52,330 What it allowed them to do is also settle in more dense environments. 107 00:05:52,330 --> 00:05:54,149 You can imagine, when you just have people walking around 108 00:05:54,149 --> 00:05:56,378 you need a lot of land to support 109 00:05:56,378 --> 00:05:58,905 even the calory requirements of 1 human being. 110 00:05:58,905 --> 00:06:01,825 But all of a sudden, if you are able to develop agriculture, 111 00:06:01,825 --> 00:06:03,987 you are able to domesticate animals, 112 00:06:03,987 --> 00:06:07,815 and so in the same amount of land you can have 113 00:06:07,815 --> 00:06:09,908 more calories being generated, 114 00:06:09,908 --> 00:06:11,985 and because you have more calories being generated 115 00:06:11,985 --> 00:06:14,845 in a smaller amount of land, people can settle 116 00:06:14,845 --> 00:06:17,151 and they can settle in a denser environment. 117 00:06:17,151 --> 00:06:20,154 So agriculture was really this necessary requirement 118 00:06:20,154 --> 00:06:29,571 for people to kind of develop civilization or to develop villages and cities. 119 00:06:29,571 --> 00:06:33,406 And maybe also giving them free time to start thinking about: 120 00:06:33,406 --> 00:06:36,323 "Hey, maybe we wanna think about how we can record what we know, 121 00:06:36,323 --> 00:06:39,074 how we can develop even more technologies." 122 00:06:39,074 --> 00:06:42,824 And so just to give us a sense of the categorization 123 00:06:42,824 --> 00:06:45,556 that an archeologist would use for this different periods of time, 124 00:06:45,556 --> 00:06:47,642 I told you we're still in the Paleolithic Era, 125 00:06:47,642 --> 00:06:50,156 with the advent of stone tools, pre-humans 126 00:06:50,156 --> 00:06:53,320 most of human time on this planet, 127 00:06:53,320 --> 00:06:57,157 and then about 11,000 years ago the development of agriculture, 128 00:06:57,157 --> 00:07:00,042 and it developed independendtly in different places around the world, 129 00:07:00,042 --> 00:07:01,836 which was by itself an interesting phenomenon 130 00:07:01,836 --> 00:07:05,818 and people think that climate might have warmed up a little bit 131 00:07:05,818 --> 00:07:09,575 so that maybe naturally there were some human-edible crops 132 00:07:09,575 --> 00:07:11,572 that would exist in a little bit denser environment 133 00:07:11,572 --> 00:07:13,654 and humans learned optimise that slowly 134 00:07:13,654 --> 00:07:15,658 and they did that independently. 135 00:07:15,658 --> 00:07:17,965 It's an interesting question of why did it develop 136 00:07:17,965 --> 00:07:21,974 just then, after 180 or 190,000 years, 137 00:07:21,974 --> 00:07:24,723 why did agriculture all of the sudden happen. 138 00:07:24,723 --> 00:07:27,454 But just to get to terminology, the Paleolithic Era 139 00:07:27,454 --> 00:07:29,571 is that period before agriculture, 140 00:07:29,571 --> 00:07:31,568 and then once agriculture starts to develop, 141 00:07:31,568 --> 00:07:36,486 we are now in the Neolithic Era. 142 00:07:36,486 --> 00:07:39,736 And some archeologists would describe a transition period 143 00:07:39,736 --> 00:07:42,298 between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic era, 144 00:07:42,298 --> 00:07:44,069 called the Mesolithic. 145 00:07:44,069 --> 00:07:45,985 And just to know what these words mean, because they actually 146 00:07:45,985 --> 00:07:47,702 make sense when you know what they mean. 147 00:07:47,702 --> 00:07:50,965 "Paleo" means "Old", 148 00:07:50,965 --> 00:07:54,989 and "lithic" means "stone" or "old stone", 149 00:07:54,989 --> 00:07:57,709 so they really talking about the Old Stone Age. 150 00:07:57,709 --> 00:08:03,116 "Neolithic", as you can imagine, means "New stone", 151 00:08:03,116 --> 00:08:05,156 so it's kind of the New Stone Age. 152 00:08:05,156 --> 00:08:11,232 And "Meso" means "Middle". So it is the Middle Stone Age. 153 00:08:11,232 --> 00:08:14,636 So another way of thinking about this whole period 154 00:08:14,636 --> 00:08:17,822 from when people were hunter- gatherers all the way 155 00:08:17,822 --> 00:08:23,069 to about 11,000 - 7,000 years ago when they developed agriculture, 156 00:08:23,069 --> 00:08:26,986 this whole period is called the Stone Age. 157 00:08:26,986 --> 00:08:29,241 And the Stone Age is kind of the biggest age 158 00:08:29,241 --> 00:08:31,697 and there are different ways of describing it. 159 00:08:31,697 --> 00:08:33,735 Bacause if you just call it the Stone Age, 160 00:08:33,735 --> 00:08:36,398 you are really making the importance out of the actuall tools 161 00:08:36,398 --> 00:08:40,568 that people could shape, they weren't able to use matal at this point. 162 00:08:40,568 --> 00:08:42,994 When you refer to Paleolithic and Neolithic, 163 00:08:42,994 --> 00:08:46,068 you are maybe referring a little bit more, 164 00:08:46,068 --> 00:08:47,702 and there are other ways to think about it, 165 00:08:47,702 --> 00:08:50,572 you are refering a little bit more to the lifestyle of the human beings, 166 00:08:50,572 --> 00:08:52,739 Paelotihic being hunter-gatherers, 167 00:08:52,739 --> 00:08:57,415 Neolithic having actually settled, starting to develop 168 00:08:57,415 --> 00:09:01,326 kind of primitive villages and even cities 169 00:09:01,326 --> 00:09:05,906 and of course Mesolithic is in between. 170 00:09:05,906 --> 00:09:08,407 And just a word about a pop-culture reference, 171 00:09:08,407 --> 00:09:12,365 you might have heard of the Paelolithic diet that some people are going on now, 172 00:09:12,365 --> 00:09:15,074 and those are people who try to live like hunter-gatherers. 173 00:09:15,074 --> 00:09:17,571 Their belief is that most of human evolution occured 174 00:09:17,571 --> 00:09:22,570 while we were hunter-gatherers, and so that's what our bodies are most accustomed to, 175 00:09:22,570 --> 00:09:27,074 so they like to eat meat and they like to eat a lot of nuts 176 00:09:27,074 --> 00:09:30,071 and I've even met someone who used to eat only raw meat, 177 00:09:30,071 --> 00:09:31,740 and I don't know if that's easy to justify 178 00:09:31,740 --> 00:09:34,718 or if that's even somehow valid by the archeological records, 179 00:09:34,718 --> 00:09:37,417 these people probably did cook their meet. 180 00:09:37,417 --> 00:09:41,822 Now, the end of the Stone Age we would have, I would say 181 00:09:41,822 --> 00:09:46,457 the number 2 most significant development in human history, 182 00:09:46,457 --> 00:09:49,375 and now we're talking about 3,000 BC 183 00:09:49,375 --> 00:09:51,739 which is about 5,000 years ago. 184 00:09:51,739 --> 00:09:54,900 And this is the development of wiriting. 185 00:09:54,900 --> 00:09:59,320 So we were hunter-gatherers, about 9 - 11 thousand years ago 186 00:09:59,320 --> 00:10:01,983 people started developing argiculture, 187 00:10:01,983 --> 00:10:04,906 allows them to settle in more dense environments 188 00:10:04,906 --> 00:10:06,903 it also gives a little bit more free time 189 00:10:06,903 --> 00:10:08,824 because they don't have to hunt and gather all the time 190 00:10:08,824 --> 00:10:11,823 and then you go and once again, we'll probably discover things 191 00:10:11,823 --> 00:10:14,658 as we go forward in time that maybe these days 192 00:10:14,658 --> 00:10:16,599 need to be pushed back or whatever else, 193 00:10:16,599 --> 00:10:18,577 we'll discover new civilizations, who knows, 194 00:10:18,577 --> 00:10:23,070 but our best sense is: you have these villages and civilizations developing 195 00:10:23,070 --> 00:10:26,614 and by about 5,000 years ago, 196 00:10:26,614 --> 00:10:29,901 so this will be 5,000 before the present 197 00:10:29,901 --> 00:10:32,918 or 3,000 BC, Before Christ, 198 00:10:32,918 --> 00:10:34,906 you have people saying: hey, why don't we 199 00:10:34,906 --> 00:10:37,984 start trying to write down what we know, so it doesn't... 200 00:10:37,984 --> 00:10:41,907 you know, when I tell someone orally it does actually 201 00:10:41,907 --> 00:10:44,571 lose information there, so let's slowly collect 202 00:10:44,571 --> 00:10:48,075 all the knowledge we have and maybe accelerate, 203 00:10:48,075 --> 00:10:50,572 we know they didn't explicitly think of these, 204 00:10:50,572 --> 00:10:52,490 but let us write down what we know. 205 00:10:52,490 --> 00:10:56,360 And so at about that period of time you have as far as we can tell 206 00:10:56,360 --> 00:11:00,706 the first development of kind of a pictogram-based system of writing. 207 00:11:00,706 --> 00:11:02,571 And the earliest system of writing we know 208 00:11:02,571 --> 00:11:06,150 is cuneiform which is from the Sumerian civilization 209 00:11:06,150 --> 00:11:10,320 which is now in present-day Iraq. 210 00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:13,142 I was a really big deal. This is on some level 211 00:11:13,142 --> 00:11:15,902 the beginning of recorded history. 212 00:11:15,902 --> 00:11:19,569 We can talk about the world history, you can say the history 213 00:11:19,569 --> 00:11:22,934 is all of the past and we can use the archeological record 214 00:11:22,934 --> 00:11:26,235 to figure out stuff before people started to write things down 215 00:11:26,235 --> 00:11:28,571 but when they started to write things down 216 00:11:28,571 --> 00:11:30,326 now it was recorded, now we're actually getting 217 00:11:30,326 --> 00:11:34,153 actuall accounts of what poeple know, of actuall people's knowledge. 218 00:11:34,153 --> 00:11:36,817 And the reason why this is a big deal, 219 00:11:36,817 --> 00:11:38,738 I mean, argiculture hopefully you now appreciate 220 00:11:38,738 --> 00:11:40,297 that it was a pretty big deal, 221 00:11:40,297 --> 00:11:43,190 but the reason why writing was a big deal 222 00:11:43,190 --> 00:11:46,404 is that now civilization could collect its knowledge 223 00:11:46,404 --> 00:11:49,098 it could build upon it, generation after generation, 224 00:11:49,098 --> 00:11:51,403 without having to worry about people forgetting it 225 00:11:51,403 --> 00:11:58,154 or information getting distorted verbally from ancestor to descendant. 226 00:11:58,154 --> 00:12:01,405 And with that you also have the beginning of the Bronze Age. 227 00:12:01,405 --> 00:12:04,155 The Bronze Age is kind of known from this beginning 228 00:12:04,155 --> 00:12:07,376 even though it's referring to a material which comes from 229 00:12:07,376 --> 00:12:10,032 the first time that people started using bronze 230 00:12:10,032 --> 00:12:13,527 as a tool or using using bronze for their tools and weapons 231 00:12:13,527 --> 00:12:15,489 and bronze, as you know, is a mixture of 232 00:12:15,489 --> 00:12:17,975 mostly copper and a little bit of tin. 233 00:12:17,975 --> 00:12:21,152 But the Bronze Age, at least in my mind, the biggest deal 234 00:12:21,152 --> 00:12:23,077 of what started the beginning of the Bronze Age 235 00:12:23,077 --> 00:12:26,070 really was the writing. 236 00:12:26,070 --> 00:12:30,151 So once again, just as a review, because I actually find this kind of confusing. 237 00:12:30,151 --> 00:12:35,502 Most of our current understanding, most of human pre-history 238 00:12:35,502 --> 00:12:40,070 and even pre-human pre-history we spent as hunter-gatherers 239 00:12:40,070 --> 00:12:43,662 using stone tools until about 11,000 years ago, 240 00:12:43,662 --> 00:12:46,699 and then we became a little bit more settled, 241 00:12:46,699 --> 00:12:49,735 we became farmers essentially using stone tools 242 00:12:49,735 --> 00:12:54,488 and then you fast forward another about 5-6,000 years 243 00:12:54,488 --> 00:12:57,490 and then we started to become farmers who started 244 00:12:57,490 --> 00:12:59,789 to write down the things that we knew 245 00:12:59,789 --> 00:13:03,000 and we started to use bronze tools.