Civilization as a Survival Tool

Civilization is a unique achievement of humanity.  At its core, tools, cities, languages and even warfare are effective survival strategies to compete for survival in a hostile world.  Our ancestors lacked great speed, sharp claws and thick fur coats.  They were endowed with a far more powerful attribute, a problem-solving brain.  Homo sapiens did something no other animal could.  Instead of adapting to natural conditions, early humans developed the tools and abilities to re-shape the environment to their needs.  With no writings, incomplete artifacts and partial ruins, archaeologists have to interpret evidence and make assumptions to piece together the evolution of human culture.  A generally accepted definition of civilization includes agrarian practices, urban centers, division of labor, and writing.  Over time, a theory has emerged on the rise of civilization.  It began slowly in the Paleolithic era and accelerated as humans amassed a wider array of skills and tools.  The accumulation of new abilities allowed our ancestors to change their environment to thrive beyond survival inaugurating complex cultures reflecting the creativity, imagination and consciousness of that unique brain.

Throughout most of history early man lived off the land as hunter gatherers.  Unable to rely solely on physical attributes, humans used their mental facilities to conceive unprecedented strategies to survive.  They carved stone tools to augment hunting and gathering, harnessed fire for warmth and safety, and spawned a limited form of communication to pass on knowledge.  Acquisition of diversified skills took millennia of trial and error.  The process of developing and mastering one ability led to more.

These earliest innovations fell into the Paleolithic Era (Old Stone Age), a time of adverse conditions.  The Pleistocene Ice Age began 2.6 million years ago covering much of the world’s surface in ice.  The Earth only began warming 11,700 years ago.  As ice sheets retreated, a broad band of fertile land emerged across the globe.  Animal populations grew exponentially as grasses, fruits, and other food sources replaced ice.    

Nomadic humans thrived as well.  With far more abundant sources of food, the pressure to move constantly receded.  Gradually, hunter gatherers recognized that food grew in the same places and that more could be grown by planting seeds.  Instead of continuing to roam, Paleolithic humans stayed in one place planting and harvesting to generate sufficient food supplies.  Einkorn wheat likely came first though humans found more food sources: berries, grapes, fruit trees, and others.  Farms became the first significant alteration of the environment and brought about a new age, the Neolithic Era (New Stone Age) circa 11,000 BC.

Crops did not grow year-round so our ancestors learned how to produce a surplus and preserve their harvest through the winter and following growing season.  Not only did humans re-shape the landscape with plows and shovels, they found a new way to harness nature adapting animals for their use.  Prior experience taming and breeding wolves into dogs, was useful in domesticating other animals: cattle, pigs, chickens, goats, and sheep to further augment food supplies.   An abundance of edible plants and a broad diversity of animals suited to domestication made the Middle East ideal for Neolithic farmers.  Several major river valleys, the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates and the Indus river valleys contributed another key factor: widespread access to irrigation .

 

Farmers next established small communities for convenience and protection.  As communities grew and surpluses increased, not every member of the population had to focus on food production.  Specialized sub-populations appeared manufacturing pottery, baskets, weapons, tools and other essential items for farming and surviving in place.  Trade soon became part of the fabric of society whereby specialists made their wares full-time in exchange for food grown by others.  These increasingly diverse communities made their homes more secure and permanent by constructing walls, watchtowers and gates.

With time to hone skills, tools became more refined and more complex activities emerged.  Mining, metalworking and blacksmithing made their debut circa 3,500 BC.  Ancient humans first turned to easily available copper.  Far more malleable than stone, copper could be forged more easily at lower temperatures into shapes not available in stone.  Copper had a significant drawback, it was softer than stone.  Soon metalworkers resorted to a much harder metal, graduating to the Bronze Age in the 4^th century BC.

Bronze requires mixing copper with a rare element, tin.  No one knows exactly how metalworkers figured out how to mix copper and tin, but this innovation could only come through specialization, the ability to accumulate necessary raw materials, and time and resources to build forges and manufacture products.  Intra-community trade already existed in isolated settlements to exchange food for finished goods.  To acquire tin, trade between far flung communities became necessary.

Towns grew into cities creating administrative bureaucracies to maintain order and regulate trade.  Religious centers appeared around the same time to address the spiritual needs.  Last, Sumerians devised written symbols for numbers to record economic transactions.   Writing soon became more diversified to encompass and define societal order in burgeoning cities: legal codes, religious texts, etc.  With the advent of writing came a new era: recorded history.  Bronze age people did not write history books, but written records of economic transactions, laws and religious texts provided clear evidence for archaeologists that required much less guesswork.

With writing, innovation sped up.  Improved forms of communication allowed for unprecedented dissemination and preservation of knowledge.  Modes of transport diversified as well.  Scythians tamed horses which greatly increased the speed and distance of trading and warring.  With horse drawn wagons, came another re-shaping of the natural environment, roads and bridges.  Ancient mariners turned barriers like rivers and seas into efficient modes of transport.  Minoans, Mycenaeans, Phoenicians, and later Greeks built sophisticated sea worthy vessels.  Ships could travel faster with significantly larger cargoes than the fastest land transport.

More cities, roads, bridges, and sea trade generated more commerce, communication and warfare which led to more innovation in less time.  Warfare may seem an odd addition to the list, but conquest of one group by another spread ideas and broadened cultural attributes of the conquerors more quickly than economic trade.  For example, Sargon of Akkad conquered the numerous city states in Mesopotamia creating the first proto-empire and making previously independent city-states better connected and more uniform in matters of trade, language and custom.  Later, Alexander the Great’s campaigns spread Greek Hellenistic culture throughout the entire Middle East in a way that would not have otherwise occurred.

Unlike chemistry or physics, history is an inexact science.  That said scientific methods can be employed.  Early civilization arose before the advent of writing so archaeologists have to generate theories based on indirect methods of observation and informed guesswork.  Nevertheless, the timeline of innovation generated by decades of study and analysis follows a logical pattern.  Toolmaking and the acquisition of skills and abilities occurred slowly at first but increased in complexity and variation.  Ancient humans became more proficient at shaping the environment to their needs which led to specialization, larger communities and increasingly sophisticated interactions that led to writing.  Once these factors were in place, knowledge and innovation could multiply as isolated city-states grew into integrated empires transforming independent communities into integrated societies.  The environment changing innovations in the ancient world have continued to shape history into the 21st century.

 

 

Sources:

http://www.essential-humanities.net/history-overview/stone-bronze-iron-ages/

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/civilization/

https://www.tes.com/lessons/sd81vxH1uCkaag/human-migration-and-the-agricultural-revolution

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/33/11597.full

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https://jbrown67.deviantart.com/art/Ancient-Mesopotamia-365518394

(Jeff Brown- Ancient Mesopotamia)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Font-de-Gaume.jpg

(Charles Knight- Font-de-Gaume)

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/mammoth-hunt.jpg?w=640

(Zdenek Burian-Mammoth Hunt in the Swamp)

http://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Zeder_Picture1_crop.jpg

(Zdenek Burian A Neolithic Settlement)