Prologue, Chapter 1: Out of Africa & The Ways We Were

The Prologue:

When reading the prologue, I was amazed. I was amazed that the universe existed 13.7 billion years ago, but the human race occupied earth for only 250,000 years. Also, seeing the timeline of how the universe came to be, was really interesting because it represents what came first and how many years it was.

Out of Africa:

The earliest homo sapiens first started out in Africa 250,000 years ago but then started to migrate out between 100,000 to 60,000 years ago. When leaving Africa the homo sapiens then migrated to Eurasia, Australia, Americas, and the Pacific. As our species started to migrate we also learned to live virtually in every environmental setting on earth. When in Eurasia, the Ice Age ended to move most of the people to the warmer regions. Being in the warmer regions meant more advanced hunting technology such as, bow and arrow, spear throwers, and other stone tools. Then in the Australia, boats became more sufficient. Australia had also developed about 250 languages, started to gather more lights bulbs, seeds, and roots, as well as becoming much more better hunters. And yet just like the early Europe; Paleolithic Australia "was both many separate worlds and... a loosely connected world." The Pacific's is the last place of where the migration has happened. Because there was plenty of open water, navigating skills was a great advantage. Since the occupation of New Zealand and Easter Island the human settlement was complete.

Reading this content made me surprised. I was surprised because of how much time it took to migrate onto different areas of the world and how the human race developed more ways of hunting, fishing, going around the world with boats, crossing the land bridges, etc.

The Ways We Were: 

The Paleolithic societies were small and since there wasn't much people around in the community, they had to be involved with each other intimately to keep expanding the population. Having not much advanced technology led to not having a huge population along with having slow population and ensured a slow population growth. Some scholars believe that the reason for the low population has to do with the eruption of a volcano 70,000 years ago. The human population dropped to 10,000 or below because of the cooler and drier climate. Paleolithic bands would always move depending on the seasons which led to not much productions of surplus. There were some areas where men and women share responsibilities. The women would gather 70 % of the food and cooked it; while the men collected white meat but worked only 30%. This is considered to be an equal partnership because hunting takes much more work than cooking and gathering plants. More than 15 % of the deaths in this era has to do with the death of hands. In 1955 the community would conduct an execution of disruptive individuals.

In all, after closely reading this section, I became fascinated with the Paleolithic Era. My interest in the Paleolithic Era started to expand because of the new information I'm starting to gain knowledge of. The actions that were happening back in the day compared to now can be somewhat different. Yes, the men are still considered to be superior while women are expected to cook and clean; however, the roles in some partnership is reversed and equally shared. Overall, I can't wait to dig deeper in this particular era.