According to Richard Rudgley, author of Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age (New York: The Free Press, 1999), from whose work many of the following facts have been gleaned, “The prehistory of humankind is no mere prelude to history; history is rather a colourful and eventful afterword to the Stone Age.”  Human history is the part of the experience of human beings on the planet that has been written down, and as noted above, it was generally written by the “winners” in an explanation of how they overcame the “losers.”  As for prehistory, archaeologists and cultural researchers are still putting the puzzle pieces together to help explain how we got to be where we are, and what preceded us.  Below are some highlights of things to keep in mind about our prehistoric ancestors.

*The Stone Age is named for the material used in tool-making throughout this prehistoric period.  It is divided into the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age, approximately 2.4 million years to about 10,500 years ago), the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age, which lasted about 500 years ), and the Neolithic (New Stone Age, from approximately 10,000 years ago). The Paleolithic Age is itself divided into the periods of Lower (ending 200,000 years ago), Middle (ending 40,000 years ago) , and Upper (ending 10,500 years ago).  The Paleolithic peoples were primarily hunter-gatherers; the Neolithic were farmers. The Mesolithic period was in most places a transitional phase between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic during which people emphasized fishing and developed new tools, particularly for use in woodworking; in some places, the Neolithic period lasted until more modern times, e.g., to 400 BC in Britain.

The Beginnings of Mankind

*All hominids (among whom are the ancestors of humans) belong to the family Hominidae and are divided into those of the genus Australopithecus and those of the genus Homo. Fossil remains of the Australopithecus, found in East Africa, can be dated to at least 3 million years ago, and maybe even earlier. The earliest member of our own genus was Homo habilis, who lived about 2.2 to 1.6 million years ago, who left behind stone tools.  This species was followed by Homo erectus (1.6 to .5 million years ago), who had a larger brain than his predecessor and is generally credited with having been the first hominid to leave Africa and settle in parts of Europe and Asia. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal man, developed during the Middle Paleolithic period about 100,000 years ago and disappeared about 33,000 years ago; he also had a larger brain and was physically more robust than his predecessor. Homo sapiens sapiens emerged in Africa at least 100,000 years ago, and like Homo erectus migrated to Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world.

The Great Mother and Partnership Societies

*The principal religion and mythology of the Neolithic period seems to have concerned a Great Mother Goddess, the source of agricultural and seasonal return, and hence the giver of all life support. The Neolithic woman, as the source of human biological life, was used in iconography as the image by which this Great Goddess was represented, with big hips, breasts, and a protuberant belly.  Many early cultures, though they might not be considered “civilized,” seem to have had partnership societies in which men and women were considered equal, with the males of the population being the hunters and the women of the population being the gatherers.  All people lived with respect for and in harmony with nature; the “web of life” was the principle behind the holistic worship of the Great Mother. (Among animals most associated with the Great Mother Goddess were the snake and the bull, about which there will be more discussion later.) The polarities of life were represented by the holistic/ feminine/ gatherer/ nurturer who was conceived of as life giving, and the focused/ masculine/ hunter/ killer who was conceived of as necessarily life taking, in order to provide the necessary food for the sustainment of human life. (Hence, there is a religious necessity among aboriginal peoples to appease by prayer and sacrifice the spirits of the animals and plants whose lives are taken as food.)

Symbols from this period that seem to have represented the two genders were the downward-pointing chevron— V —representing the female’s gathering basket and sexual paraphernalia, and the upward-pointing chevron— ^ —representing the male’s arrow-tip, spear, or other weapon, as well as his sexual paraphernalia. We’ll see variations on these symbols as they were elaborated in later cultures.

*According to the American linguist Joseph Greenberg (who Rudgley notes is somewhat controversial), most of the thousands of human languages can be classified into just 17 linguistic groupings. The Mother Tongue of virtually all Western languages, including the Iranian, Indian, Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Greek, Lithuanian, and Albanian language groups, is considered to be Indo-European.  With over two billion speakers and 140 languages, this Indo-European linguistic group is the largest modern-day language grouping. It has been shown that in Proto-Indo-European (the root language) there are many words dealing with agriculture and husbandry.  This suggests that Proto-Indo-Europeans were Neolithic peoples with an economy based on food production.  However, other linguists are pushing the frontiers of spoken language further and further back to what they believe may have been a Proto-Global language or family of languages that might argue for the beginning of spoken language as far back as 40,000 years ago.  By contrast, written script can so far be traced only to about 5,000 years ago, although again some researchers have found evidence of Ice Age markings that may have had meaning that has as yet not been deciphered.

*Paleolithic humans had scientific knowledge of lunar/solar calendar changes; markings suggesting this have been carbon-dated as far back as 22,000 years ago. Megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge in England, Newgrange in Ireland, Callanish in the Outer Hebrides, and many other sites are extremely old,  some over 5,000 years old, and are now acknowledged to have been astronomically aligned. Some are aligned with the sun, others with the moon, others with various planets, and some with several of these at the same time. Also, as noted above, many of the astronomical stone circles of prehistoric peoples are also in alignment with each other, arguing for a knowledge on the part of their builders about the energy lines of the earth itself.

According to another authority, B. Cunliffe in Prehistoric Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), a shaped and engraved plaque made of bone found in southwest France has been shown to be an accurate lunar calculator; carbon dating of the artifact has demonstrated it is between 32,000 and 34,000 years old.

Paleolithic Medicine

*Artifacts of early cultures indicate a sophisticated understanding of medical and surgical procedures, including dental surgery and trepanning of the skull as early as 10,000 years ago.

The Use of Fire

*Use of fire for cooking can be definitely traced back at least to 60,000 years ago, and some archaeological discoveries suggest the use of fire for cooking as far back as 400,000 years ago.  Use of fire for the making of ceramics, bonding, and metallurgic purposes dates to at least 10,000 years ago.  And the 30,000-year-old paintings of animals in caves would certainly suggest that the painters needed fire, lamps, or lanterns in order to see to paint in the dark caves.

So let’s give credit where it’s due!  Our ancient ancestors weren’t cave-dwelling, heavy-browed apes who dragged their women around by their hair and thumped their prey with clubs. They were pretty smart people, and we can feel good about being their descendants—and perhaps learn things about ourselves in the process of studying them.