Group-4-UCSP

• Paleolithic


  Old stone age
• Mesolithic


  Middle stone age
• Neolithic


  New stone age
• Paleolithic cultures


  • Based on hunting, fishing, and gathering rather than on farming or stock raising
  • Groups were small
  • Total population of the world was only a few million
  • Widely dispersed
• Paleolithic subdivisions

  1. Lower Paleolithic: dominated by simple Oldowan tools, core biface tools, and simple flake tools

  2. Middle Paleolithic: characterized by an enlarged and refined repertory of core tools, flake points, and other flake tools

  3. Upper Paleolithic: characterized by an enlarged and refined repertory of blade tools and by many specialized ivory, bone and antler implements and artifacts
• Mesolithic period


  • Hunting and gathering mode of subsistence
  • Intense local ecological change
  • Forest of birch and pine spread over the land
  • Camps in clearings along riverbanks and at lakesides, estuaries, and the seashore
  • Turned increasingly to a broad spectrum of plant foods and fish, mollusks, and other riverine and maritime sources of food
• Neolithic period


  • Greater control over the reproduction of plants and animals was achieved by the development of farming and stock raising
  • Provided the material basis for high-density, sedentary settlements and for rapid population increase
  • Farming and stock raising set the stage for profound alterations in domestic and political economy centering on access to land, water, and other basic resources, and for the emergence of differences in wealth and power
  • Without agriculture, the development of cities, states, and empires could not have occurred
• Pre-agricultural villages


  • Adaptations to the need to store the wild grain, process it into flour, and convert it into flat cakes or porridge
  • Construction of houses, walls, roasters, grinders, and storage pits as capital investment in grain futures
  • Selective harvesting of wild grain to ensure future harvests from the same wild stands
• Domestication


  • A complex symbiotic relationship between human populations (domesticators), and the certain favored plants and animals (domesticates)
  • Domesticators destroy or clear away undesirable flora and fauna, adjust the supply of resources, interfere in the reproductive activity of the domesticates
  • Involves genetic changes in the domesticates
• Differences between wild and domesticated grains

  • Wild grains break off upon ripening and fall to the ground, while domesticated grains remain intact even when roughly handled
  • Ripe domesticated grains must be pulled or beaten off to be made available for human consumption
• The domestication of plants and animals in the Middle East occurred synchronously as part of a general region-wide process of cultural and ecological change