WHAT IS PREHISTORY?

1

• WHAT IS PREHISTORY?
• Prehistory is the time before
• there were written records.

Creation of Earth, 4.5 billion years ago
Age of Fish, 600 million years ago
Age of Reptiles, 220 million years ago
Early Man, 65 million years ago
2
Earth
Dinosaurs
Early Man
Stone Age
3
Australopithecus 1-5 million years ago
Earliest forms of HOMINDS upright, bipedal
primate mammals
More like apes than humans
4
Homo Habilis Handy ManFirst human
speciesabout 2 million years ago

• 30 larger brain than Australopithecus
• Able to walk upright
• Use of tools

What is the importance of being able to walk
upright?
5
Homo Erectus 400,000-2 million years ago

• 50 larger brain that homo habilis
• Used tools
• First species to use control fire
• NOMADIC people
• Hunters-gatherers
• Originated in Africa migrated to
• Europe Asia

Changes in Homo Erectus
6
Homo Sapiens

• Earliest form of modern man
• Lived 300,000 400,000 years ago
• Found throughout Africa, Asia
• and Europe

7
Neanderthal Man (Homo Sapiens)
What common misconceptions exist about
Neanderthal Man?
8
Homo Sapiens Sapiens Modern Human
Beings130,000 years ago - present
Homo sapiens sapiens arrived during the
Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age)
Carving of human head, 26,000 years old

• Improved tools weapons
• Cave Art
• Venus figurines
• Needles for sewing clothes

Compare the skulls of Neanderthal Man (left) and
Homo Sapiens Sapiens (right)
9
Paleolithic Cave PaintingsLascaux, France
10
Stone Age Venus Figures
Gagarino Venus
Venus of Willendorf, Circa 28,000 B.C.
What do these Venus figures tell us about the
role of women in prehistoric societies?
Venus of Dolni Vestonice
11
What was the STONE AGE?

• Paleolithic Age Old Stone Age
• Began about 400,000 years ago
• Nomadic people / hunters-gathers
• Division of labor / possible equality of men and
  women
• Made tools and weapons from stone, wood and bone
• Use and control of fire
• Traded with other groups

• Neolithic Age New Stone Age
• Began about 10,000 12,000 years ago
• Agricultural Revolution / domestication of
  animals
• WHAT CHANGES MIGHT THIS HAVE
• HAD ON THE SOCIETY?

12
The Emergence of Civilization

• Developed agriculture
• People no longer needed to
• hunt and gather food,
• so they settled down
• Development of cities
• Formal set of laws
• Hierarchical system
• Ability to create large
• buildings
• Ability to keep written
• records therefore

Neolithic Village
HISTORY begins