Common section

Chapter 1

Prehistory 150,000 BC to 3,500 BC (approximate)

Going back to the very beginning of time we discover the Big Bang started the entire universe off about 13 to 15 billion years ago. Currently accepted theories (Einstein’s Theories of Relativity for example) hold that our entire universe started out as a point far smaller than the period at the end of this sentence—in fact, smaller than an atom. Before the Big Bang space, time, and matter did not exist—at least as we know them. Then, for unknown reasons, the small point began to expand rapidly. An “explosion,” of sorts took place and the entire universe began to expand from that infinitesimal point. Researchers studying space are discovering leftovers from the big bang; for example, the cosmic radiation present everywhere we look in space. Scientists are finding numerous other proofs of this long past mysterious event; thus, the Big Bang theory enjoys wide scientific support. It is difficult to imagine stuffing all the matter from over 200 billion galaxies into an area much smaller than a pinpoint. Nonetheless, that is where our theories and our mathematics leave us. Thus, the mystery lingers.

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While many interesting things go on in the first few billionths of a second after the Big Bang occurred one phenomenon is especially intriguing—inflation. As originally proposed, the Big Bang theory could not explain the universe as it exists now. Explaining the present nature of our universe required something more, for example, why does the universe have a uniform temperature, how could atoms come into existence, and the how did the basic forces controlling matter come about? Mr. Alan Guth, a physicist, came up with an explanation now termed “inflation.” Mr. Guth theorized that at 10-36 (that means a 10 with 36 zeros after it) of a second after the Big Bang the universe accelerated its speed of expansion, and this speed was incredibly different from the normal speed of the expansion—faster than the speed of light. At 10-34 of a second this acceleration (inflation) stopped. Thus, for something like three times less than a trillionth of a second the universe expanded at a rate more than 100 times greater than normal, then it went back to its normal rate of expansion. Without this inflationary period our universe would not exist. Alternatively, if the inflation took place for a different length of time our universe would not exist. Fundamentally, any change in the time of inflation destroys the ability of matter and atoms to come into existence. Brian Greene has a good explanation of this phenomenon for the non-scientist in The ElegantUniverse, Greene, Vintage Books, 2003, page 355 et seq.

Our universe contains mysteries so deep that we earthlings may not solve them. As we have seen, the Big Bang theory states the universe started with a massive “explosion” of sorts; then, as the universe sailed off creating space, time, matter, and whatnot it cooled off and began to form atoms. From those atoms the universe, and our small blue world, were constructed—we think. What we measure and study here on earth is the framework for exploring the known universe; however, recent discoveries call into question the assumption that the universe works the same in deep space as it does here on earth. Astronomers discovered that the galaxies we observe are not slowing down as they travel away from one another—they are speeding up! As we know from watching explosions here on earth, gravity slows down the flying debris and soon the explosion is over. If gravity acts the same way in deep space the galaxies should be slowing down, but they are not. Astronomers say this acceleration is a function of “dark energy,” an unexplained force in the universe. In another problem, astronomers found that atoms make up only four percent (4%) of the universe. The rest of the universe is some kind of “dark matter.” As dark matter and dark energy are concepts without foundations here on earth they are beyond scientific explanation at this point in time. In fact, they are little more than names. These mysteries may defy solution if we fail to reach beyond our solar system.

Here we may note the vastness of the universe. One light year is about six trillion miles, and it takes 100,000 light years to cross the Milky Way—our galaxy. The Milky Way may contain as many as 3 trillion stars (suns). From our sun it would take about 26,000 light years to reach the center of our galaxy. Our sun, which is at the end of one of several arms spiraling out from the center of our galaxy, revolves around the center of the Milky Way about once every 220 million years. The size of the universe is tough to determine, but the observable matter is about 93 billion light yearsacross. Even our solar system is large. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun in our system, is 2.8 billion miles away. No matter how one slices it the universe is a big place.

As the universe formed our solar system fell into place with its planets circling a medium sized yellow sun. Our earth circles in the diminutive life zone at the perfect distance from our sun. The moon, one of the largest and closest orbiting objects anywhere in the solar system, probably formed after a collision between earth and some other earth-sized planet. As the two planets blasted into one another the moon tore away, and by some means the earth managed to acquire more iron from the striking planet thereby creating an especially large iron core. This outsized iron core produces unusually strong magnetic fields which shield the earth from deadly cosmic rays. Without this large iron core no life would exist on this planet. This scenario is not fact, it is one of several theories trying to explain the uniqueness of our water-covered planet. After everything had formed up and the surface of the earth cooled enough the march to life began . . . somehow. It is extremely hard to say how. No one knows how life first formed or how it came to be so complex so quickly. The theory of evolution tries to explain the development of life after it began; however, it has no application to the question of how life started.

History deals with people and not the physical events described above, but knowing the earth is a rocky planet with water—lots of water—at the exact position in the solar system it needs to be, and with many exceptional features that sustain life, helps us understand the uniqueness of our planet and thus ourselves. Even our universe is exceptional. For life to exist anywhere in the universe several of its most fundamental properties must be present at pinpoint exactness. To illustrate: the relationship between the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force[1] could not vary by even one part in 10 to the 16th power (1016), otherwise life would not exist on our planet or anywhere else. Commentators and scientists remark that perhaps the most amazing thing about the universe is that it is understandable. Somehow, mere people—less than a flea speck in the universe—figured out how the universe works. These patterns ordering our universe are dense and intricate beyond all imagination, nevertheless, on both the subatomic and universal level the patterns are there. Because our species discovered these breathtaking patterns we know chaos does not rule ouruniverse or our world. Why our world and the universe are so well ordered on so many levels cannot be explained by science.

Now, on to people, their decisions, and history.

For our purposes, prehistory starts about 150,000 BC when modern man comes onto the scene, and ends about 3,500 BC when writing makes its appearance in Sumeria—according to widely accepted current theories. By definition, history must revolve around thewritten word. Without the written word history, as we will use the term in this study, does not exist. When we say writings we mean text by someone who lived at or near in time to the events, and who witnessed or participated in the events or at least talked with those who did. In this way we can attempt to reach back into the past and pull up the thoughts, sights, emotions, and actions of those who were there. We cannot understand the ancient mind very well even with these writings, because their lives were so different from ours. Can we really know what is was like to live in a hut covered with animal hides, hunt for our food, drink from mud holes, and live in fear of the noises of the night? Until people start writing down their thoughts we must simply guess at what went on inside their heads.

Please be acutely aware of how inaccurate most dates are in prehistory and ancient history. Even though the dates seem to be precise numbers (2071 BC for example) most of them are rough educated guesses. Kings lists are good points to pin past events on if you know when at least one of the kings lived, but often we do not. A chronicler may say King Joe lived 50 years, but this may be an estimate by the ancient writer based on hearsay rather than personal knowledge.

From the writings of our forefathers we have proof that one thing never seems to change, at least from the time that writing began, and that one thing is human nature. From the earliest written legends to our latest 3D movies the nature of people remains a constant. What it was like at the very beginning of human existence is speculation, but once writing begins it is apparent that human nature remains unchanged throughout history. The mind of humanity remains remarkably consistent (or is that inconsistent . . .); accordingly, the fundamental thoughts and emotional processes of our ancient brethren are the same as ours today.

Before proceeding to the arrival of Homo sapiens sapiens[2] into Europe we should mention one proto human type that existed, more or less unchanged, for over one million yearsHomo erectus (upright man). This archaic human type spread throughout the old world including China (Peking man, 600,000 BC), but did not manage the trek to the Americas. Home erectus was a fire user[3], built dwellings (some of impressive size up to fifty feet in length), carved wood into spears and bowls, used stone hand axes, and lived in groups. The ability to use fire is a big deal.[4] With fireHome erectus could ward off the cold, keep dangerous animals away, and light the night . . . at least a little bit. Art, at least sophisticated art, is missing from the evidence of Homo erectus. Modern humans alone seem to have the ability or desire to create detailed and refined art. One amazing fact about this ancestor (latest theory) is he lasted so long. Homo erectus is thought to have been around for over 1 million years and may have overlapped modern man by 50 or 60 thousand years or more. Homo sapiens have been around for about 150,000 years. Compared to the one million plus years for Homo erectus modern man has barely started.

Another interesting proto human was the Neanderthal. Neanderthals had, on average, a brain as large as Homo sapiens. Neanderthals inhabited Europe and areas as far east as Palestine by about 200,000 BC. After modern humans arrived in Europe about 50,000 BC Neanderthals went extinct, although some claim they intermingled with Homo sapiens making Neanderthals part of the modern human genome. If modern man and Neanderthals interbred this would mean they were the same species and should all be identified as Homo sapiens. Interbreeding is difficult to prove, nevertheless, modern DNA research is showing there are genetic similarities. Both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals are said to have the gene for speech, and a few researchers think that intermingling caused the gene sharing; however, all this is speculation and other investigators can cite evidence pointing to extinction.

Researchers using modern methods to image the human brain have recorded areas that are more active than others when the brain is involved in certain tasks. The doctors conclude the brain’s pre-frontal cortex (front part of the brain) is the center for generating long-term goals and analyzing how to achieve them. This area also manages the ability to learn from the past. It is also one of the most modern areas of the brain; that is, the newest or most recently evolved (Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr. Amen, 1998, Three Rivers Press). If this is so, we can speculate that Homoerectus may have lacked a developed pre-frontal cortex, thus lacking the ability to set goals far into the future and work toward achieving them as easily as Homo sapiens. Because of the developed pre-frontal cortex, Homo sapiens may have learned from previous errors far easier than Homoerectus. These two traits alone may account for the dominance of modern man over this successful but now obsolete predecessor.

The first true “humans” were the Homo sapiens and they developed in Africa (says the latest theory) by around 150,000 BC, then spread to Europe about 50,000 BC. We classify this period as the Old Stone Age or the Paleolithic because of the type of tools used and the houses Homo sapienslived in. As the human race advanced and the tools and houses became more sophisticated humanity moved into the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic. The final era of the stone ages is the Neolithic or New Stone Age, again classified by the tools used and houses lived in. The chart below may help the reader understand the three stone ages.

Paleolithic

2.5 million years BC to 80,000 BC

Types of Tools: Pebble tools to Acheulian hand axe

Mesolithic

80,000 to 10.000 BC

Types of Tools: blade tools, micro-lithe blades formed

 

15,000 BC

10,000 BC

Coldest period of Ice Age ends

Interglacial begins

Neolithic

10,000 to 5000 BC

Types of Tools: obsidians and flint blades well made pottery, and agriculture.

(All dates approximate)

Note, the New Stone Age brings in agriculture; and this was the greatest advance in the long history of humanity.

In prehistory there is no writing, and this makes investigating the era especially hard. We do have bits of physical evidence left by prehistoric peoples and it tells us a lot. People lived in groups, learned to build houses with hearths and shelves, and often buried their dead in cemeteries. Some graves contained bodies along with jewelry and clothing. Other burials involved cremating the body and placing the ashes into urns, followed by a burial of the urn (the Urnfield culture). Artistry included brightly colored realistic pictures inside caves, impressive carvings, and pottery. Our ancestors constructed very simple to very sophisticated stone tools, consumed a large variety of animals, grains, nuts, fish, and fowl from the areas they inhabited, and they eventually developed trade with other sets of people outside their area. Archeologist have found woven and died clothing dating from 26,000 BC, and clay cooking pots from 12,500 BC. These assertions are based on solid physical evidence from archeological sites, accordingly, there is little speculation about the fundamental facts; however, some books and articles on prehistory are based on the surmises of those studying the period, and this guesswork is not fact.

Figure 1  Neolithic Cave Painting, 30,000 BC.jpg

Figure 1 Neolithic Cave Painting 30,000 BC

(See front cover for color)

Let us discuss an illustration of speculation. Beautiful cave paintings found in France (Lascaux) and Spain date from 30,000 BC. The paintings are far inside the caves in all but inaccessible places. Animals and animal life are the main subjects, and some are painted with what appear to be spears or arrows in the animals. The infrequently depicted people are poorly drawn stick figures. Nearly everyone writing about the paintings classify them as high art or art with a ritual purpose. The best paintings are beautiful, containing well-executed color usage and lifelike qualities for the animals; however, are they the Rembrandts of their era? Could the paintings be graffiti placed there by wayward youths? After all, graffiti in large cities is often well executed, colorful, and generally pleasing except for its location.

Most textbooks explain that the paintings were spiritual in purpose, and played a vital part in tribal customs; however, without writing we do not know why these paintings came to be, and explanations telling us why are speculation.[5] Thus, student of history, beware of those telling you what no one can possibly know.

The history of the human race is short in comparison to its prehistory. If we start with Homo erectus there are well over one million years in prehistory, and about five thousand years for history. In addition, the world’s most important inventions and discoveries take place in prehistory. The invention of agriculture, animal husbandry, the wheel, the discovery of how to make and use fire, how to mine and refine metals, the invention of language, and the invention of writing all take place in prehistory. It was in the prehistoric era that humans began burying their dead, establishing early cities, and developing new ways of living together. Every foundational theme underlying the human race began in prehistory.

During the prehistoric era humans must have engaged in mass migrations that eventually led to Homo sapiens covering the globe by about 9,000 BC. Anthropologist theorize that modern humans originally migrated out of Africa into the Middle East and Europe, thereafter into Russia, India, China, Indochina, the Pacific Ocean area, including Australia, and finally across the Bering Sea to North and then South America[6]. Great disagreements exist over the timing of the crossing to North America with the old theories claiming a 10,000 BC crossing, but newer theories putting the migration at 16,000 BC or earlier. No one is certain what happened because time covers up a lot of evidence; thus, the activities and movements of the earliest humans are largely unknown. Another set of facts lost to time is how humans developed into three races. As early humans are so few it seems they had to start as one race, separating out thereafter; however, all our explorations have failed to find a widely accepted explanation for racial differences in humans.

Figure 2   Cave Painting 30,000 BC Valtorta_Cave.jpg

Figure 2 Cave Painting 30,000 BC, Valtorta Cave

There are certain fundamental processes that identify the human race. Wherever Homo sapiens have wandered we find important fundamental traits—here is a list of 10 important ones:

Ten Human Traits

1.    Art—Homo sapiens constantly create beautiful things. Rock carvings and paintings, statuettes, antler carvings, flutes, bead necklaces, and rope adornments of all kinds. This is not an exhaustive list, but art is a common commodity with modern humans. Not so with proto humans as we find almost no art from their era, and the few samples we do find are not sophisticated.

2.    Buildings—Humans like to construct shelters. Some of the most impressive structures were the mammoth bone houses put together by early hunters. As time went forward the buildings became more elaborate. Some proto-humans managed to construct long houses and huts, but only modern humans construct monuments like the Mayan pyramids in Meso-America or the skyscrapers of Chicago.

3.    Machines—mankind has moved forward using machines. Some machines are very simple like the bow and other extremely complex like a moon rocket, but only machines allowed people to advance from the caves to the stars. The invention and use of ever more impressive machines is thehallmark of human kind. There are six basic machines: the wheel and axial, the lever, inclined plane, wedge, pulley, and screw. From these seemingly easy ideas men reached the moon and sent machines beyond our solar system.

4.    Governments—wherever humans go, at least since the advent of writing, we find governance. For good or evil people organize. Groups form and leaders emerge. Then the leaders assume the task of making sure the group prospers. Once government is in place it never goes away, unless by annihilation through disease, disaster, or enemy action—after which it soon returns.

5.    Communication—people not only organize they communicate with one another in various ways. The spoken word for communication purposes (language) starts about 250,000 BC. The fact that humans organized into groups leads to speculation that language was required; however, it is nearly impossible to know when true language use started. What is clear is that the development of language with its ability to transfer exacting ideas between people was a key turning point in human development (Hey, that’s my chicken!). Homo sapiens would have problems moving beyond the caves without language because ideas would remain locked away in the individual’s head. Sharing knowledge and ideas moves us forward.

6.    Social Organizations—before written history people grouped themselves together by kinship, family and tribe, at least as far as anyone can tell from ancient indications of kinship. The earliest humans and proto humans buried their dead, often in cemeteries and sometimes placing more than one individual into a grave. This might indicate kinship. After writing developed we see that clans, tribes, and kin are the basic organizational units of society. From what we can tell, this has been true for 50,000 years or more.

7.    Warfare—From the start killing other humans was common. Early on the fights were most likely small, but as soon as large civilizations came about large wars became common. The more organized the civilization the larger the wars.

8.    Religion—is a constant with Homo sapiens. Even proto humans buried their dead with what appears to be personal items. As soon as writing begins we read references to gods. Strangely, from many early human societies we find that the gods demand blood sacrifice. In some cases the preferred blood was human. Even in Meso-America, far away in time and distance from Europe and Mesopotamia, blood was necessary to appease the gods. Why this is part of early religion remains a mystery.

9.    Desire for more—this is another constant with Homo sapiens. Somehow, what is there is never enough. Humans were always going forward to the next horizon both physically and mentally. Of course, not all fit into this category, but it is a most common human trait. Only people seem to have this kind of desire. Ants and bees build and they search for other locations for their habitation; however, they simply reproduce what has gone before. Humans want to make what has gone before obsolete, just like the computer you bought yesterday.

10.    Time—it seems humans have always recognized the concept of time. Early monuments tract the sun and calendars are early inventions of many civilizations. The knowledge that time moves, things change, and people die has a profound effect on human thinking, and human thinking is the key stuff of history.

Neolithic Revolution—Agriculture 8,500 BC

After modern humans established themselves the world over they were still hunters and gatherers. In Europe during the Neolithic Age, bands of people were settling into at least semi-permanent dwellings, using bones and hides of the woolly mammoth to cover living areas that contained fire pits and storage. Graveyards start appearing near the ancient villages. In some burials all the heads are facing in the same direction, beads often cover the body, and the corpse often had personal items such as hairbrushes, shoes, bows, spears and the like, buried with it.

In Europe farming was slow to develop, however, in the warmer regions of the world a new farming lifestyle was starting about 8,000 BC on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the Middle East, the Nile River in Egypt, and the Indus River on the Indian subcontinent. People began founding permanent living places with cultivated crops grown in the rich soils of these river valleys, and they acquired herd animals for meat, hides and milk. The crops might have been growing wild in these areas and humans developed the idea of planting the seeds of these wild plants so they could control their growth. By planting the seeds at a certain time of year they would all come to ripeness at the same time thereby allowing the people to harvest them all at once, and giving the farmers a great surplus of food. By somehow storing the extra grain (maybe in clay pots) they could survive the winter (non-growing) season. With goats or cattle for milk, meat, and hides the stationary folks could build a nice life without the necessity of following the herds as a hunter-gatherer society must. By abandoning the nomadic life people could build permanent structures to live in, accumulate more goods, and have a lot more to eat. By constructing irrigation systems the sedentary types could increase their crop yields and the amount of land under cultivation. Their biggest problems may have involved how to store the surplus so it would not spoil. Much of this is speculation because it all happened in prehistory; accordingly, we cannot know the true sequence of events. What we do know is these permanent communities grew in size to become the first cities.

Around 8,500 BC at the walled city of Jericho, in the Jordan Valley of modern day Israel, domesticated cereals made their appearance. Jericho was a 10 acre walled citadel where we find the first evidence of settled farming based on domesticated corps.

The most important event in the existence of humanity was the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry, which started about 8,500 BC. I cannot emphasize this enough. Food was and is the underpinning of every human activity. Western society is currently awash in food, and we do not think of it as the foundation for all we see around us. The discovery of agriculture made an abundance of food possible. Before farming, people in hunter-gatherer groups spent their time hunting or preparing to hunt. Meat is hard to store for long periods without refrigeration (or even with it), thus, tribes had to follow the herds if one wanted to stay near the grocery store, so to speak.

With agriculture and animal husbandry creating a food surplus people could sit out harsh times and survive. A surplus of food allowed the specialization of work, as some people could do work unrelated to hunting or farming. Now the person who excelled at making shoes could do that and the farmer could use his surplus to purchase the shoes. The net result was the farmer had food and very good shoes, and the shoemaker had food, very good shoes, and could spend his time doing what he did best. Others could use their time to trade with far away peoples who had resources, such as metal, the locals did not have. Refining metal ore into copper, bronze, or iron was a time-consuming task and required a lot of skill. People busy hunting all day would have problems mining the ore and refining it, not to mention the movement from area to area would prevent the investment in tools or skills needed to mine and refine the ore. Once people acquired permanent homes a few people could invest their time in mining and developing the skills to make copper or bronze objects because the metal items would sell at a high price, thus giving the metalworker a good return on his time and resource investment. In fact, the development of metallurgy was vital to the advance of stationary civilizations. The foundations of a modern specialized economy started prior to written history with the growth of cities and specialization of work.

The growing towns soon had permanent structures, specialists in many crafts, and built-in incentives to invent new ways of working and living. One of the new ideas involved writing, and that was the start of history because people began keeping track of what was going on around them. People may have tried putting things in writing as far back as 6,000 BC, but the real development took place in the Middle East in the Euphrates River area about 3,500 BC in Sumer. It was a big step toward the modern world.

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Meanwhile, in Europe, prehistory went on except with a twist. Even though Europe seemed to lag behind in many skills of civilization—including writing—they managed to build massive stone structures about the same time as Mesopotamia and Egypt were constructing enormous structures. Erecting stone circle megaliths, such as Stonehenge, took place about 2,600 BC. The first signs of construction at Stonehenge are from nearly 8,000 BC. There are thousands of these stone structures with a geographic range from the Mediterranean through France, Spain, Denmark, England and Scandinavia. Discovering the purposes for these massive stone works has proved elusive, but they resemble nothing else from that period found anywhere else on earth. It is clear, or as clear as prehistory can be, that the idea for these stone monuments arose from inside Europe. Europe remained in the non-writing, or prehistoric, stage for many centuries after writing developed in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, China, and India. Why Europe beyond the Mediterranean took so long to enter the historic era is hard to explain, especially when the European tribes had shown themselves capable of constructing the colossal megaliths.

These large stone circles may have had ritual purposes or may have been solar calendars; however, it is very hard to discern the reasons for the construction because of the lack of written records. There is a wide “road” connecting Stonehenge to a nearby site; thus, these two sites may have a complex ritualistic connection. It is fair to say that whatever the purpose for the construction the effort involved was gigantic, and required an organization of community talent and creativity that was remarkable for the time.

Africa spent nearly all of its existence in the pre-writing or prehistoric “era,” with the notable exceptions of Egypt and Carthage in North Africa. This is difficult to imagine, since humanity itself is said to have originated in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa seems locked in the moment without the need to develop writing. Our history will largely ignore Africa, South America, the Pacific Ocean areas, and Central Asia (Siberia and the lands east of the Ural Mountains). No one recorded what happened in these vast areas; thus, there is no “history.” The final analysis involves impact onhistory, and the high civilizations developed in the Middle East, Egypt, India, China, Greece, Rome, and the nearby surrounding areas had the real historic impact. Africa, northern Europe, the interior of Asia from Mongolia to the Urals, the Pacific Ocean areas, and all of the Americas have little or no impact on history before AD 1000, and many of these areas (Africa, South America, the Pacific) had little impact right up to the modern era.

Differing Views of History

Before we get too far in our story, we need to point out that we can view history in at least three fundamentally different ways. We will start with the cyclic view. Modern historians and many great civilizations, such as India, support this idea. In the cyclic view history moves like a great wheel, constantly repeating itself. The cycles are not exactly the same each time, but much like the seasons they repeat consistently even though the details may differ. The second great idea is history moves like an ascending line. In this view history is advancing somewhere, even though that somewhere may be unknown. Thus, history has a purpose. Christian theology sees history this way, as do the Jews, Muslims, and several philosophers such as Karl Marx. Under this way of thinking, history will reach a climactic moment after which all will stabilize or completely end. The Mayans of Central America also saw history this way, and thought it would all end in disaster in December of 2012. Many of these concepts about history purposefully advancing somewhere revolve around an end of the world scenario, such as the return of Jesus Christ or a cataclysmic end of everything like the Maya. Under the theories of Marx, the world was advancing to a worker’s utopia. Of course, there is also the Chaos (Post-modern) view shared by overburdened, coerced, history students and the indefatigable Homer Simpson who imagine history as a stack of irrelevant, unconnected, and meaningless events unworthy of notice—much less a grade. To quote Homer Simpson, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.” While Homer is making it sound funny, in fact the Post-modern view is quite prevalent. In this view, history has no turning points, shows no purpose, displays no repeating patterns, and there is really no such thing as progress. This is the Post-modernist view of no mega-narratives, that is, no over arching pattern or theme. History is a series of “fractured narratives” (The Times History of the World, Overy, page xvii).

Arguing any of these theories presents little challenge. History, as we know it in 2010, fits none of the categories perfectly. Those claiming repetition have an endless number of past civilizations as proof, and those saying history is advancing to an end must await that event because there is no other way to know if they are right. Saying history is a bunch of stuff that happened, without patterns or themes, is another idea that will have to wait for a non-end. Hard to do.

Let Us Learn From History

What can we learn from Pre-history? Remember that unknown and unrecorded events have large impacts on history, thus your actions, even if unrecorded, will have an influence on the future for good or evil. Someone had to be the first farmer. Thank goodness for that ancestor. Because of that person we have enough food to avoid hunting every day of our lives. Be thankful for nice living accommodations. By nice, I mean anything better than a hole with dry grass for a floor. Even very small things in our lives, such as indoor running water and flushing toilets, would be magical to our prehistoric ancestors. Think upon how great we have it, and it is all because those unknown guys and gals so long ago never gave up trying to do better. (What did the gals do? Naturally, they nagged the guys for more stuff.)

Books and References:

http://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/cas/cas_projects.html—or for photos of Acheulian hand axes and other Paleolithic artifacts.

Or see http://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/cas/cas_projects.html for similar stone age objects.

The New Penguin History of the World, Roberts, J. M, Penguin Books, 2007. Foundational.

The National Geographic Almanac of World History, Daniels and Hyslop, National Geographic, Washington, DC.

The Times Complete History of the World, Richard Overy, Barnes and Noble, New York, 2007.

The Outline of History, the Whole Story of Man, Vol. 1 & 2, by H.G. Wells, Doubleday and Company, 1956. These volumes have been brought up to date, at least to 1956, by Raymond Postgate. Even though dated, this is a wonderful read.

The Oxford Atlas of World History, Concise Edition, O’Brien, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 2007.

The Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History, Oxford University Press, 2006.

National Geographic Almanac of World History, by P.S. Daniels and S.G. Hyslop, National Geographic, 2003.

The Penguin Atlas of World History, Vol 1 and 2, by Kinder & Hilgemann, Penguin Books, 1964, 2003. This is the BEST two volume atlas on World History. Fantastically illustrated; this is a must read for anyone interested in history. These two volumes cover every important event that can be mapped up to the year 2002. The volumes aresmall, but well worth the trouble of getting a magnifyingglass to look at them. AD2

The World, An Illustrated History, Edited by Geoffrey Parker, Harper and Row, New York, 1986.

Bones of Contention, Lebenow, Baker Books, 2004

Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth, Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong, Wells, Regnery Publishing, 2002.

Darwin’s Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Behe, Free Press, 2006

The Times History of the World, Overy, 2008, Times Books.

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