History is a weapon. The powerful have their version of events, the people have another. And if we understand how the past was forged, we arm ourselves to change the future.
This is a history of struggle, revolution and social change: of hominids, hunters and herders; of emperors and slaves; of patriarchs and women; of rich and poor; of dictators and revolutionaries. From the ancient empires of Persia and Rome to the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, and the 2008 Crash, this is a history of greed and violence, but also of solidarity and resistance.
Many times in the past, a different society became an absolute necessity. Humans have always struggled to create a better life. This history proves that we, the many, have the power to change the world.
History is a weapon. The powerful have their version of events, the people have another. And if we understand how the past was forged, we arm ourselves to change the future.
This is a history of struggle, revolution and social change: of hominids, hunters and herders; of emperors and slaves; of patriarchs and women; of rich and poor; of dictators and revolutionaries. From the ancient empires of Persia and Rome to the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, and the 2008 Crash, this is a history of greed and violence, but also of solidarity and resistance.
Many times in the past, a different society became an absolute necessity. Humans have always struggled to create a better life. This history proves that we, the many, have the power to change the world.
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Overview
History is a weapon. The powerful have their version of events, the people have another. And if we understand how the past was forged, we arm ourselves to change the future.
This is a history of struggle, revolution and social change: of hominids, hunters and herders; of emperors and slaves; of patriarchs and women; of rich and poor; of dictators and revolutionaries. From the ancient empires of Persia and Rome to the Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, and the 2008 Crash, this is a history of greed and violence, but also of solidarity and resistance.
Many times in the past, a different society became an absolute necessity. Humans have always struggled to create a better life. This history proves that we, the many, have the power to change the world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786803283 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 09/20/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 592 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Neil Faulkner is a historian and archaeologist. He is the author of numerous books, including A Radical History of the World (Pluto, 2018), A People's History of the Russian Revolution (Pluto, 2017) and Lawrence of Arabia's War (Yale, 2016).
Neil Faulkner is a historian and archaeologist. He is the author of numerous books, including A Radical History of the World (Pluto, 2018), A People's History of the Russian Revolution (Pluto, 2017) and Lawrence of Arabia's War (Yale, 2016).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Hunters and Farmers
c. 7 million–3000 BP
The Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic (or New Stone Age) transformed the whole of human social experience. Only the Industrial Revolution has had a comparable impact.
Our story begins with a rapid survey of a vast span of time from about seven million years ago to about 5,000 years ago. During this period, as a product of biological, environmental, cultural, and social evolution, a succession of radical transformations took place. First, around 7–6 million years ago, in Chad or Kenya, we have the appearance of the first potential hominins, that is, creatures on our evolutionary tree after our split from the ancestors of the chimpanzees.
Second, around 3.3 million years ago, in Kenya, we have the first evidence of tool-making, representing a fundamental change in hominin behaviour. This and subsequent early technologies (such as the more famous Oldowan tools) are very basic. But then, around 1.9 million years ago, in East and South Africa, certain hominins evolved into creatures with larger brains, greater capacity for tool-making, and higher levels of social organisation and environmental adaptability. This creature had a fairly modern body-shape and is known as Homo ergaster ('Working Human'). This species was very similar to Homo erectus ('Upright Human'), a fossil type not really known in Africa, but widely distributed across Asia.
Third, after c. 350,000 years ago, we have the first evidence for ourselves: Homo sapiens ('Thinking Human'). These, our direct ancestors, seem to have originated in Morocco. The early fossils, however, display a mix of archaic and modern characteristics, and our species only became fully anatomically (and presumably cerebrally) modern by about 120,000 years ago.
Fourth, about 10,000 years ago, under the impact of climate change and food shortages, some communities made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming.
Fifth, about 6,000 years ago, new techniques of land reclamation and intensive farming allowed some communities in favoured locations to increase their output substantially by moving from hoe-based cultivation to plough-based agriculture.
The Hominin Transformations
We have evidence for creatures considered to be hominins reaching back to seven million years BP (before the present; the usual term when discussing hominin evolution). On the human tree roll-call the earliest is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, found in Chad (7–6 BP), whose status as a hominin is rather insecure, but it may have partially walked on two feet (bipedalism being one of the main characteristics of hominins). Then comes Orrorin tugensis from Kenya (6.2–5.6 BP), who may also hold the title of earliest bipedal hominin.
These two creatures (and there were probably many more: we just have not found them) were followed by other hominins such as Ardipithecus ramidus (4.5–4.3 BP) from Ethiopia and Kenyanthropus platyops from Kenya (3.5–3.3 BP).
But perhaps the best-known early hominin was the australopithecine, who emerged around 4.2 BP in East Africa. One of these, Australopithecus afarensis ('Southern Ape of Afar'), roamed throughout parts of East Africa (including Laetoli, where a small family left footsteps in the mud) around 3.7–3 million BP. We have found the fragmented remains of several hundred such creatures, and they reveal evidence for both a bipedal and a tree-based (arboreal) lifestyle. The best-known specimen of Australopithecus afarensis is the 40 per cent complete skeleton of 'Lucy' found in 1974 (though she may have been male).
Lucy stood just 1.1 m tall, weighed around 29 kg, and was probably about 20 years old when she died. With short legs, long arms, and a small brain case, Lucy would have looked rather like a modern chimpanzee. But there was a crucial difference: like all (certain) hominins, she was able to walk upright (though she could also climb and would have spent some of her time in trees). The shape of her pelvis and legs, and the knee joint of another member of the species found a short distance away, proved this beyond reasonable doubt.
Lucy was probably one of a small foraging group that moved around gathering fruit, nuts, seeds, eggs, and other foodstuffs. As climate change reduced the forests and created savannah, natural selection had favoured a species able to range over greater distances in search of food. But Lucy's bipedalism had revolutionary implications. It freed the hands and arms for tool-making and other forms of labour. This in turn encouraged natural selection in favour of larger brain capacity. A powerful dynamic of evolutionary change was set in motion: hand and brain, labour and intellect, skill and thought began an explosive interaction – one which culminated in modern humans.
We do not know whether Lucy made tools. None were found in association with her remains. But very early and very crude stone tools have recently been discovered dating to 3.3 million BP in Kenya – and may be associated with other forms of local australopithecines. And certainly, by 2.5 million BP, Homo habilis ('Handy Human') – Lucy's potential descendant – certainly did. Choppers made from crudely chipped pebbles represent the archaeological imprint of a new family of species defined by tool-making behaviour: the genus Homo ('Human'). Tools embody conceptual thought, forward planning, and manual dexterity. They reveal the use of intellect and skill to modify nature in order to exploit its resources more efficiently.
The genus Homo, like the australopithecines before them, evolved in Africa, and for about 1.5 million BP that is where they largely remained. After around 1.8 million BP, however, we start finding evidence for Homo erectus in the Far East (China, Java, Indonesia) and also in Georgia near the Black Sea (though some define this creature as Homo georgicus).
Homo erectus seems to have been very closely related to an African form, Homo ergaster, an upright creature who emerged around 1.9 BP and is known from East and South Africa. Homo ergaster would have looked much like us in terms of body form, but she had a smaller brain. Her close relative, Homo erectus, persisted in parts of the Far East down the millennia, with the latest examples possibly dating to as recently as 30,000 years ago.
Meantime, back in Europe and Western Asia, other hominin forms were appearing, such as Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis. The latter was probably the last common ancestor of the Neanderthals in Europe and modern humans in Africa.
The Ice Age epoch which began 2.5 million years ago had a great impact on human evolution. Ice Age climate is dynamic, shifting between cold glacials and relatively warm interglacials. We are currently in an interglacial, but 20,000 years ago much of Northern Europe and North America was in the middle of a glacial and covered by ice-sheets up to 4 km thick, with winters lasting nine months, and temperatures below –20°C for weeks on end.
The early hominins were not adapted to the cold, so they migrated north in warm periods and moved south again when the glaciers advanced. They first arrived in Britain, for example, at least 800,000 years ago, but then retreated and returned at least eight times. Britain was probably occupied for only about 20 per cent of its Old Stone Age (c. 800,000–10,000 years ago).
Homo antecessor ('Pioneer Human') – who was probably the first human in Britain, shortly followed by the closely related Homo heidelbergensis ('Heidelberger Human') – seems to have inhabited coastal or estuarine regions, where animal resources were rich and varied. The standard tool was either an 'Acheulian' handaxe – essentially a chopper – or a 'Clactonian' flake – a cutter. These general-purpose tools were mass-produced as needed. Excavations at Boxgrove in England recovered 300 handaxes and much associated flint-knapping debris dating to around 500,000 years ago. They had been used to butcher horse, deer, and rhinoceros on what was then a savannah-like coastal plain.
During the last glaciation, however, there was no wholesale retreat. Homo neanderthalensis was a cold-adapted hominin that we think evolved out of Homo heidelbergensis in Europe and Western Asia about 350,000 years ago. Neanderthal adaptation was a matter of both biological evolution and new technology. With large heads, big noses, prominent brows, low foreheads, little chin development, and short, squat, powerfully built bodies, the Neanderthal was designed to survive winters with average temperatures as low as –10°C. But culture was more important, and this was linked to brain power.
Hominin brains had been getting bigger. Selection for this characteristic was a serious matter. Brain tissue is more expensive than other kinds: the brain accounts for only about 2 per cent of our body weight but no less than 20 per cent of food-energy consumption. It is also high-risk. Humans are adapted for walking upright, which requires a narrow pelvis, yet have a large brain-case, which imposes a strain on the woman's pelvis in childbirth; the result is slow, painful, and sometimes dangerous birth trauma. But the advantages are considerable. Large brains enable modern humans to create and sustain complex social relationships with, typically, about 150 others. Humans are not just social animals, but social animals to an extreme degree, with brains especially enlarged and sophisticated for this purpose.
Sociability confers enormous evolutionary benefits. Hominin hunter-gatherer bands were probably very small – perhaps 30 or 40 people. But they would have had links with other groups, perhaps half a dozen of similar size, with whom they shared mates, resources, labour, information, and ideas. Sociability, cooperation, and culture are closely related, and achieving them requires high levels of intelligence: in biological terms, brain tissue.
The Neanderthals were certainly clever. The 'Mousterian' tool-kit of the classic Neanderthals contained a range of specialised points, knives, and scrapers – as many as 63 different types according to one famous study of archaeological finds from south-western France. Intelligent, networked, and well equipped, the Neanderthals were superbly adapted to Ice Age extremes, building shelters, making clothes, and organising themselves for large-scale hunting on the frozen plains. Lynford in England is a hunting site dating from 60,000 years ago. Here, archaeologists found Neanderthal tools associated with the bones, tusks, and teeth of mammoths.
But natural organisms are conservative in relation to their evolutionary perfection. The Neanderthals, in adapting so well to the cold, had entered a biological cul-de-sac. Meanwhile, in Africa, the crucible of species, a new type of super-hominin had evolved out of an ancient African line, probably representing an evolutionary transition from African Homo heidelbergensis. Such was its creativity, collective organisation, and cultural adaptability that, migrating from Africa 85,000 years ago, it spread rapidly across the world and eventually colonised its remotest corners. This new species was Homo sapiens – modern humans – and though other hominins still existed while we roamed the earth (notably the Neanderthals in the West and Homo erectus in the East), for whatever reason, these other hominins were not able to adapt sufficiently. Perhaps we even had a hand in their demise. Whatever the case, in the end, only we remain after some seven million years of hominin evolution.
The Hominin Transformations, which began around six or seven million years ago, had culminated in a species whose further progress would be determined not by biological evolution, but by intelligence, culture, social organisation, and planned collective labour.
The Hunting (or Upper Palaeolithic) Revolution
Somewhere in Africa, 200,000 years ago, lived a woman who is the common ancestor of every human being on earth today. She is the primeval progenitor of the entire species Homo sapiens – modern humans. We know her as 'African Eve'. It is DNA analysis that has revealed this, confirming and refining the conclusions reached by other scientists based on the evidence of fossilised bone.
DNA is the chemical coding within cells which provides the blueprint for organic life. Similarities and differences can be studied to see how closely various life forms are related. Mutations occur and accumulate at fairly steady rates. This allows geneticists not only to measure biological diversity within and between species, but also to estimate how much time has passed since two groups separated and ceased interbreeding. Mutations in our DNA therefore constitute 'fossil' evidence of our past inside living tissue.
The DNA date for African Eve matches the date of the earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens. Two skulls and a partial skeleton found at Omo in Ethiopia in 1967 have been dated to c. 195,000 BP.
The new species looked different. Early humans had long, low skulls, sloping foreheads, projecting brow ridges, and heavy jaws. Modern humans have large, dome-shaped skulls, much flatter faces, and smaller jaws. The change was mainly due to increased brain size: Homo sapiens was highly intelligent. Big brains make it possible to store information, think imaginatively, and communicate in complex ways. Language is the key to all this. The world is classified, analysed, and discussed through speech. African Eve was a non-stop talker. Because of this, in evolutionary terms, she was adaptable and dynamic.
Homo sapiens had this unique characteristic: unlike all other animals, including other hominins, she was not restricted by biology to a limited range of environments. Thinking it through, talking it over, working together, Homo sapiens could adapt to life almost anywhere. Biological evolution was therefore superseded by cultural evolution. And the pace of change accelerated. Handaxe-wielding Homo erectus had remained in Africa for 1.5 million years. In a fraction of that time, the descendants of African Eve were on the move. Or some of them were. The genetic evidence appears to show that the whole of Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas were populated by the descendants of a single group of hunter-gatherers who left Africa about 3,000 generations ago – around 85,000 BP. South Asia and Australia were colonised by 50,000 BP, Northern Asia and Europe by 40,000 BP, and the Americas by 15,000 BP.
Why did people move? Almost certainly, as hunter-gatherers, they went in search of food, responding to resource depletion, population pressure, and climate change. They were adapted for this – adapted to adapt. Designed for endurance walking and running, they were capable of long-distance movement. Their manual dexterity made them excellent tool-makers. Their large brains rendered them capable of abstract thought, detailed planning, linguistic communication, and social organisation.
They formed small, tight-knit, cooperative groups. These groups were linked in loose but extensive networks based on kinship, exchange, and mutual support. They were, in the sense in which archaeologists use the term, 'cultured': their ways of getting food, living together, sharing tasks, making tools, ornamenting themselves, burying the dead, and much else were agreed within the groups and followed set rules.
This implies something more: they were making conscious, collective choices. You talk things through and then you decide. The challenges of the endless search for food often posed alternatives. Some groups will have made a more conservative choice: stay where you are, carry on as before, hope for the best. Others will have been more enterprising, perhaps moving into unknown territory, trying new hunting techniques, or linking up with other groups to pool knowledge, resources, and labour.
A dominant characteristic of Homo sapiens, therefore, was an unrivalled ability to meet the demands of diverse and changeable environments. Initially, they would have migrated along resource-rich coastlines and river systems. But they seem soon to have spread into the hinterland; and wherever they went, they adapted and fitted in. In the Arctic, they hunted reindeer; on the frozen plains, mammoth; on the grasslands, wild deer and horses; in the tropics, pigs, monkeys, and lizards.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Radical History of the World"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Neil Faulkner.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Series PrefaceIntroduction
1. Hunters and Farmers c. 7 million-3000 BP
2. The First Class Societies c. 3000-1000 BC
3. Ancient Empires c. 1000-30 BC
4. The End of Antiquity c. 30 BC- AD 650
5. The Medieval World c. AD 650-1500
6. European Feudalism c. AD 650-1500
7. The First Wave of Bourgeois Revolutions 1517-1660
8. Absolutist Europe and Capitalist Globalisation 1660-1775
9. The Second Wave of Bourgeois Revolutions 1775-1815
10. The Rise of Industrial Capitalism c. 1750-1850
11. The Age of Blood and Iron 1848-1873
12. Imperialism and War 1873-1918
13. The Revolutionary Wave 1917-1928
14. The Great Depression and the Rise of Fascism 1929-1939
15. World War and Cold War 1939-1967
16. The World on Fire 1968-1975
17. The New World Disorder 1975-2008
18. Capitalism’s Greatest Crisis? The Early Twenty-First Century
Conclusion: Making the Future
Timeline
Sources
Bibliographical Notes
Select Bibliography
Index