Ways of the World

Ways of the WorldBy: Elly Sawicky

1Out of Africa to the Ends of the Earth250,000 years ago, in the grasslands of southern Africa, Homo sapiens first emerged. Using resources to hunt and fish, human activity flourished.After some time 100,000 years ago, human beings began their long trek out of Africa and into Eurasia, Australia, the Americas, and much later the islands of the Pacific. Much of this long journey occurred during the difficult climatic conditions of the last Ice Age (20,000 years ago), gave the travelers the advantage of using land bridges created from the Ice Age to connect to Alaska, New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania.

2The First Human SocietiesAn estimated 10,000 people populated the world about 100,000 years ago.Paleolithic societies were small, consisting of bands of twenty-five to thirty people, in which all relationships were intensely personal and thought of normally in terms of kingship.The Paleolithic bands were seasonally mobile or nomadic, moving frequently and in regular patterns to exploit the resources of wild pants and animals, which they depended on.The Paleolithic people were on the move so often that there was no economy normalcy due to no production surplus.Paleolithic societies had rules and structures. There was a gender based division of labor- men as hunters women as gatherers.

3The Agricultural RevolutionAround 12,000 years ago, a second global pattern began to unfold- agriculture.This was domestication- the taming, and the changing of nature for the benefit of humankind- but it created a new kind of mutual dependence .Intensification- getting more for less, in this case was getting much more food and resources from a much smaller area of land than it was possible with a gathering and hunting technology.

4The Globalization of AgricultureAgriculture spread to much of the rest of the earth, although for a long time it coexisted with gathering and hunting ways of life. The process of diffusion, which was the gradual spread of agricultural techniques and the plants of animals themselves, but without the extensive movement of agricultural people.Neighboring groups exchanged ideas and products in a down the line pattern in communication.A second process involved the slow colonization or migration of agricultural peoples as growing populations and pressures expanded and pushed outward.

5The Emergence of CivilizationsThe earliest of these civilizations emerged around 3500 BC to 3000 BC in three places. One was the cradle of Middle Eastern civilizations in Sumer. Sumerian civilization gave rise to the worlds earliest written language.The emergence of Egyptian civilization occurred around the same time as Sumerian. In Peru a populated civilization developed known as Norte Chico.

6Comparing Mesopotamia and EgyptA productive agricultural technology, city living, immense class inequalities, patriarchy, and the emerging power of states were common features of First Civilizations across the world and also of those that followed.These civilizations did not exist in isolation, for they participated in networks of interactions with the near and sometimes more distant neighbors.When looked closely at the two First Civilizations, Mesopotamia and Egypt, a glimpse can be grasped of the differences, changes, and connections that characterized early civilizations.

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