How did prehistoric people live? what contribution did they make to civilization?

Question

How did prehistoric people live? what contribution did they make to civilization?

Answer 1

That's a very wide question. For this I'll define 'prehistoric' as 'before written records'.

Let's start with some discoveries...

Fire... how to make this seems to have been a fairly late discovery, probably after the 'Out of Africa' date.

Basic astronomy and calender.. seen in Lascuax cave paintings about 15,000 years old.

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Art, the oldest cave art is about 32,000 years old in France.

Pottery, the oldest ceramic object is about 25,000 years old from the Czech republic.

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Weaving, the oldest netting, basketry and woven clothes also dates to abotu 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, also in Eastern Europe.

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Housing, Cro Magnon man in Europe seemed to make houses/teepees from about 35,000 years ago. The oldest stone construction is in Turkey, a stone temple at Gobekli Tepe, about 11,500 years old.

Metallurgy, predates wrting and seems to be found in the Balkans first, from 7,500 years in, but probably a lot earlier (copper first).

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Medicine..this seems to go back to the Neanderthals.

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Agriculture.. the oldest farmed plants are a tie between rice in Korea and Emmer wheat in Turkey, both 13,500 years old.

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The domestication of animals, dates back about 15,000 years. The dog from China, most of the rest from Turkey.

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Music, even Neanderthals had music.

The 'how did they live' part of the question varies from place to place. Paleolithic Euroepans seem to have lived a life very like that of American plains Indians, but they knew how to weave and make ceramic statues, but no horses.

http://www.iabrno.cz/agalerie/pavlova.ht...

The far East and India seems to have a similar technology level, but other places like Sub Saharan Africa, Australia and South East Asia were living in much less complex ways. Think 'very basic' hunter gatherer. Some of the didn't know how to make fire when the Europeans arrived.

Contrary to how we live today, their diet was about 65% meat/fish, with no grain until about 20,000 years ago, and that was limited to people living from Nubia to Syria until about 9,000 years ago.

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Answer 2

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is well documented and almost universal.  Although hunting and gathering are still used in modern times - particularly fishing - they are no longer the primary source of food.

Modern theory states that agricultural settlements gave rise to the security and leisure necessary to invent writing.  Although you could argue that history precedes writing, in the form of oral history, memory and myth, such records are more subject to loss and change than written accounts.

In answer to the question: they survived; they cooperated, at least within their family and tribal groups.  They explored and adapted to different climates and sources of food.

Answer 3

They lived and survived within their environments, just as any other creature has done, and still does--changing & adapting for the stealth of their species.

As far as 'civilization', we took the original Alpha system of the 'pack' and evolved it into a totally contradictory set-up:

1.  Instead of all working toward the strength of leadership, the well-being, and healthfulness of the Whole, we have created a system where the top echelon is fed & nurtured by a starving lower echelon, which in process is becoming dis-eased, and populating within those weaknesses.

2.  Instead of honing the knowledge of how Nature works in unison of the Whole, which got us this far, we have contrived our own ways of chemical creations replacing and distorting the logic of such...evident in our health care fields, food sourcing, and pollution issues of life necessities.

3.  We have taken the old wisdoms passed down through the ages, and instead of taking heed of them, we constantly choose to repeat the noted errors, thereby stifling the positive evolutionary process of humanity for the sake of revolutionizing technology.

And we live with those consequences every day from now until the mass majority gets their heads out of their butts to move on otherwise, or until the organism of Earth decides she's had enough of our parasitic infestation.  Interesting to see which occurs first.

Good Journey!!!

Answer 4

prehistoric people lived in groups and they garthered foods during the day and during the night they would for good caves and in it.They had brave and strong leaders to defend and fight for them when attack by preditors,others would not be able to survive if not strong and fast they would be tracked down and would be killed and eaten.