Since The Last Freeze

11,000 to 800 BCE

(13,000 to 2,800 Years Ago)

  

 

 

 

 

 
   
 

 

  

The Beginning of Civilizations

The ice age reached its peak 18,000 years ago and with warmer weather of our current interglacial, a dramatic change in the way people had lived for hundreds of thousands of years began.  From this point on, the effects of humans on the very fabric of Earth's biosphere become unmistakable.

About 9000 BCE, people began to cultivate crops in fields of the fertile Near East.  Supported by the reliable food supply sedentary farming communities gradually replaced nomadic life styles.  This revolution in food production led to the world's first population explosion, the first cities, and to the differentiated and hierarchical societies of modern civilizations.  Metal-work, writing and other technological inventions improved many lives.  With civilization also came slavery, inequality, and increasingly lethal warfare.
     

Beginning of Farming

9000 BCE

Farming marks the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution or New Stone Age.  In southeast Asia hunting was supplemented by the deliberate planting of indigenous wild grains for harvesting.  Over following millennia the number of domesticated plants increased and suitable animals were also farmed.   By 3,500 years ago farming had replaced foraging in large parts of Asia and Europe, leading to the transformations upon which all modern history rests.

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Early Cities

8000 BCE

Early cities like Jericho near Jerusalem, Jarmo in northern Iraq and Catalhoyuk in Turkey, were built in the shadow of mountains where rain was plentiful.  If any of these settlements then would be called cities by today' standards is debatable.  But these fixed communities with their increasing complexity offer an unmistakable alternative to nomadic life.

 South area of Catalhoyuk by "Ziggurat". GNU Free Documentation License v.1.2

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Metal-Working

7000 BCE

One of the most revolutionary processes ever devised began when copper was first hammered into tools.  Within several millennia, metal sickles and ploughs pulled by domesticated animals produced bigger and better crops.  Metal cutting tools felled trees and made serious carpentry possible.  Metal was used to craft chariots and ships and create weapons of war.  Metallurgy quite possibly changed the world as much as farming.

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High Civilizations

4000 BCE

"High civilization" is a vague term describing city-states during a creative era that lasted for some two thousand years.  The oldest high civilization archaeologists have found so far is Sumer in Mesopotamia - what is now Iraq.  The Sumerians arrived about 5000 BCE and within a millennium, Ur was the biggest city in the world - an advanced civilization which learned to use the wheel, which had a system for writing and invented taxation.

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Writing

3300 BCE
A petroglyph typical of those found in the deserts of southwestern USA. Copyright P.L. Sissons. See Copyright & Acknowledgements link on the Home page.

Among the inventions of early civilization, writing is perhaps the most outstanding.  Five thousand years ago, early writing was a cumbersome business, useful mainly to those who understood the esoteric pictograms and hieroglyphics. 

The pictoglyph on the left is typical of those found in the Southwestern deserts of the USA.  Pictoglyphs are carved or scratched into the rock.  Pictograms are images drawn or painted on the rock.

A great breakthrough came about 1400 BCE when the Phoenicians devised the ancestor to our present alphabet, a system in which letters represent individual sounds rather than concepts and which was appropriately called "phonetic."

 

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Wheels of War

2000 BCE

About 4000 years ago as the climate began to cool, nomads left the steppes in search of more fertile lands.  They moved into the Middle East, Europe, India and China.  They wielded new weapons of war, iron weapons and horse-pulled chariots carrying men armed with bows and arrows.   Old orders gave way to new civilizations, but the advances of earlier civilizations were not lost as the new rulers generally recognized the benefits of much that was already there.

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The Israelites

1800 BCE

Among the semi-nomadic tribes of Semitic peoples during this time were the Israelites.  According to their tradition preserved in Hebrew scriptures, Abraham led his tribe, selected by God to be a great nation, from the city of Ur in Sumaria to the Chosen Land of Israel.  Two more world-wide religions later also came to believe in the same God as Abraham's people.  The tragic paradox is that Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe their God has promised this land to each of them alone.

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People Reach Oceania

1500 BC

Pacific wood carving. Copyright P.L. Sissons. For conditions of use see Copyright and Acknowledgement link on the Home page.

The Pacific Ocean stretches roughly from the north to south poles and half way around the equator.  In the middle of this watery expanse are flung the Pacific Islands or Oceania, with alluring names like Hawaii, Tonga, Polynesia, Easter Island, Micronesia, Fiji and Samoa. 

People from Taiwan or South China were probably the first to reach Oceania - or at least to survive there - 3,500 years ago.  It was the fourth and last region of the world to be discovered and colonized by Homo sapiens.

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Civilizations of the Americas

800 BCE

 

Mongoloid tribes may have crossed the Bering Strait into North America as long as 30,000 years ago and migrated to the southern tip of South America by 12,500 years ago.  Civilizations were slower to develop in the Americas but by 2,800 years ago early New World civilizations were broadly similar to those in Eurasia several millennia earlier.

As in the Old World, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, technological skills advanced, as did indigenous religious art such as the Navajo sand painting illustrated here.  But the wheel was not used until it arrived with the Europeans in the 17th century AD.

Navajo sand painting. Copyright P.L. Sissons. For conditions of use see Copyright and Acknowledgements page.

 

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The title background is Castlerigg Stone Circle in the English Lake District, photograph by P.L. Sissons

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