Learnings
Prologue:
- The whole of human history is an insignificant portion of the history of the Universe (~ 13.7 billion years ago). The Cosmic Calendar highlighted our species brief, yet unique, presences within the whole of known creation.
- Earliest life on earth existed around 4 billion years ago, but the first humanlike creatures did not existing until 2.7 million years ago. This illustrates an enormous amount of time transpiring in which life evolved into our primordial forms.
- Our species, technologically speaking, can be divided into three major phases: Paleolithic era(hunters and gatherers), Agricultural era (farming and settlement), and Industrial era (modern technological).
- Every event in history can be viewed through a much larger context. Using the three primary contexts of Change, Comparison, and Connection, one can intelligently discuss events spanning timelines to conclude hypothesis around insufficient documented past or to be document future events.
Chapter 1:
- The earliest Homo sapiens existed some 250,000 years ago, and originated in the African continent.
- Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and other proto-humans coexisted in early civilization until ultimately none remained except Homo sapiens.
- Humanities migration across the continents during the Paleolithic era gave birth to technological diversity born out of necessity and environmental conditions. The abundance of certain foods, and the scarcity of animals, and the general environmental conditions all bred regional leaps civilization growth.
- Documented records of early society are limited to the fossils of humans, and early art forms (cave and pottery), which ultimately provide only a subjective view of their existence and beliefs. This limited hard evidence has led to a comparison of early civilization to existing nomadic cultures which still exist to this day. I'm not sure how valid a comparison this is considering the differencing environmental conditions, and leaps in human thought processes.
- The transcontinental journey of early Homo sapiens was made across ice sheets and land bridges which no longer exist. My point curiosity is at what point technology allowed them to travel by sea to the remote islands (a recent journey by comparison), and what led to this sea faring expedition versus continual land migration.
- The majority of human existence was during the Paleolithic, the largest population and life expectancy began during the agricultural era, but the modern era rate of growth and life expectancy is expected to exponentially dwarf both eras is a much shorter period of time.
- Agricultural breakthroughs allowed humans to settle-down and form communities. I was surprised that such a simple concept had such a drastic impact on society ranging from population growth and creative endeavors (pottery and art) to stratified social hierarchy.
Chapter 2:
- The first civilizations to exist were: The Olmecs in Central America, Caral in South America, Africa (Nile Valley Civilizations), Middle East (Sumerian city-states), and Asia (Oxus, Indus, and Chinese Civilizations).
- As wealth and surplus became apart of society, early class systems emerged which reflected perceived value to society as a whole.
- Early class systems began to favor military strength, and by extension masculinity; this highlighted early gender disparity.
- Writing was a powerful development of early civilization which led to documentation, accounting, and teaching which could e shared with other civilizations.
- Early civilization writing does not reflect modern characters, but does convey many of the same meaning through ore rudimentary ways (i.e. cuneiform, hieroglyphs, quipu, pictographs, phonetic symbols)
