4th Street

4th Street


The upgraded technology of early modern humans included enormous advances in weaponry. Worked stone tools went from clunky to intricate, with symmetrical, two-sided points, sharper edges, and more functional shapes. The atlatl, a lever used to throw spears with more power and accuracy, and the bolo, roped rocks thrown to entangle game, became important. Bone and antlers were worked for the first time, into such complicated forms as barbed harpoons and fish hooks. Soon after that, bows and arrows, snares and traps, and nets were invented. Thread and manufactured clothing (vs. animal skins) appeared about 20,000 years ago [1]. The basic human toolkit was nearly complete. 


If early modern humans led more settled lives than their forebears, it is at least partly thanks to the more effective environmental control their rich array of technologies provided. These tools also led some early sapiens to another life style that was to have important consequences later.


Modern humans tended to heavily exploit the most abundant large animals where and when they settled. Records show domination of remains in European sites by reindeer, red deer (in North America called elk), aurochs (wild cattle), horses, or ibex [2]. This may have pre-adapted groups sapiens for a life of following migratory herds. 


Large herbivorous mammals have many ecological advantages from the human perspective. They convert inedible vegetation into a nutritious package. Along with food, they provide very useful hide and bone. Milk, wool, and dung can all be harvested from living mammals. And herding animals, with predictable lifestyles and group socialization may be less dangerous to kill than their more individualistic brethren. 


As the ice age crept to its end, herding animals—reindeer, bison, mammoth, and horse—migrated between wintering grounds near the Black Sea and summer pastures in central Europe. Human settlements have been found along these migration routes. Humans learned to manage the herds for themselves. To keep from panicking masses of animals, people would drive a season’s worth away from the main herd for slaughter. The herd would also be culled for old or injured animals [1].


The big payoff came with animal management skills and associated cultural sophistication of the herd-followers. Humans and animals became linked socially as well as trophically. People learned to harvest the herds sustainably. Different groups of people would meet to slaughter and share, and the interpersonal interactions became important. Technological breadth increased— tools became more specialized for everything from handling hides to making wool clothing. Human intellect itself may have grown as people and animals became more closely linked. And herd-following was a crucial step on the way to development of agriculture [3].




Notes


[1] A compelling narrative of the technological transition and associated life style diversity is in Ponting, C. 1991. A Green History of the World: the Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. Penguin Books, NY.


[2] Pyne, p. 28


[3] Pre-agricultural human progress is well described in Redman, C.L. 1999. Human Impact on Ancient Environments. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.