Prehistoria e Historia Antigua: Edades de Piedra, Metales y Primeras Civilizaciones

Prehistory: The Three Periods

Prehistory is divided into 3 periods:

1. Palaeolithic Age (Stone Age)

The Palaeolithic Age means the Stone Age. It extends from the appearance of our first ancestors to about 11,000 years ago.

• Economy: they lived from hunting, fishing and gathering wild fruit.
• Lifestyle: they were nomadic. They lived outdoors, in caves or in wooden huts.
• Social organisation: they were organised in small tribes.
• Tools: they made stone tools.
• Fire: they discovered fire about half a million years ago. They used it to heat, cook and drive animals away.
• Beliefs: they believed in supernatural forces. They had rites and believed in the afterlife.
• Cave art: about 35,000 years ago they discovered cave art. They painted animals, used the relief of the caves to give them volume, and used several colours.

2. Neolithic Age (New Stone Age)

The Neolithic Age means New Stone Age. It extends from about 11,000 to about 7,000 years ago.

• Agriculture: they domesticated animals and cultivated plants. They discovered agriculture about 11,000 years ago.
• Crops:
  • Wheat: Middle East and Europe.
  • Rice: Asia.
  • Corn: America.
• Lifestyle: they were sedentary.
• Tools and crafts: they used polished stone to make utensils, started making textiles and invented pottery.

3. Metal Ages

The Metal Ages extend from about 7,000 to about 5,000 years ago.

• The first metal was copper, but it was not very strong.
• Later, they used bronze and iron.
• They invented the wheel, the sail and the plough.
• Villages turned into cities.
• New professions: traders, priests and warriors.

Megalithic Monuments

Megalithic monuments were built with blocks of stone:

• Menhir: a single, long, vertical stone.
• Dolmen: burial places. Vertical stones formed walls covered by horizontal blocks.
• Stone circles: wide circles formed by several menhirs, with a religious function.

Human Evolution (Humanisation)

1. Australopithecus: similar to chimpanzees.
2. Homo habilis: "habilis" means skilful.
3. Homo erectus: "erectus" means upright. Lived in Europe and Asia and used fire.
4. Homo neanderthalensis: they buried their dead and were able to speak.
5. Homo sapiens (sapiens sapiens): appeared about 130,000 years ago. Slimmer but taller than the Neanderthals, they made finer tools and had a complex language and art.

The First Civilizations

Writing was a way of storing information about taxes, trade and population.

The first civilizations developed near rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates, in Mesopotamia ("between rivers").

• Political power: the king was the most powerful and had civil servants.
• Hierarchical society:
  • King and nobility
  • Priests
  • Civil servants
  • Craftsmen and peasants
  • Slaves
• Religion: polytheistic. Their gods were immortal.
• Architecture: they invented the arch and the vault.