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TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY IN THE STONE AGE*
Biologists tell us that the origin of tool-making is probably related to the advanced functional anatomy of the human
hand and its development. The earliest tool-makers were largely CARNIVOROUS, however, and they needed
sharper instruments for hunting, killing, and cutting meat---sharp-edged stones such as could be chipped from
pebbles by hammering them with other stones.
Not only the development of manual activity but also the development of speech guided man's earliest tool-making
activities. The evolution of speech, which "gave everything a NAME," perhaps helped to differentiate man's world.
ARCHAEOLOGISTS identify and classify early human settlements by the shape and type of the tools found there.
The first tools were of stone, and the earliest stone tools (called "EOLITHS," because they date from the Eolithic or
earliest Stone Age period over a million years ago) were pebbles already pre-shaped by nature and simply picked up
from a river bed.
The growing range and complexity of man's tools ran parallel to the development of his activities and achievements in
other respects. Archaeological data show that he had now fully become Homo SAPIENS, Man the Thinker.
Two elements governed man's technical progress. DISCOVERY, the recognition and careful observation of new
natural objects and phenomena, is a very subjective event until it leads to some practical application shared by others
either directly or indirectly. INVENTION , however, is a mental process in which various discoveries and observation
are combined and guided by experience into some new tool or operation. Much experience was needed to lead to
truly important inventions, and hence, the material progress of ancient man was very slow.
THE USE OF FIRE
Fire was the most important discovery of PALEOLITHIC (Old Stone Age, which lasted about a million years, to 8000
B.C.) man, who not only warmed his body but also applied fire to the preparation of FOOD. The birth of the art of
COOKING meant that he could now prepare and "predigest" foodstuffs and augment the diet of fruit, roots, and raw
meat on which he had lived for millennia.
COOKING actually led to the invention of suitable containers and other KITCHEN utensils, of braziers (portable fires)
for domestic heating, of grates, and finally of bellows, which were an improvement on the original fan or blowpipe with
which the fire was encouraged.
Tending the fire required a suitable place in the middle of the hut or cave usually a mud-plastered, walled spot, the
hearth. This was the birthplace of POTTERY for prehistoric man soon discovered how hard the mud plaster became
after being thoroughly heated.
TECHNOLOGY AND ASPECTS OF EARLY SOCIETY
This developing trade is just one of the signs that society was changing, and with it, technology. For technology is a
social product in this sense, that it is one of the interacting factors in a society, which in those early days was still very
much limited by its food supply pattern. Its tools and technology were first of all aimed at the support and extension
of this food supply, though other factors were also important. Environment and available materials can limit the
forms and extension of this technology, but they cannot rob man of his ingenuity. Early food-gatherers and hunters
devised a full range of tools directed toward their foraging, hunting, and fishing; these tools have been classified as
"CRUSHERS," "PIERCERS," AND "ENTANGLERS."
Nor did the insecurity of daily subsistence prevent early man from creating and cultivating graphic and plastic arts.
This was partly because primitive superstition (itself a form of technology) believed that one would be more
successful in hunting and fishing if one could draw pictures of the objects for which one hunted and fished.
THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS
Man gradually tamed such animals as roamed about his settlements or camps and which sometimes may have been
scavenging. By Magdalenian times (the late period, 17,000-8000 B.C., of the Old Stone Age) the dog was
already domesticated, and probably man had already tamed the first reindeer, goats, and sheep. During the
Neolithic Age (Late Stone Age) pigs and cattle joined the range of domestic animals.
At the same time, the deforestation and cultivation of larger areas of virgin soil began to cause extermination
of wild species and to make the domesticated ones more dependent on man's care.
THE BEGINNINGS OF AGRICULTURE
Similar needs led to man's attempts to free himself from the limitations of vegetable food supplied by nature in the
wild state. He did not want to be dependent on roots and fruit only, but wanted regular supplies of green vegetables,
nuts and oil seeds, cereals, and condiments.
Men also began to cultivate intentionally such plants as flax and hemp and to use their fibers for textiles and rope
making; they also grew plants from which they could extract oils and dyestuffs. The advent of agriculture brought
more or less permanent settlements and tended to displace the earlier nomadic way of life.
BUILDING
The coming of permanent settlements led to early forms of building. Earlier men had been satisfied with simple
windbreaks, seeking more permanent shelters such as caves only for longer stays
Long houses and religious buildings of various forms were also erected, involving a more developed wood-work
technology.
THE URBAN REVOLUTION
Technological developments during the Neolithic Age gradually led to a regular production of surplus foodstuffs,
which supported what has been called the "Urban Revolution." In the Near East after 600 B.C. some farming villages
slowly developed into urban centers dominating an agricultural area. Trade was no longer in luxuries alone; the
farmers brought their surplus grain and food to the city, where skilled, full-time craftsmen traded the articles which
they had produced for the food they needed. This was particularly true after the urban centers began to move toward
the river valleys, which were being drained and cultivated but which could not provide the timber, metals, and
minerals needed by the craftsmen.
TRANSPORT
Despite an increase in trade, transport was still very primitive. On the water, apart from rafts and inflated skins
carrying a timber deck, there were baskets with a high rim. Ships made of bundles of reeds were typical for the Nile
Valley civilization. Despite these early adventurers, most early shipping was merely river transport and seldom risked
the dangers even of sailing along the coasts of the open seas.
The technological improvements of land transport was even slower. Early overland trade never involved large
volumes of goods, but for a very long time was limited to what men or pack animals could carry on their backs.
MAN AT THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Starting as one of the members of the primate group, man possessed certain biological prerequisites for technical
progress: the capacity to manipulate with his hands and fingers, the ability to develop speech for communication,
and, somehow, a capacity for abstract thought. These had enabled him to develop tools, which in turn enabled him to
evolve further.
Although early man undoubtedly first utilized wooden and bone implements, only his stone tools have survived the
ravages of time, so human prehistory is divided among the Stone Ages(EOLITHIC, PALEOLITHIC, AND
NEOLITHIC), with these tools improving in quality and usability over a long period of time. Suddenly---as such things
went in prehistoric times---in the fourth millennium B.C. (4000-3000 B.C.) revolutionary changes took place in man's
technology and hence his society.
Man had already discovered fire and had crude weapons. But in the thousand years preceding 3000 B.C. there was a
spate of inventions and discoveries. The beginnings of agriculture allowed for settled communities, and man changed
from a nomadic hunter and parasite upon nature to become an active partner with nature. He domesticated animals
and developed agricultural tools. He made textiles and produced pottery. He invented the wheel and the sail to
improve his transportation. And, at the turn of the millennium, he learned how to use and produce copper.
The development of writing took place about 3500 B.C. The earliest documents were cuneiform clay tablets,
forming the archives of the administration of early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) temples. These cuneiform tablets are
typical of the way in which language and its earliest written expression, pictographs (that is, ideas expressed in the
form of visual pictures), developed. The "naming" of all natural things and phenomena now finds its expression in the
word lists (ONOMASTICA) in which words for all kinds of animals, plants, minerals, and so forth, are arranged in
groups, which are supposed to be related in some way.
With the beginnings of metallurgy, the Stone Age of man comes to an end; with the beginnings of writing,
prehistory comes to an end; with the beginnings of agriculture, man's parasitism on nature gives way to co-
operation with nature. Technology thus made possible the beginnings of civilization in the great river valleys
of the Near East, in Mesopotamia and Egypt.