Corbin Gross

Hist 1500

Dr. Beurtheret

Signature Assignment

Changes and Evolutions in the Early World History

Human developments in early history resulted in improvements for early human

life that lead to long term evolutionary changes that positively impacted the human

experience. I am defining changes as doing or making something different. I am

defining evolution as a gradual change in objects from simple to more complex in

nature. And i am defining Early World History as the period of history well before 1500

CE. My thesis that the gradual changes in human development lead to the evolution of

social, agricultural and spiritual changes in the human experience. In this essay I will

first go over the evolutionary changes in human history like developing agriculture and

the formation of societies and how this impacted ancient humans. I will then go over

how this lead to the evolution of critical thinking and how that changed the human

experience with improvements in art, religion and eventually science. I will conclude by

discussing the impacts of this and what we can take from these evolutionary changes.

The changes in the human experience where very gradual and took place over

many years however these changes were vital to the evolution of the human

experience. Gradual changes in how early humans congregated and provided their food

was formidable in the changes that were seen during this time and methods of living like

moving from a nomadic lifestyle to something more settled led to the development of
improved agricultural methods, which lead to a surplus of food and for the first time in

history humans were not constantly and frantically on the search for enough to

survive. This lead to the formation of villages, cities, city states and eventually empires.

For the first time in history humans began to settle and what this settling down afforded

them was the luxury of stability, because previously humans were dependent on each

other bringing back food and there were periods of weeks or months of half of the group

going to hunt and the rest of the group fending for themselves. This was problematic for

them because there was almost no sertanty or communication so everyone was in the

dark about what was going on with the rest of the group. Because of developments in

agriculture humans knew where and what their group was up to because they were

more together which lead to them being able to communicate. This communication was

vital in keeping up the stocks of food and the overall navigation of their lives. This lead

to monumental inventions like writing, the wheel, and the development of government.

With the gradual evolutionary changes of humans and the changes of their way

of life humans where now relatively more stable meaning that they did not have to

chase down their breakfast for fifty miles. They could start to turn their attention towards

things that would enrich their culture like changing and evolving their art from drawings

on cave walls to carvings on stone and eventually paintings. The deep meaning of art

did not change over the course of human evolution, because art has always had a deep

religious and ritualistic nature to humans and because of the improvements and with the

development of settled society art became more substantial and more influential. Along

with the improvements that came from the changes in lifestyle the importance of religion
changed as well. While religion and religious rituals always had an important impact on

human existence, religion had now transformed into an influential entity in the world and

religious figures began to take on a political role as well, and this leads to the pope and

figures like the kings having even more influence. The importance and power religion

had in the ancient world is the reason we have so many scientific improvements in our

world today because religious figures and systems where the reason for many

advancements and with religious excursions like the crusades resulted in the

advancement and integration of science and knowledge from around the world. All of

which would not be as prevalent in today's society.

In this essay I discussed the evolutionary changes in early humanity and the

changes that humans developed like art, agriculture, cities, empires, art and religion

lead to the evolution of the human experience and lead to humans enriching their lives.

In our world today we tend to overlook the advancements that were directly caused by

the evolution of religion when the reason why our science is so advanced is because of

religion and we need to acknowledge that science has taken the place of religion in our

world.

How Does the Early World History Course Contribute to my General

Education?

This History course contributes to my general education because it taught me

how to think quickly on a topic and how to formulate an idea more thoroughly than I
have before by utilizing essay and presenting techniques like using methodology in my

work to make my ideas more concise and more thought out. Along with adopting

methodology to improve my critical thinking this course has brought my attention to the

history they do not show on the history channel and to challenge the notions of what I

have been taught and to look for my own answers. What I am most thankful for because

of this course is that it has reinvigorated my love for history that I had when I was a child

because our cable broke and for years we only got the history channel, and that passion

was lost when our cable was fixed and I thought that I learned it all, but this class taught

me that no I did not know all there was to know about history, and it taught me to think

critically about what I have learned and will learn and I will take the knowledge that I

have accumulated from this course and question what I am being told and to think

critically.