Pre Historic Age and

Background of Human
Settlement

Presented by :
Nishat Anjum Bini (NIB)
Adjunct Faculty
Department of History and Philosophy
North South University 1
The Earliest Development of Humanity
The entire span of human history
can be divided roughly into two
periods:
• Age of Stone/Prehistoric
Period/Preliterate Age
• Age of Metals/Historic Period

• Age of Stone is subdivided into:

1. Paleolithic Age
2. Mesolithic Age
3. Neolithic Age

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 The Earliest Development of Humanity
Culture Period Type of Human Characteristic Achievement Approximate
Time
Earlier Paleolithic Homo habilis Walking erect; use of objects taken from nature as tools; 3 to 2 million years
Age( Early Old Stone Age) hunting ago
Java Man Larger brains; greater intelligence 500,000 years ago
Peking Man

Neanderthal Man Speech; earliest tool making 50,000 years ago

( Homo sapiens)
Later Paleolithic Age(Late Cro-Magnon Man Variety of tools and weapons made from stone and bone; 20,000 years ago
Old Stone Age) cooked food; cave painting

Mesolithic (Middle Stone Modern physical More settled living conditions; earliest transition from food 12,000 years ago
Age) types gathering to food-raising

Neolithic (New Stone Age) Agriculture; domestication of animals; pottery; earliest 7000 years ago
village life; origin of states
Bronze Age Earliest civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia; writing; 5500 years ago
bronze metallurgy; developed political, social, religious
and economic institutions 3
Paleolithic Age
• The Paleolithic Period is an ancient cultural
stage of human technological
development, characterized by the creation
and use of rudimentary chipped
stone tools.
• The Paleolithic Period was also
characterized by the manufacture of
small sculptures (e.g., carved stone
statuettes of women, clay figurines
of animals, and other bone
and ivory carvings) and paintings
on cave walls.
• The Paleolithic period can be dated from
roughly 3 to 2 million B.C to 10,000 B.C.
• During this period at least four species of
humanlike creatures inhabited the earth. 4
Paleolithic Age
Homo habilis
• Fossilized remains were discovered for
the first time in Tanzania, East Africa in
1961.
• (Chemical tests such as carbon-14 method
or the potassium-argon method are used in
Homo habilis – forensic facial reconstruction
determining the age of the fossils)
• The species which left behind these
remains has been named Homo habilis
or "man having ability.
• Homo habilis may be counted as a true
ancestor of modern man because he walked
erect, possessed a brain that was larger and
was intelligent enough to use tools.
• Their survival depended upon cooperation.
The cooperation necessary in hunting made
KNM-ER 1813 reconstructed skull and jaw (Kenya)
Homo habilis the first truly social creature. 5
Paleolithic Age
A 1922
Java Man and Peking Man reconstruction of
the skull of Java
• Two subsequent inhabitants of the earlier Man
Paleolithic period were Java man and
Peking man.

• Skeletal remains of Java man were found

on the island of Java, Indonesia in 1891.

• The remains of Peking man were found in

Traditional
China between 1926 and 1930.
reconstruction
• Anthropologists generally agree that Peking of the Peking
man and Java man are of approximately the Man skull
same antiquity, and that both prob- ably
descended from the same ancestral type.

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Paleolithic Age
Neanderthal Humans Archaic
Neanderthal
• Although first discovered at Gibraltar,
Neanderthal man is named after a finding of
skeletal fragments in 1856 in the valley of the
Neander, near Düsseldorf, in Germany.
• Skeletal remains have been discovered in Spain,
Italy, Yugoslavia, Russia, and Israel. So closely
did Neanderthal man resemble modern man that
he is classified as a member of the same
species, Homo sapiens. Neanderthals, on the
average, were only about five feet, four
inches in height.
• They had the capacity for speech which enabled Reconstruction of
them to communicate with their fellows and they a Neanderthal
believed in burial rituals. woman
• They discovered that stones could be chipped in
such a way as to give them cutting edges. Thus
were developed spearheads, and much superior
knives and scrapers.
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Top left to right: Reconstruction of the Israeli Kebara 2 skeleton at the Natural History Museum, London
The ring structures in Grotte de Bruniquel, France

Bottom left to right: Neanderthal Tools

Speculative reconstruction of white-tailed eagle talon jewellery from Krapina, Croatia

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 Paleolithic Age
Cro Magnon Man
• From about 20,000 B.C,  a new and superior type of
human being dominated the earth .Biologically these
people were closely related to modern humans. Remains
were discovered for the first time in Cro Magnon Cave,
France.
• These people lived by hunting reindeer, bison, and
mammoths, which freely roamed through southern Europe
and Asia.
• The Cro-Magnon people were tall, broad-shouldered, and
walked erect, the males averaging over six feet.
• That they wore clothing is indicated by the fact that they
invented the needle (made out of bone). They did not know
how to weave cloth, but animal skins sewn together proved
a satisfactory substitute.
• It is certain that they cooked their food, for enormous
hearths, evidently used for roasting meat, have been
discovered. Supreme achievement of the Cro Magnon 1916 reconstruction of
people was their art. Sculpture, Cave Painting and the elderly Cro-Magnon
Carving were all represented
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Cro Magnon Man Relics
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_European_modern_humans

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 Mesolithic Age
• The Mesolithic Age was a transitional
phase between the Paleolithic Age
and the Neolithic Age.
• During the Mesolithic age there was
an establishment of farming
communities.
• Humans with modern physical
features, started learning to use
domesticated animals and plants for
the betterment of life.
• The domestication of dogs began in
that era.

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Neolithic Age(New Stone Age)

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 Neolithic Age
• The Mesolithic stage was succeeded by the Neolithic, or New Stone Age.
• Stone weapons and tools were now generally made by grinding and polishing
instead of by chipping or fracturing. The bearers of Neolithic culture were
varieties of modern peoples who poured into southern Europe from Asia.
• Neolithic settlements developed by 7500 B.C . Fully developed Neolithic
culture existed in Mesopotamia and Egypt by 5000 B.C.
• In many respects the New Stone Age was the most significant in the history
of the world thus far. The level of material progress rose to new heights.
Neolithic peoples had a better mastery of their environment than any of
their predecessors.
• Whereas all of the peoples who had lived before were mere food-
gatherers, Neolithic people were food-producers. The development of
agriculture and animal husbandry, one of the most important of all
transitions in human history, promoted a settled existence and made a
possible increase in population. 13
 Achievements of the Neolithic Age
Neolithic culture was the first to
be distributed over the entire
world. Although some earlier
cultures, especially those of the
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons,
were widely dispersed, they
were confined chiefly to the
accessible mainland areas of the
Old World.

Neolithic culture penetrated

into every habitable area of the
earth's surface-from Arctic
wastes to the jungles of the
tropics.
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 Achievements of the Neolithic Age
Neolithic peoples developed the
arts of knitting and weaving.

They made the first pottery and

knew how to produce fire by
friction.

They built houses of wood and

sun-dried mud.

To ward the end of the period

they discovered the possibilities
of metals. and a few implements
of copper and gold were added
to their stock
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 Further Reading:
• Burns, E.M. & others(1986), World Civilizations,7th Indian Edition, W.W.
Norton & Company: New York, Pg 1 to 20 ***
•
Wallbank,T. Walter, Bailkey,Nels M., Taylor, Alastair M.(1985),
Civilization: Past and Present, Scott Foresman/Addison-Wesley: New
York

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Thank you

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