1.1.B-technology and Society in the Stone Age

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY IN THE STONE AGE* by R.J. Forbes Technology is as old as man himself. Man was evidently a "tool-making primate" from the day when the first human-like creatures roamed on earth, some 25 million years ago. Such very early human remains as that of the "Peking Man" (so called because the fossil bones were found near Peking), dating back about half a million years, are accompanied by stones selected and often shaped to be used as tools. Even when we do find remains of fossil men not accompanied accompanied by tools, it is probably probably because they were trapped by death beyond their usual dwelling site, and therefore without their usual tools.

THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF TOOL-MAKING

Although Although lower animals now and then use a stone or other natural object to break a shell or to help them in some other part of their feeding or breeding habits, only the primates use "tools" in the real sense of the word word to cope cope with with unusu unusual al situa situatio tions. ns. But But even even amon among g these these there there are diffe differen rence ces. s. While While chimpan chimpanzees zees and other other apes apes will sometimes sometimes use sticks or stone stone to perform perform certain tasks and will sometimes put two sticks together to bring food within reach, this has always remained a " mental isolation of a single feature." The regular shaping of such tools or aids never became a habit with apes; but it did become a habit with man. Man's earliest natural tools were his hands and his teeth. Biologists tell us that the origin of toolmaking is probably related to the advanced functional functional anatomy of the human hand and its development. development. Further, though the muscles of the hands of monkeys differ little from those of early man, the nervous mechanism, mechanism, by which men are able to direct the movements of such muscles is of a finer structure, thus making human hands more flexible than those of other primates. The earliest tool-makers were largely carnivorous, however, and they needed sharper instruments for hunting, killing, and cutting meat---sharpedged stones such as could be chipped from pebbles by hammering them with other stones. The larger and more efficiently organized cerebrum of early man allowed him slowly to grope toward supplementing his natural tools. 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. Different tools of special types came to be used for hunting, fishing, and the making of clothes and shelters.

EARLY STONE TOOLS

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 preshaped by nature and simply picked up from a river bed. Very slowly man learned to shape such stones by striking -------------------------REPRINTED FROM:

R.J. Forbes, "The Beginnings of Technology and Man" in Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Carroll W. Pursell, Pursell, Jr.(eds. Jr.(eds.), ), Technolo Technology gy in Western Western Civilization Civilization,, Vol I (Oxford (Oxford University Press: New York, 1967) Chapter 2, pp. 11-26.

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them with other stones, and a limited number of more or less standardized shapes for chopping and cutting were developed. About a hundred thousand years ago primitive man was no longer content with his chopper tool and pointed flakes; he began to make more specialized tools: pear-shaped "hand axes," scrapers, knives, pointed stones, and so forth 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. By then speech and language as important adjuncts of thought as well as commu communic nicati ation on must must have have been been fully fully devel develop oped ed.. His intere interest, st, not not only only in terres terrestia tiall objec objects ts and and phenomena but also in those of the heavens, became more and more evident in the drawings he made on his tools, belongings, and later on the walls of caves. These show not only the rudiments of science but also demonstrate his technology, particularly his hunting techniques. The shrewd characterization in these drawings and the clear ordering of his observations which they demonstrate show the development of man's mind, though we are not allowed any intimate contact with his thoughts until the earliest writing appears in the Near East about 3500 B.C.

INVENTION AND DISCOVERY

Two elements governed man's technical progress. Discovery, the recognition and careful observation of new natural objects and phenomena, phenomena, is a very subjective event until it leads to some practical application 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

Man's earliest conquest was fire. Ancient myths agree that man was originally threatened and alarmed by forest fires, but he eventually eventually turned this phenomenon phenomenon into a boon for mankind. mankind. The earliest users of fire had to keep going those fires which they might have found in nature, for they had no means of producing it at will. Not until Paleolithic times (Old Stone Age, which lasted about a million years, to 8000 B.C.) in Europe and Asia did man discover the percussion method: lumps of flint and pyrites struck together would give off sparks with which tinder, straw, or other inflammable fuel could be set alight. Other methods, based on the heat of friction produced by rubbing pieces of wood together, as in the fire-saw and fire-drill, seem to have originated in Southern Asia at a somewhat later date. Fire was the most important discovery of Paleolithic 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. He not only increased his range of foodstuffs enormously, and was able to vary his diet, but more importantly, by drying meat and other foods with the help of fire, he could now lay in a supply to help him subsist during the lean seasons. Gradually, various ways of preparing food were developed from the original method of simply holding the item to be cooked over the fire or placing it in the fire. Food could be cooked on top of heated





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 improvement on the original fan or blowpipe with which the fire was encouraged. It is clear from later documents and from archaeological archaeological finds that many later industrial processes involving heat, such as metallurgy, pottery, and brewing brewing,, used the accumul accumulated ated experience experience of prehisto prehistoric ric cooking cooking.. In all early early langua languages ges industria industriall operations such as heating, drying, steaming, baking, and washing are indicated by terms derived from the kitchen, and even in such a late growth as alchemical practice (which is hardly older than the eight century B.C.), it is clear that not only the terms but also apparatus such as filters and water-baths were originally kitchen equipment which was later adopted to chemical use. 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. Also from the domestic hearth were developed our kilns, ovens, and industrial furnaces of a later period. Present evidence points to a fairly late emergence of the art of pottery. The oldest farming villages of the Near East did not contain pots, but by the time of such early urban settlements as Jericho (6000 B.C.), pottery was known. The earliest pottery took the shape of the gourds it was designed to displace, an early example of the tendency of inventors to adopt a natural form in attempting to replace a natural function. The fuel used by prehistoric man was the most primitive kind. Dead branches, dry wood, and shrubs were commonly used, but so was such low-grade material as dried bones. In the East, thorny shrubs, withered sticks, twigs, and dried dung were cheap fuels, supplemented by straw and other farming refuse as soon as agriculture was introduced. Only the mountain regions had sufficient firewood. In later later times times this this wood wood was was made made into into charco charcoal al for for indus industri trial al purpo purposes ses.. For For all all ancie ancient nt indu industr strial ial processes depended on charcoal, and this charcoal-burning (together with the herds of goats which grazed in the barren mountain region) was responsible for the deforestation of the Mediterranean area in antiquity. Much later, the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.) deplored the disappearance of the many forests of Athens due to charcoal-burning and ship-building. Strangely enough, prehistoric man seldom used convenient outcroppings of coal and lignite. In certain regions of Czechoslovakia, mammoth-hunters seem to have utilized local coal-outcrops for their camp-fires, but this was an exception. By the time (500 B.C.-400 A.D.) of Classical antiquity, however, peat and lignite were well known, although the burning of peat by the early inhabitants of the Low Countries was considered a proof of barbarism and poverty by the Roman author Tacitus (55-117 A.D). Coal came into more regular use in Roman Britain, but its use in earlier times is hypothetical. This limited supply of second-grade fuel was a major deterrent to the development development of industrial processes processes during the whole of antiquity as well as for many centuries thereafter. The use of fire also led to the introduction of illuminating devices. In certain cases threading a wick through such oil-rich creatures as the stormy petrel or the candlefish provided a reasonable flame. In most cases, however, the oil was first extracted from the animal or fish, and then the fish-oil, tallow, or other type of fat was used in hollowed-out stone lamps, lamps, with a wick hanging hanging over the rim or floating in the middle of the oil. Such stone lamps were in use in Paleolithic times; a specimen was found in the Lascaux caves of France, where it had served the prehistoric painters who decorated the walls there some 12,000 years ago. Sometimes resinous splinters or torches were used. Later, pottery or metal bowls were manufactured, multi-wick lamps being made by forming several spouts along the rim of the





form of lighting that mankind knew. Even after the advent of the candle, the vast majority of people usually rose and went to bed with the sun, for oil for illuminating purposes was too expensive for people who were merely eking out a living.

ADVANCES IN STONE TOOLS

As foraging, hunting, and fishing began to provide a wide range of food supply, tool-making outgrew its elementary stage. By 15,000 B.C. more differentiated and better tools were being made in Europe and the Near East. The earlier technique had been to shape a stone tool by beating it against a hammerstone or between a hammer and a stone anvil, but as more suitable stones for tool-making were found, flaking techniques were more widely used. Flint, obsidian, or fine-grained lava could be used to produce flakes by applying a stroke with a stone hammer or mallet at certain points of the surface at exactly the right angle. Experience soon taught man to strike his nodule of flint in such a way that the form of the flake detached had an accurately predetermined shape. It was also possible to produce long narrow flakes or blades for other purposes. This could be achie achieved ved by deta detachi ching ng the flakes flakes by mean means s of a wood wooden en or bone bone punc punch h struck struck by the the malle mallett or hammerstone. hammerstone. Thus a blade could be shaped into a tool with the two edges sliced down obliquely at one end, forming a narrow chisel edge. This tool is called a burin, of which over twenty types were used by the early nomadic food-gatherers. All these tools, whether hand axes, chopping tools, blades, or burins, could be retouched by secondary flaking and by pressure-flaking (splitting off small flakes along the cutting edge to make it more even) to produce a wide range of special tools for each technical operation such as chopping, cutting, adzing, sawing, scraping, etc. We must remember, however, that man did not use stone tools only. Unfortunately, remains of the less durable materials such as wood, bone, and ivory have disappeared. Only under exceptional circumstances, such as arise in the salt mines of Carinthia (Austria) or in swamps, do we find such perishable objects as wooden shovels and composite tools consisting of flint pieces with handles, suchas sickles. Nevertheless, the few objects found in prehistoric camps and settlements prove that bone tools were in fact used. Splinters could be separated from bones to serve as needles and awls. Wood could be worked by using flint scrapers for chisels, so as to produce dug-out canoes (6500 B.C.) and even, by the end of the Stone Age, to produce primitive tenon (projection cut at the end of piece of material) and mortise (hole cut in second piece to receive projection on first) joints for wooden objects. Antlers were used as picks in the mining of flint by that time. Bone or wooden handles held small flint blades; spears and arrows had hafted heads made of various materials. Hence at the beginning of the New Stone Age (also known as the Neolithic Age, and lasting from about 8000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.) men already utilized a considerable considerable arsenal of specialized specialized tools and weapons. Though our knowledge of these is based on the relatively few examples which have survived, we often have remains of the finished products made with their aid.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MINING

Good flaking stones that could be used for tools and weapons were not too common. Sometimes they were found along the shore where chalk outcroppings outcroppings had been worn away by the waves and previously embedded nodules of flint had been washed onto the beaches. Flint nodules could also be found inland





Many Many of these these Stone Stone Age Age flint flint mine mines s have have been been discov discovere ered, d, and and some some have have even even yield yielded ed skeletons of miners---with their tools---surprised by the crumbling of their" pipes" or shafts. From these remains we get the impression that originally the tribesmen must have made seasonal excursions to such sites to obtain the flint they needed. Only gradually, by the dawn of the Bronze Age (about 2500 B.C.), did flint mining become a separate profession, with miners living on the spot year round and probably fashioning fashioning flint tools to be traded by itinerant hawkers. The same must have happened happened in the case of the harder, non-flaking stones like diorite and lava which, from Neolithic times onwards, were shaped by grinding and polishing into completely new forms. Another early product to be mined, apart from the ochres and other colored earths used as pigments for decoration purposes, was salt. This ingredient became very important as man's changing diet---extended by the art of cooking---provided him with more carbohydrates and as the percentage of raw food and meat went down. The diminishing percentage of foodstuffs with a natural salt content had to be supplemented by the addition of other salt. This was sometimes found as deposits of evaporated saltspray along the coasts, but it was usually obtained obtained by the evaporation evaporation of saline waters from such springs as those those of the the Halle Halle region region (Central (Central Europ Europe), e), or the the minin mining g of rock-s rock-salt alt strata, strata, to be found found fairly fairly frequently in the deserts of the Near East and the eastern Alps and Carpathians.

TECHNOLOGY AND ASPECTS OF EARLY SOCIETY

All these products---flint, hard stone for tools, and salt (usually traded in the form of "bricks"), together with the semi-precious stones which the prehistoric tribesmen admired, as well as sea-shells from the East---constituted East---constituted the objects of trade over relatively long distances. We can still trace these trade routes through the river valleys and over mountain passes from the mines to other settlements and even to the coast by the discovery of the treasure and merchandise of peddlers who, when threatened by danger, buried their possessions and often never recovered them. 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 directed toward their their foragin foraging, g, hunting hunting,, and fishing; fishing; these these tools tools have have been been classifie classified d as "crushers "crushers," ," "piercers," and "entanglers." Included among these were the spear and spear-thrower, the simple and composite bow (typical of the hunter of herds), the arrowhead and harpoon, the blow-gun, lasso and bolas, and fish hooks and traps, such as are still used by primitive tribes in Africa and South America. 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. Perhaps also the aesthetic element---the instinct to adorn or beautify---lies deep within man. Using natural pigments crushed in a mortar with pestle (and mixed with animal fats or water in most cases), primitive man painted with his finger tips, brushes, or dry-point crayons. He engraved tools and weapons on the walls of his caves with incised lines or pecking. He also sculpted. Rock or mud were modeled in the round or in relief, and he used ivory, antler, and stone as well. Still, in these early





THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS Man gradu gradual ally ly tame tamed d such such anim animals als as roame roamed d abou aboutt his his settle settleme ments nts or camp camps s and and which which sometimes sometimes may have been scavenging. scavenging. By Magdalenian 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, the horse and the onager (wild ass) being tamed toward the end of that period. From the remains of such tamed animals we may conclude that most domestic animals of Neolithic date had already lost some of the physical characteristics of their wild ancestors and showed distinct traces of domestication. Neolithic and Bronze Age man tamed such animals intentionally. The oldest Egyptian wall-pai wall-paintin ntings gs show show that even even antelop antelopes es and gazelle gazelles s were domesti domesticate cated, d, possibly possibly for econom economic ic purposes, as their skins and the leather prepared from them were much prized. The last phase of domestication domestication was characterized characterized by the dominance of such economic purpose. Animals were bred because of their meat, hides, or milk, and man gradually acquired sufficient biological biological experience to be able to produce more "specialized" animals, the products of which were refined by various techniques. techniques. During the Neolithic Age (c.700 B.C.) we find more and more types of sheep, goats, and cattle bred to suit man's needs. At the same time, the deforestation 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. condiments. In most cases it is impossible impossible to determine where or when such cultivated foodstuffs were first discovered and used. In the case of cereals, however, it is fairly certain that they originated from the cultivation and cross-breeding or wild grasses growing in Syria and the highlands to the North, that is, in the Fertile Crescent running from the Egyptian border along the Arabian desert to the delta of the Euphrates and the Tigris. From 8000 B.C. onwards, the Fertile Crescent played its role as the center of agriculture, whence the knowledge of growing such improved foodstuffs spread to the Mediterranean region and Western Europe. Although most of the cereal grains developed first in the Near East, Europe gave the world two new cereals, oats and rye, which became important important crops in Roman times. Rice did not come west from the Orient until about 1000 B.C. 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. Yet, in these early agricultural settlements there were still few traces of technological specialization; specialization; every man had to be a jack-of-all-trades, and every homestead was virtually self-sufficient. Only in a few mining centers do we find signs of craftsmen at work trading their products through peddlers. Agriculture stimulated stimulated technology in various ways. New tools were needed: the hoe, plow, harrow







After the birth of agriculture, prehistoric man was faced with the problem of detaching the grains from the dried heads of the wild grasses he cultivated and improved. He solved this problem by beating sheaves of grain against the compacted mud floor or by spreading it out on the floor and beating it with sticks. Sometimes he had the animals which he had domesticated tread on the grain; sometimes he used the crushing effect of a threshing sledge, studded with flint or iron nails, on the grain spread out over the threshing floor. Much later, even the Romans, with their large farms aiming at mass production of wheat and other cereals, did not possess the flail. It was not until the fourth century in Gaul that the ingenious combination of two hinged sticks produced the flail; yet the technical elements and the need for an effective threshing device had already existed for millennia.

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. The earliest Europea European n houses houses were tent-lik tent-like e construc construction tions, s, often often little little more than roofed-o roofed-over ver pits and hollows hollows.. Gradually pole or frame constructions were developed, which led to more solid constructions made of planks, turf, mud, and adobe. The advent of metal tools in the Bronze Age made possible the building of log houses in the forest regions; while in the south the types of houses with a roofed front porch and a room with a central fireplace prevailed. Long houses and religious buildings of various forms were also erected, involving a more developed wood-work technology. In the Near East the earliest farming villages consisted of sapling-supported mud huts, later with wattle (woven branches or twigs) wall smeared with daub (mud). Building construction depended on the local materials available. Reed huts were constructed in the lower river valleys, wooden houses where timber was available. In Jarmo by 6500 B.C. compacted mud-walls were used and at Jericho we find mud-bricks.

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, fulltime time crafts craftsme men n trade traded d the articl articles es which which they they had had produ produce ced d for for the the food food they they need needed ed.. This This was was particularly true after the urban centers began to move toward the river valleys, which were being drained





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. From 7000 B.C. onward, sledges were in use for heavy loads such as the stones used for later later prehisto prehistoric ric (Neolith (Neolithic, ic, the Late Late Stone Stone Age, Age, period period monume monuments. nts. The great great megalith megalithic ic monument at Stonehenge, in England, shows the great feats of land and water transport possible even with the most primitive means; its four-ton stones were carried over land and sea from quarries 150 miles away, its thirty-ton stones were carried some 25 miles by sledge. For a long time archaeologists archaeologists have reasoned that such heavy stones must have been moved on sledges placed on rollers and that the idea of the wheel probably derived from these rollers. It is doubtful, however, if wheels evolved from rollers, and we still do not know where, when, and how the wheel was invented. On early tablets found at Uruk in Mesopotamia (3500 B.C.) we see pictures of sledges on four wheels; a set of solid wheels with their axle were carved from a tree trunk, and the sledge was attached to two such units. True wheeled vehicles, with the wheel rotating about the axle instead of being solidly affixed to it, are not found until the days of the Sumerian royal tombs (after 3000 B.C.)

MAN AT THE DAWN OF HISTORY

Starting as one of the members of the pirmate group, man possessed 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





in teaching pupils how to read and write. The craftsmen used them to set down their experience and to formulate the recipes and instructions they were gradually producing for technology, new terms being formed and read with ease as necessity decidated. Cuneiform writing consisted of wedge-shaped marks incised on wet clay, a material in which the Tigris-Euphrates Valley abounded. When dried in the sun or baked in a fire, the clay tablets hardened, and a permanent record was left. Almost at the same time the Nile Valley also witnessed the beginnings of writing by brush dipped in ink or dye on papyrus formed by pressing and drying pithy reeds growing near the Nile delta. With the beginni beginning ng of the written written record--record---itse itself lf a triumph triumph of technolo technology--gy---we we pass pass from prehistorical to historical times. But in prehistory technology technology had already provided mankind with the bases of civilization: settled communities made possible through agricultural advance, a wide variety of tools, domesticated animals, means of transportation such as the wheel and sail, and the beginnings of some division of labor. Contemporaneous with the invention of writing was to be the beginning of metallurgy and the accompanying change from the Stone Ages of man to the Copper Age and the Bronze Age in the third millennium B.C. 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 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.

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1.1.B-technology and Society in the Stone Age

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