Anthropology Final Notes Essay example

Submitted By cbarry10
Words: 6850
Pages: 28

Notes from October 3
Neolithic Revolution
5,500 year old leather shoe discovered in Armenia (5,500 BP)

Mesolithic (or middle stone age) Began is Europe, Asia and Africa about 14,000 years ago
The end of the glacial period saw physical changes in human habitats.
Sea levels rose, vegetation changed and herd animals disappeared from many areas.
This period marked a shift to hunting smaller game and gathering a broad spectrum of plants and aquatic resources.
It was a more sedentary period with increase reliance on seafood and plants.

Mesolithic Tools
Many tools were made with microliths: small, hard, shape blades of flint that could be a mass produced and hafted with others to produce implements like sickles.
Soft hammer
Pressure flaking

I. The Natufians
Mesolithic
Living in what are now Israel, Jordan

A. Natuifan Subsistence emphasized the collection of wild seeds that could be stored

B. Natufian Culture
Built circular pit houses buried their dead in communal cemeteries earliest know people to store plant foods
Burials show some evidence of social differentiation
On average sites 5 times larger than their predecessors

C. Artifacts
Grinding stones
Shell ornaments
Flint and bone tools
Microliths slottes into wooden handles to make sickles -- evidence of sheen from harvesting grasses
Ochre (ritual purposes)

II. First Irish
First humans in Ireland crossed from Scotland, around 8000BC (10,000 yeas ago)

A. Everyday life
Hunters and foragers inhabiting sea and lake shores and river banks
Homes made of animal skins
Frequently mobile
No competition for land and no evidence of warfare

B. Tools and Prey
Used flint tipped arrows and spears
Flint axes, bone needles
Hunted deer, duck and wild boar
Fishing from shore and from skin covered and dugout canoes

III. Archaic Americans
Term used to refer to Mesolithic period cultures in the Americas
Shifting to broad-spectrum hunting and gathering about 10,000 years ago

A. Technological Change
The replacement of fluted point forms by non fluted points is believed to reflect a change in the adaptive strategy, away from hunting Late Pleistocene megafauna toward a more generalized hunting of small game, such as deer.

B. Archaic Life
Family units joined into residentially stable groups that seasonally occupied base camps
In other words, they took fewer long journeys and settled down.
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Mesoamerica
8,000 years ago people moved seasonally betwen larger camps ( 15 to 30 people ) and micro camps of 2 - 5 residents.
No evidence of differentiation

Overview
15,000 years ago 100% of humans were foragers and hunters -- depending on wild sources of food
By 2,000 years ago 50 % lived by farming and herding
Today less than 0.0001% live by foraging and hunting

Sedentism
Over a 2,000 year period people became increasingly more sedentary reorganization of the workload, so some people could persue other tasks
More substantial dwelling structures villages Neolithic
The New Stone Age; a prehistoric perios beginning about 10,000 years ago in which peoples possessed stone-based technologies and depended on domesticated crops and/or

The Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic, derives its named rom polished stoned tools characteristic of this period
This period saw a transition from a foraging economy to one based on food production
Southwest Asia was one of the first regions to undergo this transition
Remains of domesticated plants and animals are known from parts of Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Iran, from well before 10,000 years ago

Domestication
An evolutionary process whereby humans can modify the genetic makeup of plants or animals, to the extent that members of the population are unable to survive and/or reproduce without human assistance A. General observations:
Contemporary food foragers have