Paleolithic and Neolithic civilizations of Europe - Essay Example

Paleolithic and Neolithic Civilizations of Europe Life is known to exist on earth for more than 40 million years. But, the evolution of Man from hisape ancestors has been more recent. This species of primitive man was called the 'Homo Erectus.' Homo-Erectus not only walked straight on his two legs. Other than Homo-Erectus, the 'Neanderthals' have also been found to inhabit what is today modern Europe. But both these species gave way to the new modern man 'Homo-Sapiens'. Pre-historic settlements have been found in France, and some settlements of very early periods hold evidence of even surgeries preformed.

(See table 1) Primitive man gradually started learning the use of tools to aid his hunting and food gathering expeditions. This time-period is roughly estimated to have been from around 750,000 years ago, till about 15,000 years ago. This is called the Paleolithic age. It means the 'Old Stone Age'. The evolution of primitive man to his present, modern self can be classified roughly into three periods, Paleolithic, Mesolithic (The middle stone age), and Neolithic or the 'New Stone Age'. During the Mesolithic period, not much of advancement took place and the use of stone weapons remained fairly static.

Consequently during the Neolithic period which is roughly from 10,000 years ago to 3500 years ago man mastered the art of carving tools out of stones. Fire was discovered accidentally, during the Paleolithic age. Man had not fully understood fire, though he found it fascinating and useful to protect himself against animals. Simple tools like a pebble-stone, or flint-stones used as choppers, hand-axe, and cleaver with a wide chisel edge etc, were used. The flint-stone was especially used because it was quite hard and chipped of easily.

It was also used to produce fire, by rubbing one piece against another. (picture sent to u as a attached file) Comparatively, the Neolithic man, had already mastered the use of tools and produced more and more light-weight and sophisticated tools like the crescent-shaped blade, the scraper the small sharp arrow-head etc. This was especially used to kill animals in swift motion. While the environment was still frightening for the Paleolithic man, with the ice age just having thawed, there was an increase in water levels because of the melting ice caps.

Huge animals like the Saber-toothed lion and mammoths still roamed the face of the earth. Man did not understand the occurrence of lightening and thunder, and lived in fear. Living in large groups in caves or tree-top shelters, he was mainly dependent on the vagaries of nature for sustenance. Clothing was restricted to bare animal skins and big tree barks and leaves. The survival of his species depended on the spoils of his hunter/gatherer skills. Though there seems to have been the earliest form of cultural thinking and rudimentary art, his still nomadic existence hardly left him with the time or mind to pursue it.

In contrast, the Neolithic man, the climatic changes made bigger animals like the mammoths extinct and the herds for his hunt were becoming lesser and lesser. His mastery over tool-making helped develop more efficient earth digging tools with wood and stones, and slowly he learnt that cultivation of food-crops, like wheat and barley, was possible. He also learned to tame animals probably dogs were the first, with wild goats and sheep for milk and wool, followed. His dependency on hunting lessened.

He learnt to cook his food with fire. Though his dependency on stones for tools was still great, he started making use of clay and wood to make tools and storage containers like pots and vessels, to store food for future, which became possible now because of agriculture. Clothes were not a problem any more, since he got them from the animals he had tamed. The most significant difference between the Neolithic man and his predecessor was the change from a nomadic existence to a settled existence, near water sheds in order to facilitate his agricultural and animal husbandry refinements.

Ancient settlements near Euphrates, Nile etc. testify this. Since he no longer lived in fear of wild animals, and nature; learnt the comparatively safe use of fire for lighting and cooking, as well as protection; he found time for other refined, cultural pursuits like philosophical thinking, art in the form of drawing and imitation of life, religion etc. Moreover, the Neolithic period attained its flowering within a short span of about a few thousand years, and led to further discoveries like the use of metals and the wheel, as against the relatively long years (50,000 years or more) of the Paleolithic age, which led to a more static Mesolithic age.

Since it was in the Neolithic period that his mastery of weapons and fire helped him cultivate and cook his own food, anchored him to one place, and brought about a sea change in his nomadic life-style, made him build houses and paved the way for religious and cultural progress - thereby sowing the seeds of a civilized life, it is indeed valid to speak of the Neolithic age as a revolutionary period. Table 1 Neolithic Surgery Volume 50 Number 5, September/October 1997 by Amlie A.

Walker Earliest trepanned skull found. (Courtesy Kurt W. Alt) [LARGERIMAGE] A 7,000-year-old burial at Ensisheim, in the French region of Alsace, has yielded the earliest unequivocal evidence for trepanation, according to Kurt W. Alt of Freiburg University and his colleagues. Trepanation is a surgical operation that involves the removal of a rectangle or disk of bone from the cranial vault. Most previous claims to cases predating the Late Neolithic age have been shown to be untreated head injuries or the results of decomposition.

In trepanation the section of bone may be extracted with flint or metal blades by drilling a series of small holes, making intersecting incisions, or scraping through the bone. Why the Ensisheim individual was operated on is unknown, but in African communities that practice trepanation today, including the Kissii of western Kenya, there are two traditional motives: therapeutic (to relieve pressure due to skull fractures) and magical-spiritual (to cure headaches, epilepsy, intracranial tumors, and mental illness).

On the Ensisheim skull, there are no indications of trauma or disease that might have prompted the trepanations. The burial contains the well-preserved skeleton of a man who died at roughly 50 years of age, as well as an arrowhead and an adze typologically dated to 5100-4900 B.C., a date corroborated by a radiocarbon sample from the bone. Two trepanations had been carried out. One toward the front, measuring 2.6 by 2.4 inches, had healed completely. The second had only partially healed, probably because of its enormous size (3.7 by 3.6 inches).

The larger trepanation appears to have been produced by intersecting incisions, and the smaller one may have been made in the same way. The long-term healing evident from the bone indicates the operations were successful. 1997 by the Archaeological Institute of America www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/trepanation.html