'Prehistoric' History

I was wondering something about history. We know that history is so important because we tend to repeat it. Sometimes the repetition is intentional but we usually repeat history without realizing it.

But what exactly is the definition of history? It is usually defined as events that are past. But we usually only define as history events that have some documentation. In other words, history began with the development of writing. This is what "prehistoric" means. Events involving humans that occurred before the development of writing.

Human civilization, which includes the development of writing, only began to take form after the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago, and required thousands of years from there. Humans had been on earth for a very long time before that.

Prehistoric humans were mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers. Civilization required fixed settlements and that required learning to grow crops from seeds. Other essentials of civilization are learning to measure time, learning to control fire for warmth and cooking and to keep wild animals away, and learning how to record things by counting and writing. 

But humans have been "civilized" and "historic" for maybe one percent of the total time that they have been on earth. We know that our history is always with us, but why should it be limited to just that relatively recent history that has been recorded in writing? Shouldn't some of our ninety-nine percent of prehistory still be with us?

Civilization did not come easily to humans, and it wasn't "preferred" over nomadic hunting and gathering. Humans are dependent on water but civilization began in places where it is dry. Arid land, with a major river flowing through it, was where civilization began because that forced people to cooperate. Early civilizations began in the dry lands near the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus and, Yellow Rivers. Civilization didn't begin in places with abundant water because the nomadic hunter-gatherers didn't have the same need to cooperate.

A dry climate would also foster the development of writing. People probably preferred meat or fish for food. But in places where there was an abundance of water, the diet could readily be completed with plants whenever the hunting or fishing was less-than-successful. This made it less necessary to keep track of things by writing. But that was not the case in a dry climate, where there might be scarcity. 

What this means is that civilization wasn't necessarily a "preferred" state over nomadic hunting and gathering. It was something that humans in dry areas were forced into for survival. This is all the more reason why the ninety-nine percent of our history that is prehistoric should still be with us.

Why is there so much crime? Crime is defined as a breaking of the law. But codes of law have only been around for about five thousand years. That is a very brief time relative to the amount of time that humans have been on earth. Unsophisticated hunter-gatherers simply didn't have the same concept of individual possession that we do today. Living by codes of law hasn't entirely "caught on" with humans yet. We obey the laws only as well as we do because of the prospect of going to prison if we don't. Our prehistoric nature is still with us.

Everyone has their own nation when they are born. So why is there so much moving from one country to another? Why doesn't everyone just stay with their own country? Because prehistoric people had a long history of being nomadic, and that history is still with us. Even today the internet era has brought about a new global trend of being a "digital nomad".

Humans definitely originated in Africa, in what is now Ethiopia. The "Out of Africa" Theory, that the prehistoric ancestors of non-black people gradually migrated from Africa. They lost the melanin in their skin because it was no longer necessary to protect from sunburn. What is so interesting is that black people today tend to move from where it's warm to where it's cold while white people tend to move from where it's cold to where it's warm. Maybe we all have subconscious mixed feelings about what our prehistoric ancestors did, with black people trying to make up for their prehistoric ancestors not leaving Africa and white people trying to make up for their prehistoric ancestors having left Africa.

THE FWFW THEORY 

My theory of the beginning of civilization is the FWFW Theory. It stands for Farming, Water, Fire and, Writing. Those are the four basic elements of civilization and they appeared in that order.

The beginning of the process of civilization is when humans notice that, if they drop the seeds of a plant on the ground and come back later, copies of the original plant will have grown on the spot. This is revolutionary because now people can grow their own crops in fixed settlements, instead of looking for food as nomads. This is Farming, and requires some ability to measure time to know when to plant the seeds.

We know that humans began in Ethiopia, in East Africa. The region had the rainfall that was necessary for early farming. The next step is Water. When they learned how crops were dependent on water, and how to irrigate crops instead of depending entirely on rainfall, then they could move into drier areas, such as the north and west of Africa.

The next step was learning to control fire. This provided not only warmth, so that people could move further north into Europe where it gets cold in the winter, but made possible the cooking of meat and the smelting of metals from their ores. 

The final step to civilization was writing. This is necessary to record things and predictably began in the Middle East where the dry climate, although there was water from the major rivers, made essentials scarce and forced people to cooperate on a larger scale.