Where to begin
The great challenge of teaching a course in World History, or writing a textbook for it, is deciding where to start. History depends upon written records, and by the time those start being made a lot of things have already happened. In effect, we always wind up starting in media res, with people telling what came before in flashbacks. Of course, without records, we have to be careful. Speculation and crank theories can lead one astray. But there are some pretty solid things we know from archaeology and other fields that can help us put together the human story.
If I were writing the story, then, I would begin with the Peopling of the Earth. As humanity moved out of Africa and spread across the lands, they were already “modern.” The nucleus of many of our institutions and achievements are already in evidence. Stone Age people had technology. They made art and practiced religion. Their social structures – marriage, family and kinship, tribal membership and leadership – were already functioning. All of these have been passed down to us, through every intervening civilization.
At the end of the Stone Age comes the domestication of plants and animals. People began to settle down, giving rise to towns and new religious ideas. Trade between settled peoples develops into far-flung networks. Then comes the discovery of metalworking, giving us the Bronze Age. Kingdoms and empires begin to rise. Finally, writing is developed and written records are kept, giving us the chance to read what people of the past were thinking and doing. And so, we pass out of Prehistory into History proper.
Speculations about the State of Nature underlie much of our thinking about the nature of humanity and society. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Emile Rousseau, Karl Marx all begin with certain assumptions about what primitive people were about. They were not the first to do this; this is also part of Plato’s stock in trade, not to mention the Old Testament. But we have honed the investigative techniques needed to actually learn what people were like in pre-literate societies. While we still speculate, at least a bit, we know so much more than we once did.
If I were writing the story, then, I would begin with the Peopling of the Earth. As humanity moved out of Africa and spread across the lands, they were already “modern.” The nucleus of many of our institutions and achievements are already in evidence. Stone Age people had technology. They made art and practiced religion. Their social structures – marriage, family and kinship, tribal membership and leadership – were already functioning. All of these have been passed down to us, through every intervening civilization.
At the end of the Stone Age comes the domestication of plants and animals. People began to settle down, giving rise to towns and new religious ideas. Trade between settled peoples develops into far-flung networks. Then comes the discovery of metalworking, giving us the Bronze Age. Kingdoms and empires begin to rise. Finally, writing is developed and written records are kept, giving us the chance to read what people of the past were thinking and doing. And so, we pass out of Prehistory into History proper.
Speculations about the State of Nature underlie much of our thinking about the nature of humanity and society. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Emile Rousseau, Karl Marx all begin with certain assumptions about what primitive people were about. They were not the first to do this; this is also part of Plato’s stock in trade, not to mention the Old Testament. But we have honed the investigative techniques needed to actually learn what people were like in pre-literate societies. While we still speculate, at least a bit, we know so much more than we once did.