The Early History of Humans

The following is the full text of Nikolai's history report:

When homo sapiens came around at about 300k BC, we started out as hunter-gathers.

Hunter-gathers basically either hunted for animals or picked berries and fruits. These hunter-gatherers used stone tools marking the start of the paleolithic and neolithic periods. Paleolithic comes from Greek, meaning old stone age. During this period they took a stone and shaped it a little and then put it on a stick and used it for whatever the purpose was for, such as as a spear.

Humans started growing their own food between about 12,000 and 10,000 BC. This marked the beginning of agriculture. Agriculture allowed the population to skyrocket! Scientists say that if everybody on the earth was a hunter-gatherer, then the earth could only support about 10,000,000 people, but farming allows us to grow more food in less space supporting a larger population. Growing food also allowed us to have a surplus of food.

A surplus of food means more food than needed is created meaning that non-farmers could now have food allowing those non-farmers to have specialized jobs. Personally, I think farmers are just underrated because they are the most important people. If no one was a farmer then almost the whole world would die. In historical times, like ancient Egypt, farmers were made to do free labor, but if those farmers weren’t farmers those pharaohs would be dead or have to be farmers themselves. No farmers also means no specialized jobs. No specialized jobs means no doctors and more people die and less people get healed. Because of these farmers we have clothes and food and literally everything we have today.

Farming allowed the first cities to develop in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is a region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq. Some early civilizations developed near rivers because it provided easy access to water and when the river flooded it would make rich fertile soil that was good for farming. The only problem with living between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was that the flooding was near impossible to predict, making it harder for the people who lived in this region. For most of its history, Mesopotamia was split into many city-states instead of being unified into one nation. So it made it easy to have disputes among the city-states causing wars.

Another civilization, Egypt, developed around the Nile river. The Nile river flows from south to north and there are winds that blow from north to south. This made it really easy for the Egyptians to transport goods from one place to another. It also had very predictable seasonal flooding which made it easier to utilize the water for drinking and irrigation while also being less dangerous to people than the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The flooding also produced fertile soil for farming. Since Egypt grew in a pretty straight line it made it easier for it to unify into one country with pharaohs, scribes, messengers, and farmers of course. The pharaohs were the kings and queens and there have been around 300 pharaohs. In Egyptian culture they say that the pharaoh is supposed to take care of the ma’at. Ma’at is a goddess in their culture and it is said that her name means justice, morality, law, truth and balance. The pharaoh was meant to maintain this balance. They believed that when a pharaoh died they would become a god or goddess. So when a pharaoh died they would wrap them in 140 yards of linen and then let them dry for like I think 40 days, turning them into a mummy. After that, they put them in the pyramid. I guess I should talk about the pyramids. The pyramids were made to put the mummified bodies of the pharaohs and other high officials in so they could prepare for the afterlife.

While all this was happening in Egypt and Mesopotamia, over here in China a few thousand years ago around 7,000 BC they started agriculture. Agriculture is farming. Here in China the first things they grew were rice (rice and seaweed is my 2nd favorite food) and millet. But the earliest thing we would call a civilization is when the Xia Dynasty started at about 2070 BC (and I only have it memorized because I had to memorize the dynasties and the date they started at after 1.5 hr of torture to earn 30 extra min of iPad time). Around 1200 BC they made the longest-lasting writing system in the world. Chinese, yes Chinese, has existed for over 3,000 years. When it was first made, Chinese people would carve their messages into bone and give it to one another. It was basically the hardest paper on earth.

The earliest writing system that we know of was cuneiform which started at around 3400 to 3200 BC. It was used for keeping track of things like who owes what to who and how much did so-and-so pay for some item and stuff like that.

One of the most complete collections of early laws was the Stele of Hammurabi from ancient Babylon. It dates back to about 1750 BC. It's a big stone pillar that’s about 10 ft. tall and it has written records of those laws. They were not the first laws, but are a very complete example of early laws.

In conclusion, I think that life back then was actually harder than it is today. I think that farmers are the most important people. When civilizations get more complicated there needs to be many systems such as government, writing and other things to help the civilization stay together. But there’s no one correct way to survive the challenges we face!