Fred's History of the World

Fred’s Prehistory and History of the World

12/29/09

I’ll begin at the Great Leap Forward, the upper Paleolithic age, sometime near around 50,000 years ago. This is when we first see a package of modern cultural attributes, with universals of a humanity we recognize. From here we move forward at an exponential rate, compared to the 100s of 1000s of years of apparent stasis in the previous Old Stone Age or lower Paleolithic.

The changes include: evidence of abstract thinking, planning, long distance trade, innovation, symbolic behavior, burying the dead, sewing and clothing, cooking, music, games, cave painting, figurative art, jewelry, expansion into inhospitable areas, the prepared core technique of tool manufacture allowing for much more cutting edge out of the same rock, advanced fishing technology. The upshot, people became a force on the world stage.

One possible explanation for the Great Leap Forward: a mutation in the FOXP2 gene or language gene. Modern language/grammar is the vehicle for the new symbolic behavior.

By connecting languages and genes you see the spread of humanity out of the Middle East, the main staging point after initial emergence from Africa.

We arrive then at the Neolithic age, around 10,000 years ago, characterized by domestication of plants and animals, pastoral transhumance (herding), agriculture, irrigation, sedentary lifestyle, pottery, more social hierarchy, the accumulation of excess wealth, inherited inequalities of wealth, increased war and a “fortified lifestyle”.

The Neolithic agricultural changes initially took place in the Middle East, in the Fertile Crescent as well as along major rivers in China and India, and later in Mesoamerica. The “Neolithic package”: farming, herding, polished stone axes, timber long houses, pottery, spread into Europe, along with the first signs of deforestation to make room for agriculture and pasture.

Critical domesticates and dates: wheat/ 9800 BC, barley/ 8500 BC, millet, spelt, rice/ 6800 BC, dogs/ 15,000 BC, goats/ 10,000 BC, sheep/ 9-11,000 BC, pigs/ 9000 BC, cattle/ 8000 BC, cat/ 7500 BC, chicken/ 6000 BC, horse/ 5,500 BC, donkey/ 5000 BC, camel/ 4000 BC, honey bee/ 4000 BC.

From this package we get early civilization: Mesopotamia/ Sumeria, the Levant, Egypt etc. Things meld into the Bronze Age, the advent of metallurgy, accounting and early writing (the beginning of history, a period of about 5000 years), increasing trade, more social stratification, supernatural cosmology, religious and priestly control of the masses.

The Mediterranean is an optimal proving ground for trade, exploration and navigation technology, ideas and inventions are spread and with the Classical Greeks, the center of civilized power starts to shift towards Europe. The Middle East becomes gradually desertified.

With the Classical Greeks there is the birth of scientific methods, first recorded exercises of rational capacity, the first assertions of individual prominence intellectually, ideas of socio-economic utopia in Plato’s Republic and the antecedents of later religious thought. The Romans conquered the Greeks and spread through Europe, expand the same as other empires and with their fall begins the Middle Ages and a great stasis which ends with the Renaissance, art, culture, science and the rediscovery of the Classical Greeks. Out of the Renaissance, ideas and a shared humanism grows. The printing press and moveable type facilitated the sharing of ideas, facilitated individual reading of the Bible and other religious texts.

Sailing and navigational technology reaches a level where the New World is discovered, the Columbian Exchange opens up: slaves, potatoes, corn, pepper, tobacco etc. Tremendous wealth is created. Europe has a huge infusion of capital. Investment grows:  stock companies, banks, economic power is concentrated; states compete for new territory. States and laws co-evolve with discoveries/ technology/ conquests/ information/ development of an entrepreneurial class: to preserve power, individual/ civil rights, freedom of religion, property rights etc., freedom is an issue economically as the bourgeoisie take over from monarchy, clergy and aristocracy. 

Structurally all this space opens up in the New World as a result of advances in transportation technology: sail, navigation, steam, rail, (Similarly with the Interstate highway act, a structural opening provides space for people to move into.) With the Protestant Reformation/ corruption of Catholic Church, people come to need space and territory to exercise their new religious beliefs. State religion continues to be bogie man constraining freedom of belief. Freedom becomes an issue in  terms of social justice, ironically native’s freedom is sacrificed for conquerors freedom.

The growing package of modernity gets more complicated, synergy develops with systemic components, emergent properties come out. Secular institutions arise, civics get decoupled from religion. The Enlightenment brings rational thought to the fore, notions of rights, natural law, Deism.

Science and technology arise. The Industrial Revolution brings a critical mass of knowledge and technology: mechanization, mass production. Means of production shift, labor relations change, increasing concentration of wealth, society is no longer entirely agrarian. Populations move to urban areas as industrial agriculture displaces family farms.

Western medicine diverges from eastern based on concept of atomism and the scientific method, versus concepts of monism, that all is one.

Interstate highway systems, automobile, airplane, (rockets/ satellites) shrinks the globe even more. Petroleum becomes main fuel over coal. Second Industrial Revolution based on electricity and chemicals. As globe shrinks, increasing mass phenomena: mass communication, mass transit, mass movements, mass war. Radio, TV, internet: ability to manipulate opinion. Entertainment as a commodity.

The human race achieves a mastery of the world, yet with no wisdom: nuclear arms race, genetic modification, pollution, over fishing, global warming, deforestation, desertification. We get life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in spades, fat, diseases of success. Modern allopathic medicine (germ theory, microscope)/ pharmaceutical industry/ insurance/ hospitals achieve a strangle hold on health delivery. Genetics comes to threshold of manipulating life itself/ translife/ clones: way beyond hybrids.

Ideologies, civilizations and justifications come and go, power and control remain basic, advances in weapons technology, war, hegemony by force. The top dogs position rests on exploitation and greed, immoral practices. Tendency to concentrate wealth continues at higher levels.

People are maximizers. Maximizing as cause of war, extinction, destruction. There is no self-correction other than bottoming out, similar to predator/ prey equilibriums, other than that we are taking the whole planet down with us.

Nations are isomorphic with individuals. Nobody will move unless prior conditions are met, tendency to stalemate/ checkmate, childish, but the upshot is: USA, China, India, Russia, cannot cooperate because all feel the other will take advantage or come out on top. It is basically selfish behavior, nothing new in human behavior even though the material world has changed so much. The cooperation needed doesn’t happen between out groups. Negotiating is predicated on winning, not the best outcome for all. It’s hard to get to universal level from partisan/ parochial.

I have to ask myself, am I telling the story of the USA and Western Civilization or of humanity as a whole? Up to say 1500 years ago, Europe was a tribal backwater. All the action was in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, right where people came out of Africa and set up camp like 50,000 years ago, so this is not just white guys I’m talking about. And if you look at the global effects of the rise of Europe and the USA, they pretty much became the determining factor in a lot of nations. In any empire, the vassals will be flavored by the conquerors. The colonies, the Third World, the non-centers of civilization got taken along for the ride, like it or not.

Sure you can tell history from the losers view, from a feminist view etc; that’s OK, just not my interest at this time. Third World perspectives accuse Western academics of being “Orientalist”, of transposing their own understandings. 

-Conflict of ideas/ culture/ ethnicity are at the root of all trouble. People cannot accept multiple truths, multiple cultural versions. Protestants from the Radical Reformation were not accepted in Europe yet they come somewhere new and they don’t accept the natives. Third World guys complaining about Western injustice mistreat their own women. Mexican academics hate the USA while ignoring their own country’s exploitation of natives. At bottom perhaps it is just the need for resources to exist and ideas only serve that primary necessity…?

People who have gotten the upper hand in history have not hesitated to use it, that’s nature. Talk what you want about morals it is still down to survival and ensuring the means of survival.

Sure I am dealing with big generalities, but an appeal to detail does not disprove or negate a large view. What is the point of introducing contradictory details, to say that no general sweeps exist? Sure we all line up our evidence in a partial way: the goal is to make statements that more or less hold up; then you have an argument.

I’ve looked at a bunch of different historical methods and filters: exceptionalism, determinisms, historicism, Marxism, sociobiology (in-group/ out-group dynamics), idea/ culture-based/ Max Weber, and I come to that fusion is good. I admire and respect fusion in music and art. Fusion produced jazz, blues, rock, the Messiah; it’s good. I see no need for purity of method or filters; that is needlessly limiting. You need a wide net to catch as much as possible, otherwise how can you deal with such large topics?

What are some of the constraining factors of history?

-climate: Holocene warm period 11,600 ya, el Nino, Atlantic oscillation,

-geography: east-west or north-south axis, rainfall, soil, ores, forests, fish, water, location for ports/ Atlantic nations of Europe at forefront of discovery and colonization, creation of world economy, Dutch as first modern economy/ democracy

-biology: potential domesticates,

-population: growth necessitates migration/ extinctions/ displacement/ war/ empires,

-social stratification/ hierarchy/ class: issues of power and control, concentration of wealth allows for Wizard of Oz Effect, the masses get bamboozled by the Masters of the Universe, shell games of double talk lay people can’t decipher