1.
Aurignacian
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The Aurignacian culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic. It is the earliest modern human culture in Europe, and is associated with the immigration of anatomically modern humans from the Near East and it first appeared in Eastern Europe around 43,000 BP, and in Western Europe between 40,000 and 36,000 years BP. It was replaced by the Gravettian culture around 28,000 to 26,000 years ago, the name originates from the type site of Aurignac, Haute-Garonne, which is a town in the south-west of France near Toulouse or Andorra. The oldest undisputed example of figurative art, the Venus of Hohle Fels. It was discovered in September 2008 in a cave at Schelklingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, the Bacho Kiro site is one of the earliest known Aurignacian burials. The Aurignacian tool industry is characterized by worked bone or antler points with grooves cut in the bottom. Their flint tools include blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores rather than using crude flakes. )The people of this culture also produced some of the earliest known cave art, such as the animal engravings at Trois Freres. They also made pendants, bracelets, and ivory beads, as well as three-dimensional figurines, perforated rods, thought to be spear throwers or shaft wrenches, also are found at their sites. The sophistication and self-awareness demonstrated in the work led archaeologists to consider the makers of Aurignacian artifacts the first modern humans in Europe, human remains and Late Aurignacian artifacts found in juxtaposition support this inference. Although finds of human remains in direct association with Proto-Aurignacian technologies are scarce in Europe. At least three robust, but typically anatomically-modern individuals from the Peștera cu Oase cave in Romania, were dated directly from the bones to ca, although not associated directly with archaeological material, these finds are within the chronological and geographical range of the Early Aurignacian in southeastern Europe. On genetic evidence it has argued that both Aurignacian and the Dabba culture of North Africa came from an earlier big game hunting Aurignacian culture of the Levant. Many 35, 000-year-old animal figurines were discovered in the Vogelherd Cave in Germany, one of the horses, amongst six tiny mammoth and horse ivory figures found previously at Vogelherd, was sculpted as skillfully as any piece found throughout the Upper Paleolithic. The production of ivory beads for body ornamentation was also important during the Aurignacian, there is a notable absence of painted caves, however, which begin to appear within the Solutrean. Typical statuettes consist of women that are called Venus figurines and they emphasize the hips, breasts, and other body parts associated with fertility. Feet and arms are lacking or minimized, one of the most ancient figurines was discovered in 2008 in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany. The figurine has been dated to 35,000 years ago, the oldest undisputed musical instrument was the Hohle Fels Flute discovered in the Hohle Fels cave in Germanys Swabian Alb in 2008. The flute is made from a wing bone perforated with five finger holes
2.
Blade (archaeology)
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In archaeology a blade is a type of stone tool created by striking a long narrow flake from a stone core. This process of reducing the stone and producing the blades is called lithic reduction, archaeologists use this process of flintknapping to analyze blades and observe their technological uses for historical peoples. Blades are defined as being flakes that are at least twice as long as they are wide and it is important to note that blade cores appear and are different from regular flaking cores, as each cores conchoidal nature is suited for different types of flaking. Blades are created using stones that have a structure and easily be fractured into a smooth piece without fracturing. Blades became the technology of the Upper Palaeolithic era, although they are occasionally found in earlier periods. Different techniques are required for blade creation, a soft punch or hammerstone is necessary for creating a blade. The long sharp edges of blades made them useful for a variety of purposes, after blades are flaked, they are often incorporated as parts of larger tools, such as spears. Other times, the shape and sharpness serves the designed role. Blades were often employed in the process of material culture. Scrapers, used for working or woodworking, or burins. Cores from which blades have been struck are called blade cores, small examples are called microblades and were used in the Mesolithic as elements of composite tools. Blades with one edge blunted by removal of flakes are called backed blade. A blade core becomes a core when there are no more useful angles to knock off blades. Blades can be classified into different types depending on their shape. Archaeologists have also known to use the microscopic striations created from the lithic reduction process to classify the blades into specific types. Once classified archaeologists can use information to see how the blade was produced, who produced it. Blade technology, too, is able to provide researchers with understanding of the realms of the culture in question. For example, in 2002 an article was published concerning research done in Tehran which is located in central Iran, the researched focused on six late prehistoric sites which coincidentally had a large focus of blade production
3.
Racloir
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In archeology, a racloir, also known as racloirs sur talon, is a certain type of flint tool made by prehistoric peoples. It is a type of side scraper distinctive of Mousterian assemblages and it is created from a flint flake and looks like a large scraper. As well as being used for scraping hides and bark, it may also have used as a knife. Racloirs are most associated with the Neanderthal Mousterian industry and these racloirs are retouched along the ridge between the striking platform and the dorsal face. They have shaped edges and are modified by abrupt flaking from the dorsal face, barkai & Gopher, R. Reintroducing Butt Scrapers, Another Look at a Non-formal Tool Type. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
4.
Lithic flake
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In archaeology, a lithic flake is a portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure, and may also be referred to as a chip or spall, or collectively as debitage. The objective piece, or the rock being reduced by the removal of flakes, is known as a core, the energy of this blow propagates through the material, often producing a Hertzian cone of force which causes the rock to fracture in a controllable fashion. Since cores are often struck on an edge with an angle for flake propagation. The process continues as the flintknapper detaches the desired number of flakes from the core, the surface area of the core which received the blows necessary for detaching the flakes is referred to as the striking platform. Flakes may be produced by a variety of means, force may be introduced by direct percussion, indirect percussion, or by pressure. Additionally, flakes may be initiated in a Hertzian, bending, when a flake is detached from its core in a Hertzian fashion, the flake propagates in a conchoidal manner from the point of impact or pressure, usually producing a partial Hertzian cone. The cone of force often leaves a distinctive bulb of applied force on the flake, wedging initiation is the result of a strong hammer blow. At impact, concentric radii emanate from the point of percussion, but unlike conchoidal fracture, the bipolar reduction technique is typified by its use of wedge initiation. The core is placed on a surface or anvil and is struck above by a hammer. The end which received the blow or pressure is referred to as the end of the flake. On most natural cobbles or nodules of source material, a weathered outer rind called a cortex covers the inner material. Flakes are often differentiated by the amount of cortex present on their dorsal surfaces, prominent bulbs of force generally indicate that a hard hammer percussor was used to detach the flake, flakes displaying this characteristic are referred to as conchoidal flakes. Hard hammer flakes are indicative of primary reduction strategies, more moderate and diffuse bulbs may indicate the use of a soft hammer percussor—such as bone, wood, or antler—which produces the bending flakes often associated with bifacial thinning and trimming. The relative abundance of type of flake can indicate what sort of lithic work was going on at a particular spot at a particular point in time. A blade is defined as a flake with parallel or subparallel margins that is usually at least twice as long as it is wide, there are numerous specialized types of blade flakes. Channel flakes are characteristic flakes caused by the fluting of certain Paleo-Indian projectile points, prismatic blades are long, narrow specialized blades with parallel margins which may be removed from polyhedral blade cores, another common lithic feature of Paleo-Indian lithic culture. Prismatic blades are triangular in cross section with several facets or flake scars on the dorsal surface. Prismatic blades begin to appear in high frequencies during the transition between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. This lithic technology basically replaces the Levallois reduction technology
5.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
6.
Stone tool
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A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use. Stone has been used to make a variety of different tools throughout history, including arrow heads, spearpoints. Stone tools may be made of ground stone or chipped stone. Chipped stone tools are made from materials such as chert or flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator, if the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, more complex forms of reduction include the production of highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives, sickles and microliths. Archaeologists classify stone tools into industries that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics and he assigned to them relative dates, Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic,3 to the Middle Palaeolithic,4 to the Advanced and 5 to the Mesolithic. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal—that is, they did not account for all lithic technology, Mode 1, for example, was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa. Clarkes scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community, one of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology, for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest, Kenya Stone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at Lake Turkana in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, and predate the genus Homo by half million years. The oldest known Homo fossil is 2.8 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found, Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using core forms. The blunt end is the surface, the sharp, the distal. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter. The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, eventually, more complex, Mode 2 tools began to be developed through the Acheulean Industry, named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France
7.
Blade
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A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to puncture, chop, slice or scrape surfaces or materials. A blade may be made from a stone, such as flint, metal, ceramic. Blades are one of humanitys oldest tools, and continue to be used for combat, food preparation, during food preparation, knives are mainly used for slicing, chopping, and piercing. In combat, a blade may be used to slash or puncture, the function is to sever a nerve, muscle or tendon fibers, or blood vessel to disable or kill the adversary. Severing a major blood vessel typically leads to death due to exsanguination, shrapnel causes wounds via the fragments blade-like nature. Blades may be used to scrape, moving the blade sideways across a surface, a simple blade intended for cutting has two faces that meet at an edge. Ideally this edge would have no roundness but in practice all edges can be seen to be rounded to some degree under magnification either optically or with an electron microscope, force is applied to the blade, either from the handle or pressing on the back of the blade. The handle or back of the blade has a large area compared to the fine edge and this concentration of applied force onto the small edge area increases the pressure exerted by the edge. It is this pressure that allows a blade to cut through a material by breaking the bonds between the molecules/crystals/fibres/etc. in the material. This necessitates the blade being strong enough to resist breaking before the material gives way. The angle at which the meet is important as a larger angle will make for a duller blade while making the edge stronger. A stronger edge is likely to dull from fracture or from having the edge roll out of shape. The shape of the blade is also important, a thicker blade will be heavier and stronger and stiffer than a thinner one of similar design while also making it experience more drag while slicing or piercing. A splitting maul has a section to avoid getting stuck in wood where chopping axes can be flat or even concave. Similarly, pushing on a rope tends to squash the rope while drawing serrations across it sheers the rope fibres, drawing a smooth blade is less effective as the blade is parallel to the direction draw but the serrations of a serrated blade are at an angle to the fibres. Saw blade serrations, for wood and metal, are typically asymmetrical so that they cut while moving in only one direction. Fullers are longitudinal channels either forged into the blade or later machined/milled out of the blade though the process is less desirable. This loss of material necessarily weakens the blade but serves to make the lighter without sacrificing stiffness
8.
Prehistoric technology
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Prehistoric technology is technology that predates recorded history. History is the study of the past using written records, anything prior to the first written accounts of history is prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About 2.5 million years before writing was developed, technology began with the earliest hominids who used tools, which they may have used to start fires, hunt. There are several factors made the evolution of prehistoric technology possible or necessary. One of the key factors is behavioral modernity of the highly developed brain of Homo sapiens capable of reasoning, language, introspection. The advent of agriculture resulted in lifestyle changes from nomadic lifestyles to ones lived in homes, with domesticated animals, Art, architecture, music and religion evolved over the course of the prehistoric periods. The Stone Age is a prehistoric period during which stone was widely used in the manufacture of implements with a sharp edge. The period lasted roughly 2.5 million years, from the time of early hominids to Homo sapiens in the later Pleistocene era, the Stone Age lifestyle was that of hunter-gatherers who traveled to hunt game and gather wild plants, with minimal changes in technology. As the last glacial period of the current ice age neared its end, large animals like the mammoth and bison antiquus became extinct, humans adapted by maximizing the resources in local environments, gathering and eating a wider range of wild plants and hunting or catching smaller game. The agricultural life led to more settled existences and significant technological advancements, although Paleolithic cultures left no written records, the shift from nomadic life to settlement and agriculture can be inferred from a range of archaeological evidence. Such evidence includes ancient tools, cave paintings, and other prehistoric art, Human remains also provide direct evidence, both through the examination of bones, and the study of mummies. The Lower Paleolithic period was the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and it spans the time from around 2. Early human used stone tool technology, such as an axe that was similar to that used by primates. Intelligence and use of technology did not change much for millions of years, the first Homo species began with Homo habilis about 2.4 to 1.5 million years ago. Homo habilis created stone tools called Oldowan tools, Homo ergaster lived in eastern and southern Africa about 2.5 to 1. Homo antecessor the earliest hominid in Northern Europe lived from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis lived between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago and used stone tool technology similar the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus. European and Asian sites dating back 1.5 million years ago seem to indicate controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, a northern Israel site from about 690,000 to 790,000 years ago suggests that man could light fires. Homo heidelbergensis may have been the first species to bury their dead about 500,000 years ago, the Middle Paleolithic period occurred in Europe and the Near East, during which the Neanderthals lived
9.
Prehistory
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Prehistory means literally before history, from the Latin word for before, præ, and Greek ιστορία. Neighbouring civilisations were the first to follow, most other civilisations reached the end of prehistory during the Iron Age. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing is known as the protohistory of the culture. By definition, there are no records from human prehistory. Clear techniques for dating were not well-developed until the 19th century and this article is concerned with human prehistory as defined here above. There are separate articles for the history of the Earth. However, for the race as a whole, prehistory ends when recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC. For example, in Egypt it is accepted that prehistory ended around 3200 BC, whereas in New Guinea the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently. The three-age system is the periodization of prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies, Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age. The notion of prehistory began to surface during the Enlightenment in the work of antiquarians who used the word primitive to describe societies that existed before written records, the first use of the word prehistory in English, however, occurred in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836. The main source for prehistory is archaeology, but some scholars are beginning to more use of evidence from the natural and social sciences. This view has been articulated by advocates of deep history, human population geneticists and historical linguists are also providing valuable insight for these questions. Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology, restricted to material processes, remains and artifacts rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that use, such as Neanderthal or Iron Age are modern labels with definitions sometimes subject to debate. Palaeolithic means Old Stone Age, and begins with the first use of stone tools, the Paleolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age. The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Palaeolithic, evidence of control of fire by early humans during the Lower Palaeolithic Era is uncertain and has at best limited scholarly support. The most widely accepted claim is that H. erectus or H. ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP in a site at Bnot Yaakov Bridge, Israel. The use of fire enabled early humans to cook food, provide warmth, Early Homo sapiens originated some 200,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle Palaeolithic
10.
Timeline of human prehistory
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The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology, the Middle Paleolithic broadly spanned from 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. There are considerable dating differences between regions, the Middle Paleolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic subdivision which first began between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago. Activities such as catching fish and hunting large game animals with specialized tools connote increased group-wide cooperation. Both Neandertal and modern human societies took care of the members of their societies during the Middle Paleolithic. Typically, it has assumed that women gathered plants and firewood. Anthropologists such as Tim D. Cannibalism in the Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages, around 200,000 BP Middle Paleolithic Stone tool manufacturing spawned a tool-making technique known as the prepared-core technique, that was more elaborate than previous Acheulean techniques. Wallace and Shea split the core artifacts into two different types, formal cores and expedient cores, formal cores are designed to extract the maximum amount from the raw material while expedient cores are more based on function need. This method increased efficiency by permitting the creation of more controlled and this method allowed Middle Paleolithic humans correspondingly to create stone-tipped spears, which were the earliest composite tools, by hafting sharp, pointy stone flakes onto wooden shafts. The use of fire became widespread for the first time in human prehistory during the Middle Paleolithic, some scientists have hypothesized that hominids began cooking food to defrost frozen meat which would help ensure their survival in cold regions
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Outline of prehistoric technology
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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to prehistoric technology. Prehistoric technology – technology that predates recorded history, History is the study of the past using written records, it is also the record itself. Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About 2.5 million years before writing was developed, technology began with the earliest hominids who used tools, which they may have used to start fires, hunt, cut food. Prehistoric technology can be described as, Prehistoric – before we had written records, from the Latin word for before, prehistory is the span of time before recorded history, that is, before the invention of writing systems. Beginning of prehistoric technology – the earliest technology began before recorded history, latest prehistoric technology – the level of technology reached before true writing was introduced differed by region. Latest prehistoric technology in the Near East – cultures in the Near East achieved the development of writing first, latest prehistoric technology in the rest of the Old World, Europe, India, and China reached Iron Age technological development before the introduction of writing there. Stone Age – broad prehistoric period, lasting roughly 2.5 million years, during which stone was used in the manufacture of implements with a sharp edge. The period began with hominids and ended between 6000 and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking, Paleolithic – prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered, and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory. Lower Paleolithic – earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and it spans the time from around 2. Ancestors of homo sapiens used stone tools as follows, Homo habilis – first homo species and it lived from approximately 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago in Africa and created stone tools called Oldowan tools. Homo ergaster – in eastern and southern Africa about 2.5 to 1.7 million years ago, it refined Oldowan tools, Homo antecessor – earliest hominid in Northern Europe. It lived from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis – lived between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago and used stone tool technology similar to the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus. Control of fire by early humans – European and Asian sites dating back 1.5 million years ago seem to indicate controlled use of fire by H. erectus. A northern Israel site from about 690,000 to 790,000 years ago suggests that man could light fires, burial – the act of placing a deceased person into the ground. Homo heidelbergensis – may have been the first species to bury their dead about 500,000 years ago, Middle Paleolithic period – in Europe and the Near East during which the Neanderthals lived. Their technology is mainly the Mousterian, the earliest evidence of settlement in Australia dates to around 55,000 years ago when modern humans likely crossed from Asia by island-hopping. The Bhimbetka rock shelters exhibit the earliest traces of life in India
12.
Stone Age
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The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking, bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of tools in use. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands. The closest relative among the living primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia. The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks, the oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana, northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to the discovery of these Lomekwian tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on the sediments of the paleo-Awash River. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, the oldest sites containing tools are dated to 2. 6–2.55 mya. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, excavators at the locality point out that. the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers. The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of tools to the presence thereof include. The species who made the Pliocene tools remains unknown, fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus and Homo, possibly Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools. Innovation of the technique of smelting ore ended the Stone Age, the first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, each of which was smelted separately. The Chalcolithic by convention is the period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, the transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. Note the Rudna Glava mine in Serbia, Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BCE carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age, the Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post–Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE, the proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance
13.
Three-age system
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The system first appealed to British researchers working in the science of ethnology and adopted it to establish race sequences for Britains past based on cranial types. He later used artifacts and the reports published or sent to him by Danish archaeologists who were doing controlled excavations. His position as curator of the museum gave him enough visibility to become influential on Danish archaeology. A well-known and well-liked figure, he explained his system in person to visitors at the museum, in his poem, Works and Days, the ancient Greek poet Hesiod possibly between 750 and 650 BC, defined five successive Ages of Man,1. Only the Bronze Age and the Iron Age are based on the use of metal, then Zeus the father created the third generation of mortals, the age of bronze. They were terrible and strong, and the action of Ares was theirs. The weapons of these men were bronze, of bronze their houses, there was not yet any black iron. He did not continue the manufacturing metaphor, but mixed his metaphors, Iron was cheaper than bronze, so there must have been a golden and a silver age. He portrays a sequence of metallic ages, but it is a rather than a progression. Each age has less of a moral value than the preceding, of his own age he says, And I wish that I were not any part of the fifth generation of men, but had died before it came, or had been born afterward. The moral metaphor of the ages of metals continued, Lucretius, however, replaced moral degradation with the concept of progress, which he conceived to be like the growth of an individual human being. The concept is evolutionary, For the nature of the world as a whole is altered by age, everything must pass through successive phases. Nothing remains forever what it was, everything is transformed by nature and forced into new paths. The Earth passes through phases, so that it can no longer bear what it could. In Lucretius the Earth is a mother, Venus, to whom the poem is dedicated in the first few lines and she brought forth humankind by spontaneous generation. Having been given birth as a species, humans must grow to maturity by analogy with the individual, the different phases of their collective life are marked by the accumulation of customs to form material civilization, The earliest weapons were hands, nails and teeth. Next came stones and branches wrenched from trees, and fire, then men learnt to use tough iron and copper. With copper they tilled the soil, with copper they whipped up the clashing waves of war
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Neolithic
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It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, stone, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Israel, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated
15.
Technology
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Technology is the collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, the human species use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The steady progress of technology has brought weapons of ever-increasing destructive power. It has helped develop more advanced economies and has allowed the rise of a leisure class, many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earths environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and raise new questions of the ethics of technology, examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics. Philosophical debates have arisen over the use of technology, with disagreements over whether technology improves the condition or worsens it. The use of the technology has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, the term was often connected to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The term technology rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution, the terms meanings changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into technology. In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between technik and technologie that is absent in English, which translates both terms as technology. By the 1930s, technology referred not only to the study of the industrial arts, dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 Real World of Technology lecture, gave another definition of the concept, it is practice, the way we do things around here. The term is used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics. Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time,1, defines technology in two ways, as the pursuit of life by other than life, and as organized inorganic matter. Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems and it is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material, virtual technology, such as software and business methods. W. Brian Arthur defines technology in a broad way as a means to fulfill a human purpose
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History of technology
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The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is similar to other sides of the history of humanity. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as language and stone tools to the genetic engineering. Since much of technology is applied science, technical history is connected to the history of science, since technology uses resources, technical history is tightly connected to economic history. From those resources, technology produces other resources, including technological artifacts used in everyday life, technological change affects, and is affected by, a societys cultural traditions. It is a force for economic growth and a means to develop and project economic, political, many sociologists and anthropologists have created social theories dealing with social and cultural evolution. Some, like Lewis H. Morgan, Leslie White, morgans concept of three major stages of social evolution can be divided by technological milestones, such as fire. White argued the measure by which to judge the evolution of culture was energy, for White, the primary function of culture is to harness and control energy. White differentiates between five stages of development, In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals, in the third, they use the energy of plants. In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources, coal, oil, in the fifth, they harness nuclear energy. White introduced a formula P=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, in his own words, culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased. Nikolai Kardashev extrapolated his theory, creating the Kardashev scale, which categorizes the energy use of advanced civilizations, the more information and knowledge a given society has, the more advanced it is. He identifies four stages of development, based on advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes, in the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through by experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic, in the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in communications technology translates into advancements in the system and political system, distribution of wealth, social inequality. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy, hunter-gatherer, simple agricultural, in economics productivity is a measure of technological progress. Productivity increases when fewer inputs are used in the production of a unit of output, another indicator of technological progress is the development of new products and services, which is necessary to offset unemployment that would otherwise result as labor inputs are reduced
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History of agriculture
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The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9,500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans, pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. Sugarcane and some vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7,000 BC. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 5,000 BC, in the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the period in Papua New Guinea. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 4,000 BC, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3,000 BC, irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers were introduced soon after the Neolithic Revolution and developed much further in the past 200 years, starting with the British Agricultural Revolution. The Haber-Bosch process allowed the synthesis of nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale. Modern agriculture has raised social, political, and environmental issues including pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs. In response, organic farming developed in the century as a consciously pesticide-free alternative. Scholars have developed a number of hypotheses to explain the origins of agriculture. Current models indicate that wild stands that had been harvested previously started to be planted, localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant. When major climate change took place after the last ice age and these conditions favoured annual plants which die off in the long dry season, leaving a dormant seed or tuber. An abundance of readily storable wild grains and pulses enabled hunter-gatherers in some areas to form the first settled villages at this time, early people began altering communities of flora and fauna for their own benefit through means such as fire-stick farming and forest gardening very early
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Neolithic Revolution
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These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants to learn how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants and it was the worlds first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of available, with a switch to agriculture which led to a downturn in human nutrition. The Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a set of food-producing techniques. These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation which allowed extensive surplus food production, personal land and private property ownership led to an hierarchical society, with an elite Social class, comprising a nobility, polity, and military. The first fully developed manifestation of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern Sumerian cities, the Levant followed by Mesopotamia are the sites of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of revolutions in Middle Eastern history. The beginning of process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent. Recent archaeological research suggests that in regions such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not linear. There are several competing theories as to the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture. The most prominent of these are, The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by V. Gordon Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childes book Man Makes Himself. However, today this theory has little support amongst archaeologists because subsequent climate data suggests that the region was getting wetter rather than drier, the Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance. This required assembling large quantities of food, which drove agricultural technology, various social and economic factors helped drive the need for food. The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an adaptation of plants. Starting with domestication by protection of plants, it led to specialization of location. Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger make a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with a stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wrights book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress popularized this hypothesis, leonid Grinin argues that whatever plants were cultivated, the independent invention of agriculture always took place in special natural environments. It is supposed that the cultivation of cereals started somewhere in the Near East, andrew Moore suggested that the Neolithic Revolution originated over long periods of development in the Levant, possibly beginning during the Epipaleolithic
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Ard (plough)
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The ard, ard plough, or scratch plough is a simple light plough without a mouldboard. It is symmetrical on either side of its line of draft and is fitted with a share that traces a shallow furrow. It began to be replaced in most of Europe by the carruca turnplough from the 7th century. In its simplest form it resembles a hoe, consisting of a draft-pole pierced with a vertical, wooden, spiked head which is dragged through the soil by draft animals. The ard-head is at one end a stilt for steering and at the other a share which gouges the surface ground. More sophisticated models have a pole, where the section attached to the head is called the draft-beam. Some have a cross-bar for handles or two separate stilts for handles, the share comes in two basic forms, a socket share slipped over the nose of the ard-head, and the tang share fitted into a groove where it is held with a clamp on the wooden head. Additionally, a slender protruding chisel can be fitted over the top of the mainshare, rather than cutting and turning the soil to produce ridged furrows, the ard breaks up a narrow strip of soil and cuts a shallow furrow, leaving intervening strips undisturbed. The ard is not suited for clearing new land, so grass, cross-ploughing is often necessary to break the soil up better, where the soil is tilled twice at right angles to the original direction. This usually results in square or diamond-shaped fields and is effective at clearing annual weeds, the ards shallow furrows are ideal for most cereals, and if the seed is sown broadcast, the ard can be used to cover the seed in rows. In fact, the ard may have invented in the Near East to cover seed rather than till. That would explain why in Mesopotamia seed drills were used together with ards, ards may be drawn by oxen, water buffalo, donkeys, camels, or other animals. Ards come in a number of varieties, the two were in early times used in conjunction with each other. Third is the seed drill ard, used specifically in Mesopotamia, the bow ard is the weaker, narrower, and probably earlier of the two. It is used for tillage, normally with a tang share, in dry. It is restricted mainly to the Mediterranean, Ethiopia, Iran and it had a short portion of the body which was first made to slide on the furrow bottom and gradually developed into a horizontal body. The body ard dominates in Portugal, western Spain, the Balkans, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, the bow ard favored the development of a long horizontal sole body sliding on the ground. Their use in Ancient Greek agriculture was described by Hesiod, later variations of the sole ard come in two types, the triangular and quadrangular ards
20.
Celt (tool)
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In archaeology, a celt /ˈsɛlt/ is a long, thin, prehistoric, stone or bronze tool similar to an adze, a hoe or axe-like tool. Neither the Hebrew text nor the Septuagint has a word corresponding to either certe or celte and this is now considered to be the case by most scholars, although some are still prepared to consider the existence of a real Latin word. A Celt was thus assumed to be a type of ancient chisel. There are other related words found in late Medieval Europe, all possibly descended from the Vulgate text. There are two Rhineland charters in Latin, which use such phrases as celtes seu fracmina lapidum to describe chips of stone to be used for making a road. There may also have been a rare Welsh word cellt, meaning flint stone or shell, palstave Celt, a word in common use among British and French archaeologists to describe the hatchets, adzes or chisels of chipped or shaped stone used by primitive man
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Digging stick
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They may also have other uses in hunting or general domestic tasks. They are common to the Indigenous Australians but also other peoples worldwide, the tool normally consists of little more than a sturdy stick which has been shaped or sharpened and perhaps hardened by being placed temporarily in a fire. Fashioned with handles for pulling or pushing, it forms a prehistoric plow and it is a simple device, and has to be tough and hardy in order not to break. In Mexico and the Mesoamerican region, the stick was the most important agricultural tool throughout the region. The coa stick normally flares out into a triangle at the end and is used for cultivating maize and it is still used for agriculture in some indigenous communities, with some newer 20th-century versions having the addition of a little metal tip. Typical digging sticks were and are still about 2 to 3 feet in length, usually slightly arched, with the bottom tip shaved off at an angle. A5 to 8 inch cross-piece made of antler, bone, or wood was fitted perpendicularly over the top of the stick, since contact with the Europeans in the 19th century, Native Americans have also adapted the use of a metal in making digging sticks. The most common digging stick found in Ethiopia is the ankassay in Amharic, a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia, the ankassay is a single shaft that is about 4–5 feet in length with a socket-hafted pointed iron blade as the tip. The deungora is a particularly long digging stick is about 110 centimeters, or approximately 3.6 feet, what’s unique about this digging stick is that a bored stone, about 15 centimeters in diameter, is attached at the opposing end. This stone shares the form as other bored stones that have been discovered in archaeological sites in Africa. The maresha is the Gurage name, also the word used by the Amhara. It is used primarily to dig holes for construction, planting and this tool is used as a plow to turn over the soil of an entire field before planting. It is used to break clods of soil in areas where the soil is hard or in areas that may be too steep for plowing, when compared to the ankassay, this digging stick can perform the same duties and in addition can be used as a hoe. The Kuman people of region were horticulturists who used basic tools such as the digging stick, wooden hoe. Eventually they started to use more sophisticated tools such as iron spades and pick-axes
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Domestication
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Charles Darwin recognized the small number of traits that made domestic species different from their wild ancestors. There is a difference between domestic and wild populations. The dog was the first domesticated vertebrate, and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication of other animals. Among birds, the domestic species today is the chicken, important for meat and eggs, though economically valuable poultry include the turkey, guineafowl. Birds are also kept as cagebirds, from songbirds to parrots. The longest established invertebrate domesticates are the bee and the silkworm. Terrestrial snails are raised for food, while species from several phyla are kept for research, the domestication of plants began at least 12,000 years ago with cereals in the Middle East, and the bottle gourd in Asia. Agriculture developed in at least 11 different centres around the world, domesticating different crops, Domestication means belonging to the house. Animals domesticated for home companionship are usually called pets, while those domesticated for food or work are called livestock or farm animals and this definition recognizes both the biological and the cultural components of the domestication process and the impacts on both humans and the domesticated animals and plants. All past definitions of domestication have included a relationship between humans with plants and animals, but their differences lay in who was considered as the partner in the relationship. This new definition recognizes a mutualistic relationship in both partners gain benefits. Domestication has vastly enhanced the reproductive output of crop plants, livestock, Domestication syndrome is the suite of phenotypic traits arising during domestication that distinguish crops from their wild ancestors. The domestication of animals is the relationship between animals with the humans who have influence on their care and reproduction. Charles Darwin recognized the small number of traits that made domestic species different from their wild ancestors, there is a genetic difference between domestic and wild populations. Domestication should not be confused with taming, the beginnings of animal domestication involved a protracted coevolutionary process with multiple stages along different pathways. The dog was the first domesticant, and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication of other animals. Humans did not intend to domesticate animals from, or at least they did not envision a domesticated animal resulting from, in both of these cases, humans became entangled with these species as the relationship between them, and the human role in their survival and reproduction, intensified. Although the directed pathway proceeded from capture to taming, the two pathways are not as goal-oriented and archaeological records suggest that they take place over much longer time frames
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Goad
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The goad is a traditional farming implement, used to spur or guide livestock, usually oxen, which are pulling a plough or a cart, used also to round up cattle. It is a type of stick with a pointed end. The word is from Middle English gode, from Old English gād, goads in various guises are used as iconographic devices and may be seen in the elephant goad or ankusha in the hand of Ganesha, for example. According to the biblical passage Judges 3,31, Shamgar son of Anath killed six hundred Philistines with an ox goad. Saint Paul, recounting the story of his conversion before King Agrippa, told of a voice he heard saying ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me. It is hard for you to kick against the goads. ’ Some versions of the account of his conversion earlier in the Acts of the Apostles also use the same phrase. In the Latin alphabet, the letter L is derived from the Semitic crook or goad which stood for /l/ and this may originally have been based on an Egyptian hieroglyph that was adapted by Semites for alphabetic purposes. Pollack, in discussing Lamed, Path 22 the path from Gevurah to Tiferet, Justice, in the pathworking of the esoteric Kabbalah, states, We switch sides now and bring the power of Gevurah to the center. Lamed means goad and in particular an ox-goad, as if we use the power of Gevurah to goad that Aleph ox, Lamed begins the Hebrew words for both learn and teach, and so encompasses the most Kabbalist of activities, study. Kabbalah has never been a path of pure sensation, but always has used study to goad us into higher consciousness, Lamed, alone of the Hebrew alphabet, reaches above the height of all the other letters. Through learning we extend ourselves above ordinary awareness
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Irrigation
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Irrigation is the method in which a controlled amount of water is supplied to plants at regular intervals for agriculture. It is used to assist in the growing of crops, maintenance of landscapes. Additionally, irrigation also has a few uses in crop production. In contrast, agriculture that only on direct rainfall is referred to as rain-fed or dry land farming. Irrigation systems are used for dust suppression, disposal of sewage. Irrigation is often studied together with drainage, which is the natural or artificial removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given area, Irrigation has been a central feature of agriculture for over 5,000 years and is the product of many cultures. Historically, it was the basis for economies and societies across the globe, archaeological investigation has found evidence of irrigation where the natural rainfall was insufficient to support crops for rainfed agriculture. Ancient Egyptians practiced Basin irrigation using the flooding of the Nile to inundate land plots which had surrounded by dykes. The flood water was held until the sediment had settled before the surplus was returned to the watercourse. The Ancient Nubians developed a form of irrigation by using a device called a sakia. Irrigation began in Nubia some time between the third and second millennium BCE and it largely depended upon the flood waters that would flow through the Nile River and other rivers in what is now the Sudan. In sub-Saharan Africa irrigation reached the Niger River region cultures and civilizations by the first or second millennium BCE and was based on wet season flooding, terrace irrigation is evidenced in pre-Columbian America, early Syria, India, and China. These canals are the earliest record of irrigation in the New World, traces of a canal possibly dating from the 5th millennium BCE were found under the 4th millennium canal. Large scale agriculture was practiced and a network of canals was used for the purpose of irrigation. Ancient Persia as far back as the 6th millennium BCE, where barley was grown in areas where the rainfall was insufficient to support such a crop. The Qanats, developed in ancient Persia in about 800 BCE, are among the oldest known irrigation methods still in use today and they are now found in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The system comprises a network of wells and gently sloping tunnels driven into the sides of cliffs. The noria, a wheel with clay pots around the rim powered by the flow of the stream, was first brought into use at about this time
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Sickle
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Falx was a synonym but was later used to mean any of a number of tools that had a curved blade that was sharp on the inside edge such as a scythe. Since the beginning of the Iron Age hundreds of variants of the sickle have evolved, initially of iron. The serrated blade that originated in prehistoric sickles still dominates in the reaping of grain and is found in modern grain-harvesting machines. The development of the sickle in Mesopotamia can be traced back to times that pre-date the Neolithic Era, large quantities of sickle blades have been excavated in sites surrounding Israel that have been dated to the Epipaleolithic era. Formal digs in Wadi Ziqlab, Jordan have unearthed various forms of early sickle blades, the artifacts recovered ranged from 10 to 20 cm in length and possessed a jagged edge. This intricate ‘tooth-like’ design showed a degree of design and manufacturing credence than most of the other artifacts that were discovered. Sickle blades found during this time were made of flint, straight, flints from these sickles have been discovered near Mt. Carmel, which suggest the harvesting of grains from the area about 10,000 years ago. The sickle had a impact on the Agricultural Revolution by assisting in the transition to farming. It is now accepted that the use of sickles led directly to the domestication of Near Eastern Wild grasses, research on domestication rates of wild cereals under primitive cultivation found that the use of the sickle in harvesting was critical to the people of early Mesopotamia. The relatively narrow growing season in the area and the role of grain in the late Neolithic Era promoted a larger investment in the design. Standardization to an extent was done on the measurements of the sickle so that replacement or repair could be more immediate and it was important that the grain be harvested at the appropriate time at one elevation so that the next elevation could be collected in the proper time. The sickle provided an efficient option in collecting the grain. The sickle remained common in the Bronze Age, both in the Ancient Near East and in Europe, numerous sickles have been found deposited in hoards in the context of the European Urnfield culture, suggesting a symbolic or religious significance attached to the artifact. In archaeological terminology, Bronze Age sickles are classified by the method of attaching the handle, E. g. the knob-sickle is so called because of a protruding knob at the base of the blade which apparently served to stabilize the attachment of the blade to the handle. The sickle has been discovered in southwest North America with a unique structure and these sickles are said to possibly have originated from the Far East. There is evidence that Kodiak islanders had for cutting grass “sickles made of an animal shoulder blade”. The artifacts found in present-day Arizona and New Mexico resemble curved tools that were made from the horns of mountain sheep, a similar site discovered sickles made from other material such as the Caddo Sickle, which was made from a deer mandible. Scripture from early natives document the use of sickles in the cutting of grass
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Terrace (agriculture)
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This type of landscaping, therefore, is called terracing. Graduated terrace steps are used to farm on hilly or mountainous terrain. Terraced fields decrease both erosion and surface runoff, and may be used to growing crops that require irrigation. The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the significance of this technique, terraced paddy fields are used widely in rice, wheat and barley farming in east, south, and southeast Asia, as well as other places. In the South American Andes, farmers have used terraces, known as andenes, for over a years to farm potatoes, maize. Terraced farming was developed by the Wari and other peoples of the south-central Andes before 1000 AD, centuries before they were used by the Inca, the terraces were built to make the most efficient use of shallow soil and to enable irrigation of crops. The Inca built on these, developing a system of canals, aqueducts and these terraced farms are found wherever mountain villages have existed in the Andes. They provided the necessary to support the populations of great Inca cities. Terracing is also used for sloping terrain, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may have built on an artificial mountain with stepped terraces. At the seaside Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, the gardens of Julius Caesars father-in-law were designed in terraces to give pleasant. Terraced fields are common in islands with steep slopes, the Canary Islands present a complex system of terraces covering the landscape from the coastal irrigated plantations to the dry fields in the highlands. These terraces, which are named cadenas, are built with walls of skillful design. In Old English, a terrace was also called a lynch, an example of an ancient Lynch Mill is in Lyme Regis. The water is directed from a river by a duct along a terrace and this set-up was used in steep hilly areas in the UK. Anden Banaue Rice Terraces Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras Satoyama Terrace garden Terrace Fields around the World
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Control of fire by early humans
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The control of fire by early humans was a turning point in the cultural aspect of human evolution. Fire provided a source of warmth, protection, and a method for cooking food and these cultural advancements allowed for human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed the expansion of activity to proceed into the dark. Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago, evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning some 600,000 years ago, has wide scholarly support. Evidence of widespread control of fire by anatomically modern humans dates to approximately 125,000 years ago, most of the evidence of controlled use of fire during the Lower Paleolithic is uncertain and has limited scholarly support. The inconclusiveness of some of the lies behind the fact that there exist other plausible explanations, such as natural processes. Recent findings strongly support that the earliest known controlled use of fire took place in Wonderwerk Cave, over time, early humans figured out how to create fire. Archaeological evidence, suggests that happened between 700,000 years ago and 120,000 years ago. Findings from the Wonderwerk Cave site, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, east African sites, such as Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora, and Olorgesailie in Kenya, show some possible evidence that fire was controlled by early humans. In Chesowanja archaeologists found red clay clasts dated to be from 1.4 Mya and these clasts must have been heated to 400 °C to harden. However, deliberate use of fire in Chesowanja is still debatable because there are reasons to believe that the burning of clay might have happened by chance. In Koobi Fora, sites FxJjzoE and FxJj50 show evidence of control of fire by Homo erectus at 1.5 Mya with findings of reddened sediment that could come from heating at 200–400 °C. A hearth-like depression that could have used to burn bones was found at a site in Olorgesailie. However, it did not contain any charcoal and no signs of fire have been observed, some microscopic charcoal was found, but it could have resulted from a natural brush fire. In Gadeb, Ethiopia, fragments of welded tuff that appeared to have been burned were found in Locality 8E, in the Middle Awash River Valley, cone-shaped depressions of reddish clay were found that could have been formed by temperatures of 200 °C. These features are thought to be burned tree stumps such that the early hominids could have fire away from their habitation site, burned stones are also found in Awash Valley, but volcanic welded tuff is also found in the area which could explain the burned stones. In Xihoudu in Shanxi Province, China, the black, blue, in 1985, a parallel site in China, Yuanmou in the Yunnan Province, archaeologists found blackened mammal bones which date back to 1.7 Mya BP. A site at Bnot Yaakov Bridge, Israel, has claimed to show that H. erectus or H. ergaster controlled fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP
28.
Basket
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A basket is a container which is traditionally constructed from stiff fibers, which can be made from a range of materials, including wood splints, runners, and cane. While most baskets are made from plant materials, other such as horsehair, baleen. Baskets are generally woven by hand, some baskets are fitted with a lid, others are left open. Baskets serve utilitarian as well as aesthetic purposes, some baskets are ceremonial, that is religious, in nature. Prior to the invention of woven baskets, people used tree bark to make simple containers and these containers could be used to transport gathered food and other items, but crumble after only a few uses. Weaving strips of bark or other plant material to support the bark containers would be the next step, the last innovation appears to be baskets so tightly woven that they could hold water. Depending on soil conditions, baskets may or may not be preserved in the archaeological record, sites in the Middle East show that weaving techniques were used to make mats and possibly also baskets, circa 8000 BCE. Twined baskets date back to 7000 BCE in Oasisamerica, baskets made with interwoven techniques were common at 3000 BCE. Baskets were originally designed as multi-purpose baskets to carry and store, the plant life available in a region affects the choice of material, which in turn influences the weaving technique. The practice of basket making has evolved into an art, artistic freedom allows basket makers a wide choice of colors, materials, sizes, patterns, and details. The carrying of a basket on the head, particularly by women, has long been practised. Representations of this in Ancient Greek art are called Canephorae, the phrase to hell in a handbasket means to rapidly deteriorate. The origin of use is unclear. Basket is sometimes used as an adjective towards a person who is out of wedlock. This occurs more commonly in British English, basket also refers to a bulge in a mans crotch. Materials have been used by basket makers, Wicker Straw Plastic Metal Bamboo Palm Zepeda, ocean Power, Poems from the Desert. Baskets, The Womens Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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Cooking
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Cooking or cookery is the art, technology and craft of preparing food for consumption with the use of heat. The ways or types of cooking also depend on the skill, cooking is done both by people in their own dwellings and by professional cooks and chefs in restaurants and other food establishments. Cooking can also occur through chemical reactions without the presence of heat, such as in ceviche, preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to humans. It may have started around 2 million years ago, though evidence for it reaches no more than 1 million years ago. The expansion of agriculture, commerce, trade and transportation between civilizations in different regions offered cooks many new ingredients, New inventions and technologies, such as the invention of pottery for holding and boiling water, expanded cooking techniques. Some modern cooks apply advanced scientific techniques to food preparation to further enhance the flavor of the dish served, phylogenetic analysis suggests that human ancestors may have invented cooking as far back as 1.8 million to 2.3 million years ago. Re-analysis of burnt bone fragments and plant ashes from the Wonderwerk Cave, there is evidence that Homo erectus was cooking their food as early as 500,000 years ago. Evidence for the use of fire by Homo erectus beginning some 400,000 years ago has wide scholarly support. Archeological evidence, from 300,000 years ago, in the form of ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint, are found across Europe, anthropologists think that widespread cooking fires began about 250,000 years ago, when hearths started appearing. More recently, the earliest hearths have been reported to be at least 790,000 years old, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, food was a classic marker of identity in Europe. In the nineteenth-century Age of Nationalism cuisine became a symbol of national identity. Communication between the Old World and the New World in the Colombian exchange influenced the history of cooking, the Industrial Revolution brought mass-production, mass-marketing and standardization of food. Factories processed, preserved, canned, and packaged a wide variety of foods, in the 1920s, freezing methods, cafeterias and fast-food establishments emerged. Along with changes in food, starting early in the 20th century, governments have issued nutrition guidelines, the 1916 Food For Young Children became the first USDA guide to give specific dietary guidelines. Updated in the 1920s, these guides gave shopping suggestions for different-sized families along with a Depression Era revision which included four cost levels, in 1943, the USDA created the Basic Seven chart to make sure that people got the recommended nutrients. It included the first-ever Recommended Daily Allowances from the National Academy of Sciences, in 1956, the Essentials of an Adequate Diet brought recommendations which cut the number of groups that American school children would learn about down to four. In 1979, a guide called Food addressed the link between too much of certain foods and chronic diseases, but added fats, oils, most ingredients in cooking are derived from living organisms. Vegetables, fruits, grains and nuts as well as herbs and spices come from plants, while meat, eggs, mushrooms and the yeast used in baking are kinds of fungi
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Earth oven
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An earth oven, ground oven or cooking pit is one of the simplest and most ancient cooking structures. At its most basic, an oven is a pit in the ground used to trap heat and bake, smoke. Earth ovens have been used in places and cultures in the past. Earth ovens remain a tool for cooking large quantities of food where no equipment is available. They have been used in various civilizations around the world and are commonly found in the Pacific region to date. To bake food, the fire is built, then allowed to burn down to a smoulder, the food is then placed in the oven and covered. This covered area can be used to bake bread or other various items, steaming food in an earth oven covers a similar process. Fire-heated rocks are put into a pit and are covered with vegetation to add moisture. More green vegetation and sometimes water are added, if more moisture is needed. Finally, a covering of earth is added over everything, the food in the pit can take up to several hours to a full day to cook, regardless of the dry or wet method used. Today, many still use cooking pits for ceremonial or celebratory occasions, including the indigenous Fijian lovo, the Hawaiian luau, the Māori hāngi. The central Asian tandoor use the method primarily for uncovered, live-fire baking and this method is essentially a permanent earth oven made out of clay or firebrick with a constantly burning, very hot fire in the bottom. In modern times, earth ovens are used for outdoor cooking. In many areas, archaeologists recognize pit-hearths as being used in the past. In Central Texas, there are large burned-rock middens speculated to be used for cooking of plants of various sorts. The Mayan pib and Andean watia are other examples, the clam bake, invented by Native Americans on the Atlantic seaboard and considered a traditional element of New England cuisine, traditionally uses a type of ad hoc earth oven. A large enough hole is dug into the sand and heated rocks are added to the bottom of the hole, a layer of seaweed is then laid on top to create moisture and steam, followed by the food. Lastly, another layer of seaweed is added to trap in the steam and cook the food, the Curanto of the Chiloé Archipelago consists of shellfish, meat, potatoes, milcao chapaleles, and vegetables traditionally prepared in an earth oven
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Granary
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A granary is a storehouse or room in a barn for threshed grain or animal feed. Ancient or primitive granaries are most often out of pottery. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the food away from mice. From ancient times grain has been stored in bulk, the oldest granaries yet found date back to 9500 BC and are located in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlements in the Jordan Valley. The first were located in places between other buildings, however beginning around 8500 BC, they were moved inside houses, and by 7500 BC storage occurred in special rooms. The first granaries measured 3 x 3 m on the outside and had suspended floors that protected the grain from rodents and insects and these granaries are followed by those in Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley from 6000 BC. The ancient Egyptians made a practice of preserving grain in years of plenty against years of scarcity, the climate of Egypt being very dry, grain could be stored in pits for a long time without discernible loss of quality. The silo pit, as it has termed, has been a favorite way of storing grain from time immemorial in all oriental lands. In Turkey and Persia, usurers used to buy up wheat or barley when comparatively cheap, in Malta a relatively large stock of wheat was preserved in some hundreds of pits cut in the rock. A single silo stored from 60 to 80 tons of wheat, in the archaeological vernacular of Northeast Asia, these features are lumped with those that may have also functioned as residences and together are called raised floor buildings. In vernacular architecture of Indonesian archipelago granaries are made of wood and bamboo materials, examples of Indonesian granary is Sundanese leuit and Minang rangkiang. In Great Britain small granaries were built on mushroom shaped stumps called staddle stones and they were built of timber frame construction and often had slate roofs. Larger ones were similar to linhays, but with the upper floor enclosed, access to the first floor was usually via stone staircase on the outside wall. Towards the close of the 19th century, warehouses specially intended for holding grain began to multiply in Great Britain, there are climatic difficulties in the way of storing grain in Great Britain on a large scale, but these difficulties have been largely overcome. Modern grain farming operations often use manufactured steel granaries to store grain on-site until it can be trucked to major storage facilities in anticipation of shipping, the large mechanized facilities, particularly seen in Russia and North America are known as grain elevators. Grain must be away from moisture for as long as possible to preserve it in good condition. Newly harvested grain brought into a granary tends to contain excess moisture, fermentation generally spoils grain and may cause chemical changes that create poisonous mycotoxins. One traditional remedy is to spread the grain in thin layers on a floor, once the grain is sufficiently dry it can be transferred to a granary for storage
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Ground stone
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In archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. The adoption of ground stone technology is associated closely with the Neolithic, the Stone Age comes from the three-age system developed by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. In the Levant ground stones appear in Mesolithic 2, in prehistoric Japan, ground stone tools appear during the Japanese Paleolithic, possibly predating adoption elsewhere in the Neolithic by 25,000 years. Ground stones were created and used for a variety of reasons. Each use resulted in a different development and process by which a person created their ground stone, for example, the process for creating the head of a hammer is different from the process used to create a detailed decoration piece for one’s home. That being said, there are processes that are basic to most ground stone making. When choosing what type of stone to use for a stone tool. If the stone is not tough enough to withstand hard hits and instead just flakes and cracks easily, a stone that will not shear, flake, or crack when tested against large impacts is the most important aspect when choosing what kind of stone to use. Examples of this kind of stone include limestone, sandstone, granite, basalt, rhyolite and other igneous, cryptocrystalline rocks are good to use for ground stones because they have a very fine grain structure. This is helpful because the smaller the grains are in a rock, holes could be ground out of stones with the use of sharp pointed stones or hardened sticks. By spinning the ground stone with ones hands and applying pressure to the sharp point into the ground stone. Sand would be used to quicken the process by putting it in the partially formed hole as the sharp point was being pressed. The sand would help grind more of the stone away, to put a hole all the way through a piece of stone, it would be first drilled half way in one direction and be finished on the opposite side. These tools are made using durable finer-grained materials rather than coarse materials. In the North American arctic, tools made of slate were used by the Norton, Dorset. Common forms of tools were projectile points and ulus. When making the head of an axe out of stone, the piece would be made so it could be hafted and these grooves would ensure that the stone would not move when struck with a large force. Tough hide would then be wound around the handle and inside the grooves, binding the ground stone, Ground stones were often used as dinner wear
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Hearth
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In historic and modern usage, a hearth /ˈhɑːrθ/ is a brick- or stone-lined fireplace, with or without an oven, used for heating and originally also used for cooking food. In a medieval hall, the hearth commonly stood in the middle of the hall, later, such hearths were moved to the side of the room and provided with a chimney. In fireplace design, the hearth is the part of the fireplace where the fire burns, usually consisting of masonry at floor level or higher, the word hearth derives from an Indo-European root, *ker-, referring to burning, heat, and fire. In archaeology, a hearth is a firepit or other feature of any period. Hearths are common features of many eras going back to prehistoric campsites and they were used for cooking, heating, and the processing of some stone, wood, faunal, and floral resources. Farming or excavation—deform or disperse hearth features, making difficult to identify without careful study. Lined hearths are easily identified by the presence of fire-cracked rock, often present are fragmented fish and animal bones, carbonized shell, charcoal, ash, and other waste products, all embedded in a sequence of soil that has been deposited atop the hearth. Unlined hearths, which are easily identified, may also include these materials. Because of the nature of most of these items, they can be used to pinpoint the date the hearth was last used via the process of radiocarbon dating. Although carbon dates can be affected if the users of the hearth burned old wood or coal. This was the most common way to cook, and to interior spaces in cool seasons. Kapnikon was a tax raised on households without exceptions for the poor, in England, a tax on hearths was introduced on 19 May 1662. Householders were required to pay a charge of two shillings per annum for each hearth, with half the payment due at Michaelmas and half at Lady Day. Exemptions to the tax were granted, to those in receipt of relief, those whose houses were worth less than 20 shillings a year. Also exempt were charitable institutions such as schools and almshouses, and industrial hearths with the exception of smiths forges, the returns were lodged with the Clerk of the Peace between 1662 and 1688. A revision of the Act in 1664 made the tax payable by all who had more than two chimneys The tax was abolished by William III in 1689 and the last collection was for Lady Day of that year and it was abolished in Scotland in 1690. Hearth tax records are important to historians as they provide an indication of the size of each assessed house at the time. The numbers of hearths are generally proportional to the size of the house, the assessments can be used to indicate the numbers and local distribution of larger and smaller houses
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Qesem Cave
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Qesem Cave is a Lower Paleolithic archeological site 12 km east of Tel Aviv in Israel. Early humans were occupying the site by 382,000 until c.200,000 years ago, the cave attracted considerable attention in December 2010 when reports suggested Israeli and Spanish archaeologists had found the earliest evidence yet of modern humans. Science bloggers pointed out that the coverage had inaccurately reflected the scientific report. Science blogger Carl Zimmer wrote, Nowhere in this conclusion do the authors say that these belong to Homo sapiens. Nowhere do they say they have just doubled the age of our species, Nowhere do they say that our species evolved in the Near East, not in Africa. Selective large-game hunting was regularly followed by butchery of desired carcass parts for transport back to a residence for food sharing and cooking. The cave exists in Turonian limestone in the mountain ridge of Israel between the Samaria Hills and the Israeli coastal plain. It is 90m above sea level, deposits at the site are 7.5 m deep, and are divided into two layers, the upper is about 4.5 m thick, and the lower 3 m. The upper forms a step on the lower one, the deposits contain stone tools and animal remains from the Acheulo-Yabrudian complex. This a period that follows after the Acheulian but before the Mousterian, no traces of Mousterian occupation have been found. The cave was found in October 2000 when road construction destroyed its ceiling and this led to two rescue excavations in 2001. At present the site is protected, covered and fenced and subject to on-going excavations, 230Th/234U dating on speleothems in the cave identifies that they were occupied from before 382,000 years ago possibly as early as oxygen isotope stage 11. The cave occupation ended before 152,000 years ago, possibly shortly after 207,000 years ago, Qesem Cave stone tools are made of flint. They are mainly blades end scrapers, burins, and naturally backed knives, there are also flakes and hammerstones. Some of the horizons contain many blades and related blade-tools but they are absent in others, however thick side-scrapers are found throughout them. Acheulian type hand-axes are found at the top and at the bottom of the archeological sequence, all stages of stone tool manufacture have been found. Many of the cores have sufficient of the cortex to allow reconstruction of the original stone’s shape. Using the concentration of cosmic ray created Beryllium-10 it has argued that the flint used at Qesem Cave was surface-collected or only dug from shallow quarries
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Mano (stone)
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A mano is a ground stone tool used with a metate to process or grind food by hand. Later, manos and metates were used to process cultivated maize, in its early use in the American Southwest, the mano and metate were used to grind wild plants. Besides food, manos and metates were used to separate and pulverize clay from earthen debris, the resulting clay was used for pottery-making. A mano, a smooth stone, is used against a metate. The movement of the mano against the metate consists of a circular, ancient Pueblo People often set up work rooms, called mealing rooms, that were established with sets of manos and metates for mass grinding efforts. Bedrock metate Grinding slab Quern-stone Caple, Chris, objects, Reluctant Witnesses to the Past Morris, Donald H. Changes in Groundstone following the introduction of maize into the American Southwest, western artifacts - hard stone tools
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Metate
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A metate or metlatl is a type or variety of quern, a ground stone tool used for processing grain and seeds. In traditional Mesoamerican culture, metates were used by women who would grind lime-treated maize. Similar artifacts are all over the world, including China. While varying in specific morphology, metates adhere to a common shape and they typically consist of large stones with a smooth depression or bowl worn into the upper surface. The bowl is formed by the continual and long-term grinding of materials using a smooth hand-held stone and this action consists of a horizontal grinding motion that differs from the vertical crushing motion used in a mortar and pestle. The depth of the varies, though they are typically not deeper than those of a mortar. Another type of metate called a grinding slab may also be found among boulder or exposed bedrock outcroppings, the upper face of the stone is used for grinding materials, such as acorns, that results in the smoothing of the stones face and the creation of pocked dimples. Carved, volcanic-stone ceremonial metates represent one of the most unusual and they come in many different forms, and morphological variation corresponds to different regions and time periods. They can be rectangular, circular, flat, or curved and they may or may not have rims and between three and four legs. Some exhibits show signs of use-wear while others show no signs of wear and appear to have made specifically for use as burial goods. Some examples characterized as metate might have actually been a type of throne for sitting on – not a metate at all, some examples are known as effigy-headed metate, which feature an animal’s head at one end, with the metate itself making up the body of the creature. Animals typically depicted are jaguar, crocodile or birds, the most complex type of ceremonial metate is the class referred to as “flying-panel” metate. This style comes from the Atlantic watershed region, including the City of Guayabo and represents a level of craftsmanship. Carved from a piece of stone, these metates typically contain multiple figures. Trophy heads, birds, jaguar, monkey and saurian figures are the most common themes, the “flying panel” metate is believed to be the precursor to free standing sculptural figures more common later in the Atlantic watershed region. The earliest traditions of sculpture in Costa Rica, including ceremonial metate. Metate from the Nicoya/Guanacaste region have longitudinally curved and rimless plates and those from the Atlantic Watershed have a plate that is horizontally flat and rimmed. Both are associated with goods, suggesting differential social status existed within these communities
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Mortar and pestle
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A pestle and mortar is a kitchen device used since ancient times to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, the pestle is a heavy and blunt club-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The substance to be ground is placed in the mortar and ground, mortars and pestles have been used in cooking up to the present day, they are frequently also associated with the profession of pharmacy due to their historical use in preparing medicines. They can also be used in masonry and in types of construction. Scientists have found ancient mortars and pestles that date back to approximately 35,000 B. C, the English word mortar derives from classical Latin mortarium, meaning, among several other usages, receptacle for pounding and product of grinding or pounding. The classical Latin pistillum, meaning pounder, led to English pestle, the Roman poet Juvenal applied both mortarium and pistillum to articles used in the preparation of drugs, reflecting the early use of the mortar and pestle as a symbol of a pharmacist or apothecary. The antiquity of these tools is well documented in writing, such as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus of ~1550 BCE. Mortars and pestles were used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients prior to preparing an extemporaneous prescription. The mortar and pestle, with the Rod of Asclepius, the Orange Cross, for pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are usually made of porcelain, while the handle of the pestle is made of wood. This is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1759, today the act of mixing ingredients or reducing the particle size is known as trituration. Mortars and pestles are used as drug paraphernalia to grind up pills to speed up absorption when they are ingested. Mortars are also used in cooking to prepare ingredients such as guacamole, gazpacho and pesto, the molcajete, a version used by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures including the Aztec and Maya, stretching back several thousand years, is made of basalt and is used widely in Mexican cooking. Other Native American nations use mortars carved into the bedrock to grind acorns, many such depressions can be found in their territories. In Japan, very large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi, a regular sized Japanese mortar and pestle are called a suribachi and surikogi, respectively. Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia, as well as Pakistan, in India, it is used extensively to make spice mixtures for various delicacies as well as day to day dishes. With the advent of motorized grinders, use of the mortar and it is traditional in various Hindu ceremonies to crush turmeric in these mortars. In Malay, it is known as batu lesung, large stone mortars, with long wood pestles were used in West Asia to grind meat for a type of meatloaf, or kibbeh, as well as the hummus variety known as masabcha. In Indonesia and the Netherlands mortar is known as Cobek or Tjobek and it is often used to make fresh sambal, a spicy chili condiment, hence the sambal ulek/oelek denote its process using pestle
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Pottery
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Pottery is the craft of making ceramic material into pots or potterywares using mud. Major types of potterywares include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain, the place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery. Early Neolithic pottery have found in places such as Jomon Japan. A clay body can be decorated before or after firing, however, prior to shaping processes. Kneading helps to ensure an even moisture content throughout the body, air trapped within the clay body needs to be removed. This is called de-airing and can be accomplished either by a called a vacuum pug or manually by wedging. Wedging can also produce an even moisture content. Once a clay body has been kneaded and de-aired or wedged, after shaping, it is dried and then fired. Clay ware takes on varying physical characteristics during the making of pottery, at sufficient moisture content, bodies at this stage are in their most plastic form. Leather-hard refers to a body that has been dried partially. At this stage the clay object has approximately 15% moisture content, clay bodies at this stage are very firm and only slightly pliable. Trimming and handle attachment often occurs at the leather-hard state, bone-dry refers to clay bodies when they reach a moisture content at or near 0%. It is now ready to be bisque fired, bisque refers to the clay after the object is shaped to the desired form and fired in the kiln for the first time, known as bisque fired or biscuit fired. This firing changes the body in several ways. Mineral components of the body will undergo chemical changes that will change the colour of the clay. Glaze fired is the stage of some pottery making. A glaze may be applied to the form and the object can be decorated in several ways. After this the object is glazed fired, which causes the material to melt
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Quern-stone
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Quern-stones are stone tools for hand-grinding a wide variety of materials. The lower, stationary, stone is called a quern, while the upper stone is called a handstone. They were first used in the Neolithic to grind cereals into flour, quern-stones have been used throughout the world to grind materials, the most important of which was usually grain to make flour for bread-making. They were generally replaced by millstones once mechanised forms of milling appeared, particularly the water mill, however, in many non-Westernised, non-mechanised cultures they are still manufactured and used regularly and have only been replaced in many parts of the world in the last century or so. The authors concluded that this was due to the use of these querns in the preparation of medicines, cosmetics. Querns were widely used in grinding metals ores after mining extraction, the aim was to liberate fine ore particles which could then be separated by washing for example, prior to smelting. They were thus used in gold mining in antiquity. In the Shetlands tobacco was not smoked when first introduced, but instead was ground up into snuff, snuff-querns consisted of an upper and lower stone, fixed together by a central iron pivot. The quern was held on the lap, the eye of the quern was filled with dried tobacco leaves. The friction caused by the ground the leaves into a fine powder that built up around the edge of the lower-stone. Many snuff-querns had a hole or cut made near the edge of the upper-stone, into which a pointed end of a lambs horn was placed in order to turn the stone. There are, however, more surprising recorded uses of quern-stones, for example, DeBoer, in his review of the traditional gambling games of North American tribes, reports that one of the games involved bouncing a group of split canes off a quern. Violence is recorded in the book of Judges, “But a certain woman threw an upper-millstone on Abimelech’s head and these have naturally rough surfaces, but grains do not detach easily, so the material being ground does not become gritty. However, such rocks are not always available, meaning that quern-stones have been manufactured from a variety of rocks, including sandstone, quartzite. Quernmore Crag near Lancaster in England is named after the quarrying of millstone grit used to make quern stones in these parts, rutter was able to show, for the southern Levant, that basalt quern-stones were preferred to those manufactured from other rock types. Basalt quern-stones were therefore transported over long-distances, leading him to argue that, despite their every-day, utilitarian function, the earliest forms of quern were the saddle and trough querns. The earliest quern so far discovered dates to c.9,000 BCE and was found at Abu Hureyra, a later development was the rotary quern, which takes several forms. The saddle quern is produced by rocking or rolling the handstone using parallel motions and these are the most ancient and widely used type of quern-stone
