Questions tagged [prehistory]

Prehistory is the span of time of before written history. It often refers to the period of human existence, but in broader terms also includes all time preceding this.

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Is it correct to say that primary sources only exist in 'historical times', not in 'pre-history'?

I am a secondary history teacher. I teach about a region that first was occupied by indigenous groups that lacked any written records, then later was taken over by European conquests. Some education ...
Village's user avatar
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How is robustness measured in history and archaeology? [closed]

In physics and medicine there is quite a consensus of various levels of evidence. For example, physics has a scale of fifteen levels of scientific evidence (DOI:Opera Magistris pg 50) and medicine has ...
Vincent ISOZ's user avatar
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Is there Susa art with two mountains and two suns? Or two mountains surrounded by the primordial ocean?

I've read that The bowl dates from the Amratian period, mid-fourth millennium B.C. Giedion sees this as portraying in abstract form the course of the sun from east to west, the enclosing primeval ...
Dolphin 613 Motorboat's user avatar
3 votes
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What infectious diseases were Native Americans exposed to before Columbus?

More specifically, what infectious diseases were Native Americans exposed to that were not a result of endemic spread in wild animals in the Americas? This would be a list of diseases that were ...
StarlightDown's user avatar
4 votes
5 answers
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Why is there so much prehistoric art found in Spain and France?

I was reading a book about prehistoric art, and a map with dots indicating locations of caves and deposits shown a lot of concentration around the norther area of Spain and also southern region of ...
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Is this a Stone Age artefact? [closed]

Found these in my garden some time ago. It looks like it may have been worked but also just happens to fit into my hand. Could this be a Stone Age tool of some sort? The second example looks more ...
Johnny Fitz's user avatar
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Help understanding exactly the phases of stone tool development during the stone age?

I have been studying how the stone tools evolved for the past few days, and think I am close to understanding roughly what the model is, but after reading a few recent papers, it seems there's a lot ...
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How do we know the gender distribution of cave art painters?

I recently visited an exhibition about climate, nature and culture during the last glacial period. One interactive exhibit about cave paintings sported a plaque saying: "...Jetzt wissen wir, dass ...
Marian Aldenhövel's user avatar
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How to coordinate the relationship between Corded Ware(Fatyanovo-Abashevo), Sanskrit and Graeco-Aryan? [closed]

The latest research shows that the R1a-Z93 of Sintashta and Andronovo originated from the Corded Ware culture (Middle Dnieper-Fatyanovo-Abashevo). If so, Sanskrit would be unified with Germanic and ...
Fatyanovo2022's user avatar
2 votes
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What is known of the religion/mythology/legends of the Polynesians who migrated into Oceania?

I've been listening to a couple of Patrick Wyman's Tides of History podcast episodes about the archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence on migration across Oceania by Austronesian speaking ...
Foster Boondoggle's user avatar
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Why did some regions end their prehistory much before others?

I would like to know why some places developed writing and thus started to have documented history much later than others, and why did some regions developed civilization way before others. For ...
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Is this cairn/mound-like structure in Germany real or imagined?

EDIT: I have found the answer - it was Waldviertel Pyramid. I have provided details in the answer. The thing is that I have either read about or seen on a TV documentary about a certain cairn-like ...
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How did early metalsmiths devise tools?

As I understand it, the refining of ore requires, at at least one point, the direct handling of high-temperature or molten metal. I can see early coppersmiths beating stone hammers on flat rocks, but ...
Evan's user avatar
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How did people boil water before metal pots? [duplicate]

How did ancient peoples boil water or cook rice before somebody figured out how to make metal pots? Another way to ask this is: how would you cook rice if you found yourself stranded in the wilderness ...
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Where did primitive settlements first start to occur outside of the Middle-East and Turkey? [closed]

Say when people as nomads, and started to form settlements with other people, where would these primitive settlements first started to appear, they would have first started to settle in regions around ...
Kemmisch's user avatar
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Is there validity to the claim of a scavenger hunting barter economy in the history of money?

I've read in economics textbooks, and seen in videos like this, saying that before money, there was a barter economy was based on a coincidence of wants, and people would have to go on basically a ...
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Are there examples of African/European/American hunter-gatherer's constructions?

Often people think about hunter-gatherers as primitives. "Dark Emu" book is a great example of popular history book that refutes those beliefs. Aboriginal constructions could be quite ...
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Did the Yamnaya have a particular breed of dog? Did that breed spread with them?

Using domesticated horses and wheeled wagons, the Yamnaya seemed to have conquered, if not amalgamated with, people from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indian subcontinent. Is there any research on ...
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Is there any evidence that people in the late Pleistocene understood that their environment was changing?

Of all the periods of geographic and climactic transformation our planet has undergone, the late Pleistocene is of particular interest to historians, since it was the first to be witnessed by human ...
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Did the deity "Horus" pre-date "Horus-Aha"?

Hor-Aha (or Aha or Horus Aha) is considered the second pharaoh of the First Dynasty of Egypt by some Egyptologists, others consider him the first one and corresponding to Menes. He lived around the ...
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6 votes
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How widespread was the use of red ochre by sapiens in prehistory?

It appears that red ochre, color based on iron oxide, has been used very abundantly by prehistoric peoples, especially sapiens (Homo sapiens sapiens), but also to a lesser extent, Neanderthals. ...
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What happened when the Çatalhöyük burial holes were full and the houses had no more room?

Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7100 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000 BC. The deceased in ...
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3 votes
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What is the oldest discovered Neanderthal boat or raft? [closed]

I read how there is evidence that Neanderthals used to sail on the Mediterranean using primitive 'boats'. Have we discovered any of these boats, and if we have, what is the oldest of these Neanderthal ...
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What triggered the acceleration in human advancement? [closed]

If you look back 100,000+ years humans were living in caves. They lived in caves for millennia. They used the same stone tools for millennia. They painted the same wall paintings for millennia. The ...
Fogmeister's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
206 views

Are there representation of wheat in the Gobekli Tepe temple?

While reading "Homo Sapiens" by Harari, I have been fascinated by the link made between wheat emergence and this prehistoric stone temple. A colleague told me about pseudo history in this book, so I ...
Stephane Rolland's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
654 views

When and how was the cairn structure in the "Sea of Galilee" covered in water?

In 2013 Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv university discovered a large cairn, buried under the water of the freshwater lake "Sea of Galilee" in northern part of state of Israel: Researchers find ...
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10 votes
1 answer
602 views

Did migrating people ever maintain contact across the Bering Strait?

The Inuit ranged from Alaska to Greenland. The Yupik were in Alaska and Russia. Would peoples have kept in contact across islands in the Arctic but not across the Bering Strait? This question could be ...
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15 votes
1 answer
4k views

When was the 50 billionth human born? [closed]

I don't know if this question belongs precisely at History.SE, but I can't think of a more fitting alternative. I've heard the estimate several times that about 100 billion humans have existed ...
WillG's user avatar
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1 answer
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Could homo erectus have migrated to North America? [closed]

I was reading about Virginia McIntyre's claim of finding 200,000 year old artifacts at Hueyatlaco. There's also the Calico early man site with artifacts around 250,000 years old. Is it possible that H....
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How do archaeologists date cave paintings?

Imagine I get hold on 15000 yr old pigments and I draw an iguana next to a bison at "Altamira Caves"... how does one know that that drawing wasn't made 15000 years back? Would people then start saying ...
antoniodev's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
341 views

What were the characteristics of the earliest varieties of European cattle, "bos tauros", and how were they kept?

I know that all modern cattle, whether they are bos tauros or not, are descended from aurochs, and that aurochs were allowed to mix with early domesticated cattle several times. I want to know more ...
LuminousNutria's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
96 views

Where can I find a map of Ice Age Berengia?

I need your help to find out more information about how to find map that is relate about Ice Age mammoth hunters who lived on Beringia, the ancient land bridge that inter-connected Alaska and Siberia ...
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15 votes
3 answers
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What is the significance of 4200 BCE in context of farming replacing foraging in Europe?

This is a question relating to how and, in particular, why foragers were colonized by farmers (settled societies) of Hilly Flanks (uplands of Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia). According to Ian ...
J Asia's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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How can a megalith be dated via the C14 method?

Technically this is pre-history, but maybe someone can answer this. I was listening to a podcast about the spread of megalithic structures in Europe. A modern basis of research on this is the dating ...
AtmosphericPrisonEscape's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
975 views

Why are only Homo Sapiens left?

100,000 years ago on earth there were several hominin groups, or bipedal human like species. 60,000 years ago homo sapiens began to move out of Africa and encountered these other species. All of ...
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15 votes
4 answers
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What was the staple food of the natives of South East Asia before rice?

According to Wikipedia, history of rice, rice was first brought to South East Asia region across the caravan routes of the central Asian steppes. Now many of the subcontinental people of South East ...
Shahzeb Shommit's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
115 views

Where are official images and metadata of cave paintings housed?

I have seen a few cave paintings at the British Museum and a couple other museums, but not very many and only of specific types. I also saw Lascaux (French International Center for Cave Art) which ...
Lance's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
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Have large human bones been used as measuring instruments?

Have any of the six types of large bones from the arms1 or legs2 of human beings ever been used (to a significant or considerable extent), in ancient or prehistoric times, as measuring instruments for ...
Lucian's user avatar
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3 votes
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is Ubaid 0 actually related to Eridu and Ubaid I-IV?

Most sources state 5400 B.C. as the beginning of the Ubaid period. The Ubaid period is further divided by them into Ubaid I-IV. Wikipedia lists Tel El Oueili (6500 B.C.) as "Ubaid 0", thus placing the ...
John Dee's user avatar
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5 votes
5 answers
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Did Egyptian civilization start from North to South or vice versa?

I've been reading archeological claims that say that the ancient Egyptians came from the South and that the first chiefdoms and kings were in the south. Some also claim that there is a crown of ...
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28 votes
1 answer
600 views

Why so many early temples on Malta?

Why is there such a concentration of early neolithic temples on Malta? Seven world heritage sites, plus several other significant locations (see Megalithic Temples of Malta) adds up to a lot of ...
tobuslieven's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
373 views

What do we know culturally about Cheddar Man?

There's a lot of press today about a new DNA study of Cheddar Man, who lived about 9,000 years ago in what's now the English county of Somerset. They concentrated on the genes for hair, skin, and eye ...
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4 votes
2 answers
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Do indigenous Latin Americans share any common "recent" ancestors with the Chinese?

I'm trying to understand this genetic map World map of Y-DNA Haplogroups and reading this article Settlement of the Americas. The article says North America and South America were settled by people ...
Pablo's user avatar
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15 votes
3 answers
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Why did Native Americans originally migrate to the Americas?

Native Americans migrated to America around 13000 or 15000 years ago just around the last ice age. I read that during the first wave of migration, they used the Beringia strait to travel across from ...
Ghost's user avatar
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2 votes
3 answers
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Were/are the Gaels, Picts and Britons physically distinct?

Were they only different in culture and language or were there physical differences between the three groups? Did they all belong to the same ethnic group (Celts)? For those who don't understand "...
Charlie's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
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Why have so few paleo-Indian skeletons been found?

I recently read Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Second Edition, and was intrigued by the footnote on page 174: [Aleš] Hrdlička's complaint about the lack of ...
ruakh's user avatar
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1 answer
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Intuitive misconceptions [closed]

Are there any ideas that one would have in History intuitively that would be disproven by analysis? On the other hand, are there any intuitive historical ideas that have been verified by historians? ...
M. Harrow's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
378 views

What evidence do we have that disabled people became shamans in pre-historic times?

Ian Crofton writes in 50 world history events you really need to know, regarding division of labour in pre-historic hunter-gatherer societies: Before the coming of farming there was some division ...
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3 votes
1 answer
383 views

Differences among foraging, cultivation, domestication

I am currently researching the transition from hunter-gathering bands to agricultural communities. I am coming across the word cultivation a lot. It's getting confusing, because sometimes the word ...
TheEvolutionOfHuman.com's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
425 views

Did humans hunt with dogs before planting crops for food?

Were humans hunting with dogs before they were planting crops?
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