The Copper Age

With the advent of metal tools, replacing stone and bone, humans left behind the so-called Stone Age and bravely entered into what we now know as the Bronze Age. This occured during the Neolithic period, and it occured around the world. It heralded in fact an era called The Age of Suddenlies.

Roughly speaking (which conveniently allows for overlap) 6,000 years before Titus destroyed King Solomon's temple, civilization happened due to our sudden discovery of alphabets and numbers, which enabled building and cultivating. Within the space of a few thousand years, people had become quite materialistic, enjoying fine clothes, fine food and fine accommodations.

They lived within the safety of their walled cities, protected by powerful and wise leaders - and their armed servants. Obviously some people were quite jealous of the finer things in life that were available down the road, across the river and over the mountains. Territorial conquests became the norm for another few thousand years, and it can be argued continue into the present day.

Anyway, there is this curious period that exists between the time our ancestors had begun to erect and manage huge cities and when they were building huge temples in Malta and henges in England. These structures were built, we are told, without the aid of metal. This we are led to believe was the case in Egypt and Sumer as well.

If we were to time-travel and visit a city called Catalhoyuk, located in present-day Turkey, we would see the people lived in houses, cooked in ovens and drank wine. This is a city - well, a town - that existed in the Neolithic period. There were 10,000 people but no large public buildings and men and women were treated equally. Some people farmed the land, some were fishers; some people painted and some were potters. They even buried their dead respectfully.

The cultivation of wild cereals is dated back to 10,000BC to the people living in the eastern Meditterrean, in The Levant, where scientists have found evidence that due to changing weather patterns people were forced to begin farming. After depleting nutrients in the soil they moved along, or they were forced to move. Nonetheless, farmers, their families and friends soon spread out and began to live in Africa, Anatolia and Mesopotamia.

On one hand we have the anomoly of the sudden rise of Catalhoyuk, and other curious ancient and large urban settlements found in Ukraine, but we also have another to consider: the flooding of the Black Sea, which was once, about 6,000BC, a freshwater lake. This catastrophic event changed history.

After the glaciers melted, rather rapidly, from about 17,000BC to 12,000BC, the sea levels had risen about 500 feet. There was tremendous pressure on the dam at the Dardanelles, holding back the rising Mediterrean Sea, which eventually burst. Thus, the people who had grown up - and obviously become quite civilized - adjacent to the lake had to move quickly and find safety upon higher ground.

During the Neolithic, the Trypillian Civilization flourished on this vast plain between 7,500 to 4,750 years ago north of the Black Sea. They used copper, as well as flint. Their people made pottery and they made toys. At the dawn of the Bronze Age, they moved on.

Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery, and, in Britain, it remains unclear to what extent plants were domesticated in the earliest Neolithic, or even whether permanently settled communities existed. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, India and Southeast Asia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally-distinctive Neolithic cultures which arose completely independent of those in Europe and Southwest Asia.

Early Japanese societies used pottery in the Mesolithic, for example.

In the beginning

One of the most intriguing eras in the evolution of humanity exists within the few thousand years between the catastrophic meltdown of our recent Ice Age and the rise of the historic river civilizations. It is in fact a truly mysterious period known as the New Stone Age, or Neolithic - an era when people oddly built the village at Skara Brae (pictured) in northernmost Scotland.

People, like you and me, have existed for over 130,000 years. We are called Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Thus, prior to the oft-debated event that caused the destruction of the glaciers, our ancient ancestors grew up on the lush and fertile continents across Middle Earth for 100,000 years.

Other than Adam and Eve, there are a few other theories to consider about mankind's history: we grow up, achieve civilized status and then get annialated, though with a few of us left to carry forth the gene pool; we lived in caves (only saying "ug"), until one day we found intelligence alongside rivers; and finally supernatural aliens pushed along our evolution.

Take a moment to imagine how people lived 200 years ago and how we might live 1,000 years from today.

History teachers in the West still teach their students that following a few million years of wandering, 5,000 years ago humans finally began to talk and settle the valleys alongside the Nile, Tigris and Indus rivers. Approximately, 20,000 years ago the earth and its inhabitants suffered a tremendous blow.

Frankly, humans were more fortunate than Sabre Tooth Tigers and Wooly Mammoths and many other now-extinct species. Well, those lucky few who actually survived not only "the event", but also the subsequent massive volcanoes, earthquakes, droughts, floods and tsunamis that were spread over another few thousand years.

People are people, and among the survivors some chose to travel east, some west, some north and some south. Some were violent warriors and some were peaceful artists; some were industrious and some were lazy. Some were leaders and some were followers. Most simply wanted their children to enjoy a better life.

We are taught the Egyptians built at right angles in alignment with the sun and the stars in 3,000BC, approximately the same time as people in Iraq and Pakistan were also learning to speak, add and cultivate, as well as dance, draw and build. We are taught that specific metals define our modern ages, such as Bronze, then Iron.

Bronze is created by melting together copper and tin. After using clubs of wood and pieces of bone, we are taught that chipped stone tools enabled our survival in those preceding millennia. There are anomolies we must examine.

There are flint axe heads that are labelled neolithic, and from China very curiously there are Cong Tubes and Bi Discs made of jade. All three would have taken a very long time to craft. This doesn't take into consideration the massive monuments and structures that were created during the so-called Neolithic period.

This blog will examine these anomolies throughout the past 10,000 years.