The history of humanity encompasses the period from around 300,000 BCE to the present day. The first humans lived collectively in classless groups of 30 to 40 members who adopted a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They originally lived in the Southern region of Africa, but spread to other regions around 85,000 years ago, mainly due to changing climate conditions. The whole human population of Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas are descendants of a single group of hunter-gatherers who left Africa around that time,[1] but all humans descend from a single mother who lived as far as 120,000 to 197,000 years ago.[2]
Humans throughout this period developed many lifestyles and modes of production, such as primitive communism, slavery, feudalism and capitalism and socialism.
Pre-literary history
Before the speciation process that led to the evolution of humans, the primate species Australopithecus afarensis that lived 3,2 million years ago was distinct from other apes because it walked upright. This had revolutionary implications because bipedalism meant the hands and arms were free to develop tools. The tool-making behavior would flourish in the descendant human species Homo habilis, who lived around 1,6 million to 2,3 million years ago.[1]
Up to 99% of their history, humans lived cooperatively in small-scale classless groups, similar to currently existing hunter-gatherers societies. Selflessness, reciprocity and cooperation is a common behavior of hunter-gatherers in every continent, regardless of their environment.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Neil Faulkner (2013). 'Hunters and farmers' in A Marxist history of the world – from neanderthals to neoliberals. Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745332154 [LG]
- ↑ Qiaomei Fu, Alissa Mittnik, et al. (2013). A revised timescale for human evolution based on ancient mitochondrial genomes. Current Biology, vol. 23.
- ↑ Chris Harman (1999). 'The rise of class societies' in A people's history of the world. ISBN 9781898876557 [LG]