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The economic revolution was accompanied by other important changes. In Europe and the United States the idea of education for all replaced the traditional distinction between illiterate mass and the educated few. Education was basic for most people, but opportunities for higher forms of training or for university expanded throughout the 19th century and became general in the twentieth. Civil rights and the rule of law were applied in most European states and the settler communities overseas, and limited progress was made towards representative forms of government. One of the most striking aspects of the move to greater emancipation was the gradual recognition in the liberal West that women should have equal rights—social, sexual, political—with men, even if the principle has not always worked as it should. Finally, the idea of the modern nation-state, in which identity was derived from being a citizen of a particular nation, defined by territory, shared culture and language, although far from universal even in Europe in the 19th century (and certainly not applied to Europe’s empires), set the model that has been subsequently established worldwide. The United Nations now counts 195 sovereign states, all but three as members.
The impact of Western wealth, military advantage, technology and ambition on the rest of the world was catastrophic. India was conquered, the Mughal emperors overthrown, and British rule imposed. China succeeded in keeping the West at bay, but at the cost of regular punitive expeditions, and the final sapping of China’s traditional political system by Western-educated Chinese who wanted China to adopt modern politics and economics. The Ottoman Empire crumbled under the remorseless pressure of Europe, which took over the whole of North Africa and encroached on the Ottoman Middle East. The Empire finally collapsed in 1919 at the end of the First World War. Everywhere else traditional societies, long isolated from any contact with a wider world, were visited, annexed, fought over and incorporated into the Western orbit. What resulted was usually an unstable mix of tradition and novelty, the old order sufficiently challenged or undermined that it could no longer function effectively, the new order mediated by surviving social traditions, religious practices and native cultures. The one exception was Japan. Contact with the West in the 1850s was perceived to be an immediate threat. In 1868 the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown, the Meiji emperor restored, and a rapid process of modernization undertaken to shield Japan from Western imperialism. Within forty years Japan’s modern armed forces could defeat the much larger Russian army and navy in the war of 1904–5; in the 1930s Japan invaded large parts of China and in 1941 Japanese forces launched a swift and successful campaign against American and European territories in the Pacific and South-East Asia which was reversed only by the exploitation of Western technologies yet more advanced.
The changes ushered in by the rise of European and American power have developed exponentially. The history of the past 250 years shows a dizzying transformation: global horizons have narrowed with mass communication and the development of a homogenized consumer culture; a level of knowledge and technical achievement unimaginable a century ago makes it possible to explore planets millions of miles distant, to revisit the earliest moments of the universe, to understand the genetic codes that dictate human biology, to harness lasers and micro-electronic components to produce a technical base not only of exceptional sophistication, but one that is also democratic in its reach. Some sense of the sheer speed of change can be illustrated in numerous ways, but few examples are more remarkable than the difference between the colonial wars of the late 19th century, fought with Gatling machine guns, rifles and small artillery pieces and the Second World War fought only forty years later with tanks, high-speed aircraft, radar, radio, missiles, and, in its late stages, with jet aircraft and nuclear weapons.
The Western experience, for all its technical and social achievements, has nonetheless been profoundly ambiguous. There have been perhaps no other civilizations which have been so publicly anxious about the prospects for their survival, so fearful of pride before a fall. The two world wars, both generated in Europe, compromised that claim to be the heartland of modern civilization and a source of social progress and moral authority, which had been relayed throughout the last decades of the 19th century. Exporting ideas about civil rights and nationhood accelerated the decline and disappearance of the old European empires. The transfer of the British crown colony of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997 marked a symbolic end to a long history of coercive European expansion and acknowledged China’s growing international stature. The export of Western technology and commercial skills resulted in the collapse of many European industries and the transfer of large-scale manufacturing to the rapidly growing economies of eastern and south-eastern Asia. The global reach of Western commerce and the remorseless march of English as the global language has produced a backlash against what are perceived to be new forms of imperialism, and against the crass failure of Western states to understand the complex differences that still mark off communities in Asia, Africa, Latin America or the Middle East from the Western model. Islamic terrorism is only one of the many fruits of hostility to the idea that somehow the Western model ought to be appropriate in any cultural or geographical context.
Where, then, is this history going? Accelerated change can be read several ways: it could either mean speeding downhill to the edge of the precipice, or climbing rapidly to a richer, more secure and more peaceable world. Historians would do well do be humble in the face of the future. The unpredictable and unpredicted can be found throughout the chapters that follow. How few commentators and Sovietologists thought in the late 1980s that the Soviet bloc would possibly collapse in a matter of a few years; how many observers thought, wrongly, that HIV/AIDS would provoke an unstoppable pandemic which would decimate the world’s population. One thing can be said with certainty: for all the talk of a new unipolar world built around the massive military power of the United States and the appeal of the Western model, the foreseeable future will have China, Russia, India and the Middle East, the great bulk of the world’s population, developing in ways that are not consistent with an ideal Western model, capable of exerting a growing influence on global economic structures and the distribution of political influence, able perhaps to restore at least some of that diversity in historical experience characteristic of all recorded history up to the 19th century.
Taking the longer view there is little to be said. A hundred human lives of 60 years will take us to 8,000 AD. Perhaps the acceleration of history will provoke a sudden crash long before that. There remain the awful paradoxes that the more ‘progress’ there has been, the more violence, discrimination and crime has been generated and the more economic desires are satisfied, the nearer the earth moves to ecological crisis. As Nietzsche remarked more than a century ago, ‘the universe does not need man’. Human history may well be finite. On the other hand, the history of the world hitherto has shown man to be a remarkably adaptable, ambitious, unscrupulous, technically adept creature. This history so far is no simple parable of survival and triumph; the future of the world may have to be just that.
Richard Overy, 2008
ONE HUMAN ORIGINS AND EARLY CULTURES
Recorded history is only the tip of an iceberg reaching back to the first appearance on earth of the human species. Anthropologists, prehistorians and archaeologists have extended our vista of the past by hundreds of thousands of years: we cannot understand human history without taking account of their findings. The transformation of humankind (or, more accurately, of certain groups of humans in certain areas) from hunters and fishers to agriculturists, and from a migratory to a sedentary life, constitutes the most decisive revolution in the whole of human history. The climatic and ecological changes which made it possible have left their mark on the historical record down to the present day.
Agriculture made possible not merely a phenomenal growth of human population, which is thought to have increased some 16-fold between 8000 and 4000 BC, but also gave rise to the familiar landscape of village communities which still characterized Europe as late as the middle of the 19th century and which even today prevails in many parts of the world. Nowhere are the continuities of history more visible. The enduring structures of human society, which transcend and outlive political change, carry us back to the end of the Ice Age, to the changes which began when the shrinking ice-cap left a new world to be explored and tamed.
FROM c. 5 MILLION YEARS AGO
HUMAN ORIGINS
Global cooling between five and six million years ago saw savannahs replace the tropical forests of sub-Saharan Africa. The appearance of this new environment was in turn matched by an evolutionary pulse that gave rise to new carnivores and omnivores. Among them were the hominines, the ancestors of modern man.
The earliest hominine fossils, discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia, are the fragmentary 4.5-million-year-old remains of Ardipithecus ramidus. Better evidence is available of the later and more widespread Australopithecenes, or “southern apes”. Skeletal and fossilized footprints of Australopithecus afarensis, dated to between three and four million years ago, indicate a serviceable if not fully bipedal gait, hands still partly adapted for specialized tree climbing and a brain approximately one-third the size of ours. This species is the probable ancestor both of the robustly built Australopithecines boisei, aethiopicus and robustus, all with large teeth and herbivorous diets, and of our genus, Homo, meaning “man”. A major discovery thrown up by fieldwork since the 1950s has revealed that these closely related but nonetheless distinctive species not only lived at the same time but side by side in the same habitats. Finds of more species are expected.
From between two and three million years ago, there is evidence of important evolutionary trends in Homo: brains became much bigger, a process known as encephalization; and full bipedalism was attained—as the 1974 discovery of the fossil skeleton known as ‘Lucy’ shows. As larger brains need better diets to sustain them, the increase in brain size could only have occurred as a result of significant evolutionary pressures. The problem was compounded because hominines stayed the same size, with the result that their bigger brains could be achieved only by reducing the size of another organ, the stomach, a trade-off which in turn reduced the efficiency of the digestive tract, which in turn demanded a still better diet.
EARLY TECHNOLOGIES
The most convincing explanation of this development—the expensive tissue hypothesis—holds that a move towards an energy-rich diet, particularly animal proteins, was responsible. And indeed the earliest-known stone tools, found in Gona, Ethiopia, suggest that 2.5 million years ago meat was a central part of hominines’ diet, with the sharpened stones used to cut flesh and pound marrowrich bones from carcasses either scavenged or brought down and then defended against carnivores. Burnt bones found in southern Africa indicate that by 1.5 million years ago hominines had learned to “cook” their food, a development which again would have compensated for smaller stomachs by breaking down animal proteins before digestion took place.
OUT OF AFRICA
This pattern of development was the basis for the first colonization, by Homo erectus, 1.8 million years ago of areas outside sub-Saharan Africa. Then, around 500,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis migrated into north Africa and the Near East, reaching northern Europe about 400,000 years ago (however there is also good evidence in northern Europe for hominines 700,000 years ago). Homo erectus and heidelbergensis are sometimes considered to have shared a common ancestor, a type designated as Homo ergaster, and best known from the skeleton found at Nariokotome in Kenya’s Rift valley. By perhaps 1.5 million years ago, all three had brains of about 1000cc (61cu in) and an adaptable stone technology: the weight and careful shaping of the edges of their distinctive handaxes, whether pointed or oval, made them effective butchery tools.
Stone technology was not the only factor in the evolutionary pressures that led to larger brains. It was also to do with allowing hominines to remember, to manipulate, to support and to organize others in more complex ways. Perhaps paradoxically, as hominines developed these more sophisticated social structures, so they simultaneously became less reliant on one another and better adapted to living in smaller groups. This in turn allowed them to colonize harsher barrier habitats such as the Sahara at the margins of their homelands from where they could colonize new, more temperate areas beyond.
MODERN HUMANS
From about 500,000 years ago, this early burst of colonization came to a halt. Instead, though there were undoubtedly many dispersals of populations and much intermingling of genes, regional groups of separate populations living side by side such as the Neanderthals developed. But from 100,000 years ago, another major dispersal began when anatomically modern people—Homo sapiens sapiens—emigrated from sub-Saharan Africa. By 50,000 years ago, Australia had been reached, by boat; 33,000 years ago, the western Pacific islands were colonized; 15,000 years ago, the Americas were reached. Major expansion into the Arctic began about 4500 years ago as the continental ice sheets retreated. Finally, 2000 years ago, humans began to settle the deep Pacific islands from where they reached New Zealand around 1200 years ago, 1000 years before the island’s discovery by Captain Cook.
FROM c. 200,000 YEARS AGO
THE SPREAD OF MODERN HUMANS
DNA studies have revealed that the first anatomically modern humans—Homo sapiens—arose in Africa between 200,000 and 140,000 years ago. Though much has still to be discovered about their origins and dispersal, by almost 28,000 years ago Homo sapiens had become not only the sole human species but the first truly global one.
The earliest modern-looking human skulls yet found are about 130,000 years old and come from the Omo basin in Ethiopia and Klasies River Mouth in southern Africa, the latter one of the best-researched sites of early human habitation. Perhaps 100,000 years ago, these early populations began to disperse, migrating northwards out of Africa. These migrations were followed by a process known as “bottlenecking” in which population levels among the dispersed peoples remained small for thousands of years. It is possible that a contributory factor to bottlenecking was the eruption of Toba in northwest Sumatra 71,000 years ago, an environmental catastrophe on an extraordinary scale: parts of India were covered with ash up to 3m (10ft) deep, global temperatures were lowered for a millennium. At the same time, the restricted populations generated by bottlenecking had the side effect of encouraging rapid changes in genetic structures thereby increasing the pace of evolutionary change.
Archaeological and genetic evidence then point to a further rapid expansion of modern human populations about 50,000 years ago. The archaeological evidence in particular highlights growing sophistication and the mastery of a wide and increasing range of skills. In some regions, lighter, multi-component weapons have been found, including spears made from skilfully produced stone blades fixed to wooden shafts and handles. There is evidence, too, of textiles and baskets, and of more orderly layouts of camp-sites, including cold-weather dwellings and underground food stores. Trading networks also increased dramatically. Raw materials, particularly stone, which had previously been traded over distances of less than 80km (50 miles), were now traded over several hundreds of kilometres (there is good evidence for this in eastern Europe).
THE NEANDERTHALS
Homo sapiens was by no means the only human species in the world of 50,000 years ago. In East and southeast Asia lived the descendants of those Homo erectus populations who had colonized the region over a million years earlier. Among other human populations the best known are the Neanderthals, distinguished from modern humans by their distinctive large and low-crowned heads with prominent brows and big teeth and powerful stocky bodies well adapted to cold. By contrast, the incoming modern people had an African body pattern—slender with long legs and small torsos—that copes better with heat stress. The Neanderthals had brains as large as modern humans and were in many ways highly successful. They adapted well to a wide range of habitats and climates ranging from the relatively arid Middle East to the cold of central Europe; their use of tools was sophisticated; and they were effective hunters of animals in prime condition such as bison, horse and reindeer. The burial of their dead, often with some elaboration, also indicates signs of a recognizably modern humanity. They almost certainly had language, too. But what the Neanderthals seem not to have possessed is the degree of social flexibility and cultural tradition that more than any other characteristic singles out Homo sapiens and explains our ultimate success in becoming the only global hominine.
This social and intellectual sophistication reveals itself in a number of ways but the result of it was almost always the same: the evolution of more complex social relations which allowed early humans to thrive in a much wider range of habitats and societies than previous hominine species had managed before. Whether living in large or small groups, Homo sapiens was able to overcome its environment to an unprecedented degree. The most striking evidence is provided by the wide variety of artefacts that have been discovered: engraved stones, ornaments, figurines, exotic shells, amber and ivory and, most famously, cave paintings. That the latter were frequently inaccessible and could have been seen only with ladders and artificial light suggests that a variety of factors motivated their creators. Whatever the explanation, these early works of art are an evocative monument to the humanity of these early hunters.
It is significant that the Neanderthals had almost no cultural traditions of this kind. A few incised bones have been found; similarly, the very occasional exotic piece of raw material occurs. By almost 28,000 years ago, both Neanderthals and Homo erectus were extinct. Modern humans had already colonized Australia 20,000 years before, and were set to colonize the Americas before 12,000 years ago. Henceforth modern humans were the sole surviving hominine in the world.
20,000 TO 10,000 BC
THE ICE AGE WORLD
By 10,000 years ago, humans had colonized almost the whole of the habitable world. It was an achievement made in the face of the last of a series of Ice Ages, when vast sheets of ice periodically advanced and retreated. The human species today is the product of this long process of adaptation to the varied conditions of the Ice Ages.
There have been eight Ice Ages in the last 800,000 years, each interspersed with warmer periods from 30,000 to 10,000 years known as interglacials, brief and extreme parts of this cycle. The Ice Ages were periods of exceptional cold away from the equator. Ice sheets advanced across the frozen wastes of the northern hemisphere as temperatures fell by up to 15 degrees centigrade. With so much of the earth’s water locked into the ice sheets, sea levels fell by up to 150m (500ft). As they did so, land bridges appeared, linking many major land areas and present-day islands into larger continental land masses.
Equatorial regions were also affected: as rainfall diminished, half the land area between the tropics became desert. With each advance of the ice, the plants and animals of the northern hemisphere withdrew to warmer latitudes. As the ice retreated, so they moved northwards again. Humans, too, must have migrated with these changing climates. Yet despite the extremes of cold, the human species continued to develop, spreading from its original African homeland to east and southeast Asia and to Europe. Mastery of fire and the invention of clothing were crucial to this achievement, as were new social and communication skills.
ICE AGE HUMANS
The height of the last Ice Age or LGM (last glacial maximum) was reached about 20,000 years ago. As the ice expanded, human populations contracted into a small number of more favourable habitats. Across almost the whole of the Eurasian landmass between the ice to the north and the deserts to the south, from the glacial cul-de-sac of Alaska to southern France, productive grasslands and steppes were created. Rich in seasonal grasses, they sustained large herds of mammoth, bison, horse and reindeer, all of them important food sources for Palaeolithic (the period of the emergence of modern man, about 2.5–3 million years ago to 12,000 BC) hunters.
Much the same sort of habitat seems to have developed in North America. By the time modern humans migrated there about 15,000 years ago, the rolling grasslands were teeming with animal life: giant bison with a six-foot horn spread; towering beaver-like creatures called casteroides; camels; ground sloths; stag moose; two types of musk-oxen; several varieties of large, often lion-sized cats; mastodons; and three types of mammoth. So effectively did the new human population hunt them that by about 10,000 years ago almost all of them were extinct, including the horse, re-introduced to the New World only by Europeans following in the wake of Columbus.
South of the Eurasian mammoth steppe lay an extensive zone of drier conditions. Indeed parts of the Sahara, the Near East and India became almost entirely arid, forcing their populations along permanent watercourses such as the Nile. Similar patterns of settlement are found in Australia, where cemeteries discovered along the Murray River bear marked resemblances to those along the Nile.
Modern humans were late arrivals in western Europe, replacing Neanderthal populations only from about 35,000 years ago. Yet the new communities developed remarkable levels of cultural expression. In southwest France, the Pyrenees and northern Spain, hundreds of caves decorated with paintings of symbols and animals have been discovered, evidence of a rich cultural tradition.
By 12,000 years ago, the last Ice Age was drawing to a close. As temperatures rose, vegetation spread and animals re-colonized the cold northern wastes. With them went hunters and gatherers. By 10,000 BC in Central America and the Near East, people had begun to move beyond their existing resources and to investigate new ways of producing food and manipulating plants and animals in the first experiments in farming.
