Nomads to Neoliths

The First People
The time from modern humans appeared on earth to about 8,000 BCE was known as prehistory. There was no written record of the events that took place in that time. The only clue that is to how people lived was cave drawings or cave paintings that can be found most every where. According to history the first reported modern people (scientificly known as Homo sapiens) came to be approximately in the year 200,000 BCE. These first people are today known as Neanderthals which by definition means a person with very old-fashioned ideas.Neanderthals would hunt and forage for their food, primarily hunting Bison, Woolly Mammoths, and other plains herbivores.

Social Structure in Prehistory
In the time of these early Hominids there was not a true diversity from the others you spent the majority of your time with. Early societies often were known as nomads. This was because they did not stay in one place, they moved with the food, in often cases a herd of Bison or cattle, till they could strike. Since they constantly were on the move they were not able to create a settlement. This meant that bands, or clans were formed to be able to move quickly and not have to rely on feeding multiple mouths. The band that you traveled with was often your nuclear family. The women assumed the role of gatherers retreiving berries, plants, bugs for dyes as well as taking care of the children. The males would do the hunting and also were the leaders of the family and/or clan.

The Rise of Agriculture
Around the year of 8,000 BCE the complete revolution of man from the nomadic hunter-gatherer society to a agricultural society occured. Using modern technology, archeologists have determined that the crops that were initially grown were wild and not domesticated. The first crops that were initially dommesticated were emmer and einkorn wheat. They were not domesticated into well into the neolithic era. What I mean as domesticating is that the genetic change of an organism to produc a result or do something that the domesticator wants or needs. An example of the domestication of a crop is the banana: This is an original banana which as you can see looks nothing like the banana we know todat, due to the domestication and genetic manipulation of crops.