millions of years to the use of stones as tools and to their fashioning
into more effi cient devices through skillful fl aking. Ancient
peoples discovered the use of fi re as a survival technology, only
much later devising increasingly complicated systems of water management
for irrigation and later still for hydroelectric power and many
other uses. As communications technology developed closer to our
own times, it brought people into greater contact and made them more
knowledgeable and cosmopolitan. Medical and agricultural technology
improved life expectancy, especially in our modern era; artifi cial organs
could replace dying ones, and chemical and nuclear medicines could
stop diseases such as cancers in their tracks.
Although such technology appears to have an exclusively personal
function, making life more pleasant and effi cient, ambitious leaders of
ancient and more recent times have commandeered technology to help
them build states and to conquer other peoples. Aqueducts stretching
for hundreds of miles and the building of ships for warfare and trade
were among the technologies that allowed leaders of states to maintain
and expand their power. Increasingly, the comparatively simple weaponry
of Stone Age people gave way to more complex machinery for
conquest and destruction, weaponry that has been put to ever more
devastating use in the past century.
It is hardly surprising, then, that people have had ambivalent feelings
about technology of all sorts—and not just about the sophisticated
machines of our own day. Pliny the Elder in the fi rst century ce praised
iron for its ability to cut stone and fell trees: “But this metal serves also
for war, murder and robbery,” he wrote in Natural History, “and this I
hold to be the most blameworthy product of the human mind.” Critics
have also charged technology with pollution and other devastating effects
on the natural world. For all its ability to provide increasing ease
for the world’s inhabitants, the case for technology’s drawbacks is a
powerful one, showing the tensions produced by the universal human
capacity to invent.
This book is part of the New Oxford World History, an innovative
series that offers readers an informed, lively, and up-to-date history
viii Editors’ Preface
of the world and its people that represents a signifi cant change from
the “old” world history. Only a few years ago, world history generally
amounted to a history of the West—Europe and the United States—with
small amounts of information from the rest of the world. Some versions
of the old world history drew attention to every part of the world
except Europe and the United States. Readers of that kind of world history
could get the impression that somehow the rest of the world was
made up of exotic people who had strange customs and spoke diffi cult
languages. Still another kind of old world history presented the story of
areas or peoples of the world by focusing primarily on the achievements
of great civilizations. One learned of great buildings, infl uential world
religions, and mighty rulers but little of ordinary people or more general
economic and social patterns. Interactions among the world’s peoples
were often told from only one perspective.
This series tells world history differently. First, it is comprehensive,
covering all countries and regions of the world and investigating the
total human experience—even those of “peoples without histories” living
far from the great civilizations. “New” world historians thus share
an interest in all of human history, even going back millions of years
before there were written human records. A few new world histories
even extend their focus to the entire universe, a “big history” perspective
that dramatically shifts the beginning of the story back to the Big
Bang. Some see the new global framework of world history today as
viewing the world from the vantage point of the moon, as one scholar
put it. We agree. But we also want to take a close-up view, analyzing
and reconstructing the signifi cant experiences of all of humanity.
This is not to say that everything that has happened everywhere and
in all time periods can be recovered or is worth knowing, but there is
much to be gained by considering both the separate and interrelated stories
of different societies and cultures. Making these connections is still
another crucial ingredient of the new world history. It emphasizes connectedness
and interactions of all kinds—cultural, economic, political,
religious, and social—involving peoples, places, and processes. It makes
comparisons and fi nds similarities. Emphasizing both the comparisons
and interactions is critical to developing a global framework that can
deepen and broaden historical understanding, whether the focus is on a
specifi c country or region or on the whole world.
The rise of the new world history as a discipline comes at an opportune
time. The interest in world history in schools and among the
general public is vast. We travel to one another’s nations, converse and
work with people around the world, and are changed by global events.
Editors’ Preface ix
War and peace affect populations worldwide, as do economic conditions
and the state of our environment, communications, and health
and medicine. The New Oxford World History presents local histories
in a global context and gives an overview of world events seen through
the eyes of ordinary people. This combination of the local and the global
further defi nes the new world history. Understanding the workings of
global and local conditions in the past gives us tools for examining our
own world and for envisioning the interconnected future that is in the
making.
Bonnie G. Smith
Anand A. Yang
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Technology:
A World History
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c h a p t e r 1
Stone Age Technology
In a place called Laetoli, in Tanzania, a family—a male and a female
carrying a child—once walked across some fi ne volcanic ash. Their
footprints, covered with ashes, remained untouched for 3.5 million
years until 1978, when the anthropologist Mary Leakey discovered
them. They are the oldest known footprints of Australopithecines
(“southern apes”), a species that lived in southern and eastern Africa
between 4.5 and 2.5 million years ago.
From the fossils of skulls that anthropologists have found, we know
that the brains of these apes were as large as those of chimpanzees,
about one-third the size of human brains today. Like other apes, they
had strong jaws and teeth, with which they scavenged meat left over by
other carnivores, as well as vegetable matter and whatever small animals
they could catch. They differed from other apes in several ways,
however. They lived in open grasslands, not in forests. Unlike all other
mammals, they were bipedal; that is, they could walk upright comfortably.
Their hands had opposable thumbs, with which they could grasp
things. Holding objects in their hands, they could walk without slowing
down. We do not know whether they carried sticks or hides because
such organic matter has long since disintegrated. We do know, however,
that they carried rounded stone cobbles and large pebbles long
distances from the rivers where they found them. In short, they used
found objects as tools.
Humans are not the only creatures that use tools; chimpanzees, vultures,
sea otters, even insects will sometimes pick up a twig or a stone
to get at food. Only humans, however, could not survive without tools,
and only humans have in turn been shaped by the tools they use. How
we got there is a story that began millions of years ago.
The oldest deliberately made tools we know of, found in the Omo
Valley of Ethiopia, date back 2.5 million years. They, too, were river
cobbles but with pieces broken off to make crude choppers with a sharp
2 Te c h n o l o g y : A Wo r l d H i s t o r y
edge, useful for chopping wood or breaking the bones of animals to get
at the marrow. The fl akes that broke off were also sharp enough to cut
hide and meat.
Gradually, the ability to walk upright, to manipulate objects with
their hands, and to manufacture tools transformed not only the way
of life of the Australopithecines but their very nature and anatomy.
After millions of years, they evolved into a different genus, to which
anthropologists give the name Homo or hominid, from the Latin word
for “man.” We cannot say that creatures with large brains “invented”
tools; rather, brains, other anatomical features, and tools evolved together
to create these creatures, our ancestors.
Several species of Homo belonged in the genus hominid, all of them
living in Africa between 2.5 and 1.8 million years ago. The best known
is Homo habilis, “handy man.” These creatures’ brains were half again
as large as those of the Australopithecines, though still only half the size
of ours. The fact that they carried cobbles up to nine miles from the riverbeds
where they were found shows that they could plan for the future,
something no other apes could do. They used these cobbles as hammers
and made choppers by removing fl akes from both sides, an improvement
over their predecessors’ tools. We do not know what other tools
they made or how dependent they were on their simple technology. We
know, however, that they were well adapted to surviving on the open
savannas of Africa, for their anatomies and their choppers remained
virtually unchanged for almost a million years.
We know much more about the creatures called Homo erectus
(“standing man”) who replaced these early hominids around 1.8 million
years ago. They had brains two-thirds the size of ours. Like modern
humans, their jaws and teeth were smaller than those of Homo habilis ,
and their arms were shorter and their legs longer. They were much less
adept at biting and chewing and at climbing trees than earlier species.
They could not have survived without tools.
Their tools, however, were much more developed than their predecessors’.
We call their stone tools hand axes, or bifaces, because they
were carefully fl aked on both sides to provide a fairly even and longlasting
cutting edge. Some had a sharp point, and others, called cleavers,
had a straight edge. Hand axes and cleavers could weigh as much
as fi ve pounds. They were multipurpose tools used to skin and butcher
animals, to scrape skins, and to carve wood. Evidently, these hand axes
served them well, for they hardly changed for close to a million years.
More important, Homo erectus mastered fi re, the only creatures
to do so. Fire allowed them to protect themselves from predators, to
Stone Age Technology 3
frighten animals, to warm themselves in cold weather, and to roast
meat, which they needed to do because their small teeth had diffi culty
chewing raw meat. Australopithecines and Homo habilis had hunted,
but only small or weak animals; otherwise, they scavenged the leftovers
of more powerful predators, such as the big cats. Homo erectus, in contrast,
were big-game hunters. Working in teams, they were able to drive
wooly mammoths, larger than elephants, into swamps where they could
be killed with spears and stones. Like all hominids, much of their nutrition
came from vegetable matter collected, probably by females.
Thanks to fi re and their superior hunting skills, Homo erectus could
live in temperate climates and could therefore migrate from tropical Africa
to other continents. More than a million years ago, Homo erectus
reached the Caucasus, northern China, and Java, and later Spain and
France. But they could not survive in really cold climates, like northern
Eurasia, nor could they cross bodies of water; therefore, they never
reached Australia, the Americas, or the islands of the Pacifi c.
Several species of Homo erectus existed at the same time. Sometime
between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago in Africa, one species, and
possibly more than one, evolved into a more advanced creature with a
brain as large and jaws and teeth as small as ours. We call this creature
Homo sapiens, the “wise man,” because we think of ourselves as wise.
It was so similar to us that some anthropologists claim that if one of
them reappeared on earth and sat on a bus seat next to us, we would
think it was just another passenger.
There were two distinct species within the genus Homo sapiens: one
with thick brows, strong bones, and the physique of a wrestler, called
Neanderthal, after the Neander Valley in Germany where their remains
were fi rst found; the other, called archaic Homo sapiens, was physically
exactly like modern humans. These two species lived side by side in the
Levant (the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean), but they did
not interbreed. Then, 35,000 or 40,000 years ago, the Neanderthals
vanished, and no one knows why.
The technology of the two species was identical and considerably
more sophisticated than that of Homo erectus. Instead of making one
kind of hand axe, they made many different stone tools for different
purposes: stone spearpoints they attached to wooden shafts, blades of
various sizes, and curved scrapers used to prepare hides, among others.
Microscopic analysis shows that different tools were used to cut wood,
to saw bones, to cut meat, and to scrape antlers.
Australopithecines, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus had distinctive
stone tools but barely changed them for hundreds of thousands,
4 Te c h n o l o g y : A Wo r l d H i s t o r y
even millions, of years. Similarly, the tools of archaic Homo sapiens and
Neanderthals changed very slowly over tens of thousands of years.
Then, 70,000 years ago, an explosion of innovations began, not only
in tools but also in aspects of life unknown to previous hominids: art,
religion, and ocean navigation. Some anthropologists call this event the
Big Bang. Here was something new in the world: human culture, changing
incomparably faster than the slow biological evolution of species.
We know much more about the material culture of modern humans
than about that of their predecessors because modern humans created
far more things and because many of the things they made out of organic
matter—bones, antlers, hides, and wood—have survived over
the past 70,000 years, especially in cold places where earlier creatures
would not have ventured.
Consider just one kind of tool, the sharp-edged stone. Modern humans
made a great variety of tools for cutting, scraping, and piercing,
even burins or chisels used to engrave fi ne lines on antler and bone.
They even made microliths, tiny pieces of sharp stone that they embedded
in a bone or wooden haft to form a saw.
These stone points, dating from around
4200–3000 bce , came from North Africa.
Their concave bases indicate that
they probably were used as arrowheads.
Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit
TECHNOLOGY IS THE MOST IMPORTENT PART OF THE MODERN TIME.
WE NEED TECHNOLOGY IN EVERY WHERE WHERE U WANT TO GO.
thanks you for watching ................
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