Ancient Humans Life is getting complicated. When humans first started out on this planet, they only had a few choices, one of them was not a profession. You were either a hunter or you starved. You had to have shelter, something to keep you warm in the cold like animal skins and something to eat. Who really knows how long it was before fire was discovered so when you hunted you ate everything raw. It is thought that the early humans figured out how to create fire a long ago as 700,000 years. I think they probably found something burning and stuck their hand into it and learned it was very hot and somewhere in time they might have found an animal burned and decided to try and eat it and decided it tasted much better cooked. Just because some might have found out the way to make fire doesn’t mean every human knew this trick at the same time. It could have taken many years for this knowledge to spread along the earth. It may be we might not have known how to make fire back then, but we could preserve it if found. It would have been the most precious commodity at the time. Can you imagine if someone was appointed guardian of the flame, an important position no doubt and a rain storm put his fire out. Would the ancient tribe had killed him, because this would have been an incredible loss. It might not have even been his fault the flame went out because he might not have known at the time water puts out fire. One has to wonder how long it took to realize fires kept vicious animals away from their camps and it could be used to light their caves besides cooking their food. I think it was the most important discovery mankind ever made. In the freezing winter while it snowed outside, you could build a roaring fire in your cave and stay warm. You have to wonder when we were developing our first weapons for hunting, did we create any which seemed useless? Maybe the first weapons were just a pile of rocks which could be thrown at animals. This would not have worked very well, but we had to learn. I wonder how long it was before pointy sticks were developed to use as spears? Modern man is dated to about 400,000 B.C. It is thought the invention of the spear dates back to the same time period. Did modern man use his superior brain to invent the spear? It is said the spear is the oldest of all weapons invented. There seems to be a problem with this idea, because scientists say Neanderthals and even earlier human relatives used spears. When we talk about how long Neanderthals had been on earth we get many different opinions, and that is true even for modern humans. Most believe Neanderthals were on earth for about 400,000 years and died out about 40,000 years ago. Many scientists say modern humans are not 400,000 years old but 200,000 years old. There are also those who say we have been around for 300,000 years. Be that as it may, scientists have an idea that we began to develop into more than just cave people about 65,000 years ago. They think our way of thinking about things changed. Is that when we began to think about inventions to make life simpler? Affixing stone or even bone tips to spears was a game changer. When fire was discovered, it was also discovered if you put a wooden spear tip in the flame, it would harden the tip. These inventions made it easier because the spear tips would penetrate into the animal much easier. At first, when triangular worked stones were found it was thought they could be arrow tips, but to the surprise of archaeologists they turned out to be spear tips. It seems spears were used for a very long time before someone discovered how to create a small flying spear, which we call an arrow today. The discovery of the bow and arrow could go back to 72,000 years and who knows, maybe even more. Now you could hunt without being so close to the animal. This must have saved many lives and made hunting a lot less dangerous enterprise. Today a typical arrow can travel between 50 to 120 yards. More powerful bows can launch arrows much further and bows can even reach 300 yards. I guess even if the early bows reached 50 yards that was a great improvement for those early hunters. It is a shame the bow was turned on humans and used to make killing people more efficient. Fishing was also something early man did and when the fishing net was invented it allowed him to vastly increase his catch. The oldest fishing net ever found dates back to 8300 B.C. Nets were made out of natural materials that were capable of being woven together. Nets were not limited to just fishing but had a use in hunting also. Imagine the first time someone got into their crude dugout boat and thew a net overboard and it had fish in it when pulled up. It would have seemed like a miracle. Nets were probably responsible for the birth of fishing villages all around the world. As time passed, they kept getting improved by making them stronger. Things must have been very different in those days. Since there was no lighting of any kind except the camp fire, people probably went to bed at dark and got up at dawn to get as much of the day in as they could before it got dark again. Camps had to be a close distance to fresh water. If they weren’t, they were temporary and the occupants had to have figured out how to carry water with them. The first water transportation devices were probably animal bladders or waterproof skins. If hunters went far away to hunt and lost their water, they could be in a lot of trouble. We don’t realize how much easier we have it today.
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