What is Prehistoric Archaeology?

Research Methods Prehistoric Archaeology is based on the remains and relics of prehistoric mankind, and uses archaeological methods to study the cultural landscape, economic patterns, social life and staging and breaking off the generations of that time, and at the same time, it also has to combine with the research methods of such disciplines as geology, palaeobiology, palaeoanthropology and ethnology to recover the change of the natural environment, the development of the human physique and the change of the social organization, and to provide more specific arguments for staging and breaking off the generations through the application of modern science and technology in Archaeology to provide more specific arguments for the staging of the generation. Editorial Scope The emergence of prehistoric archaeology breaks through the limitations of religious legends and documentary records, and unprecedentedly prolongs the development process of human history. The differentiation between humans and archaic apes was marked by the manufacture of tools, a concrete symbol of labor. The development of prehistoric mankind, from the lower to the higher level, until the appearance of writing, has gone through a course of at least two or three million years. Due to the uneven development of history, the lower limit of the prehistoric period is also quite inconsistent, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, as early as 3,000 BC into the historical period, China in the sixteenth century before the Shang Dynasty has appeared class state, Europe's Classical era began in the sixth century. The prehistory of some regions lasted longer, such as the Americas in the New World as late as the 16th century, and Oceania as late as the mid-18th century, all of which belonged to the category of prehistoric archaeology before the invasion of the colonialists. Edit this section of the prehistoric era division Legends about prehistory, also reflected in ancient documents, such as the eighth century before the ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod's "labor and seasonal" verse, the development of mankind will be divided into gold, silver, bronze, heroes and iron five centuries; China's East Han Yuan Kang compiled the "Yuejishu" in the tools used by mankind, is divided into stone, jade, copper, iron, four phases, which is only according to the ancient legends and reasoning. These are only reasoning narratives based on ancient legends. As for the scientific understanding from the archaeology, it started from the 19th century. 1836 Danish scholar C.J. Thomson put forward the staging of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, which laid the foundation of the prehistoric archaeology research. 1865 British scholar J. Lubbock divided the Stone Age into Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages. 1868 French archaeologist G.de In 1868, French archaeologist G. de Mortier used archaeological methods to stage the European Paleolithic culture, which was later supplemented and modified by French archaeologist Bourrière, and is still in use until today. 1892 British scholar A. Brown divided the transition period between the Paleolithic and Neolithic, calling it the Mesolithic Age. 1877 Italian scholar G. Chierick proposed that between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, he added the Copper and Stone Age as a transition period. add the Copper and Stone Age as a transitional period. Thus, the division of prehistoric archaeology is basically complete. Chinese prehistoric archaeology began in the 1920s, especially since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, prehistoric archaeology basically filled in the gaps of the era and the region, and made unprecedented achievements. Paleolithic Age In this era humans began to appear, the tools of production were marked by the beating of stone tools, and the human physique was characterized by primitive features. The remains of several extinct animals*** existed, and the geological era belonged to the Pleistocene, which began two or three million years ago and ended 10,000 years ago. The Paleolithic period is the longest, accounting for 99.8 per cent of human history. As for the so-called "Aurignacian" or "Wooden Age", there is no factual basis for the so-called "Aurignacian" or "Wooden Age". Paleolithic culture is widely distributed in the world, and due to the different regions and eras, there are considerable differences in the cultural landscape, resulting in many different cultures and phases. With regard to the division of the Paleolithic Age, the bifurcation or trifurcation method is generally adopted, that is, the Lower Paleolithic Age, the Upper Paleolithic Age, or the Early, Middle and Late Periods. The latter division corresponds to the three stages of human physical development of Homo erectus, early Homo sapiens, and late Homo sapiens. During this long period of time, both human physique and culture developed gradually from lower to higher levels. The use of fire, the improvement of stone tools, the application of bone, horn and clam tools, the appearance of art works and the development of ideology fully reflect that from the beginning of mankind's emergence, it has been in the arduous struggle with nature to transform the world and obtain survival and development. European Paleolithic culture is rich in discoveries, cultural systems and phases of the break is relatively clear, the early remains of the Abu Wili culture, Ashely culture, Clark when the culture; the middle remains of the culture of the Most, Lerwalu wow culture; late remains of the culture of Aurina, Thoreau Lute culture, Magdalene culture. Some of these cultures also influenced North Africa and West Asia. China also has a rich and self-contained system of Paleolithic culture remains, early remains of the Lantian culture, Beijing culture, Guanyin Cave culture; the middle remains of the Dingcun culture; the late remains of the Zhiyu culture, the Shanding Cave culture, the Xiaonanhai culture and so on. There are also Paleolithic cultures in the Americas and Oceania, all of which belong to the late remains. Mesolithic Age Some people call it the Continued Paleolithic Age. Its geological age has entered the Holocene, belonging to the late ice age. At this time, the climate of the Eurasian continent warmed up, which was significantly different from that of the Late Paleolithic. Humans still lived a life of gathering, fishing and hunting, and used beaten or faceted stone tools, but ground stone tools had not yet appeared. The cultural landscape is similar to that of the Late Paleolithic, but the regional color is more intense, such as the Mediterranean coast as the center of the Mesolithic cultures, which can be divided into two major groups of fine stone culture and coarse stone culture. The former is represented by geometric fine stone tools, belonging to the collection of fishing and hunting culture, such as the European Azir culture, Tadnoua culture, are geometric fine stone tools as the main body, with triangular, half-moon and trapezoidal stone knives, inlaid in the bone and wood handle as a composite tool to use. Few Mesolithic cultures have been found in China, such as the Shayuan and Lingjing cultures, both of which are also characterized by fine stone tools, which were made by stripping leaves from tiny stone cores and generally lacked processing, and are significantly different from the geometric fine stone tools mentioned above. The Mesolithic period began about 10,000 years ago and continued unevenly. For example, West Asia in 9000 BC has appeared polished stone tools, the transition to the Neolithic culture, Europe and Central Asia and other places also have some continuation to about 3000 years ago, the Danish Eteb?lle culture belongs to the remnants of the Mesolithic period of the culture, and its late emergence of polished stone tools and pottery is affected by the Neolithic culture in southern Europe, but also retained a more primitive state. The Mesolithic itself is still controversial as a transition period, and whether it can be classified as an independent era remains to be further verified. Chinese academics are mostly opposed to the existence of this era in China. Overview of the Neolithic Age The basic features of this age are the emergence of agriculture, animal husbandry, and the appearance of polished stone tools, pottery, and textiles. Strictly speaking, at this time there was a transition from dependence on natural bounties to a production economy. Since agriculture and animal husbandry were the hallmarks of the emergence of the Neolithic Age, the stage before the appearance of pottery is also referred to as the Pre-Pottery Culture or Proto-Neolithic Culture. Characteristics of the development of the Old World From a worldwide perspective, the geographical and epochal factors were so strong that the Old World and the New World, like the Old World and the New World, showed remarkable differences in terms of their cultural outlook, economic base, and means of production, etc., and could be divided into different regions and groups. The old continent based on the production economy of the neolithic culture, with Iran, Iraq, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine around the so-called "fertile half-moon zone" as a representative of the former 9000 ~ 7000 years before the pottery culture began to cultivate wheat, barley, raising dogs, sheep and goats, but the collection of fishery and hunting is still accounted for a greater proportion, and has formed a semi-stable small-scale culture. proportion, has formed a semi-stable small-scale settlements. Sickles with inlaid geometrical fine stone tools, semi-polished stone axes, and faceted stone containers were used, but no pottery appeared yet. In the pre-culture from 7000 to 6000 years ago, agriculture and animal husbandry were established and became the main source of economy, polished stone axes were commonly used, and the production of deep mantle-shaped, round-bottomed pottery began. In the middle cultural stage from 6000 to 5000 BC, colored pottery and textile technology were invented, human-shaped pottery dolls increased, and cattle as domestic animals began to appear. In the Late Culture Stage from 5000 to 4500 BC, large-scale settlements were formed, characterized by the production of exquisite colored pottery and the construction of temples, with a significant division of labor and the emergence of class division. However, the pattern of development in other places is not consistent, like the pre-pottery culture in China, which is still a missing link. With North China as the center, the Pei Li Gang culture, the Mag Shan culture and the Da Di Wan culture in the 6000 to 5000 years ago, have formed a certain scale of settlements and patches of clan cemeteries. Drought-resistant crops such as corn and millet were planted. Polished stone tools developed, fine stone tools still have remnants. The pottery represented by the three-legged bowl has a certain primitive nature, and its decoration has plain surface, rope pattern, grate pattern, and even in the late stage, there are individual patterns of simple colored pottery. Before 5000 ~ 3000 years before the Yangshao culture period, agriculture, animal husbandry has a more steady development, crops are still corn, millet two. After the Longshan culture period the number of livestock is more, the emergence of sheep, cattle, horses and other new varieties, pottery craft is unprecedentedly developed, not only the use of the wheel system, but also appeared in the wall as thin as 2 millimeters of eggshell ceramics, the social division of labor is obvious, the class bud, in the eve of civilization. As for the Yangtze River Basin and South China's agricultural activities, and North China is obviously different, such as the first 5000 years of the Hemudu culture that is mainly planted rice, and later a series of cultures have inherited this agricultural tradition. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that the origin of Neolithic culture and agriculture and animal husbandry all originated in West Asia, and there should be different centers in the world. Areas unsuitable for farming and animal husbandry or remote areas far from the centers of advanced cultures were often dominated by gathering, fishing and hunting, such as the grate-patterned ceramic cultures in the northern regions of Eurasia and the Jomon period in Japan. As for the Neolithic cultures in the interior of Africa and Indonesia, where the cultivation of yams and yams was the main focus, they did not develop into a real agricultural economy and were at a stagnant stage. Characteristics of the development of the New World Before the arrival of the Spaniards in the New World, in addition to the Paleolithic culture and the individual metal cultures in Central and South America, all belong to the era of Neolithic culture, such as the highly developed Mayan civilization, still belong to the category of Neolithic culture. The cultures of the New World include the farming culture, which used corn as its main crop, and the stagnant Neolithic culture, which was still in the economy of gathering, fishing and hunting, and some of them even belonged to the Pre-temperate culture, which had already appeared polished stone tools but did not see any ceramics. Copper and stone era or gold and stone era, at this time the use of red copper tools, has mastered the copper smelting, cold forging or casting method to produce red copper, but the main tools are still stone tools, belong to the Neolithic era to the transition period of the Bronze Age. However, often due to the discovery of examples is not typical enough, in the concept of confusion, for example, some people put the Bronze Age heyday of the Anyang Yinxu as a copper and stone era is an example. Some archaeologists, such as O. Menking (1888-1973) and V. G. Child, oppose this concept. China has no copper and stone age is also a problem, such as the Qijia culture has appeared cold forging and single casting of small pieces of red copper, seems to be categorized into the category of copper and stone age; but also appeared more than casting of bronze, according to the test has been analyzed by 25 pieces of copper shows that the red copper accounted for 64% of the other belongs to the bronze. In addition, like Gansu Yumen fire burning ditch site, the identification of 66 pieces of bronze, red copper accounted for 54.6%, the rest of the lead-containing, tin bronze. It can be proved that even with bronze, red copper was still in use, so some people think that the appearance of red copper can only symbolize the development of the transition. Whether the Copper and Stone Age can be regarded as a separate stage is open to further study. Bronze Age Bronze is an alloy of red copper with tin as the main component. The purpose of adding tin was to lower the melting point of copper, enhance the fluidity of the copper liquid for casting, and strengthen the hardness of the alloy. Due to the limited origin of tin ore, mining and smelting requires a certain technology, thus the production of bronze is often limited to small or precious weapons, vessels, general tools are still limited to stone tools. At the same time often appear to lead instead of tin, or the use of copper, tin, lead ternary alloy; but the hardness of the alloy is softer, not suitable for practical use. The Bronze Age is inherited from the Neolithic Age and developed, but in some marginal areas, the Neolithic Age was at a stagnant stage, and there was a direct transition to the Iron Age without going through the Bronze Age, such as the Yayoi Age in Japan, and this was the case in the Americas and Oceania. There are a number of similar examples in Africa. Certain regions were already written down during the Bronze Age, such as the 1st to 18th dynasties in Egypt, Mesopotamia before the 14th century, and the Shang and Zhou dynasties in China, and thus no longer fall into the realm of prehistoric archaeology. However, their neighboring areas, such as most of Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, the Bronze Age is still in the prehistoric stage without writing. As for the Bronze Age culture in the Americas, it appeared in the Andes Mountains of South America before the 11th century A.D. The Inca Empire was basically in the Bronze Age. Iron Age The earliest iron tools appeared at the beginning of the 14th century in eastern Asia Minor, and the time of entering the Iron Age in other places was not quite the same. As for meteorite iron products, such as certain knives, short swords and ornaments that began to appear in Western Asia in the first 3,000 years, and iron-bladed bronze battle-axes of the Shang Dynasty in China, they cannot be regarded as products of the Iron Age. Most regions have long been in the historical era during the Iron Age. However, many of the early Iron Age cultures in Europe still belong to the prehistoric era. This shows the development of the quality of production tools and the inconsistency of the historical process.