1020 Introductory Lecture transcript

This is the introductory lecture for HUM1020 - Introduction to Humanities. By the end of this presentation you should be able to answer all of these questions: What are the humanities and why do we study them?How do we distinguish between culture and civilization, and which one came first? What characteristics must societies possess in order to be called "civilized"? And finally, when did the first civilizations emerge?

I really like this definition of the humanities from the Stanford University website. It says, "The humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world. These modes of expression have become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities umbrella.

Knowledge of these records of human experience gives us the opportunity to feel a sense of connection to those who have come before , as well as to our contemporaries." In my face-to-face classes, I like to mess with my students by asking them which one they think came first, culture or civilization, and they overwhelmingly vote for civilization first. But as you can see on this slide, it's culture that came first. If you think of culture as what you get when humans express themselves, what's important to them, we have evidence of human culture that dates back to at least 28,000 years ago.

The seeds of civilization, however, weren't planted until about 10,000 years ago. In order to be called "civilized" a group of people must have some or most, at least most, of these characteristics. The first is permanent settlement-- some form of urban life involving the construction of permanent settlements. And you probably know that in their earliest human history humans were hunters and gatherers; they had to follow the food source around because they didn't have agriculture yet.

And so they weren't able to build permanent settlements at that point, so once they developed agriculture, they could develop these other characteristics. Next would be a system of government, the development of distinct social classes, tools and specialized skills for the production of goods, some form of written communication, and a shared system of religious beliefs. These things weren't developed until thousands of years after the first culture was produced, and when we go back to the beginnings of culture, we have here the five so-called "Prehistoric Cultural Periods".

They're called that because, well, duh!, they come from before the time of written history. The ancient Greeks were the first credible historians, and so the first historical cultural period is just basically called the "Greek period", but before the Greeks came these cultural periods that are basically named for the material that was important to them at the time. So first we have the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Next, the Middle Stone Age, called the Mesolithic, the Neolithic, the Bronze and then the Iron Age.

And at some point civilizations were created. And if you're asked this on a test or something in the future--during which prehistoric cultural period did the world's first civilizations emerge?-- the answer to that is the Bronze Age. Think of this phrase in your head, get this in your head: "Bronze Age civilizations", that's when the world's first emerged. So I have a slide for each, several slides, actually, for each of these cultural periods coming up.

First is the Paleolithic period. Dates for this period will vary from textbook to textbook. I think I tried to be consistent with your textbook, so on this slide I have 7 million to 10,000 BCE. First of all, as I said before, humans were hunters and gatherers. They had to follow the food source around such as, I don't know, antelope, bison, whatever. And because of that they didn't build permanent dwellings, so they lived in caves, if caves were available, or maybe out on the plains.

They did not have written forms of communication, yet. They had only verbal forms of communication, and culturally speaking, we know that they were expressing themselves because archaeologists have dug up a number of so-called 'fertility figurines' around Europe, and also in the last several centuries, these amazing cave paintings have been discovered. I'll I'll show you some pictures of those on the next slides. Also from the Paleolithic period we have the evidence of ceremonial burials with personal objects in the graves.

The Neanderthal people of what we call present-day Germany practiced this, and because we don't have writing from the earliest humans, we really don't know what personal objects in the graves meant. The only thing we can take from that is that it signified maybe some kind of belief in the afterlife, but we don't know anything more than that. Here is a picture of a kind of funny-looking little figurine. When you first see it, it looks kind of funny.

It's actually only about three and a half inches tall; it can fit in the palm of your hand. So we wouldn't call this a statue; it's a figurine and it's known as the "Venus of Willendorf". And it's called that because it was found in Willendorf, Austria. And you might know Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, and procreation, and I think in this case it's safe to say that it represents procreation more than love or beauty.

Obviously the parts of the body that are exaggerated, are the parts that have to do with procreation. Notice the enlarged breasts, the genitals. I think it's kind of funny how you see her arms folded over her gigantic breasts. But notice, no facial features. This is not a portrait of an individual human being. That's very sophisticated; that comes much later in human history. Basically what people think this represents, and all of the many other numerous figurines like it that have been found, people think that this represents fertility, the importance of fertility, and that makes sense because the earliest people had to have been worried about procreation because if they didn't reproduce their clan or their tribe would have died out.

So basically, survival is what these earliest humans were concerned with. I think it's safe to say that another example to illustrate this emphasis on survival is probably with these cave paintings. Now the cave paintings are younger than the fertility figurines but they're still pretty old. The most famous set of cave paintings was found in Lascaux, France. It's known as the Lascaux Cave, and these date back to about 15,000 - 13,000 BCE.

This is also during the Paleolithic period, and this cave and others like it were found, like I said, before, in just the last century or two. I think this one was discovered in the late 1800s, if I'm not mistaken. The problem was, as soon as these paintings were discovered, people started flocking to the cave to see these, and the paintings are not, like, in the front part of the cave where there's air coming in, but rather in the back, dark recesses of these caves.

And people just gathering in here and breathing resulted in moisture collecting on the walls and mold growing through the walls, and so they basically shut the cave down. And now today only scholars who get permission, I think, from the French government can go in here and see the original paintings. They have built a replica cave next door with copies of the paintings for tourists to go and see. And I guess it's a pretty good replica, but it still would be nice to see the original, don't you think so?

Here's a close-up of some of the paintings on the wall of what's known as the "Hall of Bulls" at Lascaux. And look at the amazing realism of these artworks. It almost looks like they were painted just, you know, last year. Nobody knows for sure what the cave paintings were for, why they were painted. Your textbook gives you some theories about it. One theory is that maybe before a hunt, people would gather here in the back part, back dark recesses of the caves, and shoot arrows at these animals on the walls.

If that's true, that's something I would liken to voodoo, if you know what voodoo is, where you make an image of something, and then you do to the image, like stick pins it, do to the image what you hope will happen to it in actuality. And so if that's what these were used for, that shows some kind of evidence of trying to control what happens in the future on the hunt. There might have been magical purposes for these things.

I believe they have found some musical instruments in some of these caves, and so they think there might have been musical performances back here. But again, not just for entertainment but probably as some part of a ritual or ceremony. One thing that can probably be ruled out is that these were just for decoration. I really don't think people were sophisticated enough yet to want to have decorations on their cave walls.

Also, again, these were found in the back recesses of the caves, not in the front parts where the people would have mostly been living, Here are some more pictures of some cave paintings, a little bit more primitive looking than the ones we see at Lascaux, but what's interesting to me in this middle picture is the dimension. You see how these horses are clearly behind and in front of each other. That's amazing to me.

Now we move on to the next cultural period known as the Mesolithic, or the Middle Stone Age. Notice that it's a relatively short period of time, only about 2,000 years or so, and the main characteristic of this period was the development of agriculture. This is when humans were learning how to grow crops and breed animals, and because of that, over on the right, here, you see we have for the first time the awareness of seasonal changes.

If you think about it, before they were farmers, they probably really weren't as in tune with the seasonal changes as they they were going to be once they started farming because, with farming you have to know when to plant and when to harvest. Evidence of this comes in the form of stone circles, the most famous of which, I think, is Stonehenge in England. But that's not as old as the the one found in Turkey that dates to about 9,000 BC.

But here, of course, are some pictures, we have to look at some pictures of Stonehenge, right? You can no longer walk out among the stones of Stonehenge; that's why you see the people all gathered there on the little roadside. Stonehenge has been occupied by numerous groups of people over time. I think I heard about the Druids, how the Druids occupied this site at one point. And it's pretty much agreed upon that this was some kind of a solar calendar.

On the same day each year the Sun rises directly over a headstone that is set apart from the group of the circular stones, and I think this might be the headstone up here. And in this shot you can see where the Sun is rising directly between these two main stones there. So again, if it's a solar calendar, that backs up the theory that these were indications of the seasonal, the awareness of seasonal changes. And this, Stonehenge comes from the late Mesolithic period.

So again, the one in Turkey is older than this, but this is the most famous. After the Mesolithic we get the Neolithic, or the new Stone Age, from roughly 8,000 to 3,000 BCE. And it's during the Neolithic period that we get the world's first settlements, the first permanent settlements. Now notice we don't have the description of civilizations yet on this slide. It's settlements, and they were along rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates in what we call Iraq today, and along the Nile River of Egypt.

And during this time, war is profitable for the first time in human history. That makes sense because now there's going to be stores of food to steal from somebody else, and people are settled on land and somebody else might come along and want that land. And so this is why there's war for the first time. And also during this time we get the creation and use of pottery. Not that that's as significant of a development, but it's still notable.

Finally the Bronze Age, this is where we get the world's first civilizations. And you can see here on the slide, the first civilizations of the world, Mesopotamia, which is mostly modern Iraq and a little bit of Iran, and Egypt, followed by India and China in the Far East, and then finally, back in the West, the Minoan and the Mycenaean civilizations. Please note that the Minoans and the Mycenaeans were the first two European civilizations.

From this time we get the first written communication. The Mesopotamians created cuneiform, and the Egyptians invented hieroglyphs. We have organized religion. What that means is a hierarchy of priests, understood rituals and ceremonies, religious texts, perhaps. We didn't have that stuff before the Bronze Age. Tools and specialized skills, government, and of course the use of bronze for weapons. That's how the period got its name.

Here's some writing for you. On the left we have cuneiform, invented by the Mesopotamians, and on the right hieroglyphs. And finally, the Iron Age, from about 1000-800. Most characteristic,the most dominant characteristic of this time is the use of iron for weapons. And finally imperialism. This is where the Romans will come in. Imperialism is the practice of going outside your borders and conquering other people for the sake of making your political entity bigger.

And the Romans were pretty good at doing that. Not that the Romans had the world's largest empire, there were many others who had larger empires, but the Romans are probably the most famous Western civilization to have done that. And after 800 we get the Greeks, so that's it for the prehistoric cultural periods. And on this last slide I have the names of the historical cultural periods. These are the periods that we study in the Western humanities classes.

You've probably heard of some of these. So the Greek period, the Roman period, and then after the fall of Rome we have the Dark Ages of Europe, and then finally the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque Enlightenment, Romanticism, the Early Modern Era, and the 20th and 21st Centuries. So that's how our humanities classes are broken up here at Valencia. for these periods. From this point, you are ready to go on to a study of the Greeks.