This book outlines human origins - the growth of farming, the rise of urbanism and the emergence of civilization - on a global scale. It traces the patterns and processes that led human societies in just ten thousand years from small hunter gatherer groups armed with basic tools to nation states with advanced technologies. Renfrew challenges the conventional idea of the 'human revolution' - that homo sapiens emerged some 100,000 years ago and that at the revolutionary time (40,000 years ago), everything changed. This view holds that at the same time self consciousness and language emerged, and was quickly followed by cave art and new stone tools. Renfrew contends that these things did not take place all at the same time, and that the technological and cultural changes that began around 10,000 years ago were due to changes in our states of mind. By examining the material objects left behind by early Man and reconstructing the prehistoric mind, Renfrew argues that new concepts of value, commodity and prestige were crucial to the human revolution, creating trading relations that in turn made city states possible.
This book will range from the hunter gatherers of Australia to the great civilizations of Mesoamerica to give a startling new account of how human beings escaped from the Stone Age.
- ISBN10 1842127047
- ISBN13 9781842127049
- Publish Date 1 January 2010 (first published 15 January 2004)
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 14 July 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson History
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English