Prehistory

Prehistory encompasses the vast majority of human existence — from the emergence of the earliest hominins over 6 million years ago to the invention of writing around 3400 BCE. During this immense span of time, our ancestors evolved from tree-dwelling primates to the dominant species on the planet, developing tool use, language, art, agriculture, and the first complex societies.

The term "prehistory" itself reveals a bias: it defines this era by what it lacks (written records) rather than what it contains. In reality, the pre-literate period witnessed humanity's most transformative innovations. Bipedalism, fire use, stone tool technology, language, symbolic thought, artistic expression, agriculture, and settlement all emerged during "prehistory." The invention of writing, rather than marking the beginning of human achievement, represented the culmination of tens of thousands of years of accelerating cultural complexity.

Understanding prehistory requires different methods than studying literate civilizations. Archaeologists read artifacts, bones, and soil layers instead of texts. Paleogeneticists extract DNA from ancient remains. Anthropologists study contemporary foraging peoples for analogies to past lifeways. Together, these disciplines have revealed a human past far richer, more diverse, and more surprising than earlier generations imagined.