What is megalithic. How archeologists found that.how this tells about earliest people's culture, livelihood and about society.
Answers
Explanation:
A megalith is a large pre-historic stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, ranging from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea.
Overview
Paleolithic societies were largely dependent on foraging and hunting.
While hominid species evolved through natural selection for millions of years, cultural evolution accounts for most of the significant changes in the history of Homo sapiens.
Small bands of hunter-gatherers lived, worked, and migrated together before the advent of agriculture.
Sociocultural evolution
Paleolithic literally means “Old Stone [Age],” but the Paleolithic era more generally refers to a time in human history when foraging, hunting, and fishing were the primary means of obtaining food. Humans had yet to experiment with domesticating animals and growing plants. Since hunter-gatherers could not rely on agricultural methods to produce food intentionally, their diets were dependent on the fluctuations of natural ecosystems. They had to worry about whether overfishing a lake would deplete a crucial food source or whether a drought would wither up important plants. In order to ensure enough food production for their communities, they worked to manipulate those systems in certain ways, such as rotational hunting and gathering.
This was the case for much of human history; it was not until about 11,000 years ago that these hunter-gatherer systems began to transform. As humans began migrating and adapting to new environments, they began developing tools and methods that equipped them to make the best of their respective environmental constraints.
The study of early humans often focuses on biological evolution and natural selection. However, it is also equally important to focus on sociocultural evolution, or the ways in which early human societies created culture. Paleolithic humans were not simply cavemen who were concerned only with conquering their next meal. Archaeological evidence shows that the Neanderthals in Europe and Southwest Asia had a system of religious beliefs and performed rituals such as funerals. A burial site in Shanidar Cave in modern-day northeastern Iraq suggests that a Neanderthal’s family covered his body with flowers, which indicates a belief in something beyond death and a deep sense of spirituality. They also constructed shelter and tools.
An opening to a cave, surrounded by greenery and some simple roads and structures.
An opening to a cave, surrounded by greenery and some simple roads and structures.
Cultures evolved and developed in specific environmental contexts, enabling their communities to not only survive but to flourish in unique and dynamic ways. But what exactly is culture? Culture is a broad term which encompasses the full range of learned human behavior patterns, behaviors which are often linked to survival.
Homo sapiens has not changed much anatomically over the last 120,000 years, but it has undergone a massive cultural evolution. Accordingly, cultural creativity rather than physical transformation became the central way humans coped with the demands of nature.
Nevertheless cultural evolution cannot be divorced from biological evolution, as the evolution of a more highly developed and advanced human brain, more highly attuned to social structures, enabled cultural growth. In fact, the very large size of a human brain itself necessitated certain cultural adaptations: many scientists have theorized that more difficult births, due to larger skulls, longer gestation periods, and longer periods of infant dependency, required more advanced social organization and communication, which played a big role in the cultural evolution of humans.
Homo sapiens’ unique aptitude for creativity allowed for symbolic expression, particularly in cultural and spiritual contexts, such as artwork and burial rituals. This creative activity is the hallmark of the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens (wise, wise human), which is what we are today, a subspecies that is distinctive for its intellectual abilities.