Our website uses cookies to understand content and feature usage to drive site improvements over time. To learn more, review our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Frames in Era 2
Frames in Era 2
In this era, humans began to build communities, create language networks (the smallest kind of human network), and produce and distribute goods. How did this happen?
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
According to this video, how did the cognitive revolution and the development of language helped our ancestors to survive and thrive?
Watch the animation of humans populating the world. Where were humans first? Where did we go next? What regions were populated last, according to the animation?
What does the video argue was the biggest change of the era, through the frame of production and distribution.
According to the video, did everyone become a farmer in this period?
According to the video, why was the shift to farming a big deal?
: (music playing)
: A lot of big changes happen in the period we call Era 2.
: How can we understand these changes
: through our three frames?
: At the beginning, our ancestors lived
: only in Africa, in very small groups.
: Then cognitive breakthroughs happened
: that allowed us to communicate better
: and pass information along through generations.
: One of the most important innovations of this era
: was the development of language.
: Humans are social animals--
: we need to cooperate with each other
: in order to survive and thrive.
: The development of language
: allowed us to do this in two ways.
: First, sharing ideas through language
: allowed us to work together,
: or collectively to achieve goals.
: Working collectively meant
: that we could build our first communities--
: large, stable bands that could work together
: for common purposes
: despite being made up of many individuals.
: Languages also allowed humans to create our first networks--
: enabling us to communicate with people
: who were in neighboring communities,
: whose languages were similar,
: in order to exchange ideas, things, and even members
: through intermarriage and migration.
: With the tool of language,
: our ancestors expanded from our original home in Africa
: throughout most of the world,
: picking up new skills and technologies along the way
: and forming a whole patchwork of little communities
: and networks by the end of the era.
: But in Era 2, the biggest story was the development of farming.
: Farming is the domestication and cultivation of plants.
: This was one of the most important transformations
: of production and distribution in all of human history.
: Of course, not everyone became farmers.
: Those who did made the changes at different times,
: and sometimes they still also hunted and gathered
: like their ancestors before them.
: But even so, farming dramatically changed
: how all people lived and worked.
: (music playing)
: Farmers generally settled down in one place.
: They also developed an entirely new set of tools--
: that's why we call the original foraging societies
: Paleolithic-- or "old" stone tool-- societies,
: and the farmers who came after them Neolithic--
: or "new" stone tool-- societies.
: Farming societies also grew much more rapidly
: than their foraging neighbors.
: Farmers had more children than foragers,
: partly because they had more food.
: And although farmers had more diseases
: and were often less healthy, over time,
: farmers came to represent the majority of human societies.
: Farming radically changed how we made and shared things.
: Farmers had to spend long hours doing work
: that foragers didn't have to do.
: They had to plant crops,
: tend them, protect them from weeds and bugs and other animals
: that wanted to eat them.
: They had to harvest them and process them.
: Women, especially, found their hours consumed
: with turning harvested plants into edible food.
: But farming also produced enough calories
: that some people could do other work--
: specializing in making clothes, or tools, for example.
: In this way, farming was also a gateway
: to a lot of other innovations.
: Later, as we will see,
: farmers were more likely to create villages and cities,
: and produce innovations like writing and iron-working.
: And these changes are still with us today.
: Farming is still the way most of our food is produced-–
: even if fewer and fewer of us are farmers.
: In fact, we won't see a change
: in production and distribution that is this significant again
: until Era 6, about 12,000 years later,
: when we get to the Industrial Revolution.
: That makes farming one of the most enduring
: historical transformations of all time,
: and it began a very, very long time ago.