Cultural Categories
Social scientists have classified human social development into four broad groupings, or ways of life, based on the principal means by which people organized and exploited their surroundings: Paleolithic, Neolithic, Pastoral Nomadic, and Civilized, the last of which can be divided into numerous categories and subcategories. As these ways of life are not mutually exclusive, some or all of them have been practiced at the same time in Asia (and around the globe). However, such drastically different customs typically produced conflict among diverse lifestyles when in close proximity. Thus, as farmers occupied gatherers’ former hunting grounds after approximately 10,000 BCE, Neolithic and Paleolithic communities clashed; later, Neolithic farmers resisted but gradually came under the domination of Civilized urban elites beginning around 4000 BCE in Mesopotamia and Egypt, by roughly 3000 BCE in India, and just after 2000 BCE in China. And traditional civilizations based on agricultural productivity began colliding with civilizations based on industrial output after roughly 1800 CE. Although hunting communities, farming societies beyond the reach of civilization, and traditional agricultural civilizations declined in numbers, wealth, and/or power, they typically remained as vestigial ways of life transitioning to oblivion or “modernization.” But the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods account for the majority of time that human beings have existed; Pastoral Nomadic and Civilized ways represent relatively new human arrangements.
Paleolithic Culture
Paleolithic or Old Stone Age culture employed two principal instruments that the earliest humans used to survive: crude stone tools and weapons, as well as hunting and food gathering. Paleolithic people foraged for wild plants that provided not only nutrition but also materials for clothing, tools, weapons, and artistic activities. Pottery shards have been unearthed throughout Asia, and in 2009 Chinese and Israeli archaeologists unearthed pieces of earthenware in southern China that were estimated to be 18,000 years old. At that point humans had begun the process of devising the ways and means of improving their standard of living. They learned by trial and error which products of the earth were edible or poisonous, possessed medical or manufacturing uses, or had recreational, religious, or other applications.
But such primitive people produced insufficient wealth to afford specialists who could focus on advancing secular and spiritual knowledge in any timely or reliable fashion. Nonetheless, part‐time “experts” approximating artisans, shamans, and community leaders took up such roles on an ad hoc basis. Understanding of the natural and social worlds in which they operated remained primal, with most phenomena explained in supernatural terms and with little or no comprehension of why things happened. Such Paleolithic peoples inhabited most parts of today’s Asia, and they created countless numbers of different Paleolithic cultures.
Neolithic Culture
Neolithic or New Stone Age life appeared around 10,000 years ago and revolved around sedentary farming instead of wandering foraging. The appearance of advanced tools and weapons along with an agricultural economy marks this new stage of human development. Some argue that farming began once foragers became more familiar with plant life. Others claim that climate forced foragers to farm as either the Ice Age or droughts relocated humans to regions more favorable to agriculture. Still others claim that population pressure required foragers to turn to farming, which was known but not practiced until hunting and gathering failed to feed the growing size of drifting bands of gatherers. In any case, farming increasingly became seen as the chief means of feeding people. Humans began to control nature by domesticating crops and animals rather than purely collecting or killing what nature made available, and these innovative endeavors had likely evolved over the centuries, much as economic and military utensils had improved, by ongoing trial and error. Very early in the Neolithic period, crops such as rice, millet, sugarcane, and hemp had become dependable sources of good nutrition and household materials.
Full‐time farming resulted in positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, sedentary village life allowed cultivators to create permanent residences (most likely thatched huts), which gave meaningful protection against inclement weather and dangerous animals. During less hectic times of the agricultural season, villagers created and repaired tools and weapons and fabricated primitive textiles. They also frequently improved these products over time. Gourds, baskets, and eventually pottery allowed villagers to accumulate and stockpile crops and water as well as store tools, weapons, and clothing. More permanent residences permitted elderly villagers to survive longer, since they no longer needed to keep up with hunting bands or be left to the elements as in Paleolithic times. These survivors, no longer around‐the‐clock tillers, had time to pass on their experiences to younger villagers as well as to reflect on their surroundings. Thus apparently began the part‐time shaman, offering advice and counsel to villagers, particularly instruction on fertility and how to achieve it for field and female. Other elders made recommendations concerning such issues as sanitation, childbirth, social relations, and so forth. Since little contact existed among distant villages, local knowledge tended to be viewed as universal knowledge.
On the negative side, village life immediately presented serious challenges. What crops were safe and could be produced in sufficient amounts to feed the village? Only trial and error, which is to say malnutrition or starvation if miscalculations were made, ultimately permitted farmers to select the most nontoxic and bountiful crops. How to deal with sanitation? Instead of a Paleolithic band of several dozen people constantly on the move and rarely concerned about human or other waste, villagers usually numbered in the hundreds, lived in close proximity to one another, and generated volumes of garbage. The rubbish in turn produced flies, rats, and other vermin capable of quickly spreading disease. Farming also meant dealing with nature in its many manifestations, especially drought, flood, locusts, frost, and heat, any one of which might spell crop failure and consequently famine. Thus, although lack of sanitation and episodic low food production resulted in early death, generally a high birth rate (once farmers worked out safe crops to plant) meant a larger village population. The slash‐and‐burn type of farming commonly practiced—whereby farmers cleared the land of trees and other vegetation, burned it, and then planted crops in the ash—eventually exhausted the soil and required farmers to search for more fertile land.
Evidence for Neolithic life in Asia indicates farming