An analysis of 3 turning points in history from 8000 B.C.E up to 1500 Essay

An analysis of 3 turning points in history from 8000 B.C.E up to 1500 - Essay Example From an academic point of view, analyzing the history of societies, cultures, disputes, inventions and technological advances allow us to understand the methods through which primitive nations overcame their limitations and attempt extract useful information from the patterns of change that have been there in the previous millenniums. In comparison to the world that we live in today, these patterns of change were much less disruptive and slow paced before the last few centuries. Change, when it came, was gradual and took several generations to be implemented with visible effects. The life of one generation would be nearly identical to those of their fore fathers and the lifestyle continuing on the same patterns; utilizing the same resources. Consequently, even with the restricted sources of information scholars have about the people that existed in the time before the AD years it is possible to identify and categorize those points when the human population went through a drastic tran sformation. In a positive sense, these events could symbolize a discovery, a way of travel, communication or livelihood- anything which made life easier for the groups and allowed them to increase their populations. The opposite would be any happenings which damaged their ability to survive or removed the effects any previous developments. It is easy to understand why the positive disruptions are the ones highlighted and researched more extensively. The introductory period in the studies of world history is known as the â€Å"foundations†. this period ranges from 8000 BC to 600 BC and is so named because of it was the beginning era for the all future trends and discoveries which have shaped human civilizations to eventually transform it into the modern world we recognize. This was the time of emergence of major Early "River Valley" Civilizations (about 3500 B.C.E. - about 1200 B.C.E.) and Classical Civilizations (about 1000 B.C.E. - 600 C.E.) which were the first formally des igned societies1. Though there is still some argument between academics about the exact dates of this era, the marker events have been recognized by all and it is accepted that many of these may not have occurred at a specified date but would have happened during a certain period with discoveries being made simultaneously in different regions and different populations. The major transforming events could not remain restricted to any one group or area; they had to be and spread and adopted on a global scale in order to have a true long lasting impact on the human species and their life style. In some cases sharing of knowledge between different groups enhanced the cumulative knowledge base as a greater number of minds could then work on producing new solutions to the existing problems and improving the ones that existed. As such we will be discussing the three major turning points of the period ranging from 8000 BC to 1500 BC from the view point that these were continuous processes a nd the contributions and scale of impact from these differed for different geographical areas. 1. The Agriculture Revolution: Man cannot live without food; as any other species it lives where food can be gained easily and follows where its prey goes. However, humans had many advantages over their animal companions including bipedalism, highly defined motor skills, and most importantly greater mental capacity that allowed them to use