Page 18 - All About History - Issue 12-14

Education
EDUCATION IN
PREHISTORY
LEARNING HOW TO HUNT, BUILD FIRES
AND MAKE TOOLS, PALAEOLITHIC AGE
Material culture
In nomadism tools were few and
of a limited variety as they were
difficult to build and transport.
Initiation rite
These ceremonies were a rite of passage from
childhood to maturity and sometimes left marks
on the body, such as tattoos or ablations. They
were celebrated at a specific time and site with
fixed roles among the initiators and the initiated.
How do we know this?
Much of the information that we know about
the Palaeolithic era (literally meaning ‘Old Stone
Age’) comes from primary sources that have
been found in archaeological digs. The era is an
extremely long one, lasting from approximately
2.6 million years ago to around 10,000 years
ago. The digs have found some of the tools that
were used and cave paintings have also provided
historians with a good degree of education.
There are also numerous books on the subject,
such as A Companion To Paleoanthropology,
which comprehensively covers developments
in human origins and human evolution in an
attempt to reconstruct behaviour. A selection of tools from the
palaeolithic period
18
rom the earliest days of man – a long time before
language had been developed – informal education
existed with knowledge being passed on from peer
to peer and from adult to child. The men and women
Fthat inhabited the Earth had to ‘invent’ education to
help ensure their survival. They had to teach their children
a whole set of essential information that was not included
in their cultural heritage, but created by them. In the
Palaeolithic age, they taught ways to make and build fires and
the use of tools to hunt big animals, while in the Neolithic
they transmitted more elaborate information, which would
throughout their civilisation.
pave the way for the development of agriculture and farming
Education had three main characteristics: it was short in
time, everything was learned through practice and everybody
learned everything. With the progressive complexity
of thought, the advent of social differentiation and the
unbalanced appropriation of goods, these features started to
disappear. Education became a socially differentiated practice
for specific moments and locations, different for men and
women and different between social groups.
The horde was the most typical social organisation of
hunter-harvesters in the Palaeolithic. Each had between
20 and 40 members and were divided in small groups for
specific jobs like hunting. Later on, they would form tribes
with strong family ties.
Learning by imitation
Education took place in groups. Adults
showed their skills through an example
or a specific action and the children who
accompanied them imitated them.
Close to the water
A key resource for the location of
settlements in these societies was to be
close to the water as this provided food
through fishing and water to drink and
for the tribes to clean themselves with.