Читать книгу Asia Past and Present - Peter P. Wan - Страница 19

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.