So, we began the class with a wonderfully academic discussion about Youtube, which, might I add, brought up some very funny videos which I have now enjoyed. Afterwards, getting serious, we discussed the first developments of three major parts of human society: the ability to adapt to new situations, beginning specialization, and the start of culture. Beginning from before the ice age, and ending after the ice was retreating, we discussed how people lived their lives according to these intense changes in their environment. Generally, when climate changes, people’s way of life changes because they need to find new food sources. Unlike what is generally perceived about the ice age about it only bringing hardships to the people of the time period, we noticed how the Ice Age was actually a very productive – concerning obtaining food and developing culture – time period. This tells us how the people after the Ice Age began to think more and more about culture and their roles in it. Focusing not only on food gathering allowed new roles in society to arise.
One thing that we discussed briefly in class that interested me is that our first notion when we think about people in previous time periods is how much worse their lives must have been without the aspects of culture that we have now. It’s very hard to believe that because they didn’t know of things we have now, they were perfectly content with what they had then. It’s very surreal to me to not even be able to conceive of everyday items that we have now and noticing how the measurement of wealth changes over time because of new advances.
