Module overview
As the ice sheets retreated and the global climate began to stabilise at the beginning of the Holocene c. 12,000 years ago, humans began to create new ways of living. The story of our human past usually tells this tale as one of a move away from mobile hunter gathering ways of existence, towards settled, agricultural communities of the Neolithic: with an associated growth in property, centralisation, and hierarchy. The usual conclusion of this narrative is the exploitative, extractive and profoundly unequal ‘civilisation’ we live in today.
But what do we mean by the term ‘civilisation’? Gordon Childe famously listed a number of key characteristics of a society that enabled it to be labelled as ‘civilisation’, including the use of writing and monumental architecture. This module offers a thematic exploration—and explosion—of some of these core narratives about the human past—including ideas of ‘progress’, ‘diffusion’, ‘power’, and the link between subsistence and social formation. Throughout, we will explore the diversity of prehistoric Holocene human societies across the globe and through time.