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Prehistoric Anatolia
Turkey
Paleolithic Age ( Old Stone Age) ( 2 Million- 8000 BC)
Paleolithic Age, also known to be the old stone age,
begins somewhere between 2 million years ago and ends
10.000 years before our time. This time period marks the
beginning of the existence of the ancestors of man.
The early man in the Paleolithic age did not know to farm
and raise crops but lived on picking up vegetables, fruit
and on hunting. In search of the new food sources and to
be able to hunt animals, he moved from place to place ,
and gathered in small groups. His dwelling was in rocky
areas, under big rocks and in caves. In areas where this
condition could not be met he made easy and primitive
shelters out of wood. Around 40.000 BC he started making
simple stone tools for hunting and protection purposes.
Between 40.000 and 10.000 is the glacial age on earth.
Not being able to move much due to the climate, the
primitive man utilized the skin of the animals that he
hunted by successfully carved stones. To make clothes he
used pins made out of bones and saw animal skin covers
for himself. During this hard time of survival , he was
able to discover and to control fire and by doing so he
happened to have passed an important step in his
development which helped him be separated from the
animals. In this same period the earliest notion of the
need to believe in an other world or in a mightier power
can also be traced. In the graves that were dug for the
dead as simple holes he left food by the side of the
deceased and this is interpreted to be his faith in
afterlife. To sum up, the hard conditions of life in the
glacial age led the early man develop better socially and
technically. The passage from the very primitive man,
namely Home Neanderthal, to the ancestor of the modern
man, namely Home Sapiens who is dated to between 10.000
and 8.000 may also be considered in this period.
In the last phases of the Paleolithic age the early man could
make tools in order to make different new tools. The
first works of art emerged in this era too: paintings
made on cave the walls and various art objects such as
low reliefs and figurines.The intellectual life of the
man was beginning. Moreover, animal bones, teeth and
shells the ornate objects demonstrate the first aesthetic
concern in man.
The fact that in Paleolithic Age, the Asia Minor is extremely
rich in fossils and fragments of human beings and
animals, of stone, of bone and of vegetation, as well as
of works of art reveals that Anatolian land was intensely
inhabited during this period. The most important place in
Anatolia where all the three phases; Upper, Middle and
Lower in the Paleolithic Age can be seen, is the Karain
Cave on the 30 km northwest of Antalya. In this
respectively big cave, there are various living sections
from each of the three phases of the Paleolithic Age.
Among the finds are many carved stone and bone tools,
moveable art objects, remains of the bones and teeth of
Homo Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens, burnt and unburned
animal and bread fossils. Karain cave in the Paleolithic
Age is not a crucial excavation site only for Anatolia
but also for the Near East. One can see some of these
remains in the Museums of Karain, in Antalya and in
Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
Turkey
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