Prehistoric humans' view of nature

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Hello,

you have asked for an opinion on how our prehistoric ancestors, or cavemen, might have viewed nature. Please read the article below entitled "CAVEMEN... a cultural overview of cavemen" taken from http://matrixbookstore.biz/cavemen.htm.

This article suggests that cave people viewed nature much in the same way as Native Americans viewed nature and still view nature....on a very spiritual level. "Their harsh circumstances were ideal for this to occur and a phenomenon few modern men can comprehend or would believe. Guidance and blessings were often sought and miracles were undoubtedly more commonplace" The article suggests that such a spirituality was inevitable since many things were happeneing in their world that they were unable to explain because of a lack of understanding modern science.

What the article does not suggest though is that cave people were probably instilled with a fearful respect of nature, since there were so many things around that could injure, maim or kill you. Eating the wrong thing or even stepping on the wrong thing could be deadly in an era with no modern medicine or an understanding of how to cure injuries or illnesses beyond herbal remedies and spiritual prayer.

Please read the article below for a broader understanding of a current theory on the culture of Cave People

I Hope this helps and good luck!

Brendan Klug

OTA 101195

(Version V - March 2005) by A.O. Kime

It doesn't seem as if too much could be written about cavemen, after all, they haven't been around since the Stone Age. Well, over the past century our knowledge about cavemen has grown despite that, albeit more-or-less limited to where they once lived and the rough time frame. For an overview one should begin, I suppose, by relating the discoveries of their cave art, the various stone tools found, their axes, spear-points and arrowheads, or write about the few bones dubbed the 'Java Man' or 'Peking Man'. Maybe one would want to mention the more recent Neanderthal who once lived in Europe or even the later Folsom Paleo-Indians from New Mexico (c 8,000 B.C.). Well, that is already well documented, all that information can easily be found. The exception is we know little about cavemen themselves so this overview will be a quite different... it will be about who the cavemen were.

As a general rule, to present an overview of a culture one needs to include their way of life, their mentality, ethics and beliefs. That's largely been missing in other accounts about cavemen. But to describe a people such as cavemen, being practically anyone who lived before recorded history, would seem impossible. I'm talking about people who lived more than 10,000 years ago, societies we know virtually nothing about. Yet to most people, cavemen weren't sophisticated enough to be considered a culture or society. Well, sophistication shouldn't always be determined by modern day standards. Despite their Spartan living conditions, their lack of amenities and a written language, they weren't much different than modern man.

Besides, sophistication should be based largely by one's mental attitude. To wit, there are a lot of people today who cannot be called sophisticated despite better living conditions. However, if one preferred to remain steadfast, to insist sophistication should be based on the standard of living, then they should realize that kind of sophistication takes time to develop. One cannot justifiably demean a people who, ...