by ExpertScholar.com

Created on: May 19, 2010   Last Updated: May 20, 2010

Consider the intricacies of modern human society.  To evaluate any relationship, it helps to understand the impact of historical development upon individuals. This is one such analysis.  The presupposition is properties of a macro-level system impact medial-level and micro-level components. That is, technical advances impact social structures and individual development.

Ten thousand years ago, people lived primarily in nomadic hunter-gatherer groups.  They relied mainly upon implements fashioned from stone, bone, stick, and hide, and this method of survival dominated for about 90% of the total time of human existence. 

A modern example of this lifestyle is found in the Hadza tribe of Tanzania.  Child care occurs as shared responsibilities in a sort of nursery setting organized by elder women, and dangers in the immediate environment are so effectively controlled, children learn autonomy in a very open way. 

Honing individual initiative and industriousness would be an operational imperative for those living under such natural conditions.  Interpersonal intimacy and commitment become the baseline for mating pairs that have successfully negotiated adolescence; however, pair bonding is very fluid as is group affiliation, and members move between both pairs and groups relatively unrestrained.

Nevertheless, standardized productive processes establish degrees of familial comfort, and aging hunter-gatherers lend a source of integrity, continuity, and stability to the rest of the group. During this phase of historical development, there were only about 100,000 people on earth.

This picture of paradise changed around 8000 BCE when people began using agriculture as a means of sustenance. As such, they began living in semi-permanent settlements.

The regular proximity of livestock required parents to truncate the exploratory impulses of the young, and due to the more rigid techniques of farming, individual industry met a more stringent set of guidelines. 

Individual isolation became less of an option and the flexibly of intimacy waned in this sedentary social setting where for the first time people had significantly more stores of food than they needed. Building trades and animal husbandry were born during this period when there were about 1 million people on earth.

By 3000 BCE, city-states were born. Permanent stone construction and metallurgy were in full swing. The age of chariot driven warfare ushered in the reigns of empire.

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