Prehistoric Flashcards
What were prehistoric hunters?
They hunted animals for food
What were prehistoric gatherers?
They collected berries, nuts and other plants for food
Why were the prehistoric people nomadic?
Had to travel around to find food
What was the life expectancy for someone in the prehistoric era?
About 19-25 years old
Why was it difficult to find out how the prehistoric people lived?
They moved around all the time
Had no written language
What methods are used to make educated guesses about the way prehistoric people lived?
Look at hunter-gatherer societies (e.g. The Plains Indians and the Australian Aborigines)
Look at what was written about hunter-gatherers by the Egyptians and Romans
Look at artefacts (e.g. bones, skulls and cave paintings)
What did the prehistoric people believe, in terms of religion?
They believed in spirits
What did the Prehistoric people believe about spirits?
They were in every living thing
They were involved in every part of their world
What did they know about the causes of disease?
Very little
What were their three supernatural explanations of illness?
Evil spirits accidentally entering someone’s body
People putting a curse on someone
People losing their own spirits
What were their three supernatural treatments of illness?
Chanting and dancing
Charms
Trephining
What did they believe happened to someone when someone else put a curse on them?
They made an evil spirit enter their body by chanting and pointing at them with a pointing bone
What did they think caused them to lose their own spirits?
Having a curse put on them
Who was the medicine man?
Provided spiritual comfort and medical help
What happened when the medicine man was chanting and dancing to cure an illness?
He would get very hot and go into a trance to contact the spirits to get rid of the evil ones
What did charms do?
They were given to people to warn off evil spirits
What was Trephining?
Boring a hole into the skull to allow the spirit to escape the body
How was Trephining performed?
The hole was created by a stone knife as there were no metal tools at that time.
What evidence in there to show that Trephining was successful?
Skulls have been found where the bone has grown back over the hole to suggest that people lived for months or even years after the operation
What were their natural treatments of illness?
Natural remedies
How did the prehistoric people go about treating the sick with natural remedies?
They used herbs, plants, minerals and animal parts in their remedies which were usually made by the women
Remedies were passed down from a woman to her daughter
They were developed through a process of trial and error
What were their natural treatments of injuries?
Mud was used to set broken limbs
Splints made of wood
Give three causes of ill health
Injuries from hunting, fighting or working
Childbirth complications
Infections
Give two examples of healers
Women with natural remedies
Medicine men if the problem did not get better
