The everlasting Botanic Age

The Stone Age. The Bronze Age. The Iron Age. Life back then was hard, literally. We think of these time periods in relation to the hard, resilient materials that tools and weapons were made out of. We're obsessed with tools, in archaeology and in the way we assess the intelligence of other species. We've created a narrative about how we progressed from primordial swamp to megacities and it involves some key periods where we made rapid progress because we started picking things up and using them. And our obsession with tools has nothing on our obsession with weapons.

There are various sociological, cultural explanations that might explain why we're so focused on tools and weapons. For instance, a focus on weapons fits well with the patriarchal narrative that men drove our progress: we associate weapons (and, to a large extent, tools) with men (even though research has shown that women also hunted¹), and in archaeology (history, science, and most other topics) we tend to focus research on men. This narrative, “Man the Hunter, Woman the Gatherer,” has led to research on hunting and the tools and weapons used to do so dominating the literature. There's little evidence to support this notion of a prehistoric sexual division of labour, and many argue it's an obvious example of modern beliefs and gender roles being projected onto the past.

Regardless of what you think about the sociological reasons for our focus on stone, bronze, and iron tools and weapons, there's a practical reason, too: those materials last. Anything that biodegrades, like naturals fibres, doesn't stick around anywhere near as long as stone and metal. It's like survivorship bias. If you talk to lots of people who recovered from a risky operation, you'll get the impression that the operation is usually a success; after all, everyone you've spoken to said they're doing well. But the people who died aren't around for you to ask. In archaeology, we've only been talking to the surviving tools. We look at what remains thousands of years later and see stone, bronze, and iron. We conclude that humans at that time relied predominantly on these materials because that's what we see. We even name the time periods after the materials, so sure are we that they dominated the time period.

Of course, archaeology is an enormous field and there are researchers working on all sorts of topics. There's a lot of nuance in archaeological discourse. But if you look at what's taught in schools, or what's in introductory and accessible books about prehistory, or if you ask a random person on the street what the most important or most widely used material of the stone, bronze, or iron ages was, you'll almost certainly leave with the impression that the most widely used material was stone, bronze, or iron (as applicable). It's this contribution - the influence on public perception of general ideas about prehistory - that in my view is the strongest public output of archaeology. This matters, because stories we tell ourselves about our origins have enormous effects on how we think about things today, not only things like gender roles, but also our relationship with the natural world.

Use of stone, bronze, and iron is extractive. Stone is often quarried from the earth. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin; copper, tin, and iron are all mined. The manufacturing process is hard; it usually requires high levels of force or high temperatures. The stories associated with these materials - cleaving from the ground, smashing, burning - fit well with the current focus on extractive, industrialised capitalism. But there's a glaring hole in this narrative: the materials that weren't left behind.

When we think about things that supported life and progress in prehistory, we think of stone and metal tools and weapons, but if we only had stone and metal at our disposal we'd have died, or never have evolved to look like we do today. How did we keep warm without fur or with thin body hair? How did we carry our babies once we stood on two legs? How did we farm? What did we keep food and water in? What did we use to treat ailments?

Plants hold the answer to most of these questions. Sophie Berdugo wrote a great piece in the New Scientist² about how 'the origins of human technology could have been profoundly misunderstood'. She looked at archaeological findings that suggest there could have been a botanical age before the Stone Age, where our lives were supported by woodworking and weaving plant materials. The use of tools made from plants is, Berdugo writes, universal in non-industrialised societies and in our closest ape relatives, so surely ancient hominins must have used plants in a big way too. She talks to some researches, like Linda Hurcombe at the University of Exeter and Dean Falk at Florida State University, who are studying 'this undiscovered era of human evolution'.

With new research techniques, evidence is emerging of fragments of this biodegradable history that have stuck around: a wooden toothpick in a skull, wooden building materials, wooden digging tools and spears, plant fibres twisted into a thread clinging to a 50,000-year-old stone tool. And aside from the physical evidence, many academics - such as feminist anthropologists Nancy Tanner and Adrienne Zihlman - have suggested that plant-based tools and items were an important part of our lives in prehistory, fundamental to our survival and evolution, based on drawing parallels with current behaviour seen in our closest relatives, behaviour in modern hunter-gatherer societies, and just basic logic: we were surrounded by plants, we had to build shelter, and hold our babies, and store food. Of course we used plants.

Berdugo's article focuses on 'humanity's possible pre-Stone Age botanical period', but I think we should acknowledge that we are in an everlasting Botanic Age. We're waiting for further physical archaeological evidence of these perishable remnants of our history, but it feels obvious that we have used plants throughout our history. We've certainly eaten them, and were interacting with them every day. It seems nonsensical to entertain the idea that we made tools from stone and metal without turning before that, and throughout that period, to the plants around us and using wood and natural fibres to help us survive and thrive. We continue to do so.

The linear progress narrative is problematic. It's the one that leads to the (inaccurate) diagram of human evolution that makes it seem like linear progression: ape then early human then modern human, standing straighter with each leap forward. I see it reflected in the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age naming progression. It creates the idea that progress is about leaving things behind, that great leaps are made when we ditch one approach or material for another. It ignores what must be true: that some skills and materials have been fundamental to our life throughout our history and should continue to be. The idea that the Botanic Age occurred before the Stone Age but then stopped doesn't make sense; we still rely on plants for survival today, we still make clothes and tools and other things that support our lives from plants. And we should make more things from plants. If our current era had a materials-based name, it would be the Plastic Age. As we work to mitigate the climate and biodiversity crises, we must leave behind fossil fuel-derived materials and return to honour the everlasting Botanic Age: mend our relationships with plants and reconnect with the ways we can work in harmony with them to ensure our survival.

Ideas about 'technology' and 'progress' - that they must be rooted in extractive, exploitative, 'masculine' approaches, that the way forward is to leave things associated with pre-late stage capitalism behind - are socially constructed, and they're harming us. We need to embrace a revived relationship with the natural world, our everlasting Botanic Age.

¹ https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13914

² https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435164-200-before-the-stone-age-were-the-first-tools-made-from-plants-not-rocks/