Talk:Human history

Coverage of genocides and atrocities

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Ottoman genocides and Holocaust is mentioned in the article but the following seems to be missing:

• Genocide of Indigenous peoples in Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Africa etc. Here are few that can be mentioned such as California genocide: [1]
• Other crimes in Africa such as Atrocities in the Congo Free State, Herero and Nama genocide, and Algerian_War#Atrocities_and_war_crimes
• Circassian genocide
• Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction with about 5 million dead.

And that is just from a very quick glance at the article. Here's a specific example of the biased coverage:

• What the article says:

  Several European powers colonized the Americas, largely displacing the native populations and conquering the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and Inca.[447] Diseases introduced by Europeans devastated American societies, killing 60–90 million people by 1600 and reducing the population by 90–95%.[448]

• What sources say:
  • The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies p. 304

    The conquest of Latin America resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of individuals, primarily as a result of disease and forced relocation into more concentrated settlements, as well as through exterminatory attacks on those who resisted Iberian domination. Severe exploitation aggravated the process through overwork, nutritional deficits, and reduced resistance to illnesses generally. Paralleling this process were concerted efforts to destroy the religious and cultural fabric of native societies through the systematic destruction of sacred objects, the death of indigenous religious leaders, and the prohibition of native rites

  • The Cambridge World History of Genocide Volume 2 p. 6:

    European colonisation has stretched around the world for more than five centuries, disrupting or destroying millions of Indigenous people’s lives. Yet only in the last few decades have some colonial histories, especially those of settler colonies, begun to be understood as genocidal. This volume reflects that historiographical shift. Sixteen of the following chapters identify and document genocides committed by colonists and their leaders in Ireland, North America, Australia and Africa. However, this volume also includes two cases of mass violence perpetrated by members of Indigenous groups, in North America (Ned Blackhawk’s Chapter 10 on the Iroquois destruction of Wendake) and Africa (Michael Mahoney’s Chapter 14 on the Zulu Kingdom’s genocide of neighbouring groups). In addition, this volume also assesses cases that did not take place in a settler colonial context, such as Dean Pavlakis’ Chapter 24 on the Congo, as well as four cases on the Eurasian continent, in Korea, Central Asia, Russia and France.

I'm also adding a NPOV tag for now. Bogazicili (talk) 16:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

• Bogazicili, please don't do that. Not everything can be covered in every article. Drmies (talk) 16:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

  Ok, I'll wait for few more comments and proceed with a RfC if necessary. Bogazicili (talk) 16:53, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

  RFC's are not for retaliation. If a discussion reaches a standstill over a prolonged period, sure. You sound like you're practically threatening an RFC after less than a few hours of discussion. Aza24 (talk) 18:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

  Not my intent. Bogazicili (talk) 18:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

The fact that something occurred in the history of the world is not sufficient reason for including it in this article, see WP:PROPORTION and WP:UNDUE. This article can't discuss every single genocide, similar to how it cannot discuss every single war. Are you aware of sources that establish that the genocides you mentioned really were major events from the perspective of world history in general? The sources you presented so far belong to the more narrow field of genocide studies, not world history in general. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't mean listing every genocide. But we need a concise single sentence that several genocides occurred in Americas. Or at least point to the debate about it (some authors seem to argue against it). No need to list everything, but omitting to mention the issue entirely is indeed biased. Bogazicili (talk) 17:04, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

• Which chapters in the Cambridge World History are important enough to be included in the article, and why? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Is there really a reason you can articulate why it's "systemic bias"? Is the bias that there aren't enough Americans editing Wikipedia? (If you would argue that that there being too many Americans is actually why it the Great Dying is not mentioned, you're mistaken.) Surely nothing is lost by being a bit more specific and not using terms just because they sound more serious. Remsense诉 17:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

No colonial genocide by Europeans are mentioned. Besides the above quote, here's the one for Long nineteenth century: The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power. Much of the world was under its direct colonial control or its indirect influence through heavily Europeanized nations like the United States and Japan.. Positives are mentioned, negatives are omitted such as Atrocities in the Congo Free State (with up to 13 million dead) Bogazicili (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the things you've mentioned should be in the article, but I just really don't see why it's systemic bias—which is a broader characterization about the recent efforts of specific editors. It seems more helpful just to call it bias which is a more natural to remedy in one specific article and perhaps assumes a bit less about the contributors. Remsense诉 17:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I say Wikipedia:Systemic bias because I assume it's due to the demographics of editors. For example, if we had more editors from Congo, they'd probably be more passionate about inclusion of Atrocities in the Congo Free State. If we had more native American editors, they'd be more passionate about indigenous genocides sentence. It doesn't mean there was any bad faith intent among the primary editors of the page. It's easy to miss issues in a very high level article such as this. Does that make sense? Bogazicili (talk) 17:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Classic Wp:recentism - what about the the Mongols, Timur, Assyrian Empire and so on and on. Johnbod (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Some of those can be added too possibly. But there's a whole paragraph about European colonization here Human_history#Long_nineteenth_century starting with European empires lost territories in Latin America, which won independence by the 1820s through military campaigns, but expanded elsewhere as their industrial economies gave them an advantage over the rest of the world.... So an entire paragraph but any mention of genocides or atrocities committed by Europeans are omitted? I don't think there's an entire paragraph about Mongols. Bogazicili (talk) 18:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

This topic might be best addressed by simply stating that genocides have happened throughout history.... without naming any individual one.... we should simply summarize what the UN says or actually quote it "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity." Moxy🍁 18:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but there's no natural place for a general comment like that in such an article. We have no "overview" section (nor should we, that would get messy quick), and including such a sentiment in the lead would not be summing up the article like a lead should. Aza24 (talk) 18:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, removal of anything wasn't my suggestion. Examples can be given in relevant sections, with concise overview sentences. Bogazicili (talk) 18:19, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Pick by what criteria ? List of genocides Moxy🍁 18:54, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Bogazicili, this article is intended to be perhaps the most general, concise and summarized article on Wikipedia. You will need to cite and provide examples from books on the topic of Human history. That is, we need to see these things represented in modern reliable secondary sources about human history. Of course the The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies is going to mention these things, but how much are the mentioned in The Cambridge World History series? I'm not saying I disagree with you, in fact it seems like many here sympathize with your concerns (including me), but you're going about this the wrong way (and the systemic bias accusations don't help). As for which genocides, again, that would be decided by coverage in topic-relevant reliable sources. Aza24 (talk) 20:04, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Aza24, thanks for the source suggestion. I checked The Cambridge World History Volume 7 Part 1. There seems to be good coverage of genocide topic (chapter 16). Here are some quotes and page numbers. I'm keeping the quotes under 200 words:

• About Genocide of Indigenous peoples, page 430:

  That said, and ever since the initial Eastern seaboard settler wars against the Tsenacommacahs and Pequots in the 1620s and early 1630s, systematic genocidal massacre was a core component of native destruction throughout three centuries of largely ‘Anglo’ expansion across continental North America. The culmination of this process from the mid-1860s to mid-1880s ... native Araucanian resistance by the Argentinian and Chilean military in the Southern Cone pampas, primarily in the agribusiness interest. In Australia, too, ‘Anglo’ attrition or outright liquidation of Aborigines from the time of ‘first contact’ in 1788 reached its zenith in Queensland in these same decades, as a dedicated Native Mounted Police strove to cleanse the territory of indigenous tribes in favour of further millions of cattle stock. Undoubtedly, in all these instances, Western racism and contempt for natives as ‘savages’ played a critical role in psychocultural justifications for genocide

• About Circassian genocide, page 430:

  However, the 1864 Russian genocidal eructation of the Circassians from the North Caucasus into Ottoman territory...

• About Atrocities in the Congo Free State, page 429:

  One irony of this situation is that the most egregious case of violent mass death in fin-de-siècle Africa – the drive to extract wild rubber by concession companies in the so-called Congo Free State...

Bogazicili (talk) 21:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

This seems solid enough ground to partially expand content on the genocide of Indigenous peoples by at least sentence or two; I would assume the content needed here would be Oceania-based (which is an exceptionally small section in the Early modern period to begin with). I'm afraid the single sentence on the Circassian might not translate to anything in a limited encyclopedia article.

I think the last quote illustrates a possible lapse in this article. There's nothing said on the actual time during which African countries were colonized, just when they were colonized and when they were decolonized. I'd suggest that at the end of the 2nd paragraph in the "Long nineteenth century", a sentence be included on why the appeal of colonizations to major powers, and then the negative results for the native population, where the Atrocities in the Congo Free State could be used as an example.

That's just my reaction, others are welcome to way in. – Aza24 (talk) 22:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I suggest adding the following two sentences.

• For the Americas: Colonial policies included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples. Sourced to Cambridge World History, from the quote Bogazicili provided.
• For Africa: Imperial rule in Africa involved many acts of violence such as the atrocities in the Congo Free State and the Herero and Nama genocide. --Cerebellum (talk) 23:27, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

For the Americas, the source states seems to restrict its claims to "smaller groups" of native populations in North America while excluding "large native populations" in "tropical Africa, or the Central and Southern Americas" (p. 429). This should probably be reflected in our sentence, maybe as In some cases, colonial policies included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples. Some scholar suggest the wider claim that colonialism is "intrinsically genocidal" but I don't think that this is the generally accepted position. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I made that change and added the sentences. Bogazicili, does that resolve your concerns? --Cerebellum (talk) 09:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Cerebellum and Phlsph7, thank you for the changes. I have several more concerns:

• I do think Circassian genocide should be mentioned in the article. Genocides against Christian and Jewish populations are already mentioned in this article, but there is nothing about genocides against Muslim populations, such as the Circassian genocide. I think this can be integrated into the following sentence while the tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire did little to slow the Ottoman decline. I'll make a proposal about this after I go through a few more sources myself.
• Genocide in Australia should be added into Long nineteenth century section. There's already a sentence that covers British expansion: The British also colonized Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies. So you just need to add something like "which led to genocide in Australia" into that sentence. Bogazicili (talk) 19:02, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

To make space for "which led to genocide in Australia", consider trimming this sentence: European empires lost territories in Latin America, which won independence by the 1820s through military campaigns. You can just say something like "Latin American countries gained independence by the 1820s". Bogazicili (talk) 19:28, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense, I suggest you make those changes unless someone objects. I personally have never heard of the Circassian genocide but it has a similar death toll to the Armenian genocide and both are mentioned in the Cambridge World History, so to be consistent I think we would either have to include both or omit both. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:56, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Great, I made the changes. The word count increased by only 4, while coverage of Ottoman Empire expanded significantly.

• Added Circassian genocide per above
• Migration into Ottoman Empire is mentioned in The Cambridge World History Vol 7 Part 2 p. 5: Tsarist and Habsburg Empires against the Ottoman Empire sent soldiers moving and Muslim peasant families fleeing. So I believe this is due too.

Combining with additional sources, this is the result: [2]

I really like how you guys link individual pages in the reference btw. I don't think I have seen that before. Bogazicili (talk) 09:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Actually I was too hasty, looks like the Australian case is more controversial. See Australian history wars#Genocide debate. I'm not sure if we should call it genocide or not. --Cerebellum (talk) 20:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea to focus too much on genocides. It's often uncontroversial that a certain atrocity was committed but the problem of whether some parts of this atrocity amount to genocide is frequently controversial. I would suggest that we limit ourselves to atrocities of world-historic importance. If it's uncontroversial that a major part of one of those atrocities amounts to genocide, we can say so. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Can we mention Soviet famine was specifically directed at certain populations in Human_history#World_wars? The Cambridge World History Vol 7 Part 1 p. 425: ...cause or amplify famine was particularly directed at the Ukraine, North Caucasus, Volga region and Kazakhstan? Holodomor can be linked to Ukraine. Bogazicili (talk) 09:26, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

While I don't have an objection to this request in particular, I just feel that we keep on bloating the article with details that are in some sense relevant but far from essential. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:34, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Oppose to the Ottoman contraction article for being WP:UNDUE. One would also have to write about the Ottoman atrocities committed beforehand such as the Hamidian massacres and Bulgarian Horrors, it is POV pushing to omit these. And at this point the subject would be too long for a due weight in all of human history. KhndzorUtogh (talk) 21:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Concur with the above. Khirurg (talk) 22:18, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Oppose the bloating of the article with details on the Colonial genocides. It caused eurocentric bias. Colonialism is "intrinsically genocidal" and so is the human history. Non-Europeans were not inferior in the task.

Above, it was suggested to reduce the topic of genocides to an overview similar to the genocide statement by the UN, and counter-argued that there is no place for such an overview in the article.

Perhaps, the article can end with a Summary where such statement is made. Arnold Toynbee mentions several professional historians who summarized the human history: "History is one damn thing after another." Edward Gibbon summed history up as "a little more than human criminal record." And he died before most of the genocides mentioned here.

Summary of human history can be premature, as history will not end soon and Wikipedia is not crystalball. But Summary can end open with two possibilities, one realistic and one fantastic.

• Realistic possibility: Aliens come and forbid genocides.
• Fantastic possibility: We on our own will end genocides.--IronMike6 (talk) 04:56, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 talk 23:53, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the agricultural and industrial revolutions are key turning points in human history?

• Source:

• ALT1: ... that in early human history, humans migrated out of Africa and populated most of the Earth during the Last Ice Age? Source:
• ALT2: ... that for most of human history, children did not have access to public education? Source:
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Betty Hanley
• Comment:

References

Sources

• Cajani, Luigi (2013). "Periodization". In Bentley, Jerry H. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of World History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-968606-3.
• Christian, David (2008). This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity. Berkshire Publishing. ISBN 978-1-933782-04-1.
• Christian, David, ed. (2015). Introducing World History, to 10,000 BCE. The Cambridge World History. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139194662. ISBN 978-0-521-76333-2. Archived from the original on 26 January 2023. Retrieved 26 January 2023.
• Pollack, Henry (2010). A World Without Ice. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-52485-5.
• Scott, William; Vare, Paul (2020). Learning, Environment and Sustainable Development: A History of Ideas. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-20802-3. Archived from the original on 10 December 2023. Retrieved 3 May 2023.

Improved to Good Article status by Phlsph7 (talk) and Cerebellum (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 22 past nominations.

Phlsph7 (talk) 11:52, 11 August 2024 (UTC).

• Not a review, but two friendly comments. First, Agricultural revolution in ALT0 is a disambiguation page (I'm guessing it refers to the First agricultural revolution, which redirects to Neolithic Revolution). Second, if it's possible to make a hook about life expectancy and/or child mortality, that could be a very interesting hook indeed—I know I found John Green's video "Most People Have Never Been 20" interesting. TompaDompa (talk) 12:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for pointing this out, I fixed the link. A hook on changes to life expectancy could be interesting. I think the article only covers this in the sentence Advances in medical science led to a sharp increase in global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000.[552], which does not give us much to work with. Maybe:

  ALT3: ... that in modern human history, advances in medical science helped raise global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000.

  Phlsph7 (talk) 12:53, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

• I'm not a big fan of ALT2, which is rather anachronistic: for most of human history, children did not live in societies in which "public education" was a meaningful concept. Given the wide scope of this article, I think a hook that encompasses a broad timescale would make the most sense. – Joe (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

  Many societies didn't really have public education so children didn't have access to it. Maybe you are concerned about something like the following: some readers may misconstrue the statement as implying that these societies did have public education but just not for most children. This is not what the hook says but it could happen. This problem could be solved by talking about formal education instead of public education but the claim in our article is about public education so this may not be acceptable according to the DYK rules. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

  What I mean is that 'public education' to be a meaningful concept there first needs to exist the idea of a formal education and a state that provides public services, neither of which existed for "most of human history". In other words I think the hook anachronistically implies that children were missing out on something that was not even conceptualisable until recently. Kind of like saying "for most of human history, satellites did not use reusable launch vehicles". Technically true, but not very meaningful. – Joe (talk) 09:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

  Can people miss out on something for which they lack the relevant concepts? For example, the ancient Egyptians didn't have the concept of antibiotics. Can we say that "the ancient Egyptians didn't have access to antibiotics"? To my ears, this sounds acceptable. But I'm also open to different ways of expressing the idea. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:56, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

• ALT3 is not very well sourced. It cites page 1 of The Twentieth Century: A World History, which doesn't cite any sources for these figures, and a textbook on marketing for the "due to advances in medical science" part, which also doesn't cite a source for this claim. Neither source make it clear what specific measure of life expectancy they're using, but it's probably life expectancy at birth, which was largely a function of infant mortality in premodern societies and therefore the change involved more factors than just medical science (also improvements in public health, contraception, reduction of child poverty and malnourishment, etc). – Joe (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

  ALT3 is not my favorite either but I think the sources fulfill our requirements even though they themselves do not cite other sources for these claims. The hook says "helped raise" to not imply that there were no other factors. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

  I wouldn't say they fulfil the basic requirement of being reliable sources, in this context, per WP:EXCEPTIONAL. But this is probably best continued on the article talk page. – Joe (talk) 09:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

  adjusted hook per talk page discussion at Talk:Human_history#Increase_in_life_expectancy:

  • ALT3a: ... that in modern human history, public health measures and advances in medical science helped raise global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000?

  Phlsph7 (talk) 07:44, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

• Full review needed. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:01, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Holy daunting, Batman! The article is a new enough GA, with 60k bytes of prose. Earwig's wasn't working for me, so I've spotchecked a few references, and not seen any issues. Random selection of images revealed no copyright issues. Only thing I see are a few nitpicks (non-standard punctuation in refs, for example), which are not DYK problems. Preference is for ALT3a, though all of them seem acceptable.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello Chris Woodrich and thanks for your review of this big nomination! Phlsph7 (talk) 08:12, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

"Human History"??

While I have zero issues with the point of this article, the name of "Human History" is really strange to me. What other kind of history is there besides human? As far as I am aware, we have not yet discovered any other organisms that record the past in written form. Shedsunefertum17 (talk) 12:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Big History would be an example of a discipline that goes beyond the human realm. Apart from that, there are various branches of history that only examine certain aspects of human history and should be terminologically distinguished from human history, like History of Africa or Economic history. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:16, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The usual title one encounters for the subject of this article is "world history". I believe that was the original title.

Nihil novi (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Was going to comment the same thing, might be worth making an RM but the last one was unsuccessful. Kowal2701 (talk) 21:07, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

World history could also work as a title. One difficulty is that world history is ambiguous as it refers both to the academic discipline (discussed in the article World history (field)) and the events studied by this discipline (discussed in this article). The advantage of the title Human history is that it avoids this ambiguity. For the unsuccessful proposals 2 years ago, see Talk:Human_history/Archive_4#Requested_move_16_October_2022. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:59, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

For those of us who see "history" as human-by-definition the title can be grating, but I came to accept that a lot of readers are used to using the term history more loosely, so that it can include geological, biological and paleontological discussions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:02, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

The title "Human history" begs the question: What would "Inuman history" be? Nihil novi (talk) 19:14, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

See both History and Big History. Remsense ‥ 论 19:30, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately we don’t have an article on Animal history despite there being loads of sources. See African historiography#Animal history for example Kowal2701 (talk) 19:46, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I think one reason could be that the term is more vague than others, as it could equally encompass "animals in human history" or "the chronology of organisms from the first multicellular eukaryotes and tracing the descendants thereof". Both are themselves reasonably covered histories on here. Remsense ‥ 论 19:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Idk, practically none of our articles on animals have history sections. We have Evolution of the horse, Horses in warfare, Domestication of the horse, but no History of horses, despite sources such as these:

• Horses: History, Myth, Art (2006)
• Horses Through Time
• The Horse in Human History

But also Animal history is just the academic discipline, I listed some sources at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animals Kowal2701 (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

• Natural history is the big one. – Joe (talk) 10:11, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Chimpanzees and Paleolithic

Hi there, in the origins sub-chapter there is a mention of chimpanzees and it is wrong or misleading at best. So I have to argue that this should be changed to Pan (genus). Furthermore the sentence would give a better idea of what split it is talking about if it would mention both parts of the split, meaning the Australopithecine as the other to Pan.

Altogether there is much imprecision here, which lowers the quality of the article very much.

There are random details sprinkled around but the main categories are not well elaborated.

Another issue and example for this problem is the mention of the paleolithic. Its again at best misleading to talk about the paleolithik in the origins chapter, while the chapter does not focus on the whole paleolithic. So I have to again argue for more precision, argueing for saying lower paleolithic instead. Plus for puting it into perspective I would additionally argue for mentioning the more widely known stone age, as the lower paleolithik being an early stone age.

I have put forward a text, which was reverted for being too detailed. But as I argued in a second edit and now here I see this detail as crucial to increase the qualiy (and not length) of this article.

PS: to mention the Pleistocene is another way to give a first general idea of what period the chapter is talking about.

I am looking forward to finding together a version that fits.

Here a copy of my previous suggestion:

The ability to walk on two legs emerged in early hominins after the split between the Australopithecine (from which humans developed) and the Pan (from which chimpanzees developed), as an adaptation possibly associated with a shift from forest to savanna habitats. Hominins began to use rudimentary stone tools c. 3.3 million years ago, marking the advent of the Lower Paleolithic, the first period of the Paleolithic era (the first Stone Age). and the geologic Pleistocene.

Nsae Comp (talk) 03:08, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to the talk page. It's difficult to discuss multiple separate changes in edit summaries. In general, I don't think these suggestions are an improvement to the article because they add more detail than is necessary in such a broad article. We have one section to cover all of prehistory, it needs to be kept at a very high level overview.

On chimpanzees, the split referred to is the split between our lineage (hominins) and that of our closest extant relatives, the chimpanzees (incl. bonobos). I cannot see anything incorrect or misleading about describing it that way. Specifying which genuses were involved seems unnecessary to understanding this point, and introduces two additional bits of jargon (Australopithecines, which are otherwise not mentioned until the next paragraph; and Pan, which is not explained in this article at all) into an already heavy paragraph, for no real gain.

On the Lower Palaeolithic, this is a sub-sub-sub-division of prehistory (the Lower¹ Old² Stone³ Age). Why does the reader need to know about this distinction, given that no other subdivisions of the Palaeolithic are mentioned in this article? Also, the Lower/Middle/Upper periodisation of the Palaeolithic is not used everywhere in the world; notably there is no "Lower Palaeolithic" in Africa (which is what this section is talking about), where the equivalent period is called the "Early Stone Age". If anything I can see the argument for going even broader and just saying "advent of the Stone Age", though an argument in favour of "Palaeolithic" is that the next section talks about the Neolithic, which might be confusing since it is also part of the Stone Age.

On Pleistocene, this is just incorrect. The Pleistocene started 0.7 million years after the Palaeolithic (according to the current dating; the gap can only widen with new finds) and is in no way "marked" by the appearance of stone tools. If you want to give geological context then the Lower Palaeolithic started during the Pliocene, but again this is extra jargon that is only helpful if the reader already knows what the Pliocene is, and I don't think we can assume that of a general readership. – Joe (talk) 07:44, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Just weighing on the Paleolithic issue, I agree with Joe that we don't need this extra level of information in a broad overview article like this one. How the Paleolithic is subdivided can be covered in articles on more narrow topics. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:28, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the friedly reply. You are right that just mentioning the pleistocene and not mention other periods in the timeframe of the chapter produced the same shortcoming that I tried to reduce... But regarding the main point of too many difficult terms/concepts, I do understand your point, but I dont understand it in regard to "lower" and "stone age". Quite the contrary stone age is a better known word than Paleolithik so why cut stone age. And "Lower" Paleolithik doesnt make it more difficult, since it is not any special concept. Furthermore I dont mind saying "early Paleolithic" and link it to lower paleolithic. Altogether I have a problem if we omit the availability of more detailed articles by not providing links; as I said it doesnt need to use the articles name to link to it. Because what it creates is that a common reader has to figure out by reading through the paleolithic article that the whole paleolithic doesnt apply to that chapter here.

Last but not least I really strongly find it misleading to mention chimpanzees without saying that they are like humans a later development of the split. Yours, Nsae Comp (talk) 12:26, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

As I said, I don't think it's a bad idea to swap "Palaeolithic" for "Stone Age" here. But introducing multiple terms for the same concept, when it is really only mentioned once or twice in the whole article, is just poor writing. If someone follows a link to any of the articles (Stone Age, Palaeolithic or Lower Palaeolithic) they will find plenty of context and links to the others. There is no need to be exhaustive.

What is misleading about describing it as the split between the lineages of humans and of chimpanzees? That is literally what it is. – Joe (talk) 07:01, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah better writing is needed. Nsae Comp (talk) 23:02, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

References

Images

My edit was reverted with the following edit summary: it's not clear that this is an improvement; it might be helpful to explain on the talk page why each of these images needs to be changed.

1. I think a world map related to the development of agriculture in the "Rise of agriculture" section is more informative for readers than a photo of a stone pillar.

2. In the "Ancient History" section, there isn't a single photo from ancient Greece or Rome or any other part of Europe, and a photo of the Parthenon in Greece looks better than two photos of columns/pillars. I wouldn't mind if one or both of the column photos remained in the article, but at least one editor doesn't want any more pictures in this article.

3. Teotihuacan was the largest city in Mesoamerica and the picture looks better than the pictures of the columns. On the other hand, there is already one image from Mesoamerica in the "Ancient History" section, so it could be replaced with another image. What about ancient China? Or leave one photo of the column in the article?

4. Mecca is the holiest site in Islam, and a picture of Mecca looks better than a poorly visible picture of a mosque in Damascus at night.

5. The "Greater Middle East" section is quite long and only has one image, so I've included a picture of Samarkand, one of the most important cities in Central Asia. The text next to the picture is about Central Asia.

6. There is not a single image in the "Americas" section in "Early modern period", so I inserted an image from the American Revolutionary War.

7. I deleted a few images that didn't look as good as the others, or were placed too close to other images, to avoid "over-illustration" after adding a few new images.

User:Phlsph7, do you agree with at least some of the changes? -- Tobby72 (talk) 11:44, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello Tobby72 and thanks for the explanation. Generally, I also think that the article is already borderline overillustrated so replacing images is better than adding more images. It's probably subjective whether all of your changes are improvements, but I don't think that they make the article worse either. I suggest that you wait a little longer in case other editors want to respond before restoring your changes. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:14, 12 April 2025 (UTC)