There must be a right date at which to begin a study of making things. The choice is ‘the earlier the better’ because if we are to discover the essence of the principles of managing production a start should be made at the very beginnings of human cultural evolution when technology, craft and art were one.  In terms of availability of objects for investigation this happened very approximately, at around 35,000 BC. At this time, made objects provide evidence that Homo sapiens was an advanced hunter, and established as the sole human species across the earth.  The earliest tool- making humans appeared on earth a little before two million years ago, but in these earlier times there is very little to record beyond simple stone hand-tools and a few almost featureless settlement.

The following time-line has been created which covers the period from 35,000 to 1,000BC.  By the end of the period a world had been created in which a battery of primary objects had been made that, for the most part, would last, with only stylistic modifications until the beginning of the European industrial revolution 2,800 years later. 

The 34,000 year period has been divided into the following five division.  These span decreasing time intervals reflecting the exponential increase in the rate of cultural advance.

Thirty-seven millennia ago is an appropriate starting point because it was also the dawn of an age of rapid advances the making crafts. Tools became more exactly designed for specialized uses, hunting and fighting weapons became more effective, skin clothing and shelter afforded better protection against the cold. It was not long before these advanced hunting peoples began to create objects that we appreciate today as works of art.  The latter have a high imaginative quality.  They display an amazingly wide range of techniques, and their fine sculpture, modelling, painting, and engraving put us in touch with them on fully aesthetic terms. These Palaeolithic people are like us, with the same creative urge, the same gift for image making, and it seems that they are already feeling their way towards religious symbolism.

The unfied technology of the advanced hunters was based on the production of narrow, parallel- sided "blades" of flint or other fine stone as blanks for working up into a variety of implements. A second vital innovation was the manufacture of chisels and gravers with sharp, strong cutting edges intended for working in bone, antler, and ivory. Increasingly, these burins, as they are often called, were used not only for shaping specialized tools and weapons in organic substances, but also for carving and engraving works of art. They are the first tools of any complexity designed not for direct use but to make other implements; they were, in fact, the forerunners of machine tools.

The probably spoke fluent and well-developed languages and probably had more advanced social systems than any that had gone before. We know that they danced and had simple flutes, and there can be little doubt that they sang and told tribal stories.

These ‘blade and burin’ hunters belong to a race that is called Cromagnon, after the French cave in which their remains were first discovered. People that were to emerge as Cromagnon Man were hunting over Africa, the Near East, and Europe, early in the last interglacial age, roughly 120,000 years ago. For a long span of time they were living contemporaneously with the early Neanderthalers.

By the end of glacial times Late Hunting peoples in the Near East were typified by the Natufians, who, though still relying on natural resources, were already moving towards the new economy. By the sixth millenium BC some were beginning to control nature, to establish substantial villages and even towns of a sort integrated with a system of fields and pasture, based on domesticated animals and plants. The rest of mankind, however, remained hunters and food gatherers. Ever since this time peoples in different parts of theworld have lived on increasingly different material bases, the technological van accelerating, the archaic rear dwindling but little changed.

Today, our global technology still exists with a handful of people still using the stone-tipped arrow. 

True farming was first to be developed in uplands of the Levant and the great sweep from southern Anatolia round the head of the Tigris-Euphrates valley and along the southwest flank of the Zagros. The cultural shifts during this period were linked with the domestication of plants and animals, followed by the further elaboration of mixed farming.

Over this area descendants of the Late Hunters began to select and control wild cereals and wild sheep and goats in a manner that was to alter their genetic bases and produce true domestic breeds. This culture gradually spread westward and there was a development of crafts such as potting and spinning for woven textiles that accompanied the more settled agricultural life. Together these changes comprise what has been called the Neolithic Revolution.  This was a very slow cultural change which provided the necessary foundation for the growth of urban settlements. The Neolithic period covers the greater part of the New Stone Age. Stone, bone and wood remain the only materials for all implements, but the grinding and polishing of new forms, such as hoes and axes, is an important technological advance of the time.

One of the most important changes through selective breeding was that in cultivated cereal the ear retained its grains instead of scattering them as for natural seeding. Wild plants having this mutation would have been more easily gathered, and once carried home, would have inevitably provided a disproportionately larger amount of the seed com. Furthermore the cultivators learned deliberately to select ears with more numerous or larger grains for seed.

Similarly the early herdsmen advanced from a rough and ready loose control of animals towards true stock breeding, selecting the smaller, more docile individuals. The protection of herds from predators allowed genetic variations to be established that would have been eliminated in the wild. By this means the growth of horns was altered, and also in cattle piebald colouring emerged, now so characteristic of many domestic breeds.

The primary reason why domestication began in the Near East was probably because the wild ancestors of wheat and barley, sheep and goats, were native to that region. Another reason was that the peoples of the Near East had long maintained progressive cultural traditions. To these explanations can be added the facts that the upland valleys offered good water supplies, often fertile soil, and their natural configuration made it easier for men to confine their herds.