Prehistoric man was a hunter gatherer and had no need of insurance. Early hunter gatherers were nomadic and traveled in small, often familial, groups. When they found a particularly attractive camping spot with a good water source and fresh fruit and berries growing nearby they might stay there for a while before moving on. It was only with the advent of formal settlements and the development of agrarian society that insurance would become a necessity.

Today we humans cannot do without insurance, what will all the possessions we have that assist us to successfully live our lives. Cars are an absolute necessity in order to get around as is a housing to protect us from the elements and to contain all our possessions. The growth of the human population has resulted in high density living, although I hear there are fewer car accidents in Alaska because there are fewer people per square metre there, and the growth between the haves and the have nots has resulted in the existence of the concept of theft. Because of their nomadic lifestyle, prehistoric people would not have wanted to acquire a lot of possessions as they would have been heavy to carry. A man might have a couple of stone tools that he had fashioned from small rocks but if one of them got lost or stuck in the hide of a runaway mammoth then it was a relatively easy to make another one. Besides, cars to drive in, expensive designer clothing to wear, and homes with swimming pools, tennis courts and jacuzzis to live in had not been invented yet, so there wasn’t a need for car, home and contents insurance. It was only after the wheel was invented and animals became domesticated that a man would have allowed his wife to accumulate a bunch of pretty things which he called junk because there was a way to transport them.

Medical insurance would also have been redundant in prehistoric times as there would not have been much you could do to protect yourself from a 160kg jaguar, ditto life insurance. If you were able to escape from a predator like this without being killed outright then you would most likely die from your injuries. In short, there was simply no way an herbal poultice was going to work under these circumstances. What is more, people in prehistoric times did not have a great life expectancy. The chances of surviving past middle age were second to none so there would not have been any need for medical aid to assist with the consequences of ageing. As civilization developed, people devised ways of protecting themselves from predators and other causes of injury. Eventually the medical industry came about and surgeons were no longer barbers wielding knives but specialists performing life saving medical procedures extremely expensive to perform making it necessary for people to have hospital plans.

Of course, there was no money in prehistoric times with which to purchase insurance anyway, as it was only with the advent of trade and industry that the need for insurance products arose and a service industry dedicated to selling insurance grew out of it. Life has changed so much since prehistoric times that, ironically, the needs of modern man are the exact opposite of those of prehistoric man and have necessitated a variety of different types of insurance cover for which early man had no need.

For more information about insurance related visit the website http://www.payasyoudrive.co.za