Parent book: The Human Past · Domain: History
Source status
These are source highlights organized by chapter. Use the linked PDF and parent book note to verify wording, pagination, and context.
Front matter (Preface / How to use / timeline)
- PDF p. 21 (book p. 19)
The
human past is much longer, richer, and more diverse, stretching
back 3 million years or so to our early tool-making ancestors on
the African savanna. How humans colonized the rest of the world,
how farming came to support larger and more complex societies,
how the first cities and states arose, and how a diverse mosaic of
cultures came to populate the habitable world, is the story told by
archaeology. - PDF p. 22 (book p. 20)
The volume is divided into two main sections. Part I (Chapters
2- 4) focuses on human origins and developments up to the end
of the last Ice Age - the period conventionally known as the Paleo
lithic. The second, longer, section (Part II, Chapters 5- 18) covers
the postglacial period, the Holocene, from 11,500 years ago to
recent times.
Chapter 1 — Introduction: The Study of the Human Past
- PDF p. 27 (book p. 25)
Modern humans (Homo sapiens) have been living on the
Earth for around 125,000 years, an immense span o f time
when compared with the normal com pass o f human experi
ence. Human ancestors go back even further, to the earliest
so-called hominins o f Africa 6 million years ago, or to the
first o f those who made stone tools, c. 2.5 million years ago. - PDF p. 28
In terms of chronology, many consider that archaeology
begins when early hominins first began to create material
culture (stone tools) some 2.5 million years ago (Chapter 2).
Material culture is often presented as one of the hallmarks of
humanness; several other species use found objects such as
twigs or stones to probe for food or to break open nuts, but none
manufacture tools on a regular basis. The reliance on material
culture, on tools, is hence distinctively human, and has given
humans a substantial advantage in coping with a wide range
of environments. Without key items of material culture such
as clothing and shelter, humans would still be restricted in
distribution to the tropical regions, where our closest primate
relations, the gorillas and chimpanzees, live today. It is mate
rial culture that has allowed humans to populate the globe,
and to develop large and complex settlements and societies.
Material culture also makes humans what we are today: we are
in many respects the product of the material world we have
created. Thus, in a real sense, the rudimentary stone tools
made in Africa 2.5 million years ago were a vital step in ena
bling the development of human potential, the results of which
we see around us in the 21st century. - PDF p. 28
The occasional burials of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic
testify to the origins of human feelings of respect in the treat
ment of the dead. - PDF p. 29 (book p. 27)
If archaeology is essentially an approach to human societies
based on the study of material culture, there is nonetheless an
important distinction to be drawn between historic and pre
historic archaeology. History is the study of the human past
from written records (or from recorded oral traditions). Since
writing was first invented less than 5500 years ago in South
west Asia, the whole of the human past before that time falls
within the period of prehistory - PDF p. 31
A series of key developments came
together to create the underpinnings of modern Western
science, one of which was the invention of movable metal type
and the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th
century. - PDF p. 32
Early in the century, it came to be realized that archaeo
logical materials could be sorted into sequences by means of
their technology: stone tools had preceded metal ones, and
among the latter, bronze had preceded iron. Thus the three-
age system of Stone, Bronze, and Iron was established. - PDF p. 32
It was Europeans who undertook these world voyages, and
hence Europeans who were first faced with the full perspective
of global human diversity. - PDF p. 32
The first serious investigations
of British prehistoric monuments began in the 17th century,
with John Aubrey’s descriptions and plans of Stonehenge and
Avebury in southern England. - PDF p. 32
The voyages of discovery brought back to Europe new
information and a new curiosity about human societies and
technology that fed directly into the understanding of the
European past. - PDF p. 32
Thus the Stone Age was subdivided into an Old Stone Age
(with tools exclusively of chipped or flaked stone) and a New
Stone Age (with tools of polished stone). In the 1860s these two
periods came to be known as the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) and
Neolithic (New Stone Age). - PDF p. 33 (book p. 31)
The model of evolution through natural
selection was given further support by advances in genetics,
beginning with Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel’s plant breed
ing experiments in the 1860s, which showed how particular
characteristics are passed from parent to offspring. With the
rapidly developing knowledge of DNA in the past 50 years,
geneticists are now able to explain in detail how Darwinian
natural selection operates at the level of the genetic code. - PDF p. 34 (book p. 32)
Although useful as a
general scheme, however, this classification of human societies
must be used with caution. It suggests that there are universal
types of human social organization, whereas we know from
both archaeology and ethnography that each society is dif
ferent and indeed unique. - PDF p. 34 (book p. 32)
Darwin’s thesis of human origins, coupled with the discovery
of the Neanderthal fossils and the early stone tools, suggested
that the human story went back much further than had previ
ously been supposed, - PDF p. 34 (book p. 32)
One widely influ
ential scheme was that proposed by Elman Service (1962), in
which he divided human societies into four major categories:
• Bands, characterized by small groups of 25-60 individuals
who are related to each other through family and marriage ties- such societies are typical of mobile hunter-gatherers;
• Tribes, generally settled farmers or pastoralist herders, num
bering from a few hundred to a few thousand individuals
whose identity is based on a concept of descent from a common
ancestor; they are loosely organized without central control or
strongly developed social hierarchy;
• Chiefdoms, which may number over 10,000 individuals,
in which institutionalized differences of rank and status are
embedded in a hierarchy of lineages ruled over by a chief; a
key economic feature of chiefdom societies is redistribution,
in which subordinate sectors of society pay tribute to the chief,
who then redistributes it to his followers;
• State societies or civilizations, in which populations reach
much greater levels of size and complexity, with a centralized
and institutionalized control that overrides kinship ties, and in
which differences of rank and wealth are fostered and protected.
- such societies are typical of mobile hunter-gatherers;
- PDF p. 35 (book p. 33)
Radiocarbon dating is effective on materials up to 40,000
years old; beyond that date, the amount of radioactive carbon that
survives is too small for accurate measurement. - PDF p. 35 (book p. 33)
potassium-argon
dating, - PDF p. 35 (book p. 33)
radiocarbon dating has revolutionized our understanding of
prehistoric and historical archaeology. - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
Principle of Strata
Identified by Fossils/Artifacts. - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
Principle of Superposition, - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
Prin
ciple of Association, - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
analyses reveal that interbreeding has given
modern humans an enhanced immune response, making us
more resistant to disease. - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
ancient DNA - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
modern human populations are much more
genetically diverse in Africa than elsewhere in the world, a
finding which supports the case that modern human popula
tions outside Africa are descended from a subset of the original
African population. - PDF p. 37 (book p. 35)
uranium-
series dating, and electron-spin resonance dating - PDF p. 38
Change
is a recurrent feature of human society, and the analysis and
understanding of change lies at the heart of the archaeological
endeavor. - PDF p. 39 (book p. 37)
Innovation, Diffusion, Emulation, and Migration - PDF p. 39 (book p. 37)
agency theory in archaeol
ogy, which considers individuals in the past as knowledgeable
actors. - PDF p. 40 (book p. 38)
Archaeologists have experienced great difficulty
in identifying migrations in the material record, and most of
the changes in prehistory that have been attributed to migra
tion are today explained by other mechanisms. - PDF p. 40 (book p. 38)
isotopic signatures carried in the human
skeleton can reveal whether individuals buried in one area
had spent part of their life elsewhere. - PDF p. 42
It has sometimes been observed that humans are an Ice Age
species. The mild, stable, and relatively benign world climate of
the past 11,600 years (the Holocene period) is far from typical
of the conditions in which most members of our species have
lived. From at least 700,000 years ago, world climate has expe
rienced a regular series of dramatic fluctuations between warm
and cold conditions, the latter characterized by advancing ice
sheets in the northern hemisphere and pronounced aridity in
the tropics. These “ice ages” occur on a cycle of about one every
100,000 years, with short warm spells or “interglacials” of
around 10,000 years duration between them. The harshness of
the climate during the last Ice Age would have placed a severe
brake on the development of human societies. - PDF p. 43
important of these is food production - farming - which has
enabled communities to far outstrip the resources available
from hunting and gathering. The development of farming
was not a single act, but a steady intensification of production,
from simple hoe agriculture to irrigation farming and use of
animal fertilizers. - PDF p. 44
What sets humans apart from all other species is not just their
numbers, but their capacity for symbolic behavior, and its
material expression in terms of structures and artifacts. The
evidence for material expression begins with the first stone
tools, and grows steadily more complex during the later stages
of the Paleolithic period. - PDF p. 45 (book p. 43)
The increasing sophistication of symbolic behavior remains
a major strand in the human story up to the present day.
Humans use material symbols alongside language in a routine
way to help them represent and conceptualize ideas and rela
tionships, and to gain an understanding or interpretation of
the social and physical world around them. - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
By around half a million years ago, humans had
reached most parts ofthe Old World, - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
The evolution o f
human anatomy and behavior must be set against the
dramatic fluctuations in world climate which saw the
successive advance and retreat o f the ice sheets in
northern latitudes from 700,000 years ago, coupled
with major changes in sea level, rainfall, and vegeta
tion. - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
col
onization o f new lands, by sea across the Sunda Straits
into Australia and by land across the Bering land bridge
into North America. - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
cru
cial divergence o f the ape and human lineages. - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
expand from Africa into southern
and eastern Asia, and then to Europe. Control o f fire,
the invention o f clothing, and new skills in hunting and
foraging lay behind this success. - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
second crucial step in the human story
occurred some 2.5 million years ago, when early homi
nins in eastern Africa began to manufacture stone tools. - PDF p. 47 (book p. 45)
survival owed much to
the enhanced cognitive skills o f modern humans, which
are reflected in technology and creativity, and in the pro
duction o f art.
Chapter 2 — African Origins
- PDF p. 49 (book p. 47)
The earli
est flaked stone tools are dated to between 2.6 and 2.5 million
years ago and, by definition, herald the beginning of the
archaeological record. - PDF p. 49 (book p. 47)
The fossil evidence indicates that bipedal hominins
emerged in Africa from an ape ancestry by 6 million years ago.
A number of different hominin species - possibly a dozen -
are known to have existed between then and 1.5 million years
ago; our own genus, Homo (a genus being a group of closely
related species), emerged fairly recently, by at least 2 million
years ago. - PDF p. 49 (book p. 47)
bipedal walking preceded the
first evidence for stone tools by millions of years, and brain
expansion is evident only several hundreds of thousand of
years after the beginnings of stone tools. - PDF p. 49 (book p. 47)
earliest members o f the human
lineage, who lived in Africa between 6 million and 2 million
years ago. - PDF p. 50 (book p. 48)
gradualism, in which the
gradual, rather slow and steady accumulation of small changes
over a long period of time finally produces major changes in
the descendants of a species. - PDF p. 51 (book p. 49)
Sometime after our split with the other apes, the ances
tral human lineage apparently developed bipedal locomotion
(walking on two legs). This bipedal adaptation was not unique
just to the lineage that ultimately led to us; there were a number
of contemporary “cousin” species and lineages, including the
various robust australopithecines. - PDF p. 52 (book p. 50)
The higher primates, the Anthropoidea, show morphological
traits such as heightened enlargement of the brain and devel
opment of the visual senses, - PDF p. 58 (book p. 56)
It is estimated that humans and our closest
living relatives, the chimpanzees and
bonobos o f Africa, share a last common
ancestor approximately 7 million years ago. - PDF p. 59 (book p. 57)
Around 1.7 million years ago During the Pleistocene (or Ice Age,
beginning c. 1.75 million years ago) there was another major
shift to drier, more open habitats, with the C4 grasses [see box
Reconstructing Paleoenvironments, p. 55] spreading through
out much of East Africa. This was the approximate time of the
appearance of Homo erectus (the earlier African forms of which
are often, as here, assigned to Homo ergaster) and, soon after,
the first Acheulean (hand axe and cleaver) industries, discussed
in the next chapter. The earliest evidence of hominins outside
Africa (for example at Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia,
Mojokerto on Java, and ‘Ubeidiya in Israel; see Chapter 3), also
occurred at around this time or shortly thereafter. - PDF p. 63 (book p. 61)
The first recognizable objects modified by hominins - another
significant step forward in the human story - are found approx
imately 2.5 million years ago in the form of flaked and battered
stone artifacts from the Middle Awash Valley in Ethiopia. - PDF p. 63 (book p. 61)
The second major development is the emergence of early
forms of the genus Homo - Homo rudolfensis, H. habilis, and
H. ergaster (the last considered by some to be an early form of
Homo erectus, discussed more fully in the next chapter) between
2 and 1.8-1.7 milion years ago. They probably evolved during
this period from one of the non-robust australopithecines,
perhaps A. garhi [2.11, 2.12]. Larger brains and, usually, smaller
jaws and teeth characterize these early Homo forms and define
the species, although H. rudolfensis still retains large, australo-
pithecine-like premolars and molars. The overall architecture
of the skulls of some of these larger-brained forms seems to
foreshadow many modern human cranial features. It is just
before this time, around 2.5 million years ago, that the first
stone tools are found, establishing the earliest known archaeo
logical record. - PDF p. 78 (book p. 76)
In 1995, anthropologists Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler
published an article entitled “The Expensive Tissue Hypoth
esis.” They noted that animals with diets that include large
amounts of low-nutrient plant foods tend to have more - PDF p. 78 (book p. 76)
complex digestive tracts and need to devote more metabolic
energy to digesting and detoxifying these foods. Animals
(such as carnivores and omnivores) with diets characterized by
higher-quality foods (high in protein and calories, such as meat
and fat) tend to have simpler, more streamlined digestive tracts
and need substantially less energy for digestion, often allow
ing these species to evolve larger brains. Aiello and Wheeler
argued that hominin groups that could process larger amounts
of meat and fat (with the assistance of technology) would need
to consume fewer vegetable foods that require more metabolic
energy to digest and detoxify. A more omnivorous diet would
allow more metabolic energy to be devoted to a larger brain.
Therefore, tool use, meat/marrow consumption, and brain
expansion all evolved in tandem. - PDF p. 79 (book p. 77)
suggests that a significant inclusion
of animal protein in hominin diet, accomplished through the
use of tools, may have provided a critical impetus to the rapid
evolutionary expansion of brain size in the hominin lineage - PDF p. 84 (book p. 82)
Between 2 million
and i.8 -i.7 million years ago, the first hominins that appear
to show marked encephalization (brain expansion) are found. - PDF p. 84 (book p. 82)
The first bipedal hominins appear to have emerged in Africa
from an ape ancestry in the late Miocene, between 8 and 6
million years ago. Between 5 and 2 million years ago, bipedal
hominins (Australopithecus/Paranthropus) are characterized
by having relatively small brains and large jaws and teeth, - PDF p. 84 (book p. 82)
especially cheek teeth. The first archaeological sites, dated to
around 2.5 million years ago, are found at Gona in Ethiopia,
characterized by flaked stone technologies assigned to the
Oldowan industry. - PDF p. 85 (book p. 83)
At around 1.8-1.7 million years ago, the larger-brained
Homo ergaster emerged in Africa.
Chapter 3 — Hominin Dispersals in the Old World
- PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
H. ergaster developed the ability to strike especially large
flakes, and by i.75 million years ago, it had created the hand
axes and other more extensively flaked artifacts that archaeolo
gists assign to the Acheulean culture or industrial tradition. - PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
Homo ergaster became the first human
species to expand to Eurasia. - PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
Homo ergaster. H. ergaster trans
lates roughly as “working man,” - PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
If we assume that the
advanced, essentially modern behavioral repertoire developed
in Africa about 50,000 years ago, it could explain how African
H. sapiens subsequently managed to spread to Eurasia, where
it swamped or replaced H. neanderthalensis and H. erectus. Most
specialists accept the African origin of modern behavior, but
they disagree on whether it appeared abruptly about 50,000
years ago or evolved more gradually before this time. - PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
The first, which remains
weakly documented, occurred between 8 and 6 million years
ago, when the australopithecine and chimpanzee lineages
diverged. The australopithecines are the oldest well-known
representatives o f the human tribe, the Hominini (or homi
nins), and it is from one ofthem that all later humans evolved.
The second step, much better documented, occurred around
2.5 million years ago, and produced the humans who created
the Oldowan cultural complex, the oldest known stone tools. - PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
at least three different human lineages
emerged: Homo erectus in eastern Asia, H. neanderthalensis (the
Neanderthals) in Europe, and H. sapiens (modern humans) in
Africa. Homo erectus differentiated first, by i million years ago
or before. H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens appear to have
shared a common ancestor as recently as 6 0 0 ,0 0 0 -5 0 0 ,0 0 0
years ago, and they separated only after this ancestor, here
labeled Homo heidelbergensis, spread from Africa to Europe. - PDF p. 87 (book p. 85)
third key evolutionary step and
its important consequences. This step occurred c. 1.8-1.7
million years ago, and resulted in a species that anticipated
living people in every major respect o f anatomy, behavior, and
ecology, save mainly for its smaller brain. With this caveat in
mind, its members can reasonably be labeled the first “true
humans.” - PDF p. 90 (book p. 88)
It is
impossible to exaggerate the significance of the Turkana Boy
for what his skeleton reveals about the course of human evolu
tion. - PDF p. 91 (book p. 89)
In ape species that
exhibit a similar degree of sexual dimorphism, males compete
intensely for sexually receptive females, and male-female
relationships tend to be transitory and non-cooperative. The
reduced size difference in H. ergaster may signal the onset of
a more typically human pattern, in which male-male compe
tition was more muted and male-female relationships were
more lasting and mutually supportive. - PDF p. 91 (book p. 89)
These facts
suggest that by modern standards he was cognitively limited,
and the same was probably true of everyone who lived between
1.8 million and 6 0 0 ,0 0 0 -5 0 0 ,0 0 0 years ago, when brain
volume seems to have increased rapidly to an average firmly
within the modern range. - PDF p. 103 (book p. 101)
Artifacts and East Asian Homo erectus fossils indicate, there
fore, that a human species had left Africa before 1 million years
ago, and this species was almost certainly Homo ergaster. But
aside from the question of who the hominins were, we may
also ask why they left and what route(s) they took. Unlike many
other questions in paleoanthropology, these are relatively easy
to answer. Archaeology shows that about 1.5 million years
ago, shortly after H. ergaster appeared in Africa, people more
intensively occupied the drier peripheries of lake basins on the
floor of the Great Rift Valley (Harris 1983), and they colonized
the Ethiopian high plateau at 2 300-2400 m (7 6 0 0 -7 9 0 0 ft)
above sea level for the first time (Clark and Kurashina 1979).
By 1 million years ago, they had fully colonized the extreme
northern and southern margins of Africa. The Sahara Desert
might seem to provide an impenetrable barrier to movement
northwards, but during the long Acheulean time interval, there
were numerous periods when it was somewhat moister and
more hospitable, and Acheulean people penetrated it readily
(Wendorf and Schild 1980). - PDF p. 103 (book p. 101)
Assuming that Homo ergaster lacked boats, its first stop on
departing Africa would have been in what today is Israel. It is
not surprising, therefore, that Israel contains the oldest firmly
documented Acheulean site outside of Africa. This occurs at
‘Ubeidiya in the Jordan Rift Valley (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen
2001), where ancient lake and river deposits have provided
nearly 8 000 flaked stones. The tools include hand axes and
other pieces that closely resemble early Acheulean artifacts
from Olduvai Gorge and other African sites. They have been
bracketed in the interval between 1.4 and 1 million years ago by
associated mammal fossils, paleomagnetism, and potassium-
argon dating of an overlying lava flow. - PDF p. 108 (book p. 106)
It was suggested above that Homo heidelbergensis represents
the last shared ancestor between the Neanderthals (Homo nean-
derthalensis), who evolved in Europe after 500,000 years ago,
and modern humans (Homo sapiens), who evolved in Africa
over roughly the same interval, perhaps beginning somewhat
later. - PDF p. 109 (book p. 107)
The previous sections argued that by i million years ago,
humans had spread to the northern and southern margins
of Africa and had colonized eastern Asia as far east as China
and Java. But what about Europe? The Dmanisi site puts
people on the southern flank of the Caucasus Mountains
in modern Georgia, at the “Gates of Europe,” by 1 million
years ago, and perhaps as much as 1.7 million years ago.
Yet, despite searches that began in the i830s (long aided
by industrial activity), the antiquity of human presence in
Europe remains debatable, particularly northern Europe,
north of the Alps and Pyrenees [see box: When Did Humans
First Colonize Europe?, p. 110]. - PDF p. 113 (book p. 111)
Careful analysis of fossil data suggests that between 1.8
million and 6 0 0 ,0 0 0 years ago, brain size remained remark
ably stable at roughly 65 percent of the modern average; not
long afterwards, it increased to about 90 percent of the modern
value. If a spurt in brain size and associated changes in skull
form sparked the appearance of Homo heidelbergensis, its emer
gence 6 0 0 ,0 0 0 years ago would signal a punctuational event - PDF p. 114 (book p. 112)
The European fossil record after 500,000 years ago is criti
cal to a full understanding of human evolution, for it shows
that the Neanderthals were a European phenomenon, evolving
in Europe over the same interval that modern humans were
evolving in Africa. Occasional proto-Neanderthal fossils have
long been known from sites between 4 0 0 ,0 0 0 and 200 ,0 0 0
years old (Hublin 1996), such as Swanscombe, England, and
Steinheim, Germany. The certainty with which we can now
reconstruct Neanderthal roots stems mainly from one site -
the extraordinary Sima de los Huesos at Atapuerca, Spain,
which, as noted previously, is often abbreviated as the “Sima,”
or “Pit” (Arsuaga et al. 2003). - PDF p. 121 (book p. 119)
Both logic
and observations of historic hunter-gatherers suggest
that, in general, early people everywhere depended more
on plants than on animals. - PDF p. 124 (book p. 122)
The emergence of H om o ergaster 1.8-1.7 million years ago
marked a watershed, for H . ergaster was the first hominin
species whose anatomy and behavior fully justify the label
human. Unlike the australopithecines and Hom o habilis, in
which body form and proportions retained apelike features,
suggesting a continued reliance on trees for food or refuge,
H . ergaster achieved essentially modern form, proportions,
increased stature, and degree of sexual dimorphism. The evi
dence suggests that H . ergaster was the first hominin species to
resemble historic hunter-gatherers not only in a fully terrestrial
lifestyle, but also in a social organization that featured eco
nomic cooperation between males and females and perhaps
between semipermanent male-female units. H . ergaster was
also larger brained than earlier hominins, and this increased
brain size was probably linked to the nearly simultaneous
appearance of hand axes and other relatively sophisticated
artifacts of the Acheulean industrial tradition. The emergence
of H . ergaster and the Acheulean recall the appearance of the
genus H om o and of the first Oldowan stone tools roughly
8 0 0 ,0 0 0 years earlier. Both events reveal a close connection
between biological and behavioral change in the early phases of
human evolution. Arguably too, both occurred abruptly, in the
punctuational (as opposed to the gradual) mode of evolution,
and each may have been stimulated by a broadly simultaneous
change in global climate. - PDF p. 125 (book p. 123)
By 2 5 0 ,0 0 0 -2 0 0 ,0 0 0 years ago, craniofacial differences
among H om o erectus, H . neanderthalensis, and H . sapiens were
highly conspicuous, but all three lineages seem to have shared
a tendency toward brain enlargement (encephalization). By
200 .0 0 0 years ago, brain size, whether measured on its own
or relative to body size, everywhere approximated the modern
average, and only variation in braincase form might imply that
the different lineages differed neurologically from each other
or from later people, including present-day living ones. The
shared natural selective forces that could have driven brain
enlargement in each lineage are easy to imagine, but the pace
of encephalization remains uncertain, partly because the rel
evant fossils are scarce, and partly because they are often very
imprecisely dated. It is thus impossible to say whether enlarge
ment occurred in sudden spurts or gradually, but a shared
trend in three otherwise distinct lineages may argue that the
increase was mostly gradual. - PDF p. 125 (book p. 123)
It is thus only
after 50,000 years ago that fully modern behavior became
firmly established. Archaeologists disagree, however, whether
completely modern behavior developed abruptly about 50,000
years ago or more gradually over the preceding 3 0 ,0 0 0 -2 0 ,0 0 0
years.
Chapter 4 — The Rise of Modern Humans
- PDF p. 127 (book p. 125)
The key story o f the last 120,000 years o f human history
is the expansion o f H. sapiens throughout the known world,
replacing both H. erectus in eastern Asia and the Neander
thals in the West. The end result was a world dominated
by a single hominin species: our own. The archaeology o f
this last 120,000 years - formally speaking the geological
Upper Pleistocene - reveals profound behavioral changes
associated with modern humans, including the emergence
o f symbolism and art. How far these behaviors were shared
with Neanderthals is the subject o f considerable debate. - PDF p. 127 (book p. 125)
origins and spread o f Homo
sapiens - anatomically modern humans - from c. 400,000 to
12,000 years ago. - PDF p. 139 (book p. 137)
Although complex and varied, the results of a number of
studies show that MtDNA, nuclear microsatellite DNA, and
phenotypic (expression) traits including craniometric meas
ures and skin color are all more diverse in sub-Saharan Africa
than anywhere else. The simple conclusion is that they have
had more time to vary through random mutation in Africa,
hence in the main Homo sapiens has a longer connection with
Africa than anywhere else - PDF p. 141 (book p. 139)
The emerging consensus is that the hybridization and
replacement hypotheses put forward by Gunter Brauer and
others are most closely supported by the genetic data. The
greater genetic diversity of sub-Saharan African populations
suggests that the long-term population size in the region was
larger than elsewhere, and one might expect greater rates of
mutation, as well as gene flow out of Africa far more frequently
than into it. - PDF p. 144
It is most likely that a variety of meat-procurement strate
gies were employed in the Middle Stone Age, which included
active and efficient hunting. - PDF p. 148 (book p. 146)
Neanderthals seem to have lived relatively short lives, in which
physical trauma was a common event. The ageing of Neander
thal remains suggests that most individuals died by their early
40s, although it is conceivable that some lived into their 50s. - PDF p. 148 (book p. 146)
Recent excavations, with improved recovery techniques,
have revealed that plant resources played an important role
in Neanderthal diet when available. - PDF p. 157 (book p. 155)
By 50,000 years ago, Hom o sapiens was clearly established
throughout much or all of Africa, and had already by this time
occupied a range outside that continent, including Southwest
Asia. By 4 0 ,0 0 0 years ago, modern humans had expanded
their range considerably into new environments, dispersing at
the same broad time period into Southeast Asia and Australia,
northeastward into the Caucasus and southeast Siberia, and
northward into Europe. As changes in the archaeological record
largely indicate radical new behavior in a number of realms
from this time, it is tempting to view these changes and human
expansion as linked. In this sense, the resulting Late Stone Age/
Upper Paleolithic is as much a colonizing and dispersal phe
nomenon as it is a technological and social revolution. - PDF p. 158 (book p. 156)
The distinctive nature of the earliest truly Upper Paleolithic
industry in Europe, the Aurignacian (from the Aurignac rock-
shelter in the French Pyrenees), indicates that Homo sapiens
had reached at least the southern edges of Europe by around
45.000 years ago, and may have expanded to occupy other
southern regions as far as Iberia by 4 0 ,0 0 0 years ago. This
is indicated at sites such as Bacho Kiro and Temnata in Bul
garia, the Grotta de Fumane in northern Italy, and El Castillo in
northern Spain. This early spread, possibly restricted to Medi
terranean environments or even coastal areas, seems to have
occurred during relatively mild climatic conditions (Mellars
1993). Although associations of the Aurignacian industry with
modern human fossils are rare (Churchill and Smith 2000),
there is a general consensus that it was solely the product of
Homo sapiens rather than of the indigenous Neanderthals. - PDF p. 161 (book p. 159)
No convincing evidence of Neanderthal presence in Europe
can be found younger than 35,000 years ago (Joris and Street
2008). Until recently scholars believed that a period of co-exist
ence between Neanderthals and early populations Homo sapiens
occurred in some regions of Europe, although the chronology
of transitional assemblages and those thought to be indicative
of modern humans is now fairly exclusive, - PDF p. 161 (book p. 159)
Recently, it has been argued
that two significant ecological disasters - the severe cold con
ditions precipitated by a Heinrich Event, a massive discharge
of ice off the north polar glaciers into the Atlantic, and the
eruption of a volcano in the Flegreian Fields near Naples, Italy,
which deposited vast amounts of ash (ignimbrite) across several
thousand kilometers of Europe - may have played a significant
role in the decimation of Neanderthal populations (Fedele et al.
2008). Ash from this “CI-H4” event (Campanian Ignimbrite- Heinrich 4) around 4 0 ,0 0 0 (calendar) years ago has been
recovered in thick lenses in many caves with Late Mousterian
and Early Upper Paleolithic archaeology, and seems in many
cases to define the boundary between the two.
- Heinrich 4) around 4 0 ,0 0 0 (calendar) years ago has been
- PDF p. 168 (book p. 166)
Alter
natively, the same people may have made the trip by boat, either
across the 55-km (18-mile) wide Bering Strait in a time of higher
sea level, or by hugging the coasts of the Pacific Rim and exploit
ing a wide variety of coastal and inland resources en route. - PDF p. 168 (book p. 166)
Although it is generally
agreed that the source area for the colonization of the Ameri
cas is northeastern Siberia, the relatively poor archaeology
of the region does little to provide direct evidence of Ameri
can Paleoindian forebears. There is a possible archaeological
link between the two continents later in time: finely worked
spear points typologically similar to contemporary fluted and
unfluted forms found in Alaska and further to the south have
been found at Uptar, in northeastern Siberia, in a context dated
to 8 5 0 0 -8 0 0 0 years ago (King and Slobodin 1996). This may
demonstrate a cultural link a few thousand years later than
the most probable first dispersal, but does little else, and there
are problems with context and the issue of whether or not the
apparent fluting is deliberate. Archaeological traces of a proba
ble source population come from the Upper Paleolithic Diuktai
culture, which was established in the Aldan Basin of Siberia
by 35,000 years ago. There are problems even here, however,
since Diuktai stone tool assemblages bear little typological
resemblance to American forms. - PDF p. 168 (book p. 166)
Modern humans could have colonized the Americas in only a
few ways [4.54]. In the glacial phases of the last 100,000 years,
when sea levels were relatively low, the grassland of “Beringia”
extended over what is now the Bering Strait and linked north
eastern Siberia to Alaska. In its deglaciated areas, Beringia
supported a “mammoth steppe” community of large herbi
vores, including mammoth, bison, and horse - PDF p. 168 (book p. 166)
The question of when humans colonized the Americas is
hotly debated, and the evidence - archaeological, linguistic,
and genetic - often produces different possible dates, which
we will examine here. Although occasional claims arise for
pre-modern human presence in the Americas, no convincing
evidence exists for any human colonization of the continent
prior to the last 18,000 years, or possibly later, and most schol
ars agree that it was only the behavioral adaptations necessitated
by living in the far north under glacial conditions that permitted
modern humans to make this last, major terrestrial dispersal. - PDF p. 170 (book p. 168)
A number of sites now appear to break the Clovis barrier,
indicating that at least small numbers of humans were operat
ing in regions of the Americas as early as 15,500 years ago. - PDF p. 172 (book p. 170)
The demise around
30,000 years ago of the last communities of H . neandertha-
lensis and H . erectus, however, left Hom o sapiens - anatomically
modern humans - the sole surviving hominin species on the
planet, with the possible exception of Hom o floresiensis. - PDF p. 172 (book p. 170)
new behaviors developed
by modern humans, which may have given them an advantage
in competing with other hominin species. Their brains were
no larger than those of the Neanderthals, but they engaged
in a much richer repertoire of cognitive and symbolic activity,
which is manifest archaeologically in the evidence for cave art,
personal adornment, and burial. Their success in coping with
the vicissitudes of the Pleistocene climate is shown not only by
their survival in relatively cold regions, such as central Europe,
but also in their colonization of new territories, above all, Aus
tralia and the Americas. - PDF p. 175 (book p. 173)
While elegant in theory,
these remain to be tested against the available
data. The bulk o f opinion therefore rejects the
overkill hypothesis, but there is no agreement
as to alternative causes. - PDF p. 177 (book p. 175)
Diversity and change are two o f the keynotes o f
these millennia. In several regions o f the world there
were important subsistence changes, as hunting and
gathering gave way to more intensive methods o f food
production: what we today call agriculture. These in turn
laid the basis for further social developments that cul
minated in populous and culturally complex cities and
states in many regions: Egypt, the Maya, and Rome, to
name but a few. One outcome o f social complexity was
the invention ofwriting, which from modest and limited
beginnings has come to dominate the way in which we
now understand and manage our world. Yet in many
regions people experienced change at a different pace
or in a different form: these include, for example, the
highly successful long-term adjustments to desert envi
ronments o f the native Australians, or the spectacular
maritime achievements o f the Pacific islands. - PDF p. 177 (book p. 175)
The rapid rise in global temperatures some 11,600
years ago marks the beginning o f the Postglacial, or
“ Holocene” era. As temperatures improved and rainfall
increased, the world entered an age o f biological plenty
in which plant and animal species flourished and spread
into higher latitudes, opening up new opportunities for
human societies that already had successfully colonized
every continent save Antarctica.
Chapter 5 — The World Transformed: From Foragers and Farmers to States and Empires
- PDF p. 179 (book p. 177)
At the height of the last Ice Age (or Last Glacial Maximum,
c. 2 2 ,0 0 0 -1 9 ,0 0 0 bc), the world presented a strange and
largely hostile appearance. Land temperatures had fallen from
present-day norms by up to 20°C (36°F), tropical sea tempera
tures by perhaps 2° to 5°C (4° to 9°F), and northern Europe
and North America were blanketed by ice sheets up to 3 km - PDF p. 179 (book p. 177)
It would be misleading, however, to regard the human
story of the past 11,600 years simply as one of “progress” from
scattered bands of hunters and gatherers to complex, densely
peopled cities and states. - PDF p. 179 (book p. 177)
This current interglacial - the so-called
Holocene, or “recent” epoch in geological time - began around
11,600 years ago (c. 9 6 0 0 bc). Temperatures increased rapidly
to approximately their present level [5.1], vegetation slowly
recolonized northern latitudes, and sea levels rose in stages
to their present height [5.2]. Where this period differed from
anything that had gone before, however, was in the human
response to these climatic changes. By the end of the last Ice
Age anatomically modern humans were established on every
continent of the globe save Antarctica, and once the climatic
constraints were relaxed, human societies became increas
ingly prolific, and new forms of social and economic activity
developed. - PDF p. 179 (book p. 177)
domestication o f plants and animals led to the estab
lishment o f new farming economies that could support much
larger communities. The result was a growth in world popu
lation to far higher levels than were sustainable by hunting
and gathering alone. Food production and demographic
increase led, in turn, to other changes, notably in social com
plexity and technological development. - PDF p. 179 (book p. 177)
profound global transformation
that followed the end o f the Pleistocene and the last Ice Age,
at around 9600 b c (11,600 years ago). This transformation had
two components. The first was environmental change, notably
the warming o f the global climate, causing the ice sheets to
melt and a consequent rise in sea level, and the expansion o f
plant and animal species. The second was the human response
to new opportunities provided by the warmer climate, and
above all the development and spread o f agriculture. - PDF p. 180 (book p. 178)
(2 miles) thick (Roberts 1998). With so much water locked up
in the ice sheets, world climate was marked by aridity. Major
deserts expanded far beyond their present limits, and the
tropical rainforests of Africa and Amazonia were reduced to
isolated pockets. Sea levels fell to 100 m (328 ft) below their
present height, turning vast areas of what is now sea bed into
dry land; this resulted in land bridges that linked Asia to Alaska
and transformed much of island Southeast Asia into an exten
sive, dry, low-lying peninsula called Sundaland, within which
existing islands we know today stood out as chains of hills or
mountains. - PDF p. 181 (book p. 179)
One notable effect of early Holocene sea level rise was the
creation of islands. Thus the Japanese islands were separated
from the Asian mainland, Tasmania from Australia, and Britain
from continental Europe. East Asia and North America became
divided by the flooding of the Bering Strait around 8500 bc
[5.3]. In terms of geographical extent, however, the most dra
matic of all late Pleistocene and early Holocene coastal losses
occurred in Southeast Asia, where the Pleistocene landmass
known as Sundaland, twice the size of India, lost over half of
its land area to rising sea levels between 15,000 and 5000 b c ,
resulting in the creation of the Southeast Asian islands - PDF p. 185 (book p. 183)
The global distribution of human population expanded
outward from warm central latitudes, and grew steadily in
scale, as a warmer climate increased the overall biomass of
the planet and food sources became correspondingly more
abundant. That is not to overlook the fact that there was con
siderable regional variation. Nor was the Holocene climate
entirely stable, as the changes in the Saharan sequence illus
trate. Areas of dense forest were not easily exploited, and
human groups often chose to settle within breaks in the forest,
beside lakes and rivers, where freshwater fish and waterfowl
as well as game animals were available. Some of the best evi
dence for postglacial settlement comes from former wetland
margins, such as the North Sea basin or the Florida swamps. - PDF p. 186 (book p. 184)
The special status of dogs as human com
panions is suggested by the burial of dogs with humans from
as early as 14,000 years ago. - PDF p. 186 (book p. 184)
the dog - was domesticated by hunter-gatherers
during the Paleolithic Remains of domestic dog that are over
10,000 years old have been found at archaeological sites in north
ern Europe and southwest Asia, but analysis of DNA lineages
suggests an initial domestication at least 14,000 and perhaps
as much as 135,000 years ago. - PDF p. 187 (book p. 185)
Domesticated plant species are more numerous. They
include several large-seeded grasses, namely wheat, barley,
millets, sorghum, rice, and maize; tuberous root crops such
as manioc, yam, and potato; and pulses such as beans, peas, - PDF p. 187 (book p. 185)
Full domestication - the development of
the non-shattering seed head - took a further 1000 years to
appear. It can have been only at that stage that sickles came
systematically into use for harvesting the cereal heads. Full
domestication is hence the end-result of a prolonged period of
human-plant interaction and adaptation - PDF p. 190 (book p. 188)
The assumption that hunter-gatherers were constantly
threatened by starvation was emphatically refuted by a number
of ethnographic studies. - PDF p. 190 (book p. 188)
These studies reversed the idea that early humans domes
ticated plants and animals to avoid drudgery and starvation. - PDF p. 201 (book p. 199)
In favored regions, notably lowland river valleys, the poten
tial for high agricultural yields was linked to the development
of increasingly complex societies. These processes resulted in
the formation of the first cities and states in the Old World,
and later in the Americas. While local circumstances and indi
vidual historical trajectories were responsible for these changes
in every area, the single most salient feature - both cause and
consequence - was the growing size of human populations. - PDF p. 201 (book p. 199)
The greater productivity made possible by
food production ensured the further growth of farming com
munities and the extension of farming (and in many cases
colonist farmers) to new areas. Farming came to dominate the
world far beyond the confines of the original habitats of the
domesticated plants and animals.
Chapter 18 — Complex Societies of North America
- PDF p. 681
The introduction o f maize agriculture contributed to
demographic growth and the establishment o f larger settle
ments, including Cahokia in the M ississippi Valley, which
in the 11th and 12th centuries a d grew to become North
America’s largest town, with a population o f perhaps 3000
people. - PDF p. 681
Though none o f these societies reached the level o f
organization seen in the cities and states o f Mesoamerica
(Chapter 16) and Andean South America (Chapter 17), a
number o f them merit the description o f “com plex.” - PDF p. 681
W hen Europeans first established a p erm an en t toehold on the
N orth A m erican continent in the 16 th century, they fo u n d a
rem arkably diverse array o f societies. M any Native A m e ri
cans w ere livin g in settled com m u n ities n u m b erin g fro m a
few h u n d red to a thousand or m ore people supported by w hat
they could locally grow ; this in clu ded native plants as w ell
as those originatin g in M esoam erica, m ost notably m aize.
O ther groups hun ted , fished, and foraged. Som e natural
settings w ere so w ell endow ed that they supported hunter-
gatherer societies every bit as large and com plex as those based
on agriculture. M ost non -agricultural societies, how ever, occu
p ied regions w here the distribution an d reliability o f w ild
foods w as uncertain; these people con sequen tly lived in sm all,
m obile groups. - PDF p. 714
In som e parts o f North A m erica, social in equalities in
the fo rm o f ran ked h ouseh olds or larger descent groups w ith
fixed leadership positions eventually em erged in village-based
societies. T h e nature o f these societies h as been the subject o f
in creasin g attention; too m uch o f this w ork, how ever, has been
directed tow ard m erely pigeo n h olin g ancient societies into cat
egories such as ch iefdom s. It is m ore im portant to docum ent
h o w in dividual societies w ere organized, to iden tify the reasons
fo r geographical an d tem poral variation am on g them , to chart
their developm ent an d dissolu tion over tim e, and to explain
w h y such changes took place. - PDF p. 714
Populations, likew ise, did not increase
steadily in variou s parts o f North A m erica, as show n m ost
clearly by the abundant and tightly dated Southw estern sites. - PDF p. 714
T h e em ergen ce o f larger and m ore com plex societies
often took place in the context o f in creasin g conflicts am on g
com m u n ities that relied on spatially fixed resou rces. T h is is
true o f M ississip p ian societies, as w ell as those o f the Pacific
N orthw est, but not o f M iddle W oodland groups in the Eastern
W oodlands. W hile conflicts occurred am on g hunter- gatherers
throughout North A m erica, it is nevertheless true that com plex
societies co n sistin g o f settled villages w ere particularly prone - PDF p. 715 (book p. 713)
to conflict, w h ich w axed an d w an ed over tim e. T he existence
o f w arfare can be recogn ized by the skeletons o f in ju red and
m utilated people, settlem ents w ith defen sive structures, sites
in in accessible places, and, occasionally, actual w eapons or
depictions o f them . Increases in late prehistoric conflicts
appear to have been accom pan ied in at least som e places by the
adoption o f the bow and arrow, a critical change in technology
that probably had as m uch to do w ith killin g en em ies as it did
w ith h u n tin g gam e.