History, the definitive visual guide

HISTORY
EDITORIAL CONSULTANT ADAM HART-DAVIS
t h e d e f i n i t i v e v i s u a l g u i d e
from the dawn of civilization to the present day

First American Edition, 2007
This edition published in 2012
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Editorial Consultant Adam Hart-Davis
Main Consultants
Origins
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology,
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
Professor Brian Fagan
Contributors and Specialist Consultants
Contributors: Simon Adams, Lindsay Allen,
Robin Archer, Debbie Brunton, Jack Challoner,
Nick McCarty, Thomas Cussans, Erich DeWald,
Brian Fagan, Emma Flatt, Abbie Gometz, Reg
Grant, Alwyn Harrison, Ian Harrison, James
Harrison, Michael Jordan, Ann Kay, Paul
Rulers and Hierarchies
Lecturer in the Ancient Near East, University
College London, UK
Dr. Karen Radner
Thinkers and Believers
Professor in the Ancient Mediterranean World
and Late Antiquity, Smith College, Massachusetts
Professor Richard Lim
Warriors, Travelers, and Inventors
Honorary Fellow, School of History and Classics,
University of Edinburgh, UK
Dr. Roger Collins
Renaissance and Reformation
Fellow and lecturer in Modern History,
New College, Oxford University, UK
Dr. David Parrott
Industry and Revolution
Postgraduate researcher, specializing in 18th and
19th century history, Cambridge University, UK
James Freeman
Population and Power
Professor of History, University of Exeter, UK
Professor Richard Overy
Kriwaczek, Keith Laidler, Siobhan Lambert-
Hurley, Sarah Lynch, Margaret Mulvihill, Liz
Mylod, Owen Miller, Sally Regan, Nigel Ritchie, J.
A.G Roberts, Natalie Sirett, Giles Sparrow, Paul
Sturtevant, Jenny Vaughan, Philip Wilkinson.
History, University of Oxford, UK; Japan and
Korea Dr. Angus Lockyer, Department of
History SOAS, UK; How We Know Dr. Iain
Morley and Dr. Laura Preston, McDonald
Institute for Archaeological Research, University
of Cambridge UK; Consulting editor Philip
Parker; China J.A.G Roberts
Consultants: Early Mesoamerica and
South America Dr. Jim Aimers, UCL Institute of
Archaeology, UK; India Professor David Arnold,
University of Warwick, UK; Food and diseases
Professor Kenneth Kiple, Department of History,
Bowling Green State University, US; Latin
America Professor Alan Knight, Department of

CONTENTS
THINKERS&
BELIEVERS
700 BCE–600 CE 84
Introduction and Timeline 86
Frontiers of Power 90
How the vast ancient empires of Eurasia were
shaped by the landscape and environment.
The Persian Empire 92
The Achaemenid empire of Persia, the extent
of which was on an unprecedented scale,
stretching across Asia to the Mediterranean.
The Greek City-States 94
The great city-states of ancient Greece,
including Athens, Sparta, and Corinth.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 96
The Greeks in Asia 98
The aftermath of Alexander the Great’s
conquests in the Middle East and Asia, and
the cultures that adopted Greek ideas.
The Birth of Democracy 100
The development of the democratic system in
ancient Athens, whose principles inform the
most common form of government today.
From Myth to History 102
The rediscovery of writing in ancient Greece
and the shift from oral to written history.
Triumphs of Greek Science 104
The roots of modern scientific method lie with
the ancient Greeks who sought logical
answers to life’s mysteries.
The Rise of Rome 106
From humble beginnings on the hills above
the Tiber River, a mighty city and empire rose.
JULIUS CAESAR 108
From Republic to Empire 110
The Roman empire gave rise to a remarkable
culture, whose influence is still seen today.
ORIGINS
4.5 MYA–3000 BCE 12
Our Remote Ancestors 16
The human family tree from our earliest
relatives to the dominance of Homo sapiens.
The Art of Communication 20
The emergence of speech, language, and
artistic ability in early humans.
The Ice Age 22
Climate changes that began about 1.5 million
years ago and how they affected humans.
Out of Africa 24
The migrations from Africa that resulted in
human colonization of Earth.
Hunters and Gatherers 30
The prehistoric way of life—foraging and
hunting for food.
The Spirit World 32
Early rituals and beliefs in the afterlife.
EARLY SOCIETIES 34
First Harvest 36
The development of societies based on
agriculture and the domestication of animals.
Village Life 38
The cultivation of domestic crops and livestock
brought about the first settled communities.
Rites and Rituals 40
Unraveling the mysteries of megalithic
structures such as Stonehenge.
Precious Metal 42
From copperworking to the Bronze Age, the
impact of the discovery of metalworking.
Town Planning 44
The development of increasingly complex and
expanding communities.
RULERS &
HIERARCHIES
3000–700 BCE 46
Sickness and Health 52
Illness, disease, and early attempts to
understand and treat them.
The Cradle of Civilization 54
The rise of complex societies between the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia.
The Divine Pharaohs 56
Egypt’s Old Kingdom, which flourished on the
banks of the Nile River, over 2000 years bce,
and saw the construction of the pyramids.
Mysteries of the Indus 58
The cities and civilization that developed in
the Indian subcontinent’s Indus Valley.
Bronze Age China 60
The Shang dynasty, which produced two major
achievements: writing and bronze casting.
The Writing on the Wall 62
The independent development of writing
systems throughout the world, including
cuneiform and hieroglyphs.
Egypt in Order and Chaos 64
The rise and fall of ancient Egypt from the
order of the Middle and New Kingdoms
to the chaotic Intermediate Periods.
RAMESES II 66
The Realm of Osiris 68
The cult of the god Osiris, and the extensive
rituals surrounding death and the afterlife in
ancient Egypt.
EGYPTIAN ARTIFACTS 70
Building for Eternity 72
The architecture of ancient empires, including
the monumental tombs of ancient Egypt and
the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.
People of the Jaguar 74
The first great civilizations of Mesoamerica
and South America—the Olmecs and
the Chavíns.
Europe’s First Civilization 76
The Minoans, who flourished on the
Mediterranean island of Crete during the
Bronze Age.
Bronze Age Collapse 78
The diplomatic and trading community
of civilizations that existed in the Middle
East, and the mysterious collapse of the
Bronze Age system.
Rulers of the Iron Age 80
The great Assyrian Empire, which dominated
the Middle East for two centuries during the
Iron Age, from the 9th century bce.
Conquering Sea and Desert 82
The complex network of trade routes that
developed over the Mediterranean Sea and
across the deserts of Arabia and Africa.

The Roman Army 114
The structure and organization of the
professional Roman army.
Classical Art 116
The sculpture, pottery, painting, mosaics, and
architecture of ancient Greece and Rome.
Greek and Roman Egypt 118
Egypt’s transition from a kingdom ruled by
Greeks to a Roman, then Byzantine province.
CLEOPATRA 120
The Revival of Persia 122
Persia after the Greeks—Parthian expansion
and the period of Sassanid rule.
India’s First Empire 124
The Mauryan domination of the Indian
subcontinent and the rise of Buddhism.
The Unification of China 126
The “Warring States” period, which gave
rise to the Qin state.
The Centralized State 128
Han Dynasty China and the development
of its highly efficient civil service.
Classical Thought 130
The emergence of key philosophical ideas
in ancient Greece, including the work of
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
A Wider World 132
Increasing commercial and cultural exchange,
forging links across the ancient world.
Celtic Warriors 134
The spread of Celtic culture across Europe,
which leads to contact with Romans, Greeks,
and Christianity.
CELTIC METAL 136
Nomads of the Steppes 138
The tribes of the vast grasslands of Eurasia,
such as the Scythians and Kushans.
Early American Civilizations 140
The cultures of Mesoamerica and South
America—Maya, Zapotec, and Nazca.
Gods and Goddesses 142
The polytheistic religions and pantheons of
deities that developed in the ancient world.
Spreading the Faith 144
The emergence and expansion of the great
world religions.
WARRIORS,
TRAVELERS, &
INVENTORS
600–1450 152
Diffusion of Knowledge 158
Muslim scholarship and the spread
of ideas to the West.
China’s Golden Age 160
The Tang dynasty’s rule of China, which
saw a great flowering of Chinese culture.
The Song Dynasty 162
China under the Song, a period of upheaval
and key reforms.
GENGHIS KHAN 164
The Ming Dynasty 166
China under the Ming, during which Beijing
became capital and the Great Wall was built.
The Rise of the Samurai 168
The establishment of the Shogunate and
the domination of the warrior class in Japan.
Korea in the Middle Ages 170
The ascendency of the Choson kingdom,
which dominated Korea until 1910.
Lost Empires 172
The empires of Southeast Asia, including
the Khmer, Pagan, and Dai Viet.
The Ascent of Islam 174
The spread of the Islamic faith throughout
the world following the death of Muhammad.
ISLAMIC TREASURES 178
The Delhi Sultanate 180
The great Islamic kingdom that was founded
in India.
South of the Sahara 182
The trading centers and empires of Africa,
including Great Zimbabwe, Songhay, and Mali.
The Silk Road 184
The greatest trading route of the 13th–14th
centuries, which spread from Europe to
East Asia.
The Black Death 186
The plague that decimated Europe during
the medieval period.
Medieval Europe 188
The establishment of the Holy Roman Empire,
and the feudal system in Europe.
BATTLE OF HASTINGS 192
The Power and the Glory 194
The might of the Roman Catholic Church
in medieval Europe.
The Byzantine Empire 198
The great empire of the East, centered
on Constantinople (Istanbul).
The Crusades 200
The religious wars for control of
the Holy Land (Palestine).
Raiders and Traders 202
The Vikings—the warrior tribes from
Scandinavia that spread across Europe.
BATTLE OF ’AYN JALUT 204
The Rise of Ottoman Power 206
The foundation of the Ottoman Empire by
nomadic warriors in Anatolia (Turkey).
Cities and Trade 208
The rise of commerce and city-states, such
as Genoa and Venice, in medieval Europe.
Pre-Columbian Americas 210
The rich and complex societies of the Maya,
Aztecs, and Incas.
AZTEC TO INCA 214
Polynesian Expansion 216
The colonization of the islands of the
South Pacific.
BATTLE OF MILVIAN 148
BRIDGE
Decline and Fall? 150
The end of the Roman Empire, the changing
balance of power in the West, and the rise of
the Christian Byzantine Empire in the East.
RENAISSANCE &
REFORMATION
1450–1750 218
Voyages of Discovery 224
European expeditions around the globe
and the discovery of “new worlds”.
ISABELLA OF CASTILE 226
COLUMBUS LANDS IN 228
THE CARIBBEAN
Contact Americas 230
The Spanish conquistadors in South
and Central America.
The Great Exchange 232
The two-way exchange of plants, animals, and
disease between Europe and the Americas.
Spanish Silver 234
The discovery and exploitation of South
America’s vast natural resources.
The Pilgrim Fathers 236
The religious refugees who became the
founding fathers of the US and whose
colonies set the tone for future colonization.
Trade and Empire 238
The vast European trading empires that
stretched to Africa, Asia, and the Americas
between the 15th–18th centuries.
The Three Emperors 240
The “prosperous age”, when China’s empire
expanded to its greatest extent.
Japan’s Great Peace 242
The Edo period, when Japan isolated itself
from the rest of the world, and developed a
unique cultural identity.
The Great Mughals 244
The empire that at its peak ruled over 100
million subjects across the Indian subcontinent.

INDUSTRY &
REVOLUTION
1750–1914 284
The Food Revolution 290
Dramatic increases in food production that
sustained a rapidly expanding population.
The Industrial Revolution 292
The technological and social developments
that transformed the Western world from an
agricultural to an industrial society.
The First Global Conflict 296
The Seven Years War—the first conflict
to be fought across continents.
US Declaration of 298
Independence
The war between the American colonies
and Britain, which resulted in the formation
of the United States.
STORMING OF THE 300
BASTILLE
Revolution in France 302
The violent events and terror that shook
France at the end of the 18th century.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 304
The Napoleonic Wars 306
French imperial ambitions in Europe and
beyond during Napoleon’s reign.
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE 308
Expanding the Frontier 310
The American pioneers, and their “manifest
destiny” to colonize an entire continent.
AMERICAN INDIAN 300
CULTURE
The American Civil War 314
The conflict that ripped the United States
apart between 1861 and 1865.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 316
Latin America Liberated 318
The struggle for freedom in the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies of South America.
Completing the Map 320
World exploration during the 18th and 19th
centuries.
City Living 322
The urban explosion that took place in the
19th century throughout the world.
Germ Warfare 326
The increasing knowledge and understanding,
of anatomy, medicine, infection, and disease.
Our Country 328
The idea of nationalism in Europe and
the US, and its consequences.
Europe Redefined 330
How Europe’s map was transformed in
the 18th and 19th centuries.
KARL MARX 334
Workers Unite! 336
Political movements that aimed to organize
the expanding working class and share the
wealth of the Industrial Revolution.
The Romantic Movement 338
Ideas of self-expression and imagination
that led to a growing distinction between art
and science.
Origin of Species 340
Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution.
Science vs. God 342
The public debate that pitted science against
religion in the wake of scientific advances.
Ingenious Inventions 344
The explosion of technology in the
19th century.
The Imperial World 346
The empires that dominated the world map
by 1900.
QUEEN VICTORIA 348
Colonial Resistance 350
The relationship between the colonial
powers and the indigenous populations
of the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
The British Raj 352
India as the jewel in the crown of the
British Empire.
POPULATION
& POWER
1914–present 362
THE ASSASSINATION AT
SARAJEVO 370
The Great War 372
World War I (1914–18), which devastated
Europe, wiping out an entire generation, and
reshaped the map of the world.
The Russian Revolution 376
Ten days that shook the world—the old order
in Russia overthrown and the foundation of
the first communist state.
JOSEPH STALIN 378
The Hammer and Sickle 380
The Soviet experiment—collectivization,
industrialization, and the oppression of
Stalinist rule.
SOVIET PROPAGANDA 382
The Opium Wars 354
Conflicts between Britain and China during
the 19th century.
Rising Sun 356
Japan’s emergence as a modern industrialized
power after centuries of isolation.
The Young Turks Revolt 358
Islamic states and governments in the late
19th century.
The Scramble for Africa 360
How Europe came to dominate and
colonize the continent of Africa.
The Ottoman Empire 246
The Ottoman Empire at its height and the
beginnings of its decline.
BATTLE OF LEPANTO 248
The Renaissance 250
The remarkable flourishing of European art,
architecture, and culture during the 15th
and 16th centuries.
LEONARDO DA VINCI 254
The Reformation 256
The immense religious changes that swept
through Europe during the 16th century.
ELIZABETH I 260
The 30 Years War 262
The most devastating and costly war the
world had yet seen.
The English Civil War 264
The war between parliament and monarchy
that changed the face of England.
Scientific Revolution 266
The radical breakthroughs in science and
technology that changed our perception of
our place in the universe.
LISBON EARTHQUAKE 268
The Enlightenment 270
An intellectual movement born from scientific
method that dared to question the status quo.
Masters of War 272
As war became the dominant method of
settling trade disputes, so military tactics
became increasingly sophisticated.
ARMS AND ARMOR 274
The Rise of Capitalism 276
The emergence of the free market economy
and the beginning of modern financial
institutions.
LOUIS XIV 278
The Slave Trade 280
The brutal trade that saw 10 million Africans
shipped across the Atlantic to work in
colonial plantations.
Exploring the Pacific 282
How European exploration and colonization of
the Pacific became viable with the invention
of an accurate device for measuring longitude.

The Great Depression 384
The global economic depression that resulted
from the Wall Street Crash.
Fascism 386
The rise of fascism in parts of Europe,
accompanied by increasing militarism and
state control of all aspects of society.
Spanish Civil War 388
The conflict between fascism and
communism that tore Spain apart.
ADOLF HITLER 390
Blitzkrieg 392
How Hitler’s armies swept through Western
Europe in the early days of World War II.
STALINGRAD 394
Total War 396
War in the Atlantic, North Africa, and the
turning tide against Nazi Germany.
D-DAY 398
The Holocaust 400
Mass murder on an unprecedented scale—
the Nazi concentration camps.
War in the Pacific 402
The Pacific theater of war, from Pearl Harbor
to 1945.
HIROSHIMA 404
The Cold War 406
The world divides between the communist
East and the capitalist West.
MAHATMA GANDHI 408
The Partition of India 410
Independence for the former British Raj
as the subcontinent is divided into India
and Pakistan.
End of the Colonial Era 412
The assertion of independent rule by the
former colonies in Africa, the Middle East,
and Southeast Asia.
The Promised Land 414
The foundation of the State of Israel and its
effects on the Middle East.
ALBERT EINSTEIN 416
The American Dream 418
The booming economy and increase in mass
production that created postwar affluence
in the US.
THE DEATH OF KENNEDY 420
Viva la Revolución! 422
The revolutionary and popular movements
that transformed Latin America.
China’s Long March 424
Nationalism, communism, and Mao’s rise to
power in China.
BERLIN WALL 426
The Sixties 428
Sexual equality, radical politics, and pop
music—the decade that changed attitudes.
The Vietnam War 430
America’s war against communism in
Southeast Asia.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 432
Civil Rights 434
The nonviolent struggle for black civil rights in
the US and other rights-based movements.
The Troubles 436
The 30-year sectarian conflict between
Catholic nationalist and Protestant Unionist
communities in Northern Ireland.
Dictatorship and Democracy 438
Latin American politics and society in the later
part of the 20th century.
The Oil Crisis 440
Rising fuel consumption and dependence on
foreign imports that focused global attention
on the Middle East.
The Iranian Revolution 442
The overthrow of the US-backed government
and the foundation of the Islamic state of Iran.
War in Afghanistan 444
Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan and the
decade-long war that ensued.
Perestroika 446
Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
Raising the Iron Curtain 448
The end of the Eastern Bloc as the Soviet
satellite states assert their independence.
War in Yugoslavia 450
The ethnic nationalist divisions in post-
communist Yugoslavia that led to civil war.
United Europe 452
The formation and progress of the European
Community.
Apartheid and Beyond 454
The end of the system of Apartheid and a
new beginning for South Africa.
Tiger Economies 456
Asia’s economic boom.
Modern Technology 458
The innovations that transformed the 20th
and 21st centuries.
Feeding the World 462
The revolution in biotechnology that boosted
agricultural productivity around the world.
World Health 464
How astonishing advances in health and
medicine have significantly improved and
extended our lives.
9/11 466
The Gulf Wars 468
The wars against Iraq.
Globalization 470
The increased mobility of goods, services,
labor, technology, and capital as a result of
new communications technologies.
Superpower China 472
The rapid social and economic transformation
of China after embracing the free market.
Dynamic Populations 474
The continual growth of cities as more and
more people flock to urban centers.
Climate Change 476
The continual warming of the world as
a result of human activity.
Shrinking World 478
The erosion of the barriers of time and distance
through technological advances that have
created a global community.
NATIONAL
HISTORIES 480
North and Central America 482
United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, Panama, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican
Republic, Bahamas, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts
& Nevis, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent,
Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago.
South America 494
Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname,
Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile,
Uruguay, Argentina.
Europe 502
United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Monaco,
Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Italy, Vatican City,
San Marino, Malta, Switzerland, Liechtenstein,
Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, Iceland, Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro,
Macedonia, Albania, Cyprus, Greece, Russian
Federation, Ukraine, Belarus.
Africa 548
Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Niger, Chad, Sudan,
Egypt, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cape
Verde Islands, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-
Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory
Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon,
Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé & Príncipe,
Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo,
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea,
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda,
Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Zambia,
Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, Comoros,
Mauritius, Seychelles, Namibia, Botswana,
Zimbabwe, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho.
Asia 562
Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen,
Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives,
Bangladesh, Burma, China, Mongolia, North
Korea, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Laos,
Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore,
Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, East Timor.
Oceania 588
Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea,
Tuvalu, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Antarctica.
INDEX 594
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 608

Foreword
he history I learned at school was a mass of seemingly
endless lists, formed of dates and the names of kings
and queens. As a result, I hated it, and never saw the
connections between the various strands of the subject. I now
realize that history is important and that we can all learn from the
triumphs—and mistakes—of our ancestors. Both utterly fascinating
and hugely informative, History is a reference book that teases out
the sparks of wars and revolutions, and uncovers the deep roots of
great civilizations. It brings the subject to life, painting broad pictures
of history’s great sweep, aiming to excite and enthuse the reader
by focusing on the most interesting, exciting, and dynamic people,
events, and ideas of the past.
The photographs, maps, and graphics throughout History are
spectacular, compelling you to dip in and discover what each page
will reveal. This image shows some of the ancient standing stones
at Callanish, Scotland, where 20 stone circles jut out from the bare,
peaty landscape. The primary purpose of these stones, which have
weathered through 4,000 years of human history, seems to have
been to mark a curious lunar event that happens only once every
18.61 years—those early astronomers must have been persistent.
One of the joys of this book is that most subjects, however vast in
scale, are presented within self-contained spreads. Some describe
hundreds of years of ancient Egyptian civilization, or momentous
periods of upheaval like the religious Reformation in 17th-century
Europe or the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Others take
as their theme much shorter periods of history, such as the English
Civil War or the Russian Revolution. There are also spreads devoted
to “Decisive Moments”, key events that proved to be historical
turning points, for example the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, which triggered World War I, or the 1755 Lisbon
earthquake, which shook Europe to its very foundations.
But History isn’t just about the events that have shaped us. A key
strand in the book focuses on the ideas that have changed the world,
exploring concepts such as democracy, evolution, and globalization.
It also features biographies of some of history’s most important and
inﬂuential individuals from Alexander the Great to Adolf Hitler.
And, as an enthusiast of science and technology, I am delighted
to see coverage of the crucial innovations, inventions, scientiﬁc
discoveries, and theories that have had an impact on the human
story, from metalworking to the internet, and DNA to global warming.
ADAM HART-DAVIS
T

ORIGINS
4.5 MYA–3000BCE
Evidence of the earliest hominins, the ancestors of modern humans,
has been found in Central and East Africa, and dates back millions
of years. Discoveries of early human remains reveal the remarkable
ability to adapt to Earth’s changing environment that has been so
significant in the evolution of our species.

c. 10,000BCE
Rising temperatures,
retreating ice sheets,
rising sea levels.
Siberia separated from
North America,
continental shelves
flooded.
c. 30,000ya
Cro-Magnon cave
art and decorated
artifacts in Western
and Central Europe.
c. 70,000YA
Population spread
halted, possibly due
to catastrophic
volcanic eruption of
Toba, Sumatra; global
temperatures lowered
for a millennium.
c. 10,000BCE
Earliest pottery
from Jomon,
Japan, heralds
gradual revolution
in transportation
and storage of food.
14
4.5 MYA –3000 BCE
ORIGINS
4.5MYA–3000BCE
MYA MYA YA BCE
Domesticated goats
Ice age landscape
Jomon pottery
c. 10,000BCE
First settled agriculture
in Anatolia (Turkey),
Middle East, and
Mesopotamia.
Evidence of early
sheep and goat
domestication in
northern Mesopotamia.
c. 4.2MYA
Earliest of the
australopithecines
(“southern ape-
humans”), East Africa;
walks on two feet, has
a brain one-third the
size of modern
humans’.
c. 20,000YA
Ice Age populations
live by hunting and
gathering, building
shelters from available
resources.
Hunter-gatherers
c. 1MYA
Homo erectus well
established in North
Africa and Middle East.
c. 600,000YA
Homo heidelbergensis
flourishes in Central
Europe; introduces
Acheulean stone tools
(carefully flaked on
both surfaces).
c. 2.75–1MYA
Earliest known stone
tools found, Ethiopia.
Meat now apparently
a central part of
energy-rich diet of
hominins.
c. 1.8MYA–500,000YA
Evidence of deliberate
use of fire.
“Lucy” skeletonǡ
Neanderthal skullĬ
Fireį
Homo sapiens skullį
į
Mammoth-bone
houseĬ
Ĭ
Ĭ
Ǡ
Village settlementǡ
c. 4.5MYA
Emergence of an early
ancestor of modern
humans, Ardipithecus
ramidus, in Ethiopia.
Olduvai Gorge
Acheulean
hand-ax Ǡ
Ǡ
c. 3MYA
Australopithecus
afarensis, known
as “Lucy,” lives in
East Africa.
c. 2.5mya
First genus of human,
Homo habilis, Olduvai
Gorge, East Africa.
c. 350,000YA
Homo
neanderthalensis
emerges in Europe.
c. 150,000YA
Emergence of first
Homo sapiens, Africa;
subsequently coexists
with Homo erectus
in Asia and Homo
neanderthalensis
(Neanderthals) in
Europe and
Middle East.
c. 24,000YA
Disappearance
of Homo
neanderthalensis.
4.5 1 30,000 10,000

c. 5000BCE
Corn cultivated in
Ecuador and parts of
North America.
Cultivation of corn
begins in Tehuacán
valley, Central
America.
c. 4000BCE
First use of plow
in Mesopotamia.
15
OR IGI N S
Measured against the estimated 4.5-billion-year age of Earth itself,
humans—anatomically modern humans in particular—evolved remarkably
recently. Modern man—Homo sapiens—appeared only about 150,000
years ago, rapidly migrating from African homelands to join other human
species—Homo erectus in Asia and, across Europe and the Middle East,
the Neanderthals. By about 24,000 years ago, Homo sapiens, socially
more sophisticated, had become the sole human species. Then,
in the Middle East, about 6,000 years ago, settled and increasingly
complex societies emerged. With them came the first cities and the first
states. It was the birth of civilization as we know it today.
BCE BCE BCE BCE
Corn
Stonehenge
c. 6500BCE
Copper smelting and
trade in obsidian at
Çatalhöyük, modern
Turkey.
Halaf figurine
c. 5500–4500BCE
Linearbandkeramik
farming culture
flourishes, Central
Europe.
c. 8000BCE
Foundation of Jericho,
Palestine, the world’s
oldest continuously
inhabited town.
Domesticated cattle
Gold from Varna
c. 5000BCE
Copper first used in
Mesopotamia; gold
and copper artifacts
produced in southeast
Europe.
c. 4500BCE
Introduction of
irrigation techniques
in Indus valley. Horse
domesticated in
Central Asia.
c. 7000BCE
First Chinese
agricultural
communities,
Yangzi Valley.
Agriculture spreads
to southeast
Europe from
modern Turkey.
Obsidian
į Çatalhöyük figurine
Ĭ
Ǡ
į
Ĭ
į
c. 3100BCE
King Narmer
completes unification
of Upper and Lower
Egypt and becomes
first pharaoh. Nekhen,
Egypt, an important
trading town.
Warka vase, Uruk
ǠNekhen ivory
c. 3500BCE
Emergence of world’s
first city-states in
Mesopotamia; Uruk
possibly the world’s
first city.
c. 3350BCE
“Ötzi the ice man”
dies in the Alps.
ǡ
ǡ
c. 6000BCE
Early town cultures,
such as the Halafian
in southwest Asia,
flourish.
Linearbandkeramik
pot Ĭ
c. 6500BCE
Cattle successfully
domesticated in
North Africa, the
Indus Valley, and Asia.
c. 5500BCE
World’s earliest
irrigation system,
Mesopotamia.
c. 3200BCE
First hieroglyphic script
in Egypt. Evidence
of use of wheeled
transport in Sumer.
Stone circles and
rows of standing
stones built in north
and west Europe.
8000 6000 5000 4000

17
OU R R EMOTE ANCESTOR S
Our Remote Ancestors
The evolution of modern humans extends back millions of years. It is not easy to trace, as our
evidence comes from scattered, unrelated finds, making it difficult to form a cohesive picture.
The dominance of Homo sapiens is a comparatively recent development.
Australopithecines—highly diverse
hominins that appeared for the first
time one million years later. The
earliest found, Australopithecus afarensis,
was famously nicknamed “Lucy” by
the archaeologists who found her in
1974. Although it seems that this long-
limbed hominin spent a great deal of
time in the trees, some well-preserved
footprints reveal that the species was
bipedal (walked on two feet) (see p.18).
As such, “Lucy” is an important
link between us and our tree-
dwelling ancestors.
The next generation
By 3 mya, the Australopithecines
had diversified into many forms.
They flourished throughout
much of sub-Saharan Africa,
especially in more open
grasslands. These early
humans were fully bipedal.
Nimble and fleet of foot,
species including
Australopithecus africanus were
skilled at scavenging meat from
predator kills. Their brain size was
also larger than their predecessors’.
The first humans
Ancestors of modern humans appeared
about 2 mya in eastern Africa, quickly
spreading to the west. Tools dating
from 1.8 mya have been found in a
dry stream bed at Koobi Fora on the
shore of Lake Turkana,
Kenya. The tools were
made of stone from
several miles away.
It is not known
who the tool
users were, but they may have
been some of the earliest humans,
possibly a group who paused here
and butchered antelope.
Handyman
Clearer evidence of the earliest
toolmakers and their descendants has
been found on the ancient lake beds at
Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The tools
n the 19th century, Charles
Darwin, the father of the
theory of evolution by
natural selection (see pp.340–41),
identified tropical Africa as the
cradle of humankind. Pioneering
paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey
found evidence of this in the 1950s
with discoveries in Olduvai Gorge,
a deep gash in the eastern Serengeti
Plains in Tanzania, East Africa (see
left). It was in East Africa that our
human ancestors evolved at least 4.5
mya (million years ago). A wide range
of fossil finds provide evidence of a
remarkable diversity of early hominins
that flourished in this area.
Earliest ancestors
One of the earliest known human
ancestors is a small forest-living
primate named Ardipithecus anamensis,
which flourished in Afar, Ethiopia,
some 4.5 mya. Ardipithecus was
probably the ancestor of the
I
B E F O R E
No one knows when human beings first
appeared. Our only clues lie in fossils and
stone tools. The journey started some time
around six million years ago (mya) in Africa.
THE HUMAN FAMILY
Humans are classified as
primates, a group that
includes apes and
monkeys. Our closest
living relatives are
chimpanzees, with whom
we share almost 99 percent of
our genes, but this tiny
genetic difference is
what makes us so far
removed from apes.
OUR ROOTS
Sahelanthropus tchadensis 18 , found at
the southern edge of the Sahara in Chad, and
dating to between 6 and 7 mya, may be the
earliest human ancestor. Although very early,
this skull seems more advanced in some ways
than later species and it is unclear how it fits
into the evolutionary story. Other very early
ancestors about whom very little is known
include Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus
ramidus. Some of these species came to a
dead end on the human family tree. Others
may have led directly to our own ancestors.
THE MOLECULAR CLOCK
Evolutionary biologists have developed a way
of dating the evolution of more than 60 primate
species. It is known as the molecular clock.
The clock starts with the last common ancestor
of all primates about 63 mya, and dates the split
between chimpanzees and humans to
about 6.2 mya. This is the moment when the
human story truly begins.
CHIMPANZEE
“Human consciousness arose but a minute
before midnight on the geological clock.”
STEPHEN JAY GOULD, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST, 1992
are thought to date from
about 1.8 mya, and were
made by Homo habilis (“handy man”),
who left what could be the remains
of a camp by a lake, including a
scatter of stone tools and broken
animal bones. Homo habilis probably
slept in trees, in relative safety from
lions and other dangerous animals.
In this predator-rich environment,
humans were both the hunters and
the hunted.
The evidence
from the Olduvai
camp suggests
that Homo
habilis was
breaking up parts of animal carcasses
scavenged from predator kills.
At about the same time, what could
be termed the first true human had
appeared. Large-brained, with a
receding forehead, and prominent
brow ridges Homo ergaster had strong
limbs similar to those of modern
humans. These newcomers were
hunters rather than scavengers.
HOMININ The term used to refer
to all early humans and their ancestors,
including Homo erectus, Homo ergaster,
Homo neanderthalis and Homo sapiens.
Also includes all the Australopithecines,
Paranthropus boisei, and Ardipithecus.
The “cradle of humankind”
Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania is the most important
prehistoric site in the world, where many finds that have
furthered our knowledge of early human evolution have
been made. The oldest artifacts found at the gorge—
stone flakes and tools—are 2 million years old.
STONE TOOLS
Homo habilis used the simplest stone
technology, which was refined by Homo
erectus into stone axes and cleaving
tools for particular tasks such as
butchering animals. The Neanderthals
were the first to mount scrapers, spear-
points, and knives in wooden handles.
Modern humans developed more
sophisticated technology, punching
off parallel-sided blanks from
carefully prepared flint nodules.
They turned these blades into
scrapers, chisels, and borers to
work antlers, bone, and leather.
After the Ice Age (see pp.22-
23), hunters added tiny stone
barbs to their arrows.
FLINT HAND-AX
FIRE
Fire is one of the most important discoveries
ever made. Possibly around 1.8 million
years ago and certainly by 500,000
years ago—the date is uncertain—early
humans tamed fire, perhaps by
taking branches from a blazing tree
caused by a lightning strike.
Creating fire at will was another
step forward. The control of fire
enabled humans to live in cold
environments, and in deep caves,
and provided protection against
predators. The use of fire to cook also
led to a greater variety of foods in the diet.
D I S C O V E R Y
I N V E N T I O N
PALEOLITHIC A period covering
the time from the first use of stone
tools about 2.5 mya to the beginning
of agriculture in about 10,000 BCE.

18
6.7 mya
Sites Africa
Brain size 320–380 cc
Sahelanthropus tchadenis
may be one of the first humans
or may be more closely related to
apes, as it shows a mixture of human
and ape characteristics. Only the
fragments of a skull have been found.
18
4.5 M YA –3000 BCE
The remarkable finds at Schöningen are
the earliest preserved wooden tools yet
discovered. Homo heidelbergensis lived in
small, mobile groups. Each group
probably returned to the same locations
to hunt and forage at different times of
the year. However, their communication
and reasoning abilities were limited (see
pp.20–21), which affected their ability
to adapt and may be one reason why
they do not appear to have settled in
intensely cold environments or reached
the Americas and Australia.
Adapting to different environments
By 500,000, early humans had adapted
successfully to a wide variety of tropical
and temperate environments, moving
as far north as China, where numerous
fragments of an evolving Homo erectus
have come to light in Zhoukoudian
Cave, near Beijing. The ability to use
fire (see p.16) was crucial in making
settlement possible in cold locations
Homo ergaster was closely related
to Homo erectus, the first humans
to spread out of tropical Africa into
Europe and Asia as part of a general
radiation of mammals and their
predators some 1.8 mya. Homo erectus
was a skilled hunter and a brilliant
opportunist, quick to take advantage
of different environments—a key factor
in the success of the human species.
These early humans soon settled in
South and Southeast Asia, reaching
Dmanisi in Georgia by 1.7 mya (see
pp.24–25). They were well established
in Western Europe by at least 800,000
years ago. Warmer conditions than
today may have attracted Homo
heidelbergensis to Northern Europe by
400,000 years ago. At about the same
time, small bands of early humans
were using long-shafted, aerodynamic
wooden spears to hunt wild horses and
larger game at Schöningen, Germany,
and at Boxgrove in southern England.
2.5–1.8 mya
Sites Africa
Brain size 750 cc
Homo rudolfensis, a contemporary
of Homo habilis, has been the subject
of much debate concerning its age and
relationship to the hominin species.
It had a relatively large brain and
was bipedal.
5.8–5.2 mya
Sites Africa
Brain size Unknown
Ardipithecus kadabba was one of
the earliest species to be placed on the
human tree. Like Orrorin tugenensis,
this species had primitive canine teeth.
Sahelanthropus tchadenis
Orrorin tugenensis
Ardipithecus kadabba
Ardipithecus ramidus
Australopithecus anamensis
Australopithecus afarensis
Homo habilis
Australopithecus africanus
4.3–4 mya
Sites Africa
Brain size Unknown
Australopithecus anamensis
is little known as few remains have
been found. The jawbone from Kenya
resembles that of a chimpanzee, while
the teeth are closer to human teeth.
6.2–5.8 mya
Sites Africa
Brain size Unknown
Orrorin tugenensis is known to us
through finds of large canine teeth.
Little is known about the species,
except that it may have been bipedal.
Homo rudolfensis
4.5–4.3 mya
Sites Africa
Brain size Unknown
Ardipithecus ramidus is a
very early hominin. Fragmentary
remains include large canine
teeth found in Ethiopia, which
are similar to those of the
australopithecines.
Human family tree
New discoveries of fossils that add to our knowledge of human evolution are being made all the
time. The size and shape of the skulls help us to understand the abilities of our ancestors. Brain size
is measured in cubic centimeters (cc), with an average modern human brain measuring 1,400 cc.
H O W W E K N O W
THEY WALKED ON TWO FEET
About 3.75 mya, a volcanic eruption left a
layer of ash at Laetoli, Tanzania that preserved
the footprints of Australopithecus afarensis
(“Lucy”). They were identified as those of a
young adult who walked on two feet with a
rolling gait, slower than that of modern
humans. This bipedal posture—an important
human anatomical feature that appeared
before 4 mya—allowed our ancestors to
live away from forests in open terrain.
MYAMYAMYAMYAMYAMYAMYA
❯❯
2.5–1.8 mya
Sites Africa
Homo habilis had relatively
long arms, marking it out from
later humans. The species may
descend from the australopithecines.
3.3–2.4 mya
Sites Africa
Australopithecus africanus
was a slenderly built species. Its facial
features appear to have been more human
than earlier australopithecines. It had longer
legs and shorter arms than modern humans.
3–2.4 mya
Site Africa
Australopithecus afarensis
Known as “Lucy,” this early hominin
was relatively short at 3 ft 3 in (1 m)
in height, had shorter limbs than later
species, and, significantly,
walked on two feet.
26 5 37 4 2.5

19
1.9–1.4 mya
Sites Africa
Homo ergaster was relatively
tall, with a brain size well below
that of modern humans. The skull
was thick and the face long, with
a “modern” projecting nose, a
massive jawbone, and large teeth.
19
OU R R EMOTE ANCESTOR S
A F T E R
The arrival of Homo sapiens may have
spelled the end for the Neanderthals.
EXTINCTION AND SUCCESS
Although Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived
alongside one another, DNA evidence suggests
they did not interbreed. Neanderthals died
out, perhaps at the hands of Homo sapiens, who
were successful in adapting to every corner of
the globe. More than any other species, humans
have used their skills to their own advantage.
during the climatic swings of the Ice Age,
but population levels remained very
low and the survival of early humans
must have been precarious at times.
The Neanderthals
By 200,000 years ago, Homo
neanderthalensis had evolved in Europe
and Eurasia. The Neanderthals had
large brains and more rounded heads
than their predecessors. Their body
shape was also more recognizably
“human,” but it is believed that their
reasoning power and speech were not
as developed as those of Homo sapiens.
They were, however, expert hunters,
who pursued animals such as bison
with wooden and stone-tipped spears.
They made sophisticated tools and
dwelt in caves, rock shelters, and open
camps. Theirs was a tough life in
savage environments, and they
probably lived for 30–40 years. Most
experts agree that Neanderthals were
not the ancestors of modern humans.
The appearance of modern humans
Intense controversy surrounds the
origins of Homo sapiens—ourselves.
Most geneticists use DNA evidence
(see pp.26–27) to argue that modern
humans ﬁrst appeared in tropical
Africa by about 180,000 years ago.
The earliest fully modern human fossils
come from Huerto, Ethiopia, and date
to about 160,000 years ago. From
Africa, Homo sapiens spread across the
Sahara and into southwestern Asia by
100,000 years ago. No one knows
when humans developed the abilities
that set them apart from their earlier
ancestors, but they were fully
developed by 45,000 years ago, when
the ﬁrst modern humans settled in
Europe alongside the Neanderthals.
Paranthropus boisei
Homo erectus
Homo heidelbergensis
Homo neanderthalensis
Homo sapiens
PRESENT DAY
Homo ergaster
350,000–24,000 ya
Site Africa and Eurasia
Homo neanderthalensis may have
lived alongside modern Homo sapiens
in Europe. The species had a large
brain and short robust build with
powerful limbs.
2–0.5 mya
Site Africa, Asia, Europe
Homo erectus was a powerfully built
human with massive brow ridges, a
large face, and a long, low skull to
accommodate a much larger brain.
2.75–1 mya
Sites Africa
Paranthropus boisei is the most
extreme version of the early “robust”
humans living in eastern Africa. Boisei
flourished in the dry savanna areas
that existed in Africa at that
time and may have died out
after climate change.
From 150,000 ya
Sites Worldwide
Homo sapiens roughly
translates as “wise man.” Our brain
size is larger than earlier humans’,
and it is perhaps this which has
enabled us to thrive in a variety of
environments around the world.
MYAMYAMYA
600,000–250,000 ya
Sites Africa and Europe
Homo heidelbergensis may
have been an ancestor of Homo
neanderthalensis in Europe. The
skull had a large brow ridge like
Homo ergaster and Homo erectus
but its brain was larger.
1 0.51.5

20
The Art of Communication
Speech and language were key developments in human history, perhaps even more so than toolmaking.
They turned the simple signs and grunts of our ancestors into increasingly sophisticated communication.
Archaeology and studies of human anatomy help to indicate when these important traits evolved.
ur knowledge about when and
how speech evolved remains a
controversial area in the study
of early human history. Articulate
speech is an important threshold in
human evolution because it opened up
new vistas of cooperative behavior
and the enrichment of human life.
From archaeological evidence alone, it
is difficult to know accurately when
speech first developed. Homo habilis had
a slightly more humanlike frontal lobe
(where speech control is located) than
earlier australopithecines. Other clues
are found in the position of the larynx
(voice box)—unlike all other mammals,
the larynx of Homo sapiens is positioned
low, permitting a wide variety of vocal
O
sounds. Homo erectus, from around 1.8
million years ago, was the first human
with a lower larynx, and finds from
Sima de los Huesos, in Atapuerca, Spain
have shown that Homo heidelbergensis
had developed a hyoid bone—a small,
U-shaped bone that lies at the root of
the tongue, between the larynx and
pharynx—about 400,000 years ago.
It was only about 300,000 years ago,
however, that the base of the skull
evolved, physically allowing fully
articulate speech to develop.
The Neanderthal debate
Neanderthals may have had some
capacity for speech and communication,
and were apparently capable of
Discovering speech
The hyoid bone is found in the neck and is required for
speech to occur. Finds such as these fossilized pieces of
400,000-year-old Homo heidelbergensis hyoid bone
from Atapuerca, Spain, help date the first human speech.
Little is known about the development
of human speech and conscious thought.
Physical evidence can yield some clues.
LOOKING AT THE EVIDENCE
Internal casts of human skulls (endocasts) reveal
the relatively small brains of Australopithecus
16–19 as apelike and incapable of speech.
A BRAIN FIT FOR THE JOB
The brain size of our early ancestors
grew gradually over millions of years,
allowing increasing levels of sophistication in
communication and culture. Homo sapiens’
brain measures 97½ cu in (1,600 cm3
), almost
three times the size of that of Homo habilis,
whose brain capacity was 36½ cu in(600 cm3
).
NO TALKING
Homo habilis 16–19, who lived from about
2.5 million years ago, is thought to have had
very limited communication skills, possibly
using a range of signs and grunts to foster
cooperation between members of a group.
B E F O R E

21
Sophisticated levels of speech developed
as society became more complex. Written
records also became important as a method
of communication.
POWER THROUGH SPEECH
Speech and language enhanced cooperation
between hunters, which led to the greater
success of human societies around the world.
Groups could plan game drives, negotiate
exchanges of toolmaking
stone, and share
intelligence about food
and water supplies.
KEEPING RECORDS
Cuneiform writing
62–63 developed
in West Asia c. 3000BCE
as a means of recording
commercial transactions
and inventories. Egyptian hieroglyphs
developed at around the same time.
WRITING HISTORY
By the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, writing
was widely used for recording history,
philosophy, and science 102–103 .
PASSING ON KNOWLEDGE
Speech and writing allowed knowledge and
cumulative experience to be passed on from
generation to generation.
ABSTRACT THINKING
Today, symbols such as road
signs are part of an
internationally
understood language
we use every day.information, perhaps about 250,000
years ago. As group sizes increased,
so did an ability to learn language
that could be used to articulate social
relationships. It was only later—
perhaps around 40,000 years ago
during a time that has been referred
to as the “Great Leap Forward”—
that modern humans developed
language of the kind we would
recognize today.
Cultural explosion
Connected to the
development of speech
is the arrival of cognitive
thought in early humans.
This includes qualities
such as perception of
our place in the world,
intelligence, and moral
codes that come with
more elaborate societies.
None of these advances
would have been possible without
sophisticated speech. We don’t know
when Homo sapiens acquired the
conscious thought and the abilities we
have today, but it was at least 40,000
years ago, and most likely in tropical
TH E ART OF COM M U N IC ATION
considerable intellectual reasoning.
The discovery of a hyoid bone in
Kebara Cave, Israel, dating to about
60,000 years ago, intensified the debate
about Neanderthal linguistic abilities.
The Kebara hyoid is almost identical to
that of modern humans, which has led
some anthropologists to claim that
the Neanderthals were capable of
fully articulate speech. Others
disagree, pointing to the high
position of the larynx,
which would limit the
sounds they could
make. Some believe
that Neanderthals had
the communication
skills of modern infants.
The controversy is
unresolved, but most
scientists agree that
Neanderthals did not
have the advanced
linguistic and
communication skills of Homo sapiens.
The great leap
Human language may have evolved
because of the need to handle
increasingly complex social
EGYPTIAN WRITING
ROAD SIGN SYMBOL
Artistic ability
17-000-year-old art from the Lascaux cave in France
shows a high level of sophistication. Modern humans
created these images that we can still relate to today.
Africa or southwest Asia. It appears
that conscious thought evolved after
modern human anatomy, for Homo
sapiens flourished in tropical Africa at
least 160,000 years ago, long before
the appearance of the elaborate
art traditions of the
late Ice Age.
First artists
The creation of art
requires reasoning
and an ability to plan
ahead and express
intangible feelings.
Some of the earliest
known decorated artifacts, which
were found in Blombos Cave in South
Africa, are about 75,000 years old (see
left) and are very basic. The full range
of human artistic skills came into play
during the late Ice Age, epitomized by
the cave art, jewelry, sculpture, and
carving of the Cro-Magnon people of
Western Europe (see pp.26–27). The
great bulls at Lascaux cave in France,
and the polychrome bison at the cave
at Altamira, in Spain, reflect human
societies with complex religious beliefs
and relationships with the spirit world.
Although we do not know exactly
what these paintings mean, it is clear
that they had great symbolism for
those who painted them. This
knowledge would have been passed
down through the generations by
speech and song. For all later human
societies, art has remained an
important way of expressing our
beliefs and knowledge of the world.
Understanding speech production
Broca’s area—showing up red on this brain scan—
is located in the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe.
As our knowledge of the human brain grows, so
does our understanding of how speech developed.
Blombos beads
These 75,000-year-old perforated shell
beads from Blombos Cave, South
Africa, are perhaps the oldest known
human ornaments in the world.
H O W W E K N O W
BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
Research into the brain can reveal some
evidence about the development of speech.
Soft brain tissues do not fossilize, and are
only preserved in casts of the inside of the
skull case. The earliest signs of development
of Broca’s area, the part of the brain that
controls speech, occur in Homo habilis
about two million years ago. Homo erectus
also shows signs of development in Broca’s
area, perhaps an indication of slowly evolving
speech. However, any study of language
abilities from casts is tentative. Unless a
well-preserved hominin brain is discovered—
which is unlikely—the amount that we are
able to discover from Broca’s area is limited,
and tangible evidence from hyoid bones will
still be needed to learn about fluent speech.
Much remains speculative in our knowledge
of the evolution of speech.
A F T E R

The Ice Age
Much of human history unfolded during the dramatic climatic shifts of the most recent Ice Age, which
began about 1.5 million years ago. Our ability to adapt to changes in climate has been crucial to the
development of civilization but, adversely, may be the cause of future global warming.
ontrary to popular belief, an
Ice Age is not a continual deep
freeze, but a period of constantly
fluctuating climate conditions
punctuated by periods of intense cold.
The earliest millennia of the last ice
age—the critical period when our
remote ancestors first colonized Africa—
are little known. The information
gleaned from deep-sea cores and ice
borings gives us a much clearer picture
of ice-age climate after Earth’s
magnetic field, generated deep inside
our planet, abruptly reversed some
780,000 years ago. (It has not reversed
since.) Deep-sea cores from the Pacific
Ocean reveal at least nine major glacial
(icy) periods that have come and gone
over the past 780,000 years, the most
recent of them ending in abrupt and
irregular global warming between
C H O W W E K N O W
DEEP SEA AND ICE CORES
Layers of sediment build up over time on
ocean beds, and annual layers of ice are
added to polar caps. By extracting cores of
ice or deep sea sediment and looking at the
composition, scientists can build a picture of
climate change. Increases in atmospheric
CO2
(carbon dioxide) and CH4
(methane)—
both greenhouse gases—can be detected in
the ice and indicate warming.
Similarly, the ratios of oxygen isotopes
in the shells of microscopic marine animals
reflect changes in sea temperature. The
Vostok ice core from Antarctica provides
evidence for the last 420,000 years, and
shows that major shifts in temperature
occur about every 100,000 years.
B E F O R E
Over millions of years, Earth has
experienced a range of temperatures and
climatic conditions that have played a
part in the extinction or survival of whole
groups of species, and changed the face of
the planet.
THE ICE AGES
There is geological evidence (seen in rock
surfaces and textures) for four major ices ages
in Earth’s history. The earliest of these is believed
to have occurred around 2.7 to 2.3 billion years
ago during the Proterozoic period.
HOT PLANET
Temperatures in the past were generally far
higher than today. Following the extinction of
dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, perhaps
due to climatic change, average temperatures
rose to about 82ºF (28ºC). Tropical rainforests
proliferated on Earth.
THE BIG CHILL
The abrupt cooling about 1.5 million years
ago that led to the last Ice Age, known as the
Pleistocene epoch, probably resulted from
small shifts in Earth’s tilt toward the Sun.
4.5 M YA –3000 BCE

23
TH E ICE AGE
A harsh world
Temperature variations up to 10,000 years ago meant
that humans could only survive by adapting to the
changing conditions. Our ancestors became successful
at surviving and thriving in the cold.
A F T E R
Earth is currently experiencing a
warmer phase but is still affected by
fluctuations in temperature and natural
phenomena such as El Niño.
INCREASED VULNERABILITY
For most of human history, people have lived in
small, highly mobile bands 30–31 . Farming
36–37 made humanity more vulnerable to
major climatic events because people were
unable to quickly move to avoid them. Such
short-term events were a factor in the rise and
collapse of early civilizations. One example
of this is Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a site
that was settled between 900 and 1150CE and
was abandoned following drought and other
unknown dramatic climatic changes.
THE EL NIÑO PHENOMENON
El Niño is a reversal in the flow of water in the
Pacific Ocean that causes dramatic changes in
the weather every two to seven years.
El Niño is one of the most powerful
influences on climate after the
seasons. The phenomenon
originates in the Southwest
Pacific and results from
interactions between the ocean
and the atmosphere. El Niños
have affected human history for at
least 10,000 years. Major El Niños
have powerful global effects,
causing monsoon failures, and
drought or flooding elsewhere. This thermal
image highlights El Niño
currents in white and red.
PERIOD OF
STABILITY
As temperatures rose
after the Ice Age, humans
adapted to a rapidly
changing world of
shrinking ice sheets
and rising sea levels.
After 5,000 years of irregular warming and
cooling, the world entered a warming period that
has lasted into modern times. The Vostok ice
core tells us this period is among the most warm
and stable of the past 420,000 years.
THE FUTURE
The overuse of fossil fuels has increased global
warming. The future effects of this human-
made problem are still unknown.
THE ABANDONED SITE OF CHACO CANYON
MONSOON SEASON, INDIA
the Pyrenees, on the Andes, and on
Central Asian mountains and high-
altitude plateaus. South of the
Scandinavian ice sheets, huge expanses
of barren landscape extended from the
Atlantic to Siberia. These environments
suffered nine-month winters and were
uninhabitable by ancestors of Homo
sapiens, who lacked the technology and
clothing to adapt to the extremes of
temperature. It is no coincidence
that Homo erectus, with their simple
technology and limited cognitive skills,
settled in more temperate and tropical
environments. The cold caused sea
levels to fall dramatically as more water
was converted into ice. Huge expanses
of what are now continental shelves
(land under shallow coastal waters)
were exposed, linking land masses—
Siberia was part of Alaska, and Britain
was joined to Europe. Only short
stretches of open water separated
mainland Southeast Asia from
Australia and New Guinea.
During interglacials, sea levels rose,
ice sheets shrank, and forests moved
northward as the steppe-tundra
vanished. Humans moved north,
following the animals they hunted and
the plants they foraged, and adapting
to a broad range of forested and
grassland environments as well as arid
and semiarid lands.
Humans and the elements
The Ice Age climate was volatile and
the world’s environments changed
constantly, which meant that the
opportunism and adaptive ability of
humans was continuously challenged
from one millennium to the next.
These challenges may even have been
a factor in human evolution. Our
earliest ancestors originated in tropical
Africa and were basically tropical
animals. During long periods of the
ice ages, the Sahara was slightly wetter
than today. The desert can almost be
seen as a pump, drawing in animals
and early humans during wetter
periods, then pushing them out
to the margins when the climate
became drier. This was the
ecological effect that allowed
Homo erectus and the animals
they preyed on to cross the
desert and spread
into more temperate
environments some
1.8 million years ago.
A major interglacial raised
temperatures, peaking around
400,000 years ago. By that time,
Homo erectus was thriving in north
Europe, but they could not adapt to
the extreme cold of the glaciation that
followed around 350,000 years ago.
The few hunting bands living there
probably moved southward to more
temperate regions. By around 250,000
years ago, there are traces of early
human settlement in Europe and parts
of East Asia. The final interglacial
peaked about 128,000 years ago, when
Neanderthals (see p.19) were thriving
in Europe. They adapted to the extreme
cold of the last glaciation. After 50,000
years ago, modern humans had
mastered all the global environments
and were living in even the coldest
and most extreme parts of the world.
10,000 and 15,000 years ago. Sea cores
give only a general impression of Ice
Age climate change, but, as a rule,
cooling proceeds relatively slowly and
warming unfolds rapidly, as was the
case at the end of the last cold (glacial)
period. Glacial periods in the past have
been longer than interglacials—brief,
volatile intervals of warmer conditions
during the Ice Age when the climate
was as warm (or warmer than) today.
These increases in temperature are
caused by changes in Earth’s path
around the Sun and its rotation
on its axis. Natural increases in
greenhouse gases add to the warming.
We are currently experiencing an
interglacial period caused by these
natural phenomena that began about
10,000 years ago.
Environmental change
The Ice Age witnessed dramatic shifts
in global climate and major changes in
natural environments. During glacial
periods, huge ice sheets formed over
Scandinavia, and covered most of
Canada and parts of the United States
as far south as modern Seattle and the
Great Lakes. Great glaciers formed on
the Alps and there were ice sheets on
Temperature variations of the Ice Age
Layers of sediment in ice cores taken from Vostok in
Antarctica have enabled scientists to chart temperature
variations over the past 420,000 years. The levels of
CO2
in the atmosphere have also been recorded and
are linked to temperature rises, as can be seen here.
EL NIÑO
Degrees˚F/˚C
Level of CO2
Temperature
KEY
39/4
36/2
32/0
28/–2
25/–4
21/–6
18/–8
14/–10
350,000 300,000400,000 200,000 150,000250,000 50,000 0100,000
LevelofCO2
High
Low
Years before present
The number of meters
(yards) sea levels around
the world dropped at the
beginning of the last Ice
Age as water froze to form the ice caps
of present-day Antarctica and the Arctic.
90
The number of years
ago that the current
interglacial began. Based on past
shifts, this warmer phase could last
100,000 years, although the influence
of humans may affect this.
10,000

24
Out of Africa
Every human today is the descendant of a small group of modern humans who left Africa
around 60,000 years ago to explore the planet. We can see the legacy of these
journeys today in the diversity of races and cultures around the world.
4.5 M YA –3000 BCE
Many people may not have
encountered more than a few dozen
fellow humans during their lives,
although we can only speculate about
this, as the population figures can only
be educated guesses.
Evidence of migration
Dozens of archaeological sites—caves,
rock shelters, open camps, and huge
garbage heaps, or “middens,” of
seashells and freshwater mollusks—
document the great journeys made
as humans spread around the globe.
Klasies River Mouth in South Africa
is one such site where caves were
used as shelter by modern humans
about 120,000 years ago, showing that
by that date the first modern people
had traveled from their origins in
northeastern Africa (see pp.18–19).
The techniques of molecular biology
are another way in which we can learn
more about the movement of these
early humans. By comparing certain
strands of DNA (the substance found
in every human cell that determines
the characteristics we inherit), we can
work out how Earth was colonized
by Homo sapiens, and when splits in
the population occurred. This was a
complex process involving constant
movement by small numbers of
people. We are only just beginning to
comprehend the process of colonization,
but one thing seems certain: all non-
Africans are descended from what
American biologist Stephen J. Gould
once called “a single African twig” on
the human family tree.
All people alive today have their
ultimate roots in the so-called “African
Eve” of some 150,000 years ago. This
name stems from the fact that MtDNA
(mitochondrial DNA) was passed from
mother to offspring through every
generation since the first Homo sapiens.
We all share genetic information with
“Eve,” with each other, and with our
ancestors (see p.27).
ixty thousand years ago,
modern humans (Homo sapiens)
were confined to tropical
Africa and a small part of southwestern
Asia. These were people with the
same physical and mental abilities as
ourselves, hunter-gatherers capable
of adapting to any environment on
Earth, be it one with nine-month
winters and subzero temperatures,
or steamy tropical rainforests. Then,
during the last cold period of the last
Ice Age, the most significant of all
human migrations out of Africa began.
Toward the end of the Ice Age 15,000
years ago, this vast population
movement was complete. Late Ice
Age hunting bands had settled all of
mainland Africa and Eurasia and had
crossed, or were about to cross, into
the Americas. Homo sapiens had
mastered tropical waters with canoes
or rafts, had drifted or paddled to New
Guinea and Australia, and penetrated
as far south as Tasmania.
Survival of the fittest
Earlier forms of humans such as Homo
habilis and Homo erectus had long
vanished from Earth, forced into
extinction on marginal lands where
food was not plentiful, or killed by
the newcomers, with whom they
could not compete.
Colonizing the planet was not a
deliberate project, undertaken by
men and women set on occupying
new lands or exploring the world that
lay beyond their hunting territories.
Rather, the complex population
movements that took modern humans
to the limits of the harsh late Ice Age
world came about as a result of the
necessities of hunting and plant
collecting in a great diversity of natural
environments. In more northern
climates, meat was the staple food,
while tropical and temperate groups
made considerable use of wild plant
foods. The secrets to survival were
adaptability—the ability to adjust to
sudden changes in climatic conditions
by technological innovation—and
sheer ingenuity, mobility, and
opportunism. People responded to
food shortages, drought, or extreme
cold by moving elsewhere in a world
where the total global population was
perhaps no more than five million
people, scattered in small groups over
hunting territories large and small.
S
B E F O R E
The ancestors of modern humans (Homo
sapiens) colonized Africa, Europe, and
western Asia.
LIFE IN THE FREEZER
The last glaciation (colder period) of the Ice Age,
when many areas were covered in ice, lasted
from 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. During this
period, sea levels were far below modern levels
and Siberia and Alaska were linked by land.
It was also drier
than today and
tropical climates
were slightly
cooler 22–23.
This was followed
by a slightly
warmer period
before a return
to extreme cold
about 18,000
years ago.
ORIGINS OF MODERN HUMANS
The original ancestors of modern humans
evolved south of the Sahara Desert in tropical
Africa. The scattered human population was
very small, and groups developed in isolation
from each other.
EARLY MAN ON THE MOVE
Early Homo erectus fossils 19
indicate that they had settled in
western Europe by 800,000 years
ago. Neanderthals 19 spread
into Europe and western Asia by
200,000 years ago.
FLINT HAND-AXES
This technology, developed
in Africa 2.5 million years ago,
was used for millions of
years 17.
ICY LANDSCAPE
FLINT HAND-AX
Clovis
Meadowcroft
Monte Verde
Cactus Hill
12,000 YEARS AGO
12,000 YEARS AGO
N
O
R
T
H
The earliest known
settlement in South America
dates from about 13,000 years
ago. Finds from the site, at
Monte Verde in Chile, include
stone tools for chopping,
scraping, and pounding.
SOUTH
A
M
E
R
I
C
A
Big game hunters The
people associated with
Clovis hunted big game.
Their presence in America
about 12,000 years ago
coincides with the extinction
of several large species
including mammoths,
mastodons (a mammothlike
species), and giant sloths.
Mammoth cave painting
The walls of Lascaux Cave in France are alive with bison,
mammoth, wild oxen, and stag. Cro-Magnon artists (see
p.26–27) painted these powerful, ageless images in this
Ice Age treasure trove of art some 17,000 years ago.
The number of years
since small groups of
humans began to leave Africa. By 60,000
years ago genetically modern Homo
sapiens were colonizing the Earth.
100,000
Human migration
This map shows key sites for our early ancestors,
as well as the routes that Homo sapiens is thought
to have taken from Africa around the world.
MILLION The estimated
human population of Earth
500,000 years ago.
1

25
OUT OF AF R IC A
E U R O P E
45,000 YEARS AGO
160,000 YEARS AGO
45,000 YEARS AGO
50,000 YEARS AGO
15,000 YEARS AGO
Malakunanja
Zhoukoudian
Kennewick
Klasies River Mouth
West Turkana Koobi Fora
Nariokotome
Lake Turkana
Olduvai
Blombos Cave
Boxgrove
Altamira
Lascaux
Le Moustier
Schöningen
Dolní Vestonice
Atapuerca
Dmanisi
Hadar
Huerto
A F R I C A
Sangiran
Shanidar
Flores
P
A
C
IF
IC
O
CEAN
Beringia Land Bridge
A S I A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
A
M
E
R
I
C A
A
U
S
T
R
A
LIA
Niah
60,000 YEARS AGO
Klasies River Mouth
Caves in South Africa were
occupied by hunter-gatherers
c. 120,000 years ago and have
revealed some clues about
how they lived. Some of
the earliest known remains
of Homo sapiens were
found in the caves.
The earliest finds in Australia
come from Lake Mungo. Tourists
today visit a landscape of strange
formations where over 20,000
years ago there was a lake and
much human activity. Stone tools
and animal bones found in the
area have shown us much about
the first Australians.
“Lucy” (Australopithecus
afarensis) was found in
Ethiopia in 1974, dates from
about three million years ago,
and is an important example of
an Australopithecus (see pp.16–
17). This area of northeastern
Africa is rich with early hominin
remains and continues to yield
finds that provoke new theories
about our own evolution.
This archaeologist holds the
remains of Homo erectus, which
dates from about 1 million years
ago, and was found on this site.
The first modern humans in China
occupied this site by about 40,000
years ago.
This mammoth bone
carving found at Dolní
Vestonice was made by
hunters between 28,000
and 22,000 years ago.
The cave paintings of Altamira
date from about 15,000 years ago
and are famous for their dramatic
representations of bison, boar,
and red deer in charcoal and
earth pigments by people of the
Magdalenian (Paleolithic)
culture of southern Europe.
I N D I A N
O C E A N
Laetoli
25,000 YEARS AGO
120,000 YEARS AGO
Lake
Mungo
KEY
Migration of Homo sapiens
around the world
Site of early Homo sapiens find
Site of early Hominin find

4.5 M YA –3000 BCE
years. DNA research on Neanderthal
bones suggests that the newcomers
did not interbreed with them, as had
previously been believed. One theory
is that Europe’s indigenous inhabitants
died out because they lacked the
adaptability, mental abilities, and
technology of modern humans. They
survived in some parts of southeastern
Europe until as late as 24,000 years ago
before becoming extinct.
A thriving European culture
From about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago,
a remarkable array of sophisticated,
cold-adapted hunter-gatherer societies
flourished in Central and Western
Europe. These Cro-Magnon people—
named after a rock shelter near Les
Eyzies in southwestern France—were
opportunists. They relied for their
subsistence on a range of plant foods
and fish, taking advantage of salmon
runs, for example, when the rapidly
changing climate of the late Ice Age
allowed. Their success came not only
from their superior mental abilities,
but also from their ingenious multi-
purpose flint tools, which worked
almost like a modern Swiss Army
knife. They used carefully shaped
flint nodules to produce standardized,
parallel-sided blanks, which they then
turned into points, scrapers, and other
tools. One of these artifacts—a chisel—
allowed them to cut grooves in
reindeer antlers, thereby “unlocking”
a new technology for manufacturing
harpoon heads, spear points, and other
hunting weapons. Barbed, antler-
tipped spears were especially effective
on reindeer and other game. The
Cro-Magnons produced other
revolutionary items, including the
spear thrower—a hooked stick that
vastly increased the distance a spear
could be thrown. They successfully
used this new technology to hunt a
wide range of Ice Age animals, including
bison, mammoth, and woolly
rhinoceros. The eyed needle was
another remarkable invention (see
below). These people were also skilled
artists and developed a distinctive
visual tradition, which amplified their
elaborate rituals and beliefs. One of
the most famous examples of their
art comes from the cave paintings of
Lascaux in southwestern France, which
are on a huge scale, and renowned for
the skill of the artists who created them
The bone house
This reconstruction of a shelter built from mammoth
bones is based on the remains of a dwelling that was
found by archaeologists in modern-day Ukraine. It
demonstrates the ingenuity and adaptability of early
humans to local conditions and resources.
Sometime after about
50,000 years ago, when glacial
conditions in the north had improved
and the climate was more temperate,
modern humans moved into Europe
and Asia. Tiny numbers of people were
involved—in the hundreds—but by
45,000 years ago they were well
established in the eastern European
plains and in the Don Valley, now in
Ukraine, and were moving rapidly
across Central and Western Europe.
The Neanderthal controversy
Homo sapiens had settled alongside
Neanderthal bands that had already
been in Europe for about 200,000
The longest journey
The first Homo sapiens left
Africa to colonize the planet
about 60,000 years ago. By the
end of the Ice Age 10,000 years
ago, they had reached all the
continents except Antarctica,
adapting to different conditions
wherever they went.
I N V E N T I O N
THE NEEDLE
The eyed needle was a groundbreaking
invention. As early as 30,000 years ago,
late Ice Age people in Europe and Asia
made needles from polished bone and
ivory slivers, perforated with sharp-
pointed flints. They sewed tailored,
layered garments that enabled them to
work outside in freezing temperatures.
It is believed that, like modern Inuits, they
used cured and softened animal pelts,
sewing the seams with fine thread made
of animal and plant fiber. Without tailored
clothing Homo sapiens would never
have settled the Eurasian steppes or
colonized the Americas.

OUT OF AF R IC A
across an extremely inhospitable
landscape. Such natural population
movements led to vast areas of the
globe being colonized.
Even earlier, from around c. 60,000
years ago, other groups moved east
from northeast Africa and southwestern
Asia into what is now India and
Pakistan, and into the tropical forests
of Southeast Asia. We know little of
these movements—the groups
probably skirted the Eurasian
A hunter’s tool kit
As humans traveled around the
globe and experienced different
environments and climates, they
adapted their weapons and tools
to survive. These bone tools, found
in France and dating to between
18,000 and 10,000 years ago, were
used by hunters in Ice Age Europe.
(see pp.20–21). For the first time,
people had the skills to live in harsh
environments like the Eurasian
steppes, where there is little rainfall
and dramatic changes in temperature
with hot summers and very cold
winters. Despite these skills, the
Cro-Magnons appear to have moved
south into sheltered locations, only
moving north again as temperatures
rose. Some of them constructed
elaborate dwellings, like the intricate
mammoth bone houses at Mezhirich
in modern Ukraine (see left), built
partially into the ground and roofed
with hides and sod. Toward the end of
the Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago,
human society became more elaborate,
as populations grew larger and new
areas were colonized.
Siberia and the tundra
Homo sapiens migrated north from
southwestern Asia and colonized the
river valleys of Central Asia around
45,000 years ago. Small bands lived
permanently in the bitter cold of the
steppe-tundra—a windswept landscape
featuring low-growing vegetation—
that extended from central Europe all
the way to Siberia far to the northeast.
Enduring long winters, each band
anchored itself on shallow river valleys
like those of the Don and Dnieper in
Russia, subsisting for the most part on
animals such as the saiga antelope
and large game, including the arctic
elephant and the mammoth.
Between 35,000 and 18,000 years
ago, some hunting bands moved
northeastward across the steppe-
tundra into the Lake Baikal region of
Siberia and farther to the northeast.
Some moved to, or formed, new
groups, while others moved to find
new hunting grounds or natural
resources. A variety of circumstances
linked to hunting and survival
contributed to the movement of tiny
numbers of these late Ice Age bands
H O W W E K N O W
ADAPTING TO CHANGE
Study of the genes of modern populations
can help to show how the early humans
colonized the planet. Mitochondrial DNA,
inherited through the maternal line back to
a fictional “Eve” (see p.24), can be traced
from an ancestral tropical African population
to today. The male Y chromosome can also
be used to trace through generations. From
this evidence we know that 99.9 percent
of the genetic code of modern humans is
identical throughout the world. The
differences in facial features and coloring are
down to minor genetic mutations that have
taken place over the last 150,000 years.
Amazingly, the world’s population outside
Africa can trace their genetic history back to
perhaps as few as 1,000 individuals who
made the journey out of that continent.
Chromosome mutations can be used to
show when groups arrived in different parts
of the world and to construct a genetic
family tree that goes back to the Ice Age.

29
ATLATL
Atlatls (from an Aztec word)
are throwing sticks or spear-
throwers, first developed by
Cro-Magnon hunters over
20,000 years ago. Spear throwers
increase a spear’s range and
velocity—useful qualities for
hunters who rely on stalking to
kill their prey. The simplest atlatls
are hooked sticks. A weight
adds stability and velocity
to the throw. Such weights,
often called “bannerstones,”
are often found on native
American sites, as they arrived
with the first inhabitants of the
region. The Aztecs later used them
against Spanish conquistadors
(see pp.230–31).
By 10,000 years ago humans had spread
to every continent (except Antarctica) and
had learned the skills needed to survive
in different environments. Later explorers
found their “new world” already inhabited
by the descendants of those first settlers.
ADAPTING TO CHANGE
American Indian societies adjusted to warmer,
often drier conditions, by intensifying the search
for food, whether it be fish, game, or plant
foods. By 4000BCE, some foraging groups were
experimenting with the planting of native
grasses 36–37 , such as goosefoot.
LATER
EXPLORATION
Europeans first came in
contact with
American Indians
500 years ago when
they traveled the world
in search of new land
230 . Dutch settlers
arrived in Manhattan
in the 1800s and traded
with the native population before establishing
a permanent settlement there.
AN ISOLATED CULTURE
The culture of the Australian Aboriginals
developed in virtually complete
isolation. Like other hunter-
gatherer societies, they have
a complex relationship
with their environment
and elaborate spiritual beliefs.
OUT OF AF R IC A
deserts and settled in
northeastern China by 25,000
years ago, after the warmer south part
of the continent had been explored.
Sunda, Sahul, and Asia
During the late Ice Age, a huge
continental shelf—an area of land
connecting the continents that is now
covered by higher sea levels—known
as Sunda extended from mainland
Southeast Asia far into the Pacific.
Only short stretches of open water
separated New Guinea and Australia
from this now-sunken land. Another
landmass, Sahul, linked Australia and
New Guinea themselves. Homo sapiens
arrived in mainland Southeast Asia
before 50,000 years ago. By 45,000
years ago—the date is controversial—
a few hunting bands had crossed open
water to Sahul and colonized what is
now Australia. They may have crossed
on primitive rafts or in dugout canoes.
Modern humans had settled New
Guinea by about 40,000 years ago,
and crossed to the Solomon Islands
by about 5,000 years later. Hunter-
gatherers had settled throughout
Australia, including Tasmania,
by 30,000 years ago.
This was the outer limit
of human settlement of the
offshore Pacific until outrigger
canoes (see pp.216–17)
and open-water navigation
techniques allowed people
with domesticated animals
and root crops to make the
lengthy open-water passages
after 1000BCE. The evidence of human
life at Lake Mungo in Australia reveals
details of hunter-gatherer life about
40,000 years ago. It is important as
it captures a moment in time and
a lifestyle that remained largely
unchanged for thousands of years.
Reaching the Americas
Archaeologists have disputed the date
of the first settlement of the Americas
for over a century. Most now agree
that native Americans originated in
Siberia. Genetic and dental evidence
links the two areas and backs up this
theory. There are also linguistic ties
that hint at population movements
from Siberia to Alaska. But it is not
known precisely when and how the
first settlement took place.
Until about 10,000
years ago, a low-lying
land bridge, Beringia,
joined Siberia to
Alaska
(see pp.24–25). Most scientists believe
that the first Americans were Siberian
hunters who crossed this bridge into
Alaska at least 15,000 years ago,
toward the end of the Ice Age.
Route south
More controversy surrounds the
route by which the first Americans
penetrated the heart of North America,
something which is thought to have
taken place at least 13,000 years ago.
Huge ice sheets covered most of what
is now Canada. One theory favors a
movement south along the continental
shelves of southeast Alaska and British
Columbia, which was then a
landscape of steppe-tundra.
Another common hypothesis
claims a rapid movement south
along a narrow corridor
between two ice sheets, one
mantling the Rocky Mountains
and the other extending east
toward the Atlantic. The
controversy is unresolved, but
we know that small numbers of early
American hunter-gatherers were south
of the ice sheets, and some as far south
as Chile, by at least 13,000 years ago.
The early Americans are best known
from the remains of kills of bison,
mammoth, and mastodon in North
America. They are often labeled “big-
game” hunters, which is misleading, as
they relied on plant foods and adapted
to temperate and tropical areas, as well
as the bleak lands at the margins of
retreating ice sheets. They did prey on
indigenous species of large mammals,
but, by 10,500 years ago, most of this
“megafauna” was extinct, probably as
a result of drier climatic conditions,
perhaps speeded by some overhunting.
Early evidence
The archaeological record of the
early Americas is sketchy. Key
sites include a 12,000-year-old
rock shelter in Meadowcroft,
Pennsylvania, a scatter of
stone tools from a site at
Cactus Hill, Virginia, and a
well-documented foraging
camp at Monte Verde, Chile,
dating to about 13,000
years ago. The first well-
defined culture is that of
the Clovis people, famous
for their fine flint tools,
who flourished between
about 11,200 and 10,900
years ago. One controversial
discovery is a 9,500 year-
old skull from Kennewick,
Washington State, which is
believed to have caucasian
features and may be an indication that
some of the first settlers in America
came from Europe. However, this has
been the subject of much debate.
ABORIGINAL HUNTER
Clovis points
North American hunters made these flint spearpoints
over 11,000 years ago. They are some of the few objects
found from this early period. They would have been
used to kill and cut up large prey such as mammoth.
Oldest footprints
Hundreds of human footprints, preserved for over
20,000 years, have been found at Lake Mungo, Australia.
At that time, the lake there would have been home to
fish, mussels, and crayfish—all valuable food sources.
FLORES FIND
Excavations in 2003 at Liang Bua Cave
(right) on Flores Island, in Indonesia,
yielded the remains of a tiny skeleton
standing about 3 ft 6 in (1 m) tall. The
bones display a unique mix of primitive and
more advanced characteristics, and date to
about 18,000 years ago. With a small skull
(below), large brow ridge, and a delicate
face, Homo floresiensis had slight legs like
some early hominins, yet modern teeth.
Questions have been raised over whether
this is a separate species or a small Homo
sapiens. Others suggest this is the remnant
of a Homo erectus population, or the
descendant of humans who drifted to the
island, then developed unique anatomical
traits in isolation. Unless more remains are
found, Homo floresiensis may remain an
intriguing, unsolved mystery.
H O W W E K N O W
EUROPEAN SETTLERS
IN AMERICA
I N V E N T I O N
A F T E R

30
Hunters and Gatherers
4.5 M YA –3000 BCE
e have been able to understand
more about the hunter-gatherer
diet from surviving artifacts
such as carved stone and bone tools
and decorative items (see pp.34–35),
and also from hunting scenes in rock
paintings, such as those at Lascaux,
W
B E F O R E
Hunting and gathering, or foraging for food,
is the fundamental way that humans and
their ancestors lived. The success of the
species depended on their ability to use
Earth’s resources to their own advantage.
HUMAN SCAVENGERS
Evidence from bones and flints has shown that
early humans may have eaten the remains of
animals killed by other predators rather
than hunting for most of their food.
A VARIED DIET
As the first modern humans
spread around the world
24–29 their diet changed in
response to locally available
foods. A process of trial and
error would have been necessary
while learning what foods were good to eat and
what could potentially be harmful.
CHANGING TO SURVIVE
Human societies throughout the world had to
adapt to radically different environments.
Predictability, seasonality, abundance, and
distribution of food resources such as fish
and nuts affected their choice to live a nomadic
or more settled existence.
The hunter’s equipment
The earliest weapons took the form of simple flint arrow-
heads. As hunters became more sophisticated, weapons
grew more specialized. The harpoon point, below, is
carved from bone and suited to fishing. Arrows would
have been used about 8,000 years ago for hunting.
Hunting and foraging for food was the only way of life for all humans up until 12,000 years ago. It was
a successful lifestyle that, in some ways, had significant advantages over a life of farming. Today, only
a handful of hunter-gatherer societies survive, in the Amazon Basin and Africa.
overlooking a river valley and nearby
swamps. Among the objects found at
the site, which dates back to the last Ice
Age, is the oldest known ceramic in the
world—a “Venus” figurine (a carving
shaped like a female
figure) dating to
between 29,000 and
25,000BCE. Other
carvings of bears,
lions, and
mammoths
indicate a culture
of some degree of
sophistication. A
similar date has been
given to the Venus of
Willendorf (see p.34)
found in Austria. It has
been suggested that these
figurines represent fertility
and the success of the
hunter-gatherer group
they are associated with.
Stone age transition
The line between nomadic
hunting and gathering
and settled farming is not always clear.
Many communities may have stayed
in one place while hunting, or moved
around and cultivated crops. Ten
thousand years ago, bands of
Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) fishers
and hunters lived by the Baltic Sea,
which at that stage was newly
uncovered by retreating ice. Their diet
mainly consisted of fish, supplemented
by birds, plant foods, and game, caught
twine bindingFISHING SPEAR
FLINT ARROW
MESOLITHIC ARROW
HARPOON POINT
France, and Altamira, Spain. Rare
finds of wooden digging sticks and
flint sickle blades show that people
dug for tubers and harvested wild
grasses. Broken animal and fish bones,
and fossil plant pollens, reveal details
of the hunter-gatherer diet, as do
deep shell middens (waste sites)
crammed with the discarded shells
of edible mollusks.
In addition, the few surviving
hunter-gatherer societies
can tell us first-hand about
the dynamics of human
existence before
agriculture and
animal domestication.
Mammoth hunters
Most hunter-
gatherer bands were
constantly on the
move, camping
near lakes and other
strategic locations
during the times
of year when a
particular plant food
ripened or game was close by. At Dolní
Vestonice, in what is now the Czech
Republic, mammoth hunters lived in
oval bone-and-timber huts (see p.26)
serrated edge
reproduction shaft
flints stuck in groove of wooden shaft
flight of duck feathers
Gathered food
Wild plant foods, whether grasses, nuts, or
tubers, were the dominant staple for most
ancient hunter-gatherer societies. In most
societies, women did the gathering.
using stone-tipped arrows, antler
harpoons, and wooden spears. Many
groups in this area occupied the same
settlements for generations, living
along shorelines that shifted constantly.
Another site that has revealed details
about a community that was hunting
and gathering while on the move
throughout the year is Star Carr in
northeastern England. In 9000BCE, a
small group of Mesolithic people settled
on waterlogged ground by a lake there.
The wet conditions preserved flint
tools, the remains of the elk and red
deer they hunted, and the barbed spear
points they used to kill them. Teeth
and seeds tell us the site was occupied
every year from March to June. These
people adapted successfully to a rapidly
changing post–Ice Age world by
HAZELNUTS

31
I N V E N T I O N
BOW AND ARROW
Bows and arrows appeared during the
late Ice Age and came into widespread
use by about 10,000BCE. At first, these
would have been simple wooden bows
used with stone- or bone-tipped arrows.
The composite bow, made of sinews and
bone or wood laminated together, is
known from 1500BCE, and reached North
America in the first millennium CE.
Hunting in the field
A modern San hunter takes aim with bow and arrow.
His success depends on meticulous stalking to approach
his quarry at close range. Many early hunters used
vegetable poisons on their arrows, pursuing wounded
animals for hours to kill them before predators struck.
H U NTER S AN D GATH ER ER S
A F T E R
maintaining a flexible way of life.
Lepenski Vir in modern-day Serbia
was also repeatedly used over many
generations and has yielded a lot of
information about a culture between
two lifestyles. The site, used from as
early as 6000BCE, was situated on the
banks of the Danube River, and the
group’s reliance on fishing was heavy.
The fish sculptures found there (see
pp.34–35) are significant early works
of art and may be symbols of a religious
cult, such was the importance of fish
to this culture. The people lived in
structures whose wide ends faced the
river. Revisited for several hundred
years, Lepenski Vir provides a portrait
of a gradual changeover from nomadic
life to more permanent settlement.
The seminomadic lifestyle of Lepenski
Vir meant that people lived there for
part of the year while also traveling to
other areas. Finds at the site discovered
some distance away provide the
evidence for this.
A continuing way of life
Five thousand years ago, much of
East and southern Africa was home
to nomadic hunter-gatherer bands,
which subsisted on a wide variety of
animal and plant foods. Some sites,
such as Gwisho in Central Africa,
have revealed well-preserved wooden
arrowheads and digging sticks, as well
as traces of brush shelters. Many of
these groups regularly visited rock
shelters, including those at Nachikufu
in present-day Zambia, Pomongwe in
Zimbabwe, and Oakhurst rock shelter
in South Africa. These people, well
known for their rock art (see pp.32–
33), were the distant ancestors of the
modern-day San hunter-gatherers, tiny
numbers of whom still live in the
Kalahari Desert of Botswana. Modern-
day San have long been in contact with
farmers, but the ancestry of their
culture extends back to ancient times.
As in other traditional hunter-gather
cultures, the women are responsible for
much of the food collection and
hunting smaller animals, while the
men hunt large prey.
Some hunter-gatherer groups
had turned to farming by
10,000BCE. Others continued
to develop and innovate.
WHY NOT FARM?
From about 10,000BCE there was a
general transition from the hunter-
gatherer lifestyle to farming. Some
groups continued to forage for
food, perhaps partly due to
conditions in the part of the world
they lived in, making growing crops
or staying in one place impossible.
Another reason may be that
farming needs more time spent devoted
to food production and carries a greater
risk of starvation if crops fail. Some groups,
such as the Haida people of North America
and the Aboriginals in Australia, seem to have
retained the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
CULTURAL COMPLEXITY
In areas of exceptionally rich food resources,
much more elaborate hunter-gather
societies developed after about 3000 years ago.
In the Pacific Northwest of North America, for
example, rich salmon and coastal fisheries and
abundant lumber led to the development of
complex societies under powerful chieftains.
INNOVATION
By 2000 years ago, the Norton people in North
America had developed sophisticated art
styles and an elaborate harpoon weaponry
for hunting seals. By 1000CE, the ancestors of
the modern-day Inuit had settled in Canada.
MODERN INUIT SETTLEMENT
INUIT BOW
HAIDA HOUSE

The Spirit World
Ever since humans became conscious of their own frailty and mortality, they have sought the answers
to the eternal mysteries of life. Theories about the purpose of our existence and questions about what
happens after we die will always be a part of the human experience.
4.5 M YA –3000 BCE
thought of as a link to another
world, and the practices surrounding
burial are always significant. The
art of early humans found in caves
and on bone carvings are indications
of their beliefs outside of their
everyday existence.
From about 40,000 years ago, the
Cro-Magnons of western Europe
developed a flamboyant artistic
tradition that survives on cave walls
t is difficult to know what
the beliefs of humans were
before the advent of writing.
However, from the material remains
left to us, we can piece together some
of the ideas of the particular culture
that created them. The main ways
in which we know about prehistoric
religion today are from images painted
on cave walls, and from objects found
in graves (grave goods). Death is often
I
B E F O R E
There is little evidence that early humans
before Neanderthals buried their dead or
believed in a higher power.
NEANDERTHAL BELIEF
Neanderthals 19 first buried their dead
at least 60,000 years ago.
CONSCIOUS THOUGHT
Homo sapiens is unique in thinking and
planning ahead, and in conceptualizing ideas.
Such cognitive abilities first appeared around
50,000 years ago, and perhaps even earlier 21.
and on beautifully carved and
engraved antler tools (see pp.20–21).
The cave engravings and paintings
depict a wide range of animals, some
of them long extinct, such as the
mammoth and woolly rhinoceros;
others, like wild horses, European
bison, and reindeer are more familiar
today. The animals on the cave
walls reflect a harsh late Ice Age
environment where people survived
A wealth of grave goods
Two 25,000-year-old hunter-gatherers buried in Sungir
near Vladimir in Russia lie surrounded by spears,
bracelets, brooches, and thousands of ivory beads.

History, the definitive visual guide

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