essay of early human

Early Human Migration

Disregarding the extremely inhospitable spots even the most stubborn of us have enough common sense to avoid, humans have managed to cover an extraordinary amount of territory on this earth. Go back 200,000 years, however, and Homo sapiens was only a newly budding species developing in Africa , while perceived ancestors such as Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis had already travelled beyond Africa to explore parts of Eurasia, and sister species like the Neanderthal and Denisovan would traipse around there way before we did, too. Meanwhile, the wake-up calls of Homo floresiensis , found in Indonesia, and Homo naledi from South Africa (which do not seem to fit with previous, more linear models) serve as excellent reminders that the story of human migrations across the prehistoric landscape is far from a simple one.

How, when, and why both fellow Homo species and our own Homo sapiens started moving all over the place is hotly debated. The story of early human migration covers such an immense time span and area that there cannot be but one explanation for all of these groups of adventurous hunter-gatherers going wandering around. Where for some groups a change in climate may have pushed them to seek more hospitable lands, others may have been looking for better food sources, avoiding hostile or competing neighbours, or may have simply been curious risk-takers wanting a change of scenery. This puzzle is further complicated by the fact that only a highly fragmentary fossil record exists (and we do not know exactly how fragmentary it is, or which bits are missing). Recently, the field of genetics has shot to the forefront by analysing ancient DNA, adding to the fossil, climatic, and geological data, so that hopefully we can attempt to piece together a story from all these titbits.

This story will keep changing, however - at least in the details but perhaps even amounting to considerable overhauls - as new bones are dug up, tools are found, and more DNA is studied with increasing accuracy. Here, a basic overview will be provided based on what we think we know right now, alongside a discussion of the possible motivations these many different early humans may have had to migrate away from their homelands, across the far reaches of our globe.

Early transcontinental adventurers

Already millions of years ago, middle and late Miocene hominoids – among which were the ancestors of our species of Homo as well as of the great apes – were present not just in Africa but also in parts of Eurasia. Our own branch developed in Africa, though; the Australopithecines , our supposed ancestors, lived in East and South Africa's grasslands. The earliest Homo to be securely found outside of Africa seems to be Homo erectus around 2 million years ago, and when interpreted in the broad sense (there is some dispute over which fossils should be included within the species) it is seen to have set the bar high, spanning an impressive geographical range indeed.

However, the very tricky to place species of Homo floresiensis (nicknamed 'hobbit'), found at Liang Bua in Indonesia, must be named, too; it may be descendant from a very early (before or not long after Erectus ) and still unknown migration from Africa. Clues are trickling in about migrations of people possibly predating Homo erectus , anyway. By now, five or six sites in Eurasia together span an suggested timeframe of roughly 2,6-2 million years ago, sporting tools made by as of yet unknown species; recent finds at Shangchen in the southern Chinese Loess Plateau, for instance, indicate hominin occupation there that dates back as far as 2,1 million years ago. Palaeoanthropologist John Hawks suspects that 'there were many movements and dispersals from Africa and back into Africa, starting much earlier than 2 million years ago and extending up to the most recent.' (Hawks, 12 July 2018). The main model followed today – that of Erectus being the first globetrotting humans spreading out from Africa across Eurasia – does not seem to account for all the evidence cropping up today. But, seeing that we do not have enough material yet to flesh out a more complex story, Homo erectus must still play a feature role in our story of early human migration.

Popping up in East Africa at sites such as Olduvai Gorge in the Turkana Basin in Kenya, from roughly 1,9 million years ago onwards, Homo erectus is also seen in South and North Africa. They are generally thought to have gone wandering out of Africa by 1,9-1,8 million years ago, travelling through the Middle East and the Caucasus and onwards towards Indonesia and China , which they reached around 1,7-1,6 million years ago. Erectus may even have braved the normally cold north of China in a period with somewhat milder temperatures, as early as roughly 800,000 years ago.

The follow-up crew

Erectus had set the trend for far-reaching early human migration, and their successors would push the boundaries further still. By around 700,000 years ago (and perhaps as early as 780,000 years ago), Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have developed from Homo erectus within Africa. There, different bands made territories within East, South, and North Africa their own. Of course, migration within Africa itself also occurred, in general.

From there on, a particularly energetic group of Homo heidelbergensis spread out all the way through western Eurasia, crossing the major mountain ranges of Europe and making it as far north as England and Germany. This is Ice Age Europe we are talking about, and these humans would have had to flow along with the often-changing climate; they were quite good at coping with the colder conditions of Europe and were able to survive on the southern edge of the subarctic zone, but naturally avoided the actual ice sheets. Evidence from Pakefield and Happisburgh in England, for instance, shows that early humans around 700,000 years ago were indeed able to make it this far north when the climate was more temperate, while they probably edged back into southern refuges during colder stages.

Homo Sapiens Spreads out

Meanwhile, what we call Homo sapiens gradually began to emerge, most likely from Heidelbergensis ancestors within the rich territories of Africa, in either Africa's southern or eastern reaches, by at least 200,000 years ago. Many sites have been found in both these regions that show that early bands of anatomically modern humans successfully lived there. However, they were not alone; the discovery in 2013 CE of Homo naledi in South Africa's Rising Star Cave, whose fossils were dated to between 236,000-335,000 years old, adds more players to the African stage. Already around c. 315,000 years ago, a species with some modern human features but also some archaic ones – possibly making them a precursor to Sapiens , or a related side-branch – lived out at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Northern Africa, too. Genetic evidence furthermore seems to suggest that our modern human ancestors may well have had company from other ancient groups that were related to them in varying degrees. The story of hominin evolution is not one in which single species succeeded each other; it was rather a complex mosaic of different players, many of them likely interbreeding and/or overlapping in terms of timeframe.

From Africa, members of the branch that is related to us modern humans formed migrated away from their homelands and into the Near East, where Homo sapiens burials have been uncovered at the sites of Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel, dated to between 90,000 and a staggering 130,000 years old, respectively. Similarly, the site of Jebel Faya in the United Arab Emirates seems to show through the tools that were found there that Homo sapiens may have migrated here as early as 130,000 years ago, too. Even older migrations are not exactly unlikely, either, as fossils that appear to be Homo sapiens (although some alternatives have been suggested, too) found at Misliya Cave in Israel were recently found and dated to c. 180,000 years ago. Far from there being one, singular big migration of one species to far-flung areas – which does not really make sense if you think about it, anyway – there appear to have been multiple instances of adventurous people moving about.

A recent study has shown that some of these early adventurers made it all the way to the island of Sumatra in western Indonesia between 73,000 and 63,000 years ago; this ties in well with other evidence that hints at humans reaching inner Southeast Asia some time before 60,000 years ago, and then following the retreating glaciers up towards the north. There is even new evidence that places humans in the north of Australia by 65,000 years ago, seemingly also stemming from an early migration.

But which route did they take on this huge trek? Regarding possible ways out of Africa, Egypt is an option, but so is a journey through 'wet' corridors in the Sahara, through East Africa and into the Levant . Once out, we know through genetic research that in this Near Eastern setting, humans met Neanderthals and interbred with them (not for the first time, by the way: physical contact with them dates back to at least 100,000 years ago), after which an offshoot branched off and eventually migrated into Europe around 45,000 years ago.

Within Europe, modern humans probably dispersed rapidly, as hinted at by new evidence for their seemingly early arrival in southern Spain (for instance at Bajondillo Cave, Málaga) c. 43,000 years ago. In such a scenario of consistent and quick spread throughout Europe, the use of coastal corridors may have played a role. Homo sapiens also continued towards the east, though, probably all the way along the coastline, through India and into Southeast Asia, where they may have bumped into the possibly resident Denisovans and interbred with them (it is clear interbreeding happened somewhere, and the most likely location seems to be Southeast Asia).

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All of this apparently happened at record speed; already by 53,000 years ago, descendants of that main wave out of Africa reached the north of Australia, the south taking until around 41,000 years ago. Reaching it was not straightforward, though. Although sea levels were about 100 meters lower than today, there was still a slightly inconvenient amount of water – a stretch of some 70 km – standing in between these early Homo sapiens in Asia and the landmass that included Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. Rather than surviving such an ambitious swim, they probably built boats or rafts to help them on this gutsy crossing.

Meanwhile, within Asia, a migration towards the north of East Asia could have begun around 40,000 years ago, paving the way to the Bering Land Bridge – a happy grassland steppe-covered side effect of the Ice Age, connecting Asia to the Americas. Humans are usually thought to have reached the Americas through this route, by around 15,000 years ago, expanding downwards along the coast or through an ice-free corridor in the interior, but this is far from a closed case. After this, there were some last strongholds that remained human-free for a long time still, such as Hawaii – reached by boat around 100 CE – and New Zealand, which held out until around 1000 CE.

Possible driving forces

The question of why these prehistoric people decided to leave and move somewhere else is a tough nut to crack, especially considering we are looking at a time that predates written sources. Migration is generally seen a result of push and pull factors, though, so that is a place to start. Push factors relate to the circumstances that can make someone's homeland an unpleasant enough place for them to ditch it entirely in favour of something new. With regard to these early human migrations, of course 'no jobs' or 'terrible political circumstances' do not apply; rather, think of stuff like the climate taking a turn for the worse and turning places into huge ovens or freezers where barely anything can live or grow, natural disasters, competition with hostile neighbouring groups, food and other resources running too low to support the amount of people within an area, or the more mobile type of food (herds of herbivores) migrating away.

Pull factors, on the other hand, involve the draw of new possibilities and rewards; basically, the more favourable side of the things mentioned in the 'push' section, such as greener lands with better climates and luscious amounts of food and resources. Of course, this is a bit of a simplification, and it will be hard to track down the exact combination of factors that led to each individual instance of early human migration.

There are some prerequisites for successfully handling migration. It is stressful and dangerous – Homo erectus , for instance, most likely had no idea what they would find when they left Africa – and it challenges a group's resourcefulness and ability to adapt. If you move into a new environment, it helps to have adequate technology to help you tackle it; in this case, tools to successfully hunt and gather the resident animals and plants, or to protect yourself against colder areas via clothing or fire (the latter has been known by humans since probably at least 1,8 million years ago, but was not habitually used until probably between 500,000-400,000 years ago). Inventiveness and cooperation in securing new resources also help.

There was the slight problem of the Sahara standing between Homo sapiens and a possible way out, however. Other climate studies have shown, though, that there were 'wet' or 'green' phases during which more friendly corridors would have opened to form pathways across the Sahara, the timings of which seem to coincide with the major dispersal of humans leaving sub-Saharan Africa (identified wet periods are between roughly 50,000-c. 45,000 years ago and c. 120,000-c. 110,000 years ago). However, a recent study has shown that although the 'wet' phase holds up for Sapiens ' early migration into the Levant and Arabia between roughly 120,000-90,000 years ago, during the time of the main migration (around 55,000 years ago) the Horn of Africa was actually really dry, arid, and a bit colder. This may, then, have helped push the main wave out.

Another instance in which the impact of the climate on early human migration seems to become visible occurs even earlier. Around 870,000 years ago, temperatures dropped, and both North Africa and eastern Europe became a lot more arid than before. This may have caused large herbivores to migrate into southern European refuges, with early humans following hard on their tails. At the same time, the Po Valley in northern Italy first opened up and formed a pathway for possible migration into southern France and beyond. This ties in pretty well with Homo heidelbergensis making its way into Europe. Following herds of large herbivores would have been a good strategy in the challenging process of migration, anyway, and a 2016 CE study suggests Homo erectus may also have done this, while also sticking close to flint deposits and avoiding areas with loads of carnivores, at least early on in their dispersal.

Whatever the exact driving forces or the exact difficulties early humans ran into en route, as time passed adaptability reigned supreme and humans – starting with Homo erectus and culminating in Homo sapiens ' greedy dispersal - spread across the whole wide world.

Blind spots

There are obviously a lot of holes in this story, though, and it cannot hurt to explicitly name some of the blind spots we have to take into consideration at this point in time. As a whole, the dates mentioned above are only our best estimates based on our interpretation of the data we have gathered so far. Some areas in which the story can be fleshed out a lot more if we can get our hands on more evidence are found below.

The Denisovans, for instance, are known to us only through one finger bone and three molars found in a cave in Siberia, and through their DNA (their genome was sequenced in 2010 CE) which seems to imply they ranged from there all the way to Southeast Asia. It is moreover possible that they interbred with an unknown archaic human, which would obviously tell a story of its own. Fossils of these mysterious humans would be very welcome in trying to fill in the picture of their life and their movement. Another enigmatic species is Homo floresiensis ; exactly how and when did they get to the island of Flores (and did they somehow use boats at this very early point in time)? Who were their ancestors? More evidence is required to seal the deal on this.

More evidence is clearly needed before this can overwrite the current story regarding the Americas, but it forms a good example of what could happen to our current image of early human migration as new discoveries are made. We certainly cannot paint a complete and finished picture yet.

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Homo Heidelbergensis

Homo Floresiensis

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Homo Erectus

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Groeneveld, E. (2017, May 15). Early Human Migration . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1070/early-human-migration/

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Groeneveld, Emma. " Early Human Migration ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified May 15, 2017. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1070/early-human-migration/.

Groeneveld, Emma. " Early Human Migration ." World History Encyclopedia . World History Encyclopedia, 15 May 2017. Web. 06 Jul 2024.

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What is a human being?

When did humans evolve, are neanderthals classified as humans.

human evolution

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Humans are culture-bearing  primates classified in the genus  Homo , especially the species  Homo sapiens . They are anatomically similar and related to the great  apes ( orangutans , chimpanzees , bonobos , and gorillas ) but are distinguished by a more highly developed  brain that allows for the capacity for articulate  speech  and abstract reasoning. Humans display a marked erectness of body carriage that frees the hands for use as manipulative members.

The answer to this question is challenging, since paleontologists have only partial information on what happened when. So far, scientists have been unable to detect the sudden “moment” of evolution for any species, but they are able to infer evolutionary signposts that help to frame our understanding of the emergence of humans. Strong evidence supports the branching of the human lineage from the one that produced great apes (orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas) in Africa sometime between 6 and 7 million years ago. Evidence of toolmaking dates to about 3.3 million years ago in Kenya . However, the age of the oldest remains of the genus Homo is younger than this technological milestone, dating to some 2.8–2.75 million years ago in Ethiopia . The oldest known remains of Homo sapiens —a collection of skull fragments, a complete jawbone, and stone tools—date to about 315,000 years ago.

Did humans evolve from apes?

No. Humans are one type of several living species of great apes. Humans evolved alongside orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. All of these share a common ancestor before about 7 million years ago.

Yes. Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ) were archaic humans who emerged at least 200,000 years ago and died out perhaps between 35,000 and 24,000 years ago. They manufactured and used tools (including blades, awls, and sharpening instruments), developed a spoken language , and developed a rich culture that involved hearth construction, traditional medicine , and the burial of their dead. Neanderthals also created art ; evidence shows that some painted with naturally occurring pigments . In the end, Neanderthals were likely replaced by modern humans ( H. sapiens ), but not before some members of these species bred with one another where their ranges overlapped.

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human evolution , the process by which human beings developed on Earth from now-extinct primates . Viewed zoologically, we humans are Homo sapiens , a culture -bearing upright-walking species that lives on the ground and very likely first evolved in Africa about 315,000 years ago. We are now the only living members of what many zoologists refer to as the human tribe, Hominini , but there is abundant fossil evidence to indicate that we were preceded for millions of years by other hominins, such as Ardipithecus , Australopithecus , and other species of Homo , and that our species also lived for a time contemporaneously with at least one other member of our genus , H. neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals ). In addition, we and our predecessors have always shared Earth with other apelike primates, from the modern-day gorilla to the long-extinct Dryopithecus . That we and the extinct hominins are somehow related and that we and the apes , both living and extinct , are also somehow related is accepted by anthropologists and biologists everywhere. Yet the exact nature of our evolutionary relationships has been the subject of debate and investigation since the great British naturalist Charles Darwin published his monumental books On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). Darwin never claimed, as some of his Victorian contemporaries insisted he had, that “man was descended from the apes ,” and modern scientists would view such a statement as a useless simplification—just as they would dismiss any popular notions that a certain extinct species is the “ missing link ” between humans and the apes. There is theoretically, however, a common ancestor that existed millions of years ago. This ancestral species does not constitute a “missing link” along a lineage but rather a node for divergence into separate lineages. This ancient primate has not been identified and may never be known with certainty, because fossil relationships are unclear even within the human lineage, which is more recent. In fact, the human “family tree” may be better described as a “family bush,” within which it is impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens , that experts can agree upon.

(Read T. H. Huxley’s 1875 Britannica essay on evolution & biology.)

The primary resource for detailing the path of human evolution will always be fossil specimens. Certainly, the trove of fossils from Africa and Eurasia indicates that, unlike today, more than one species of our family has lived at the same time for most of human history. The nature of specific fossil specimens and species can be accurately described, as can the location where they were found and the period of time when they lived; but questions of how species lived and why they might have either died out or evolved into other species can only be addressed by formulating scenarios, albeit scientifically informed ones. These scenarios are based on contextual information gleaned from localities where the fossils were collected. In devising such scenarios and filling in the human family bush, researchers must consult a large and diverse array of fossils, and they must also employ refined excavation methods and records, geochemical dating techniques, and data from other specialized fields such as genetics , ecology and paleoecology, and ethology ( animal behaviour )—in short, all the tools of the multidisciplinary science of paleoanthropology .

This article is a discussion of the broad career of the human tribe from its probable beginnings millions of years ago in the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago [mya]) to the development of tool -based and symbolically structured modern human culture only tens of thousands of years ago, during the geologically recent Pleistocene Epoch (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). Particular attention is paid to the fossil evidence for this history and to the principal models of evolution that have gained the most credence in the scientific community . See the article evolution for a full explanation of evolutionary theory, including its main proponents both before and after Darwin, its arousal of both resistance and acceptance in society, and the scientific tools used to investigate the theory and prove its validity.

Human Evolution

Six million years of human evolution.

Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years.

Paleoanthropology is the scientific study of human evolution which investigates the origin of the universal and defining traits of our species. The field involves an understanding of the similarities and differences between humans and other species in their genes, body form, physiology, and behavior. Paleoanthropologists search for the roots of human physical traits and behavior. They seek to discover how evolution has shaped the potentials, tendencies, and limitations of all people.

What Can Human Fossils Tell Us?

Early human fossils and archeological remains offer the most important clues about this ancient past. These remains include bones, tools and any other evidence (such as footprints, evidence of hearths , or butchery marks on animal bones) left by earlier people. Usually, the remains were buried and preserved naturally. They are then found either on the surface (exposed by rain, rivers, and wind erosion) or by digging in the ground. By studying fossilized bones, scientists learn about the physical appearance of earlier humans and how it changed. Bone size, shape, and markings left by muscles tell us how those predecessors moved around, held tools, and how the size of their brains changed over a long time.

Archeological evidence refers to the things earlier people made and the places where scientists find them. By studying this type of evidence, archeologists can understand how early humans made and used  tools and lived in their environments.

Humans and Our Evolutionary Relatives

Humans are primates . Physical and genetic similarities show that the modern human species, Homo sapiens, has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Modern humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa – chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas – share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.

Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The  fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago. They entered Europe somewhat later, between 1.5 million and 1 million years. Species of modern humans populated many parts of the world much later. For instance, people first came to Australia probably within the past 60,000 years and to the Americas within the past 15,000 years or so.

Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans. Scientists do not all agree, however, about how these species are related or which ones simply died out. Many early human species – certainly the majority of them – left no living descendants. Scientists also debate over how to identify and classify particular species of early humans, and about what factors influenced the evolution and extinction of each species.

Human Characteristics

One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism – the ability to walk on two legs – evolved over 4 million years ago. Other important human characteristics – such as a large and complex brain, the ability to make and use tools, and the capacity for language  – developed more recently. Many advanced traits -- including complex symbolic expression, art , and elaborate cultural diversity – emerged mainly during the past 100,000 years. The beginnings of agriculture and the rise of the first civilizations occurred within the past 12,000 years.

Smithsonian Research Into Human Evolution

The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program explores the universal human story at its broadest time scale. Smithsonian anthropologists research many aspects of human evolution around the globe, investigating fundamental questions about our evolutionary past, including the roots of human adaptability.

For example, Paleoanthropologist Dr. Rick Potts – who directs the Human Origins Program – co-directs ongoing research projects in southern and western Kenya and southern and northern China that compare evidence of early human behavior and environments from eastern Africa to eastern Asia. Rick’s work helps us understand the environmental changes that occurred during the times that many of the fundamental characteristics that make us human  - such as making tools and large brains – evolved, and that our ancestors were often able to persist through dramatic climate changes. Rick describes his work in the video Survivors of a Changing Environment .

Dr. Briana Pobiner is a Prehistoric Archaeologist whose research centers on the evolution of human diet (with a focus on meat-eating), but has included topics as diverse as cannibalism in the Cook Islands and chimpanzee carnivory. Her research has helped us understand that at the onset of human carnivory over 2.5 million years ago some of the meat our ancestors ate was scavenged from large carnivores, but by 1.5 million years ago they were getting access to some of the prime, juicy parts of large animal carcasses. She uses techniques similar to modern day forensics for her detective work on early human diets.

Paleoanthropologist Dr. Matt Tocheri conducts research into the evolutionary history and functional morphology of the human and great ape family, the Hominidae. His work on the wrist of Homo floresiensis , the so-called “hobbits” of human evolution discovered in Indonesia, received considerable attention worldwide after it was published in 2007 in the journal Science. He now co-directs research at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia, the site where Homo floresiensis was first discovered.

Geologist Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer has been a long-time collaborator with Rick Potts’ human evolution research at the site of Olorgesailie in southern Kenya. Kay’s role with the research there is to help understand the environments of the sites at which evidence for early humans – in the form of stone tools as well as fossils of the early humans themselves – have been found, by looking at the sediments of the geological layers in which the artifacts and fossils have been excavated.

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Unit 6: Early Humans

About this unit.

Humans are unusual. We walk upright and build cities. We travel from continent to continent in hours. We communicate across the globe in an instant. We alone can build bombs and invent medicines. Why can we do all these things that other creatures can’t? What makes us so different from other species? Investigating how early humans evolved and lived helps us answer these questions. Most people give our big brains all the credit, but that’s only part of the story. To more fully understand our success as a species, we need to look closely at our ancestors and the world they lived in. You’ll learn how foraging humans prospered and formed communities, and you’ll uncover the uniquely human ability to preserve, share, and build upon each other’s ideas to learn collectively.

How Our Ancestors Evolved | 6.0

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• READ: Lucy and the Leakeys (Opens a modal)
• READ: Jane Goodall (Opens a modal)
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• Quiz: How Our Ancestors Evolved 14 questions Practice

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The Life and Times of Early Man

Very early humans probably ate mostly plants, fruit, nuts and roots that they found.  Any meat they got was by scavenging after other animals. Early humans did not have strong claws to help them him fight. They could not outrun saber-toothed tigers or cave lions. Early humans had to get smart to survive. They had to use reason and invention.

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The Stone Age

Handy Man - Stone Age (Stone Tools)

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Cave Paintings

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Early Homo Sapiens

Biological anthropologists place the initial emergence of our species,  Homo sapiens , around 300,000 years ago. In this unit, students will learn about the evolution of our species and read about some of the many questions biological anthropologists are still asking about our ancestors.

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Did Humanity Really Arise in One Place?

• Lay out  the evidence  scientists use to piece together the story of human evolution.
• Explain different hypotheses about why  Homo sapiens  persisted until today and other species in the  Homo  genus went extinct.
• Explore what it means to be human and what distinguishes anatomically modern humans from other related and ancestral species.

Facchini, Fiorenzo. 2006. “Culture, Speciation, and the Genus  Homo in Early Humans.”  Human Evolution  21: 51–57.

Shea, John J. 2011. “ Homo sapiens  Is as  Homo sapiens  Was: Behavioral Variability Versus ‘Behavioral Modernity’ in Paleolithic Archaeology.”  Current Anthropology  52 (1): 1–35.

Tryon, Christian, and Shara Bailey. 2013.“Testing Models of Modern Human Origins With Archaeology and Anatomy.”  Nature Education Knowledge  4 (3): 4.

• What kinds of morphological features differentiate early  Homo sapiens  from other  Homo  species?
• How does the 2020  SAPIENS article by Sara Toth Stub  challenge prior theories about  Homo sapiens ’ migration out of the African continent?
• Have students watch this TED Talk by Zeresenay Alemseged “ The Search for Humanity’s Roots ” and generate a class discussion on why societies invest so much in pursuit of illuminating humanity’s origins.
• In class or through individual work, have students carefully explore the Smithsonian Institution’s interactive on the  Human Family Tree .

Article: SAPIENS’ “ How Eating Rat Stew Serves Hobbit Research ”

Article: SAPIENS’ “ Were Neanderthals More Than Cousins to  Homo Sapiens ? ”

TED Talk: Svante Pääbo’s “ DNA Clues to Our Inner Neanderthal ”

TED Talk: Robert Sapolsky’s “ The Uniqueness of Humans ”

Eshe Lewis (2020)

Human Genetic Variation

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Hominids and Stages of Human Evolution Essay

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Evolution theory explains the change in the human species’ characteristics over generations based on archeological evidence. The cultural behaviors of early hominids are altered with the changes in physical features. Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecines, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo Neanderthal are stages of human evolution with distinct physical appearances and behavior. Earlier, man’s biological and cultural characteristics evolved gradually in response to different environmental factors.

Ardipithecus ramidus is the initial genus of Hominidae that possesses ape-like biological and cultural features. Ardipithecus had rigid pelvis and hind and front limbs implying full bipedal characteristics (Bala, 2020). Ardipithecus displayed a small endocrinal brain capacity (300 to 350 cm3) relative to the body size. These primates were most likely omnivores, suggesting they were hunters and gatherers with a generalized diet of plants, fruits, and meat (Haviland et al., 2015). Similar to other early hominids, Ardipithecus lived in groups in the woods, signified by the tree-climbing skills displayed by their strong limbs.

Australopithecines or Australopithecus had close physical and cultural characteristics with Ardipithecus ramidus. Australopithecus had ape-like physical appearance but bipedal features and small cerebrums (Haviland et al., 2015). At the same time, Australopithecines had smaller canine teeth and massive check jaws, suggesting they were omnivores (Anderson & Tornberg, 2019). The pelvis, limbs, jaws, and teeth of Australopithecus closely resemble humans, but their brain capacity is relatively small (430 cubic centimeters). Australopithecus used tools similar to modern apes, such as sticks and twigs that could effortlessly be redesigned.

Homo habilis was a more advanced human genus than the primitive Australopithecus, exhibited by physical and cultural characteristics. According to Galway-Witham (2019), Homo habilis had a relatively high cranial capacity (500 to 800 cubic centimeters). The foot and hand bones were more human-like, with the ability to manipulate objects hence the name “handy man” (Bala, 2020). The molars and premolars of Homo habilis were comparatively smaller than Ardipithecus and Australopithecus . Homo habilis predominantly lived in grassland environments and could make stone tools such as choppers, scrapers, and flakes, often called Oldowan stone tools.

Homo erectus, identified as “upright man,” exhibited close biological and cultural characteristics to humans. Their body size and shape were identical to humans, although their hips were much broader and more muscular. They had shorter arms with longer legs and could stand upright (Anderson & Tornberg, 2019). Homo erectus skull and teeth were smaller than earlier hominids, although omnivores. The upright man mastered the use of fire and stone to make tools such as knives and scrappers (Galway-Witham, 2019). Homo erectus had a larger brain size than Homo habilis (about 950 cubic centimeters) and could use perishable wood materials and grass to make ropes and strings. Homo erectus were active hunters that did not grow crops but could feed on wild fruits.

Homo Neanderthal is the most recent species of evolution that had analogous features with humans. Neanderthals had an extended lower skull with an enormous nose and a protruded facial shape. With large bones, they were stronger and more muscular than modern humans (Galway-Witham, 2019). Neanderthals made complex tools from stones that they used in scavenging plantations and hunting. They had a significantly higher brain volume of 11,000 low temperatures by using fire to cook, warm their bodies, and protect themselves from wild animals. (Haviland et al., 2015). Culturally, Homo Neanderthals buried the dead and knew how to use fire to make advanced stone technology.

Andersson, C., & Törnberg, P. (2019). Toward a macroevolutionary theory of human evolution: The social protocell. Biological Theory , 14 (2), 86-102.

Bala, S. (2020). Human evolution: insignificant ape to an intelligent designer. International Journal of Advanced Research in Biological Sciences , 7 (12), 6-14. Web.

Galway‐Witham, J., Cole, J., & Stringer, C. (2019). Aspects of human physical and behavioral evolution during the last 1 million years . Journal of Quaternary Science , 34 (6), 355-378.

Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., & McBride, B. (2015). The essence of anthropology . Cengage Learning.

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IvyPanda. (2023, February 18). Hominids and Stages of Human Evolution. https://ivypanda.com/essays/hominids-and-stages-of-human-evolution/

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IvyPanda . 2023. "Hominids and Stages of Human Evolution." February 18, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/hominids-and-stages-of-human-evolution/.

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Early Human Essay for Children | Early Man Lifestyle | History

December 2, 2017 by Study Mentor Leave a Comment

Man has developed from prehistoric ages from an ape like creature to what he is now. From fours he started walking on twos. From stooping on the ground he started to stand up on his legs. He learnt to walk run hunt and cook.

Man’s evolution came about in certain phases. It wasn’t done in a jiffy. But it came about in a very slow and gradual phase.

Before, man used to live on trees like apes. They had a huge head and a smaller brain. His senses weren’t that developed that time. His only means of survive was to eat the wild berries and fruits that grew on trees. He was a prey that time and not a predator, since he did not know any hunting skills. He was preyed on like other monkeys and apes. His body was full of hair and he had a tail also.

As time passed man came down from the trees to the land. He started residing in caves and niches in mountains. The hair quantity in his body reduced.

Then man developed tools. This brought a major change in his life. He learnt the art of hunting. He learnt how to make sharp object by rubbing two objects with each other. With tools now he could build temporary sheds and hunt animals at close proximity.

Another change that came with tools was that he started walking on twos instead of all fours. Yes! Man started using his lower limbs. But his walk wasn’t this upright and straight as it is now. It was more like how gorillas look when they walk on their feet; slightly humped in front and the movement is from side to side.

While rubbing two stones to sharpen them man made another accidental discovery that is fire. Till then fire was a matter of mystery, something fearful, and something unknown. Something, that cannot be under control. It was an act of nature. But when man learnt this new trick he could produce fire at his will by rubbing two stones or two twigs together. He became the master of fire.

The size of his brain increased considerably. He stood more upright. With fire at control there came many advantages. He could now have cooked food (before man used to devour raw flesh) hence it enhanced his taste buds. He can now light up dark caves and stay up late in the night. Also now they have this instrument to protect themselves from wild animals. They can also keep themselves warm in winters. From a herbivore he became an omnivore.

By this time he had learnt to tame animals. He started taming animals of domestic behavior. Man started living in groups. From a nomadic nature he started having a family. From a collection of different families it soon turned into a prehistoric village.

Man shifted from the caves to the open land. He built himself huts. Separate huts for separate families. Man learnt that the soil near the river is most fertile and there is also an easy availability of water. Villages started coming up along the banks of the water sources.

Man started producing food instead of just eating the wild fruits. The very first grains to be cultivated are still unknown because at that time trees also hadn’t undergone much evolution and there were a lot more different species of trees. So the main diet of man comprised of wild fruits, berries, meat, milk from the animals he domesticated and the grains that he grew.

He started practicing shifting agriculture that is suppose they settled in an area and cleared the forest cover there and started their agriculture there. But after some years the soil will lose its fertility, then again the people will shift to a new area, make a new clearing and start cultivating again, and leave the earlier patch to regenerate itself.

The third breakthrough came with the discovery of wheels. Man saw wooden logs of trees to roll down easily from a hill top. This gave him the idea of making wheels. He tied his domesticated animals to the wheels and used them to pull the wheels. This gave him the basic idea of making a cart. Early carts were very different from us though.

Nothing much is known about the language of early man at those times. Scientists say they didn’t have a proper context or verbal sentences. Instead they had calls like animals. He used to communicate or call each other through specific set of music, shrieks, cries or calls. They had separate calls for expressing joy , sorrow or giving signals for any danger lurking nearby.

Man started using different materials for building his home- like straw, wood, mud, bamboo and wood. With the advent of fire and wood man made another discovery that changed the pace of time. He discovered metals. He discovered ores from which metals can be formed. The very first metal to be discovered was copper.

Man can now store food. Before he used to store milk in earthen pots or skins of animals hence the food got easily wasted. But with copper utensils now he can store food easily for days. Food production became super functional. Man started producing food more than he needed. This gave him the idea of trade. He traded his grains for cattle or new weapons and utensils.

Such is the journey of man. This by and by gave rise to huge and renowned civilizations which shaped our future-like the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Indus valley and many more. What we are now is because of them

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human origins

Introduction.

Modern humans evolved in stages from a series of ancestors, including several earlier forms of humans. The bodies of these ancestors changed over time. In general, their brains became larger. The jaws and teeth became smaller. Human ancestors also began walking upright on two feet and using tools. As they did, the shape of their legs, feet, hands, and other body parts changed.

Apes and Humans

Humans did not evolve from apes . Instead, modern humans and apes both developed from the same apelike ancestor. The ancestors of humans became separate from the ancestors of apes between about 8 million and 5 million years ago. After that each group developed on its own.

Modern humans and apes are still closely related. In fact, most scientists consider humans and great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans—to belong to the same scientific family. But there are many important differences between humans and apes. For this reason scientists have divided the family into smaller groups. Orangutans belong to a group called Ponginae. Gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos belong to a group called the Gorillini tribe. Humans belong to the Hominini tribe. The term hominin refers to humans and all their ancestors from the time they began developing separately from those of apes.

Today only one species, or type, of hominin exists—modern humans. In the past, two or more species of hominin often lived at the same time. Scientists do not always agree about which species are the direct ancestors of other species. But all hominins are closely related.

Australopithecines

Some of the earliest hominins are known as australopithecines. There were several different species of this group. Fossils show that they lived in Africa from roughly 4 million to 2.5 million years ago. One of the most famous such fossils is “Lucy”—a partial skeleton found in Ethiopia. These bones are about 3 million years old.

The australopithecines had some apelike features. For instance, their brains were much smaller than modern human brains. They could also climb trees easily. But, like humans, they walked on two feet. Scientists know this from studying leg, knee, foot, and pelvis fossils. In addition, they found a set of footprints preserved in the ground in Tanzania.

Early forms of humans first existed more than 2 million years ago. All species of humans belong to a scientific group within the hominin tribe called Homo. The scientific names of all human species begin with the word Homo , which means “man.” These early humans had larger brains and mostly smaller teeth and jaws than the australopithecines. Their behavior was probably also more like that of modern humans. For instance, an early human species called Homo habilis used stone tools to butcher animals. Later human species included Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis . Scientists believe that these humans used fire to cook food.

The humans called Neanderthals were alive for part of the same time as modern humans. The Neanderthals died out about 28,000 years ago. They were closely related to modern humans. But most scientists think that these humans were not the direct ancestors of modern humans.

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How Did Humans Evolve?

By: Becky Little

Updated: October 4, 2023 | Original: March 5, 2020

The first humans emerged in Africa around two million years ago, long before the modern humans known as Homo sapiens appeared on the same continent.

There’s a lot anthropologists still don’t know about how different groups of humans interacted and mated with each other over this long stretch of prehistory. Thanks to new archaeological and genealogical research, they’re starting to fill in some of the blanks.

The First Humans

First things first: A “human” is anyone who belongs to the genus Homo (Latin for “man”). Scientists still don’t know exactly when or how the first humans evolved, but they’ve identified a few of the oldest ones.

One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis , or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa. Others include Homo rudolfensis , who lived in Eastern Africa about 1.9 million to 1.8 million years ago (its name comes from its discovery in East Rudolph, Kenya); and Homo erectus , the “upright man” who ranged from Southern Africa all the way to modern-day China and Indonesia from about 1.89 million to 110,000 years ago.

In addition to these early humans, researchers have found evidence of an unknown “superarchaic” group that separated from other humans in Africa around two million years ago. These superarchaic humans mated with the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans , according to a paper published in Science Advances in February 2020. This marks the earliest known instance of human groups mating with each other—something we know happened a lot more later on.

Early Humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans Mixed It Up

After the superarchaic humans came the archaic ones: Neanderthals, Denisovans and other human groups that no longer exist.

Archaeologists have known about Neanderthals, or Homo neanderthalensis , since the 19th century, but only discovered Denisovans in 2008 (the group is so new it doesn’t have a scientific name yet). Since then, researchers have discovered Neanderthals and Denisovans not only mated with each other, they also mated with modern humans.

“When the Max Plank Institute [for Evolutionary Anthropology] began getting nuclear DNA sequenced data from Neanderthals, then it became very clear very quickly that modern humans carried some Neanderthal DNA ,” says Alan R. Rogers , a professor of anthropology and biology at the University of Utah and lead author of the Science Advances paper. “That was a real turning point… It became widely accepted very quickly after that.”

As a more recently-discovered group, we have far less information on Denisovans than Neanderthals. But archaeologists have found evidence that they lived and mated with Neanderthals in Siberia for around 100,000 years. The most direct evidence of this is the recent discovery of a 13-year-old girl who lived in a cave about 90,000 years ago. DNA analysis revealed that her mother was a Neanderthal and her father was a Denisovan.

Human Evolution Was Messy

Scientists are still figuring out when all this inter-group mating took place. Modern humans may have mated with Neanderthals after migrating out of Africa and into Europe and Asia around 70,000 years ago. Apparently, this was no one-night stand — research suggests there were multiple encounters between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Less is known about the Denisovans and their movements, but research suggests modern humans mated with them in Asia and Australia between 50,000 and 15,000 years ago.

Until recently, some researchers assumed people of African descent didn’t have Neanderthal ancestry because their predecessors didn’t leave Africa to meet the Neanderthals in Europe and Asia. But in January 2020, a paper in Cell upended that narrative by reporting that modern populations across Africa also carry a significant amount of Neanderthal DNA. Researchers suggest this could be the result of modern humans migrating back into Africa over the past 20,000 years after mating with Neanderthals in Europe and Asia.

Given these types of discoveries, it may be better to think about human evolution as a “braided stream,” rather than a “classical tree of evolution,” says Andrew C. Sorensen , a postdoctoral researcher in archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Although the majority of modern humans’ DNA still comes from a group that developed in Africa (Neanderthal and Deniosovan DNA accounts for only a small percentage of our genes), new discoveries about inter-group mating have complicated our view of human evolution.

“It seems like the more DNA evidence that we get—every question that gets answered, five more pop up,” he says. “So it’s a bit of an evolutionary wack-a-mole.”

Early Human Ancestors Shared Skills

Human groups that encountered each other probably swapped more than just genes, too. Neanderthals living in modern-day France roughly 50,000 years ago knew how to start a fire , according to a 2018 Nature paper on which Sorensen was the lead author. Fire-starting is a key skill that different human groups could have passed along to each other—possibly even one that Neanderthals taught to some modern humans.

“These early human groups, they really got around,” Sorensen says. “These people just move around so much that it’s very difficult to tease out these relationships.” 

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Human evolution evidence.

Evidence of Evolution

Scientists have discovered a wealth of evidence concerning human evolution, and this evidence comes in many forms. Thousands of human fossils enable researchers and students to study the changes that occurred in brain and body size, locomotion, diet, and other aspects regarding the way of life of early human species over the past 6 million years. Millions of stone tools, figurines and paintings, footprints, and other traces of human behavior in the prehistoric record tell about where and how early humans lived and when certain technological innovations were invented. Study of human genetics show how closely related we are to other primates – in fact, how connected we are with all other organisms – and can indicate the prehistoric migrations of our species, Homo sapiens , all over the world. Advances in the dating of fossils and artifacts help determine the age of those remains, which contributes to the big picture of when different milestones in becoming human evolved.

Exciting scientific discoveries continually add to the broader and deeper public knowledge of human evolution. Find out about the latest evidence in our What’s Hot in Human Origins section.

Explore the evidence of early human behavior—from ancient footprints to stone tools and the earliest symbols and art – along with similarities and differences in the behavior of other primate species.

Human Fossils

From skeletons to teeth, early human fossils have been found of more than 6,000 individuals. Look into our digital 3-D collection and learn about fossil human species.

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Our genes offer evidence of how closely we are related to one another – and of our species’ connection with all other organisms.

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The human family tree shows the various species that constitute the human evolutionary family.

Snapshots in Time

In these video interactives, put together clues and explore discoveries the prehistoric sites of Swartkrans, South Africa, Olorgesailie, Kenya, and  Shanidar Cave, Iraq.

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History Cooperative

Early Humans

Recent discoveries have provided much new information on the emergence and spread of modern humans.[1] Scholars in the field of genetics have established that Homo sapiens originated in Africa in about 200,000 B.P., and that our species subsequently displaced all previous hominid species. Recent results in paleontology have gone far toward confirming these views.[2] Further, while only a few scholars with degrees in history have undertaken analysis of the earliest human migrations, the comprehensive methodological approach associated with world history has been important in developing new insights into early human history.[3] That is, geneticists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and earth scientists have tended increasingly to overcome the parochialism of their disciplines, linking and comparing various sorts of evidence. Taken together, scholars from these disciplines have begun to meet on the terrain of world history to revolutionize our understanding of the early life of Homo sapiens.

Yet there remain major gaps in our understanding of human expansion. While it is accepted that all humanity came “out of Africa,” there remain disputes on the path and timing of migration from Africa to other regions. The maps and descriptions of early human migration tend to neglect migrations within Africa and include arrows suggesting a general dispersion of migrants from Africa in several directions.[4] Disciplinary parochialism reasserts itself from time to time: for instance, geneticists have not yet worked sufficiently to link their results to results from other fields of study or to develop alternative models within genetics that may yield different interpretations.[5]

READ MORE: 16 Oldest Ancient Civilization

Information from another field of study—linguistics—has the potential to clarify the paths of early human migration. This article argues that evidence on language classification can and should be used systematically in interpreting early human migrations.[6] In it I apply techniques for analyzing language-group distributions that have led successfully to reconstructing Indo-European, Bantu, and Austronesian expansions of the past four thousand to eight thousand years. I combine these techniques with the argument that they may appropriately be applied to earlier times. This is not the first application of linguistic data to the interpretation of human dispersal, though I argue that this interpretation is distinct in its conclusions and more systematic in its approach than previous interpretations.[7]

My narrative of early human migration begins with the movement of the densest human populations from equatorial East Africa to the northern savannas of Africa. It proceeds then to trace waterborne migration across the mouth of the Red Sea to South Arabia, then eastward along the shores of the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, and later across the oceanic straits to Australia and New Guinea, all by about 50,000 B.P. Thereafter, the analysis considers four possible routes by which humans might have moved from the tropics into temperate zones of Eurasia, and concludes that the easternmost route, along the eastern coast of Asia, is attested most clearly by linguistic evidence. As I argue, this movement into temperate regions took place from about 45,000 to 30,000 years ago; it included the human occupation of Europe and the displacement of its preexisting Neanderthal population. Further, I argue that this same wave of migration continued north of the Pacific and to the Americas, also in the period before the great Ice Age beginning 30,000 B.P. Thereafter, the initial populations in each major world region continued to differentiate into subgroups. Thus, well before the beginnings of agriculture about 15,000 B.P., the populations of the various world regions had settled into place, and the languages of their descendants give us strong evidence of their ancestral migrations.

As will be shown, linguistic data are central to the details of this interpretation. Why have language data not been used more in interpretations of early human history? Language may provide substantial information on early migrations, but linguistics is a field riven with controversy. Conflicting priorities in language classification leave us with contradictory classifications of the world’s languages: do languages reveal a global pattern or are the patterns restricted to localities? In part, the current contradictions in linguistic interpretations echo those of recent years in genetics and paleontology. But while both geneticists and paleontologists carried on vigorous debates until each field had confirmed a widely accepted interpretation of the data—one that confirmed the “out of Africa” vision of human origins and dispersal—historical linguists have chosen not to give priority either to resolving their classificatory differences or to developing broad interpretations of human migration. In a second area of dispute, while some linguists think that language data provide important indications on human origins and dispersal, others argue that linguistic data give no information at all for times more than 10,000 years ago.[8]

The next section of this article demonstrates the differences among linguists on the classification of languages. It shows why I have accepted the view that virtually all the languages of the world may be classified into twelve phyla, each with a time depth of more than 20,000 years, in contrast to views arguing, for instance, that there are over one hundred separate language families, no one of which may be traced back further than 10,000 years. The third section of the article summarizes the methodology I use to propose interpretations of early human migration: analyzing data on language classification and using a world-historical approach of combining language data with other data from other fields. The two final sections apply this global combination of methods to address, chronologically, the tropical migration of humans from Africa to the Pacific in the era from about 80,000 to 50,000 B.P. and then the human occupation of the temperate Old World and the Americas from about 40,000 to 30,000 B.P.

Classification of Languages: Debates on Linkage and Time Frame

Evidence from historical linguistics has been central to resolving puzzles about the origins and migrations of several populations. The most fundamental example is that of speakers of Indo-European languages. While disputes continue about the precise location and especially the timing of Indo-European origins, the linguistic data affirm that the homeland must be near to the Black Sea, and other data support this conclusion. For the Austronesian languages—spoken throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific and in Madagascar—analysis has shown that the languages originated in coastal south China (where they are no longer spoken) and that speakers migrated to Taiwan and then migrated by stages to wider regions. In the most controversial and most definitively resolved instance, the Bantu languages—spoken throughout central, eastern, and southern Africa—are shown conclusively to have originated in southeastern Nigeria, where their nearest neighbor languages are spoken.[9] Despite the success of these analyses, world historians have not found it easy to address linguistic data globally. The obstacle is that the inconsistency of language classification has impeded historians from using language data on a world-historical level. While language classification has led to successful historical analysis at the regional levels identified above, it has been difficult to utilize language data for global comparisons because the language units currently in favor in various parts of the world are inconsistently defined.

What is the best summary of current knowledge on classification of languages? The nineteenth-century work of Franz Bopp in classifying the Indo-European family of languages set the standard for more than a century of language classification worldwide.[10] The basic principle is that of “genetic” linguistic evolution: any given language may give birth to several “daughter” languages through gradual change in both lexicon and grammar. Detailed empirical analyses of lexicon and grammar in various languages are conducted to identify the patterns of such change and should enable partial reconstruction of ancestral languages. While linguists accept this principle, they disagree on the priorities in its implementation. Some analyze two or three languages at a time; others analyze larger numbers. Some linguists set the very exacting standard of creating a completely reconstructed system of sound changes between any two languages before confirming a genetic relationship between the languages.[11]

Linguists accept in general the existence of large-scale linguistic phyla. Linguistic phyla or super-families are classifications including all languages that can be demonstrated to have genetic relationships with each other. While the genetic logic of language evolution makes inevitable the postulation of phyla, many claim that that it is practically impossible to identify phyla, again because of the difficulty of identifying complete systems of sound changes.

Thus, despite the apparent clarity of principles that ought to yield consistent classification of the world’s languages and interpretation of their migratory history, it is easy to demonstrate the inconsistency of the currently prevailing language classifications. The appendix on which it is based summarize roughly one hundred language families of the world as they are identified on the Ethnologue Web site, an authoritative summary of the current classifications of linguists. I have organized the families to show that they reflect three competing but coexisting categories of breadth in language classification. The numbers of languages in each family and the indentation of terms in the table help to identify the divergences among linguists on classification of languages. These categories distinguish the approaches to classification, favoring the identification of small groupings, larger groupings, and phyla; contested language groupings are identified in parentheses. Category 1 contains eight major language groups (all but two of them with seventy-five or more languages), whose existence is accepted by virtually all linguists. (Some call these groups phyla and others call them families.) In Category 2, there are twenty-two major language groups (all but four of them with ten or more languages) whose existence is accepted by virtually all linguists; the dispute is that some linguists see these families as subphyla of the phyla listed below each group of families, while others treat these families as independent of each other, and contest the existence of the encompassing phyla. Category 3 contains seventy-three groups (nearly fifty of them with fewer than ten languages each) and a total of roughly 950 languages. Those who accept phyla in general recognize an encompassing Amerind phylum with 950 languages, and identify six subphyla within it.[12] Most linguists who specialize in these languages claim that few linkages can be established among the seventy-three groups.

There exists no “consensus” view of human language classification. Rather, there is what might be called an “armed truce” of localized camps, each armed with a different approach. Overall, those who accept the practicability of identifying phyla see human languages as consisting of about twelve phyla of roughly parallel extent.[13] Those who deny the practical knowability of phyla, especially specialists in Amerindian languages, see a patchwork of languages with little overall pattern.[14] Others fall between these limits. The encyclopedias of linguistics, rather than sharpening these differences, speak vaguely of language “families” and include a mix of both points of view.[15] In the remainder of this article I assume that the best summary of existing knowledge on language classification is that there exist twelve phyla.

How far back in time can major language groups be traced? I argue, along with some linguists, that present linguistic phyla have existed for at least twenty thousand years and in some cases as much as eighty thousand years. More commonly, linguists argue that present linguistic families or phyla can be traced back no more than 10,000 years and thus are of relevance to the study of human migrations only in the past ten thousand years. Many historical linguists, knowing the relatively rapid rate at which much vocabulary changes, accept the view that the ancestors of today’s languages would be different beyond recognition if one tried to trace them back beyond 10,000 years ago. Even those who accept the existence of language phyla have been daunted by the limitations of “glottochronology.” This early attempt to estimate the absolute dates for separation of languages sought to apply a linear model at too large a scale.[16] For a standard list of some two hundred words , one assumed a constant rate of change in words over time, so that in comparing any two languages, the percentage of cognates shared by the two gave an indication of the time of their separation. This procedure, which in any case was considered to be applicable to changes only for the last several thousand years, rapidly became controversial, and its use declined, both because of the difficulties in agreeing on cognates and because it became clear that the rate of change in words was not constant over time.[17]

A different approach to language history, based on tree diagrams of the genetic relationships within a language family, is clearer in presenting the case that language phyla represent communities of great age. Portions of the family tree for two thoroughly studied groups of languages: the Bantu languages within the Niger-Congo phylum and the Polynesian languages within the Austronesian family. The Bantu languages are about five hundred languages distributed across central, eastern, and southern Africa, and their origin has been traced back to about 4,000 years ago; the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages are more than two hundred languages of the Pacific, including the Polynesian languages, and their origin is traced by archaeological remains to at least 2,500 years ago. As indicated in the table (based on the Ethnologue Web site), the work of classification has identified some six previous branches in Niger-Congo languages before the development of Bantu; similar work has identified some five previous branches in Austronesian before the development of Central-Eastern Oceanic.[18] If the previous branches took anywhere near the same amount of time to develop as the last grouping listed has existed (that is, two thousand to four thousand years for each branching), then it is clearly implied that the ancestors of all the Austronesian speakers or all the Niger-Congo speakers have been traced to a time well before 10,000 B.P.

A larger-scale case for the deep historical depth of language groups lies in the languages of Australia and New Guinea. The languages of Australia and the Indo-Pacific phylum centered in New Guinea appear to have come into existence with the settlement of these regions some 50,000 years ago—they were the only language groups spoken in those regions until the recent arrival of Austronesian speakers.[19] If these two phyla remain identifiable after so many years of language change, then other phyla may represent a similar time depth. Of course the tasks of determining the chronological depth of the various language phyla or groupings will be difficult, and our methods are very crude so far. Thousands of individual languages have been lost in recent times, and more were lost in earlier times. Sometimes the disappearance of a language resulted from the populations dying out, but more commonly it resulted from the populations adopting other languages.20 Nevertheless, I believe that linguistic analysis, linked to studies of archaeology and genetics, will confirm the longevity of language phyla and the consistency of language data with other evidence on early humans.[21]

READ MORE: How Long Have Humans Existed?

The conflicting summaries of language data leave historians with a major dilemma. First, if one recognizes phyla as having great time depth, then language data appear to confirm and strengthen interpretations of early human migration based on genetic and archaeological data, as I argue below. Second, if we interpret human migration through a hundred independent language families that can be traced back no more than five thousand to ten thousand years, we would conclude that there had been many tiny populations in the Americas, moving only small distances, while Eurasia and especially Africa had large-scale population expansions. Third, if we rely on the same hundred language families but assume they are relevant for earlier times, we might conclude that the Americas were the ancestral human homeland, and that Eurasia had been settled from the Americas, since there was greater differentiation of language and population in the Americas than elsewhere. By the same logic, New Guinea and Southeast Asia would be seen as a center from which population expanded.[22] Yet a fourth approach would be to conclude that language data are not relevant to long-term studies of migration, and this in practice is the approach that has prevailed until now.

How did this interpretive confusion arise? Linguists are divided very unequally among the languages they study, and the process of classification has been slow. There are many issues to address in the study of language, and linguists are interested more in current than historical language. Classification studies have been relatively marginal, as linguists have concentrated more fully on grammatical and lexical characteristics of individual languages. Glottochronology, the statistical analysis of language change, ran into early obstacles and has remained limited by them. These are not trivial problems, but there may be ways to solve them other than giving up and concluding that the history of languages cannot be reconstructed beyond that of localized groups in recent times. At a time when such rapid strides are being made in early human history, historians have an interest in learning everything possible from the analysis of language. While it will take the work of linguists themselves to sort out the contradictions in their analysis, the encouragement of historians and the perspective of global interpretation may be helpful in clarifying the historical interpretation of language. It may be useful to remember the experience of Alfred Wegener, whose early insights on continental drift were long ignored, but helped nonetheless to elucidate the very specific mechanisms of plate tectonics that are now known to sustain global geographic patterns.[23]

Data and Assumptions in Analyzing Early Human Migration

Language phyla and “tree models”.

My analysis of language classifications relies most fundamentally on the research of the late Joseph E. Greenberg. Greenberg did more than anyone else to assemble a coherent and balanced picture of the main groupings of human languages. Over a long career, he classified the languages of Africa, the Americas, much of Eurasia, and parts of the Pacific.[24] Greenberg also wrote extensively on the methodology of language classification; such classification began with the work of Sir William Jones, who in a 1786 book on Sanskrit suggested that it might be related to Greek, Latin, and Persian. In 1816, the German philologist Franz Bopp published the first comparative grammar on what became known as the Indo-European languages and expanded it in later editions. Indeed, Greenberg explicitly invoked the heritage of Bopp’s comparative methodology in defense of his approach to language classification.[25]

The basic data are presented, which shows the approximate geographic distribution, in the year 1500, of twelve language phyla into which virtually all of the world’s many thousands of languages surviving at that time can be classified.[26] These twelve groups represent (for those linguists who accept that large groupings of languages can feasibly be reconstructed) a rough summary of current knowledge. Of the twelve phyla, the Dene-Caucasian (including Sino-Tibetan) and Eurasiatic language groups had the largest number of speakers; the Niger-Congo and Austric groups had the largest number of languages.[27]

Greenberg’s classifications—of four African language phyla, plus Amerind, Indo-Pacific, and Eurasiatic—each encountered substantial debate, though a firm consensus has developed on modified versions of his four African phyla.[28] Overall, the full range of Greenberg’s classificatory work reveals the consistency in the pattern of ancestry and differentiation in human languages.[29] Details of classification within phyla are likely to change with further research, and links among phyla are likely to be discovered, but the overall classification of human languages will almost certainly remain within the boundaries summarized here. Following the tradition of Indo-Europeanists, Greenberg used a tree-model approach in structuring his proposed language groups. Working with existing languages to identify their relationship through the closeness of their grammatical patterns and the proportion of their cognate words, he assembled languages with a common ancestor, and then assembled the ancestral languages to postulate a more distant ancestor, and so forth. Greenberg modeled his proposed trees on the implicit assumption of a simultaneous separation of daughters from parent languages in each generation; subsequent scholars in African languages have modified this model with closer analysis and have proposed the sequence of separations within each “generation.”[30]

Geographic Homeland: The “Least Moves” Principle

Identifying the homeland for a dispersed population is a key task in analysis of early migrations. The full determination and verification of the points of origin and the paths of movement of populations and their languages are complex and require the assembly of expertise drawn from many fields.[31] The most important single element in identifying the homelands from which languages spread, however, is the mapping of language subgroups. For this reason, through simple application of the “least moves” principle, a layperson can make quick and remarkably valuable estimates of the points of origin and direction of migration of past populations. Only two sorts of information are required, and both of these are provided by linguists in many cases: (1) a genetic classification of related languages, distinguishing the broader groupings of languages for earlier times from the narrower groupings of more closely related languages for more recent times; and (2) a map showing the locations of populations speaking these same languages and groups of languages.[32]

Let us take the example of speakers of the Portuguese language. Where was the homeland from which their ancestors came? Linguists have classified Portuguese as a Romance language, and have identified the major other Romance languages as Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian. To estimate the homeland for the ancestor to Romance languages: (1) on the map, locate and mark the point that is the geographical center for each Romance language; and (2) locate the point that minimizes the total distance from it to each of these points. Thus, if we placed points at the geographic center of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Romania , then our estimate of the point of origin for the whole language group would be somewhere in northwestern Italy. This is the point from which the total length of the lines drawn to each of the language centers would be minimized. In fact, it gives a pretty good representation of the fact that Latin-speaking Romans, especially from the northern half of Italy, colonized all of these areas more than 2,000 years ago and launched the process leading to the languages of today.

This statement of the principle of least moves is highly simplified and in this presentation has left out a great deal of available information. For instance, there were many more Romance languages than the five I listed, and the others were clustered in the area around the homeland.[33] Further, the center of origin for Portuguese (or any of the other languages) can be located more precisely by accounting for the various dialects within the language; there are huge populations speaking Portuguese, Spanish, and French outside of Europe (though these are known to have grown up in recent centuries), and so forth. Nonetheless, this simple least-moves approach enables the lay reader to participate actively in the interpretation of past human migrations through study of evidence on language classification.[34]

We can trace the ancestry of Portuguese language to an earlier stage, since Romance languages are one of the categories in the Indo-European language family. The distribution of Romance and the other ten known subgroups of Indo-European languages.[35] As shown on Map 3, the least-moves estimate for the Indo-European homeland is near the shores of the Black Sea.[36] The language evidence does not lead to a straightforward estimate of the time of Indo-European origins. In fact, linguists and archaeologists have debated fiercely the question of the location of the Indo-European homeland and also the timing of Indo-European origins.[37] But our simple least-moves estimate is sufficient to get us into the thick of the argument—it is precisely one of the main areas proposed by scholars as the Indo-European homeland and is definitely within a thousand kilometers of any of the candidates for the homeland. In short, through this method ancient homelands can be picked out of contemporary language distributions with some confidence.

Continuing back into the deeper past, we may ask whether Indo-European was part of a broader and earlier grouping of languages. Indeed, the answer is yes, and the most authoritative description is that of Joseph Greenberg, who identified the super-family of languages he labeled as Eurasiatic. The Eurasiatic super-family comprises seven major families of languages of Eurasia and the Arctic, of which the Indo-European languages are but one. As I will show, the least-moves estimate of the Eurasiatic homeland is near the Pacific coast of north Asia.

World-Historical Linkage of Data

For a world-historical approach to the issue of early human migration, the analyst should pose the issue at broad scope (preferably planetary), consider both long-term and short-term relationships, incorporate data from a wide range of disciplines, and utilize a range of methods. The geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza pioneered the linkage of different sorts of data—genetic, paleontological, and linguistic—in projecting the spread and differentiation of human populations. He has published “tree” diagrams showing estimates of the genetic distance of human populations of today, has compared them to tree diagrams of language groups of human populations of today, and has included measures of bodily characteristics of human populations.[38]

While the combination of many sorts of data enables a more comprehensive analysis, it also has its difficulties. Each type of data has its own logic. For language, genetic composition, and physical type, we assume that present data indicate the remnants of earlier communities.[39] But the definition of “earlier community” is different for each type of data, so the tree diagrams of genetic, linguistic, and skeletal change in humans have slightly different meanings. Genetic descent is sexual, so that each offspring has two ancestors at the level of each generation; further, one’s genetic composition is set at conception. Linguistic descent is asexual, so that each offspring has only one ancestor in each generation; on the other hand, an individual can change language by an act of the will. Body type is inherited biologically, but is also subject to environmental pressures after birth. The tree models of these three types of descent convey certain common characteristics. When they can be mapped, it is generally the case that the areas of greatest diversity (among groups that have some relationship) correspond to regions where populations have differentiated through long residence in a single place; these are typically a homeland from which dispersal took place.[40]

But each sort of tree has its own patterns, and a tree model is not sufficient to capture all elements of variation in the evidence it summarizes.[41] Because of the single-ancestor characteristic of the linguistic “tree model,” language gives more evidence on the path of migration than does genetics, because it allows for fewer possibilities among ancestors. Quantitative measurement of linguistic differences is difficult, however, because of the substantial qualitative differences between one aspect of language and another. Genetic variation is more readily susceptible to quantitative estimates, to the degree that it is comparison of base pairs on the genome from one population to another. For these reasons, percentages of genetic variation cannot be compared directly with percentages of linguistic variation.

Two more types of data play a central role in this analysis. First is the study of climate—the rise and fall of temperature and precipitation, habitability of various world regions, and sea level. Recently developed data, presented especially as changing sea levels, play a key role in the interpretation of migration paths. Second is archaeological studies, which provide evidence on lifestyle and environment for human populations.

The combination of these two types of evidence, I will argue, emphasizes the importance of life at water’s edge and the use of watercraft at all stages of human history. As human communities grew and spread, they were confronted repeatedly by a choice: concentrate at water’s edge or range across open grassland. Earlier hominids had faced this choice and tended to stay close to waterways.[42] Early communities of Homo sapiens, at each stage of developing technologies and exploring new ecologies, found new ways to benefit from life in the grasslands and also from life at water’s edge.

READ MORE: Who Invented Water? History of the Water Molecule

Studies of human evolution have long tended to emphasize hunting and the grasslands. To achieve some balance, I want to emphasize the continuing importance of rivers, lakes, and the ocean among early Homo sapiens. Gatherers found a rich variety of plant and animal life along the seashore, along rivers, and at lakeside. Humans are likely to have been swimmers from the first and to have developed rafts and boats. Though the evidence is indirect, maritime archaeologists have shown the logic of the construction of the first watercraft.

Logs might serve as rafts, but, more practically, the gathering and bundling of reeds—available at water’s edge throughout the tropics—provided materials for lightweight and maneuverable craft.[43] The balance of human reliance on the produce of the soil and the produce of the waters has been adjusted in each new region and with each new technology. Here I argue that this pattern of reliance on the waters and watercraft can be projected back to the earliest days of human migration and that it fits with patterns revealed in archaeology, genetics, and historical linguistics.

These principles are now applied to the data on language distribution and other data to yield a provisional synthesis, an interpretation of four stages in the migration and differentiation of human populations.

Peopling the Old World Tropics: 100,000–40,000 B.P.

In their first migration out of Africa, modern humans moved into the region east of the Mediterranean as early as 100,000 B.P. The archaeological record shows that there were alternations of modern humans and Neanderthals in the region, even in the occupation of individual caves, and that Neanderthals continued to live in the area until about 40,000 B.P.[44] For modern Homo sapiens, this was an early but limited movement out of Africa, which left no linguistic remains and for which the population did not become sizeable. Desiccation of the Sahara in the period from 90,000 B.P. suggests reasons why this northern region might not have remained hospitable to humans.

Within Africa, meanwhile, substantial migrations took place, as indicated in the patterns of language groups. African populations moved from being centered in the savannas of eastern and southern Africa, where their hominid ancestors had always been most numerous, to being centered in the east-west belt of the northern savanna between Ethiopia in the east and Senegal in the west. Four great language groups are based in the African continent and reflect the placement and movement of people for tens of thousands of years. I believe that recent language distributions can be projected back with sufficient confidence to show that as of about 80,000 B.P., the Khoisan languages were based in the savanna areas of eastern and southern Africa, where humans had first evolved.

The Nilo-Saharan languages were based in the middle Nile Valley, and the Afroasiatic languages were based in a nearby region of the middle Nile Valley. The Niger-Congo languages were centered to the west of the last two, and included groupings both east and west of Lake Chad. All of these were areas where hominids had lived before, but the regional emphasis had now moved from eastern and southern Africa to the grasslands and waterways of the northern savanna. In addition, and in continuity with earlier hominid patterns, we must assume that humans populated the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

The next move out of Africa, along the Indian Ocean littoral, was to be of a far larger scale. In this colonization of new lands, Homo sapiens migrated east along the tropical lands bordering the Indian Ocean. This tropical migration appears to have stemmed from the development of new technologies and social systems, allowing humans to occupy a steadily wider range of ecologies. Then one stream of migrants, relying on water’s-edge technology, including the use of boats, crossed the narrow waterway between Ethiopia and Yemen (lessthan 20 kilometers at the time) and expanded eastward. These migrants colonized the Indian Ocean coast with relative ease, and from that vantage point gradually spread to the interior of islands and mainland areas. The preexisting populations of Homo erectus provided little resistance to the migrants and may not have been numerous in the coastal zones along which the settlers moved. There was one significant change in ecology in the course of this eastward transit: east of the Ganges River, thick forest—populated especially with bamboo —covered the lands right up to the coast.

Perhaps the most remarkable step of this migration was the movement across what is now the Indonesian archipelago to the lands that are now New Guinea and Australia. Indonesia was then a subcontinent, but the only way to get to New Guinea and Australia was to cross open stretches of ocean of at least 100 kilometers. Archaeologists have shown, through dating of human remains and artifacts in Australia, that humans had achieved that task by about 50,000 B.P.[45]

An essential part of the information for creating this interpretation comes from the work of geologists. Their work has demonstrated that the earth went through a long cooling phase between about 130,000 and 20,000 B.P., after which it warmed rapidly. During this long era of cooling the polar ice pack grew, ocean levels declined, and the climate became steadily drier because so much water was in frozen form. Shows the summary results of recent research, using measurements from the island of Barbados to estimate the rise and fall in sea level over that time.

It suggests that in the time from 80,000 to 50,000 B.P., sea level was from 60 to 80 meters lower than it is today. Thus the migrants who first worked their way eastward along the tropical coast were on a coastline that has since been inundated by the rise in waters at the end of the Ice Age. Those lower sea levels revealed an expanded Southeast Asian subcontinent that geologists have called Sunda. The lower waters also linked Australia and New Guinea into a continent that geologists call Sahul.

Even with the maximal amount of land revealed by low levels of the ocean, the human migration eastward entailed the task of island-hopping across distances of up to 100 kilometers by boat. The boats may have been reed craft or bamboo rafts. The crossing was made not once but several times, according to genetic evidence showing differences within the populations of Australia and New Guinea.[46] After making this crossing, the settlers were able to spread throughout Sahul.

I think that this idea of a water’s-edge migration from Africa to Australia, within the period from 80,000 to 50,000 B.P., is more than plausible. If a technology were developed that enabled humans to prosper at the boundary of tropical ocean and land of somewhat varying rainfall, there were thousands of kilometers of coastline of similar ecology from the Horn of Africa to Sahul. Vegetable and crustacean nourishment from this neighborhood provided the basis of subsistence, perhaps along with fish. Boats were a necessary part of life.[47] The result was that Indo-Pacific and Australian language groups, and probably the ancestors of Sino-Tibetan, Austric, and Dravidian groups, were set in place by 50,000 B.P., summarizing existing knowledge of existing tropical language groups and their homelands, gives a clear overview of human occupation of the tropics.

What were the languages of those who left Africa and headed east along the coast? They could have been in any of the four language groups of Africa today, or of yet another language group that has since disappeared. Of the current African language groups, I argue that the Nilo-Saharan languages are the most likely source of the eastward migrants. I base this estimate on the geographical distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages, for which the homeland would appear to have been within reach of the Red Sea coast, and on the significant emphasis of Nilo-Saharan speakers in more recent times on what Christopher Ehret has called an “aquatic tradition.”[48] As a second candidate for the origin of the eastward migrants, I suggest the Afroasiatic languages: these too appear to have a homeland along the frontier of modern Ethiopia and Sudan and were geographically well placed to send migrants eastward.

Two other groups are less likely candidates as the source of colonists in Asia, but cannot be excluded. For the Niger-Congo languages, their homeland appears to be rather far to the west (at least as far as Kordofan in western Sudan), but many of the Niger-Congo speakers in recent times have emphasized life at water’s edge. For the Khoisan languages, the Khoisan speakers of today live rather far from the East African coast and have very little involvement in boating. (On the other hand, genetic comparisons suggest Khoisan-speakers are closer to Asians than other African groups, though this might reflect recent rather than early connections.)[49]

If the Nilo-Saharan languages were the source of the eastward migrants, then one would expect ultimately to find all the tropical Asian and Oceanic language groups to be related to Nilo-Saharan, presumably as daughter language groups. These include Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan (or Dene-Caucasian), Austric, Indo-Pacific, and Australian. The continuing work of language classification is almost sure to clarify these linkages.[50]

Peopling Northern and American Regions: 40,000–15,000 B.P.

By 50,000 B.P. humans had become a set of communities expanding their activities along coastal and inland areas of the tropics from West Africa to the South Pacific. The lifestyle of these humans likely depended on the gathering of animal and vegetable materials from water’s edge, from oceans, rivers, and lakes. It appears, however, that this technology was not adequate for life in the cooler or drier climates of regions north of the tropics. Humans remained restricted to the tropics until they developed techniques for living under different ecological conditions.[51]

Occupation of temperate regions required development of a technology based on gathering of different sorts of vegetable materials and associated with more effective hunting of large animals. The new technology included better spears and (later) throwing sticks, techniques for isolating large animals, and sewing to make clothing for cold weather as well as to sew hides around wooden frameworks for boats. These techniques, once developed, allowed for rapid occupation of the northern two-thirds of Eurasia. Once gaining the ability to live comfortably in temperate zones, whatever their point of entry from the tropics, humans spread easily to occupy the lands and water’s edge from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The explanation of the human movement eastward from Africa along the fringe of the Indian Ocean to the Sahul continent, as presented above, is a rather straightforward analysis, once its basic presumptions are accepted. The evidence of archaeology and genetics, confirmed by that of language, gives a consistent picture of the tropical expansion of Homo sapiens.

Reconstructing the human occupation of northern Eurasia and the Americas, in contrast, is a complex problem. It involves the sorting out of several possible routes of migration and requires resolving conflicting evidence on genetics, archaeology, and language. The overall scenario I propose is as follows. As late as 40,000 B.P., Homo sapiens remained restricted to the tropical areas of Africa, Asia, and Oceania.[52] By 30,000 B.P., Homo sapiens had expanded to occupy all of Eurasia, displacing previous hominids (Homo erectus in the eastern zones and Neanderthals in the western zones), and had established communities in the Americas. The archaeological record for widely dispersed regions of temperate Eurasia shows dates for remains of modern humans as far back as 30,000 and 40,000 B.P. The dates for Europe and the Middle East are more numerous and somewhat earlier than for central and eastern Asia, but the central and eastern regions have not been as thoroughly studied.[53]

In the analysis to come, I contrast regions of linguistic commonality with regions of linguistic diversity. The most impressive region of linguistic unity was that of the Amerind languages, which expanded without interruption to occupy all of South America and most of North America (though they have since lost out significantly to Indo-European languages). A close second in linguistic unity is Eurasia, where the single, large Eurasiatic language family is spoken today from the Atlantic to the Pacific and even to the Indian Ocean and parts of North America.[54] A third pattern of linguistic unity, characterized by a wide scattering of related groups, is the Dene-Caucasian languages.

In contrast, I want to point out four major centers of linguistic diversity: regions where the existence of distinct but related languages in a small area gives the impression that these were regions from which migrants departed. (The reader may consult to locate these regions.) One such region of diversity is the Caucasus. There in the low mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas, we find the North Caucasian languages (including modern Chechen) and Kartvelian languages (including modern Georgian)—each related only distantly to other languages—and representatives of the Indo-European and Altaic families of Eurasiatic languages. The Caucasus has long received attention as a possible center of human dispersion, and its significance as a center of linguistic diversity is striking.[55]

A second region of linguistic diversity has received far less attention. Within the great linguistic commonality of the Eurasiatic languages, the greatest diversity of languages is to be found on the northeast Asian coast, where four of the seven subgroups of Eurasiatic languages appear to have their homelands.[56]The Gilyak and Chukotian language groups have not been studied in great detail, and Greenberg’s classification of Korean, Japanese , and Ainu as a single group is recent; deeper linguistic research on this region is surely a priority. The Altaic languages exhibit the greatest diversity in the eastern part of their range, suggesting that the group emerged in the east, near the Pacific. A least-moves estimate of the homeland for Eurasiatic as a whole places it near the Pacific coast and suggests that the Eurasian grasslands may have been settled from the east rather than from the west. The Indo-European languages, while now the largest and most populous group within the Eurasiatic family, are also the most far-flung from the apparent homeland. They may have begun, therefore, as western outliers among Eurasiatic speakers.

A third region of linguistic diversity goes further back in time. All four of the major subgroups of the Sino-Tibetan languages are represented in Yunnan, in today’s southwest China, along the major rivers of southeast Asia.[57] In much the same area, and only slightly downriver, is the homeland of the Austric languages (a phylum that is commonly discussed in terms of its four constituent subgroups: Austroasiatic, Miao-Yao, Dai, and Austronesian).[58] This double-barreled center of tropical linguistic diversity may have been a source of migrations to the north and in other directions.

The fourth region of linguistic diversity goes even further back in time: the middle Nile Valley, where Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan language groups have their homeland and where a small but important group of Niger-Congo languages is located just to the west.[59] The middle Nile was arguably the region that started the whole process of expansion to the east about 80,000 B.P.; in addition, it may also have been a source of expansion to the north in later times.

The archaeological record shows Homo sapiens as inhabitants of temperate Eurasian regions from Atlantic to Pacific beginning about 40,000 B.P.—somewhat later for the arctic fringe of Eurasia. There had been a pause, it appears, between the occupation of the tropics in the years up to 50,000 B.P. and the movement into temperate Eurasia. Some sort of breakthrough in technology and perhaps social organization was needed to enable significant numbers of humans to move north.

With this introduction, let us turn to an investigation of the Eurasiatic languages, the language phylum now occupying the great majority of the territory of Eurasia. The map of Eurasiatic languages, as proposed by Joseph Greenberg, covers such an immense area that one is readily tempted to view it as reflecting a rapid move to occupy all of northern Eurasia, stemming from a single region in the tropics. This is a first approximation to the argument that I will make, though I will also add a number of complications to the story. The identification of this phylum (sometimes called a super-family) of languages is a substantial accomplishment: it is a major advance over the previous century’s emphasis on Indo-European languages, now shown to be one of seven constituent groups of Eurasiatic.

The history of the Eurasiatic language group goes back much further and includes a far wider range of populations than does its Indo-European subgroup. Linguists have suspected this possibility for some time; Greenberg’s analysis of Eurasiatic paralleled the work of a series of European-based scholars (working particularly in Russia) who developed the term “Nostratic” to refer to the combination of Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic, and other language groups. While there remain differences on the proposed linkage of Afroasiatic, Dravidian, and Kartvelian to Nostratic, there is great similarity between Aharon Dolgopolsky’s vision of Nostratic and Greenberg’s vision of Eurasiatic.[60] Thus we have significant agreement on the composition of a language family covering most of Eurasia.

The next stage in unraveling the puzzle of occupying the temperate regions is analyzing the languages of the Americas. Prior to his classification of Eurasiatic languages, Greenberg published in 1987 a classification of the languages of the Americas.[61] His identification of Amerind as a single family encompassing the great majority of American languages brought a stormy response from Americanist linguists who declined to accept the existence of this larger grouping of languages.[62] Important statements from each camp appeared as a result, and one must wait for the debate to run its course, but here I have unhesitatingly accepted Greenberg’s classification because its patterns fit so well with those accepted for languages elsewhere in the world.

Greenberg argued that Amerind is a sister group to Eurasiatic. If he had seen Amerind as a daughter group, he would have classified it along with Eskimo-Aleut as a subgroup of Eurasiatic. This classification implies that Eurasiatic and Amerind are both descendants of some ancestral stock, one that linguists can presumably seek out. Thus, if Eurasiatic came into existence in about 40,000 B.P., perhaps among fishers and hunters of the northeast coast of Asia, then one is prompted to argue that Amerind arose at much the same time, among hunters and fishers of the same region who continued to move north and east.

Amerind speakers moved across the Bering straits to the Americas, either on a land bridge during the Ice Age or by sea before it. Greenberg’s own clear opinion was that Eurasiatic and Amerind both emerged between 15,000 and 11,000 B.P. among populations that occupied lands given up by receding glaciers.[63] On the other hand, genetic evidence, as summarized by Cavalli-Sforza, tends to support the earlier date of about 35,000 B.P. for the settlement of the Americas and also for the occupation of temperate Eurasia.[64] I too accept the earlier period as the time for expansion of these languages, as it is consistent with the hypothesized expansion of Eurasiatic and with the evidence of genetic difference.

To these two large groupings of languages beyond the tropics we may add a third. Linguist John Bengtson has confirmed and expanded the case for a grouping he calls Dene-Caucasian.[65] He finds a family relationship among six sets of languages that are widely separated geographically: Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, Basque (in the Pyrenees of Spain and France), Burushaski (in Pakistan), Yeniseian (isolated languages in northeast Siberia), and the Na-Dene languages of North America. Three of these groups—Basque, North Caucasian, and Burushaski—can easily be seen as remnants of earlier populations that lost ground to expanding Eurasiatic-speaking groups. The Na-Dene group of North America, in contrast, clearly arrived in North America after the Amerind speakers and found its advance into the continent limited by the previously established populations.[66] Sino-Tibetan, meanwhile, is as much a tropical as a temperate language group, in that most of its subgroups are located in the subtropical highlands of the Southeast Asian river valleys.

The evidence for the Dene-Caucasian language family suggests that there have been at least two waves of advance by humans into the Eurasian temperate zone: first by Dene-Caucasian speakers and then by Eurasiatic speakers. To clarify this possibility, it is important to establish the place of the Sino-Tibetan languages in the larger Dene-Caucasian family. I have argued that Sino-Tibetan was one of the founding families left by the eastward-moving colonization of the tropics. Under this assumption, the other groups listed in Dene-Caucasian are in practice part of Sino-Tibetan. But if Sino-Tibetan is only part of a larger family, one may have to look beyond Southeast Asia for the location of its homeland. A different homeland would lead to a different interpretation of paths of migration.[67]

Let us turn explicitly to exploring the four main possible routes for the occupation of temperate Eurasia in about 40,000 B.P. First, as implied above, there is the argument for migration up the Pacific coast. Maritime peoples of the Southeast Asian tropics, in advancing northward, could have gradually accommodated themselves to the changing seaside species. (The importance of seafood in the cuisine of Korea and Japan today may thus be the reflection of an ancient tradition.) At a region of the coast opposite Hokkaido and Sakhalin, these coastal populations may have developed the techniques of hunting, boating, and gathering that made possible life beyond the coast. They then could have moved west, spreading out and diverging to become the various Eurasiatic-speaking populations. The Amur River valley presents the interesting possibility of a waterway by which coastal peoples could gain acquaintance with inland regions.[68] This approach focuses on the concentration of Eurasiatic subgroups on the northwest Pacific shore: Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and, nearby, Altaic. In this case, Eurasiatic would most likely have descended from Austric, though other possible linguistic ancestors include Sino-Tibetan and Indo-Pacific.

An additional dimension to the story of this first route is the development of a new type of boat: skin boats. These are boats in which animal skins are sewn and stretched over a wooden framework. Maritime archaeologist Paul Johnstone has noted the distribution of such boats all over northern Eurasia and into arctic North America.[69] This is rather precisely the distribution of the Eurasiatic languages. Skin-boat technology was invented at some place and time, and it may have been along the northeast Asian coast some 40,000 years ago. While reed boats were probably the main watercraft of tropical populations as they began to move north along the Pacific coast, they had disadvantages that would have become increasingly problematic as people moved northward into colder climates. First, the reeds necessary to make the reed boats became sparser in temperate climates; second, and more importantly, reed boats sit low in the water and expose the mariners to the water. The invention of skin boats required the ability to hunt large animals efficiently and also required development of effective awls to puncture the skins and sew them together with either animal or vegetable ties, plus the ability to construct a sturdy wooden framework. Skin boats, once created, had the advantage of riding high in the water and keeping their passengers relatively dry. They were also light and portable. They could first have been tried out in rivers, and then extended to use in the seas. In one way or another, the development of skin boats seems to have been important to the occupation of temperate and arctic Eurasia.[70]

A second path to the north was from the Sino-Tibetan homeland to the Eurasian steppes. This trail would have led from what is now South China, with the migrants moving up and down various river valleys and learning how to live in progressively drier zones that brought changing systems of rains. Movement eastward toward the Pacific should have been easy at any point, but movement westward was easy only north of the Himalayas, from the latitude of the Huang He River. In effect, then, such migrants would have followed what later became the Silk Road to reach and settle in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Europe. This might have been the path of Dene-Caucasian speakers as they moved north from a tropical homeland, then branched out east and west as they reached the grasslands. But the present wide dispersion of the communities speaking Dene-Caucasian languages makes it difficult to reconstruct the timing and the steps of their migration.

A third path to the temperate zone might be labeled the Nile–Fertile Crescent–Caucasus path. This path is often assumed to be the path by which humans left Africa and settled the Eurasian heartland. For instance, geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, in his authoritative survey of the genetics of human migration, has assumed that this was the path for the human migration out of Africa.[71] It is a superficially plausible route, but when examined in detail it reveals three types of difficulty, in the linguistic, ecological, and genetic arguments in favor of such a route. I can state the ecological point concisely, while the other two points must be explained at greater length. The ecological differences between the middle Nile and the Fertile Crescent or Caucasia—the differing vegetation, temperatures, and patterns of rains—while easily surmounted by human technology in more recent times, were not necessarily easy for humans to overcome 60,000 years ago. We need clearer archaeological documentation of Homo sapiens in the Fertile Crescent before 40,000 B.P. than is now available to argue that this was the main route out of Africa.[72]

Recent linguistic analyses give no clear support to the Nile–Fertile Crescent–Caucasus route, in contrast to the linguistic logic behind the first two routes. This point is worthy of some emphasis because it contradicts earlier linguistic analysis that claimed that such links could be shown. The Semitic languages are spoken in southwest Asia and northeast Africa. Because the Semitic languages were so influential in the development of writing and such important texts as Hammurabi’s legal code and the Hebrew Bible, scholars of the nineteenth century sought to link Indo-European to Semitic.[73] And since social-scientific analysis in the nineteenth century focused especially on racial identity, there was reason to try to link Semitic speakers to Indo-European speakers on the grounds that both were part of a Caucasian race, based especially on assessment of skin color. Scholars seeking to identify a “Nostratic” group of languages related to Indo-European in their early work revealed a continuation of this thinking. They correctly included Altaic, Uralic, Korean, and Japanese in this larger grouping, but also sought to include Semitic and Dravidian in what have been shown to be incorrect classification within Nostratic.[74]

In particular, the Semitic languages have shown to be one of seven subgroups within the Afroasiatic language family, and the homeland of the Afroasiatic family has been shown with increasing clarity by recent evidence to have been in the middle Nile Valley—so any route from the Afroasiatic homeland to the Eurasiatic homeland was a long one and not a short one.[75] In sum, this third route remains possible as a path for occupation of temperate Eurasia, but the evidence for it is not strong. If there were a link between Afroasiatic and Eurasiatic, such that Eurasiatic emerged from Afroasiatic (or from an ancestor to Afroasiatic or a descendant of Afroasiatic such as Semitic), then the migration route of early Eurasiatic speakers could indeed have encompassed the Nile–Fertile Crescent–Caucasus route. From a center in this region, humans could have occupied the forested and steppe areas before the Ice Age. A linguistic relationship between Afroasiatic and Eurasiatic remains conceivable, but no clear statement of it has been offered. In addition, if Greenberg is correct that Eurasiatic and Amerind are sister stocks, then Afroasiatic should have the same relationship to Amerind as it has to Eurasiatic.

A further difficulty with the Nile–Fertile Crescent–Caucasus route is in the genetic evidence. Although genetic evidence is commonly argued to support the case for a path of migrants from the Nile Valley through the Fertile Crescent and to Eurasia generally, I think the historical projections of genetic evidence need to be recalculated. In particular, the current projections contain a consistent bias that underestimates the genetic distance among populations geographically close to each other and exaggerates the genetic distance among geographically distant populations.[76] Cavalli-Sforza’s extensive research and careful summaries reflect the seriousness of his attempt to correlate work from all fields of study contributing to the study of early humanity. Yet there remain curious results that do not fit in. Systematically, the most isolated populations are those calculated as having the greatest genetic distance from others, and hence as being the oldest. As a result, he estimates the divisions among populations in the central parts of Eurasia as being relatively recent.[77] In another curious decision, Cavalli-Sforza uses inherited racial terms to classify phenotypes, though genetic work has made clear that physical appearances represent a small part of genetic difference.[78] A look at the global map of skin colors in the same volume, showing the differences of skin color within the Americas, suggests strongly that environment and not just heredity affects human phenotype.[79]

There is, finally, a fourth path from tropical to temperate Eurasia that can be hypothesized: a path leading from the Dravidian-speaking zone of the Indian Ocean littoral across the mountains and northward. In more recent times other populations have migrated in the opposite direction, from Central Asia into India, so it is possible that a previous migration might have gone northward. I know of no serious attempts to make this case in either archaeological or linguistic terms, though one could imagine the possibility that Eurasiatic languages are descended from Dravidian. The route from tropical waters to temperate grasslands, though mountainous, was rather short in this case.

Here is my assembly and summary of the complex possibilities out of which we must reconstruct the human occupation of temperate Eurasia. Overall, I would argue that there were three substantial migrations from the tropics to temperate Eurasia, and one cannot yet be certain about their relative timing. A movement overland (or in part along rivers in the valleys east of the Himalayas) from South China to the Eurasian steppes may have given birth to a temperate population. This group, speaking Dene-Caucasian languages, made initial adjustments to life in temperate zones. The second substantial migration moved north along the western Pacific shore. This movement led to formation of the Eurasiatic language group, which then spread to displace or assimilate earlier groups except for some Dene-Caucasian remnants. At the very least, the linguistic diversity of the north Pacific coast suggests that it was a place of early settlement and a homeland for groups of migrants. Third, a northward movement of African-based Afroasiatic speakers may have contributed to settlement of temperate Eurasia. Because of the clear demonstration that the Semitic languages (along with Egyptian and Berber) are relatively recent subgroups within the Afroasiatic languages, I think it is most likely that the Semitic speakers moved from Africa to Arabia and the Fertile Crescent after the most recent glacial maximum.[80]

The ability to occupy northern Eurasia prepared humans for entry to North America, either on foot or by boat. As they entered the Americas, humans found no hominid competitors. But as had been the case in Australia and northern Eurasia, they did encounter megafauna—in this case large mammalian species—and the expansion of humans correlated provocatively with the disappearance of the megafauna.[81] The archaeological remains of early humans in the Americas have been sparse so far, indicating that populations were either late to arrive or slow to grow. I believe, however, that linguistic and genetic evidence argues for an early occupation of the Americas—before the last great Ice Age.[82]

Between 30,000 and 15,000 B.P., the earth experienced one more wave of cooling: massive sheets of ice formed at both poles and extended to cover most of Europe and North America. Sea level fell by 40 meters to a level more than 100 meters below today’s sea level. The small human population in northern Eurasia and the smaller population in the Americas had to withdraw to more southerly regions, and every human population had to adjust to a climate that was cooler and also drier (since so much water was congealed in icy form).

I think that Eurasiatic and Amerind language groups both had their origins on the western shores of the north Pacific. Amerind then spread into the Americas, before the last Ice Age took hold in 35,000 B.P., while Eurasiatic spread westward across the Eurasian steppes. I think that both groups relied on boats as well as on the soil: they stayed close to rivers as they moved inland, and they hunted large animals as well as small on land and at water’s edge.[83]

Regardless of the outcome of my hypothesis, it is clear that Eurasiatic and Amerind must be compared with other major language groups, to see if it can be determined with which tropical groups they are affiliated. The full list of candidate groups from which Eurasiatic and Amerind might have sprung includes Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan (or Dene-Caucasian), Austric, Indo-Pacific, and Australian. Of these I think Austric is the most likely parent or affiliate of Eurasiatic, but that assertion is based so far on geographic proximity rather than on any detailed linguistic comparison.

One important issue that I have skimmed over is the interaction of Homo sapiens and other hominids.[84] The linguistic evidence discussed above, while it does not give a definitive answer to how temperate Eurasia was occupied, provides important background for understanding the ways in which Homo sapiens encountered and displaced previous hominids. Especially for Europe, we have evidence to help clarify the story of the competition of Homo sapiens for space with hominid predecessors, especially with Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. The genetic evidence so far indicates little interbreeding of the two closely related hominid populations. A likely scenario is that the incoming Homo sapiens occupied the best lands, grew in population, and reduced the preceding populations to marginal life and then to disappearance. Some intermixture could have occurred within this scenario.

This interpretation of human migration in the period up to the end of the last Ice Age has focused principally on the benefits of adding linguistic analysis to the recent advances in study of genetics, archaeology, paleontology, and earth sciences. Systematic consideration of linguistic evidence, along with that of genetics and archaeology, can give us more detail and can resolve some of the ambiguities in present interpretations. Both genetic composition and languages evolve, but they evolve in different fashions, and a detailed reconstruction of both sorts of evolution can add substantial new information on the paths and the timing of early human movements.

Available linguistic information, as interpreted here, is more specific on the paths of human migrants than are the data from genetics and archaeology. The patterns of language suggest a gradual human occupation of the Old World tropics, reaching its geographical limits about 50,000 B.P. Then, after a pause, humans accommodated to life in temperate and even arctic zones and achieved a rapid occupation (though perhaps in two stages) of northern Eurasia; the occupation of North America took place as part of the same movement northward. Occupying the remainder of the Americas, however, was a daunting task that involved adaptation to a succession of montane, arid, and tropical environments.

The evidence of language provides essential clues on the timing and direction of early human migrations. This use of linguistic data to support long-term interpretations appears to make it fit well with available genetic and archaeological data, and even to fill blanks in genetic and archaeological analysis. Such a use of linguistic data, however, involves stretching of the interpretation of language phyla to much longer time frames than has been conventional. Therefore, the linguistic analysis I have presented above can neither be confirmed nor refuted at present because of the inconsistency of methods and standards in historical linguistics. Those with training in linguistics and especially in historical linguistics need to take leadership in debating the inconsistencies in their classification of languages and in their assessment of the historical depth of language groups. At the same time, world historians, who reach habitually across disciplinary boundaries, should not hesitate to involve themselves in the research and debate on language and early human history, as the linkage to genetic and archaeological data may help resolve some of the linguistic debates.

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1 The author expresses thanks to Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Christopher Ehret, Merritt Ruhlen, and an anonymous reader of this journal for comments on an earlier version of this essay.

2 For conciseness I identify our species as “Homo sapiens” rather than use the more precise “Homo sapiens sapiens.” By “B.P.” I mean “before present” or “years ago.” For an authoritative but argumentative survey of genetic and archaeological interpretation of human evolution and migration, see Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie, African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity (New York: Henry Holt, 1996); see also Sally McBrearty and Alison S. Brooks, “The Revolution That Wasn’t: A New Interpretation of the Origin of Modern Human Behavior,” Journal of Human Evolution 39 (2000): 453–563. For an accessible summary of recent archaeological debates on early Homo sapiens, see Kate Wong, “The Morning of the Modern Mind,” Scientific American, June 2005, pp. 86–95.

3 David Christian and Christopher Ehret are two historians who have analyzed early human migrations in print. Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 176–202; Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002), pp. 20–25. For a thoughtful journalistic synthesis of human origins and early migrations, see Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

4 Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, abridged ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p.156. For a map closer to the present interpretation, see Olson, Mapping Human History, p. 135. See also Christian, Maps of Time, p. 193.

5 For a genetic argument on migration unmediated by cross-disciplinary analysis, see Bo Wen et al., “Genetic Evidence Supports Demic Diffusion of Han Culture,” Nature 431 (2004): 302–305.

6 Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza has been exemplary among geneticists in using evidence of language to confirm his analysis of genetics. Yet his approach, as I will argue, has been to appropriate the most general results of language classifications rather than inquire more deeply into language dynamics and linguistic methods, so that his linguistic insights are muted and, in some cases, incorrect. Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza, Human Genes, pp. 164–167, 220–222, 263–266, 317–320, 349–351.

7 Merritt Ruhlen, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (New York: Wiley, 1994); Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza, Human Genes.

8 For contending viewpoints, see Colin Renfrew, April McMahon, and Larry Trask, eds., Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, 2 vols. (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003).

9 On Indo-European languages, see J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), p. 262; on Austronesian languages, see Peter Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago, 2nd ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), pp. 96–127; on Bantu languages, see Christopher Ehret, “Bantu Expansions: Re-Envisioning a Central Problem of Early African History,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 34 (2001): 5–41.

10 Franz Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik des sanskrit, zend, armenischen, griechischen, lateinischen, litauischen, altslavischen, gothischen und deutschen, 3 vols. (Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1833–1837).

11 The divergences in practices of language classification seem to have grown since 1950. In this study, rather than trace linguists’ debates in detail, I have chosen—especially through Table 1—to focus on demonstrating the contradictory nature of their conclusions.

12 Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut, the language families that are outside of Amerind, are accepted as families even by those who deny the grouping of American languages into large families.

13 Even within the theorists of Dene-Caucasion there are differences and evolution in viewpoint. For instance, if Dene-Caucasian is accepted as a phylum, then Sino-Tibetan within it loses its status as a phylum.

14 Scholars in this group, however, tend not to deny the existence of such large groupings as the four African phyla, though they would not use the term “phyla” in describing them.

15 Major resources on languages include R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson, eds., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 10 vols. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994); Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World’s Languages, vol. 1, Classification (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987); and Kenneth Katzner, The Languages of the World, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002). See also the extensive collection of data on languages on the Ethnologue Web site, www.ethnologue.org.

16 In the 1950s Morris Swadesh coined the terms “lexicostatistics” and “glottochronology,” based on the notion of a fairly regular rate of change in the core vocabulary of languages, at the rate of some 14 percent over a thousand years. Swadesh, The Origin and Diversification of Languages, ed. Joel Shertzer (Chicago: Aldine, Atherton, 1971). For a recent discussion, see Christopher Ehret, “Testing the Expectations of Glottochronology against the Correlations of Language and Archaeology in Africa,” in Renfrew, McMahon, and Trask, Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, chap. 15.

17 In particular, the more basic vocabulary terms seem less likely to change than terms that are less commonly used and less central to existence. In a genetic parallel to this varying rate of linguistic change, some parts of the genome mutate at different rates than others.

18 Table 2 is based on data from the Ethnologue Web site, www.ethnologue.org. On the time frame of the emergence of Central-Eastern Oceanic and Bantu language groups, see Bellwood, Indo-Malaysian Archipelago, pp. 113–116; and Ehret, “Bantu Expansions.”

19 Australian languages include sharply different subgroups, but most specialists assume they are related to each other. The Trans-New Guinea family (over 550 languages) is widely accepted, but the broader classification of Indo-Pacific is not accepted by all.

20 By a similar logic, one can imagine that not only individual languages but whole phyla of languages have ceased to exist, as their populations became absorbed into others for which the populations managed to reproduce themselves more successfully. Frances Karttunen and Alfred W. Crosby, “Language Death, Language Genesis, and World History,” Journal of World History 6 (1995): 157–174.

21 A fuller demonstration of the case for this longevity of language phyla will require modeling of how languages within the twelve phyla of today, changing structure and lexicon at known rates, could be shown to have descended from ancestral languages of 50,000 or more years ago. This presentation does not take up that task but instead focuses on portraying the interpretation of migration that should result if such longevity of language phyla can be demonstrated.

22 To phrase these views with reference to Table 1, the first approach accepts the twelve phyla listed and assumes they apply to the past 50,000 years; the second approach rejects the notion of phyla and assumes that the families listed apply to the past 10,000 years; the third approach rejects the notion of phyla but assumes that the families listed apply to the past 50,000 years.

23 Alfred Wegener, Die Enstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1915); Martin Schwarzbach, Alfred Wegener, the Father of Continental Drift (Madison, Wisc.: Science Tech, 1986).

24 In effect, Joseph Greenberg classified seven of the twelve known phyla of the world’s languages. Greenberg’s pioneering classifications of major language groups of the Old World tropics are summarized in The Languages of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1966); and “The Indo-Pacific Hypothesis,” in Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 8, Linguistics in Oceania, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 807–871. The basic analyses of linguistic classification for northern Eurasia and the Americas are Joseph Greenberg, Language in the Americas (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), and Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000–2002). A more accessible summary, including the argument for an early migration associated with Dene-Caucasian languages, may be found in Ruhlen, Origin of Language.

25 Joseph H. Greenberg, Christy G. Turner II, and Stephen L. Zegura, “The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence,” Current Anthropology 27 (1986): 477–497 (see especially p. 493); Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik. See also Joseph H. Greenberg, Essays in Linguistics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 43.

26 A linguistic phylum is a maximal group of languages demonstrated to be related to each other through descent from a common ancestral language. It is roughly parallel in the logic of its construction to a biological phylum.

27 The map has been drawn based on language distribution in 1500, because migration since then has changed the pattern of language distribution greatly.

28 A significant group of linguists, often known as “structuralists,” decline to recognize phyla or subphyla unless the ancestral language has been reconstructed, and unless a full map of regular sound changes among languages has been established.

29 Merritt Ruhlen, a former student of Greenberg at Stanford, continues the work the two of them began on hypothesizing that there was an original human language and trying to identify elements of it. Ruhlen, Origin of Language.

30 Examples of the moderate changes in classification of African languages since the work of Greenberg are the recognition of Omotic as a major group within Afroasiatic and the recognition of Ijo and Dogon as major groups within Niger-Congo. For examples of recently drawn language trees showing sequential separation of groups, see Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse, eds., African Languages: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 18, 274, 289–293; for comparison, see Greenberg, Languages of Africa, pp.8–9, 46, 49, 85–86, 130, 177.

31 On Indo-European expansion see Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); on Bantu expansion see Christopher Ehret, “Bantu Expansions”; on Austronesian expansion see Bellwood, Indo-Malaysian Archipelago, pp. 96–127. Bellwood, an archaeologist, relied significantly on the work of Isidore Dyen and other linguists in developing his interpretation.

32 For an early and detailed formulation of this identification of linguistic homelands through a “least moves” approach, see Isidore Dyen, “Language Distribution and Migration Theory,” Language 32 (1956): 611–626; reprinted in Dyen, Linguistic Subgrouping and Lexicostatistics (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 50–74. Dyen developed ideas earlier suggested in 1916 by Edward Sapir in analysis of North American languages and applied them especially to Austronesian languages.

33 Other Romance languages include Provençal of southern France, Calatan of northeastern Spain, Corsican, Sardinian, and other small groups in northern Italy.

34 In classroom exercises with Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, and Niger-Congo phyla, I have created these simple estimates of the homeland assuming that all the major subgroups diverged at once and compared them with more complex estimates of the homeland accounting for the differing times at which subgroups emerged. The two estimates of each homeland were very close to each other, thus confirming that the simple least-moves estimate is a valuable technique.

35 Two of the groups, Tocharian and Anatolian, are no longer spoken but are known from written records.

36 As an assist in locating the least-moves center, find the latitude at which half of the groups are centered to north and south, and the longitude at which half of the groups are centered to east and west. The intersection of these two lines is very close to the least-moves center.

37 Mallory proposes a homeland at the northeast edge of the Black Sea, Renfrew proposes Anatolia (south of the Black Sea), and Marija Gimbutas argues for the northwest coast of the Black Sea. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, p. 262; Renfrew, Archaeology and Language, p. 266; Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), pp. 352–353. I argue that the origins of this group must go back before the development of agriculture, to at least 15,000 years ago.

38 Cavalli-Sforza, Human Genes, p. 99. The genetic data included recent analysis of DNA but especially earlier analysis of blood types and other protein data; measures of bodily characteristics included skin and eye color, height and skull measurements; language data were drawn from Greenberg. Links among these data were proposed by Cavalli-Sforza and his associates.

39 As Cavalli-Sforza has noted, there do not now exist ancestral populations from which others have descended, either for language or genetics. Since mutations occur in all DNA, and since changes in vocabulary and syntax occur in all languages, all the populations and languages we encounter now are modern. In genetics, it is now possible to determine the degree of relationship between the composition of any two populations. In language, within phyla (but not yet between phyla) it is possible to determine the degree of relationship of any two populations.

40 For Romance languages, the diversity of languages is greatest along the Mediterranean coast from Italy to Spain. For Indo-European languages, the diversity is greatest in the area including Greek, Albanian, Hittite, and the southern range of Slavic.

41 Cladistics is a type of analysis, developed especially among biologists, for constructing analytical trees to reflect patterns of descent and evolution. In particular, cladistics has shown that multiple trees may fit a single set of data in genetic or linguistic descent. (The “wave model” for languages reflects an attempt to account for the types of influence striking all languages at the same time—especially borrowing of terms resulting from innovations.) Cladistic models for languages, meanwhile, may differ from those for genetic descent because languages have no equivalent to bisexualism. Ian J. Kitching, Cladistics: The Theory and Practice of Parsimony Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

42 On overcoming the oversimplified model of man the hunter, focusing on foraging, and noting consistent linkage of humans to lakes and streams and littorals, see Stringer and McKie, African Exodus, pp. 29–33.

43 Paul Johnstone, The Sea-Craft of Prehistory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 7–16.

44 Brian M. Fagan, Journey from Eden: The Peopling of Our World (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990), pp. 90–100; Stringer and McKie, African Exodus, pp. 76–80. Results of newer archaeological work are expected.

45 The date for the human remains at Lake Mungo, New South Wales, has now been reduced to 40,000 B.P., but it is assumed that the first human arrivals reached western Australia (at the other end of the continent) about 10,000 years earlier. James M. Bowler et al., “New Ages for Human Occupation and Climatic Change at Lake Mungo, Australia,” Nature 421 (2003): 837–840.

46 Fagan, Journey from Eden, pp. 129–138.

47 Brian Fagan has assumed that humans developed boats in Southeast Asia, as a result of their encounter with bamboo. He assumes a journey by land from Africa to Sahul—see Fagan, Journey from Eden, pp. 121–138.

48 Ehret, Civilizations of Africa, pp. 68–75.

49 Cavalli-Sforza, Human Genes, pp. 175–176.

50 As a skeptical note on this vision of human occupation of the tropics, I should note that the islands of Madagascar and the Comoros, off the southeast coast of Africa, were not occupied by humans as part of the initial human expansion, and may not have been settled by humans until some 3,000 years ago. Madagascar and the Comoros, however, each lie some 400 kilometers from the African coast, a far greater distance than those crossed by mariners crossing from Africa to Arabia or from Sunda to Sahul.

51 Of particular importance is the question of whether, in this time from 90,000 to 40,000 years ago, the ecology of Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine was sufficiently close to that of the African tropics to make a landward migration out of Africa as feasible as the movement across to South Arabia. My assumption here is that this northern route was too different to be attractive to humans at the time.

52 The exception to this pattern is the presence of modern Homo sapiens in the Eastern Mediterranean for a period about 100,000 years ago. Fagan, Journey from Eden, pp. 90–100; Stringer and McKie, African Exodus, pp. 77–80. Further archaeological results are expected from this region.

53 Fagan, Journey from Eden, pp. 141–198.

54 In land area, the Amerind languages dominated some 40 million square kilometers in the Americas, and the Eurasiatic languages dominated roughly 20 million square kilometers.

55 The use of “Caucasian” as a racial term stems from an eighteenth-century argument that the Caucasus was the home of a pure, “Caucasian” race, and from nineteenth-century assertions that the same region was the homeland for the Indo-European languages. Since geneticists now argue that the characteristics of “race” are genetically superficial rather than of any depth, the relevance of the Caucasus for racial analysis has become dubious; however, the relevance of the Caucasus for its linguistic diversity remains significant. On Blumenbach’s 1776 coining of the term “Caucasian,” see Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 86.

56 Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives, vol. 1, Grammar, pp. 1–23.

57 R. L. Rankin, “Sino-Tibetan Languages,” in Asher and Simpson, Encyclopedia of Language, 7: 3,951–3,953; and Ruhlen, Guide to the World’s Languages, 1: 141–148.

58 Paul Benedict has led in denying that Austric is a single phylum, but I follow Ruhlen in treating it as one. Indeed, given the proximity of the homelands of the subgroups of Austric and the subgroups of Sino-Tibetan, I think it should be suggested that a linguistic relationship and a shared migratory history may ultimately be unraveled for all the groups speaking Austric and Dene-Caucasion (including Sino-Tibetan) languages. Paul K. Benedict, “Austric: An ‘Extinct’ Proto-Language,” in Austroasiatic Languages: Essays in Honor of H.L. Shorto, ed. J. H. C. Davidson (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1991); Ruhlen, Guide to the World’s Languages, 1: 148–158.

59 Some linguists have raised the possibility that Niger-Congo might be a branch of Nilo-Saharan. Further, based on proximity of homelands, one may ask whether Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic might be descended from some earlier common language.

60 Aharon Dolgopolsky, Nostratic Macrofamily and Linguistic Paleontology (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1998); Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives, vol. 1, Grammar, p. 9.

61 Greenberg, Language in the Americas. Greenberg first proposed the outlines of this classification some thirty years earlier, in a paper presented in 1956 and published as “The General Classification of Central and South American Languages,” in Men and Cultures: Selected Papers of the 5th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 1956, ed. Anthony Wallace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960).

62 See the responses of Americanist linguists in Greenberg, Turner, and Zegura, “Settlement of the Americas,” pp. 488–492.

63 Greenberg, Language in the Americas, pp. 333, 335; Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives, vol. 2, Lexicon, pp. 2–3.

64 This conclusion is based on comparison of genetic distance between speakers of Amerindian languages and populations of northeast Asia. Cavalli-Sforza, Human Genes, pp. 325–326; L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, A. Piazza, P. Menozzi, and J. Mountain, “Reconstruction of Human Evolution: Bringing Together Genetic, Archaeological, and Linguistic Data,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 85 (1988): 6002–6006.

65 John D. Bengtson, “Notes on Sino-Caucasian,” in Dene-Sino-Caucasian Languages, ed. Vitaly Shevoroshkin (Bochum, Germany: Brockmeyer, 1991), pp. 67–129.

66 Bengtson argues that Basque, Caucasian, and Burushaski form a subgroup within Dene-Caucasian, but treats Yeniseian and Na-Dene as later movements from East Asia. Ruhlen, Origin of Language, pp. 74, 143, 164–166.

67 Ruhlen argues that Dene-Caucasian originated somewhere in the Near East, with groups moving east and west from that point; he also argues that Eurasiatic originated somewhere in the Near East. But if Basque, Caucasian, and Burushaski (in Pakistan) turn out to form a group that is parallel to others in Sino-Tibetan, then it makes sense to argue that the highlands of Yunnan were the homeland not only of Sino-Tibetan but of the larger Dene-Caucasian group. Ruhlen, Origin of Language, p. 74.

68 One complication is that the Amur Valley is mostly forested; to its west and south begin the grasslands that stretch across Eurasia.

69 Johnstone, Sea-Craft, pp. 36–43.

70 From east to west, the five great basins of the Amur, Lena, Yenisei, Ob, and Volga, linked by portages, make it possible to cross northern Eurasia by boat. For description of travels across this region in recent times, see James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia’s North Asian Colony 1581–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 5–10.

71 Cavalli-Sforza, Human Genes, p. 64.

72 Stringer and McKie, African Exodus, pp. 54–114.

73 Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives, vol. 1, Grammar, p. 9.

74 The relationship of Kartvelian to Eurasiatic and to Afroasiatic languages remains unresolved. Dolgopolsky, Nostratic Macrofamily; Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives, vol. 1, Grammar, p. 9.

75 Ehret’s classification divides Afroasiatic into Omotic and Erythrean, Erythrean into Cushitic and North Erythrean, North Erythrean into Chadic and Boreafrasian, and Boreafrasian into Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic. According to this classification, any Afroasiatic-speakers who were early colonists of the Caucasus would not have been Semitic speakers, but would have been from the earlier Erythrean or North Erythrean language groups. Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Arasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 489–490; Ehret, “Language and History,” and Richard J. Hayward, “Afroasiatic,” in Heine and Nurse, African Languages, p. 292 and pp. 83–86, respectively.

76 If humans migrated from Africa to Southeast Asia (and Australia and New Guinea), and then to temperate Eurasia, then the genetic distance between Africans and temperate Eurasians should be greater than that between Africans and Australians. But subsequent and repeated mixture of populations within temperate Eurasia, and mixture of these populations with those of the northern half of Africa, has reduced the genetic distance between Africans and temperate Eurasians. So far, genetic analysis tends to report on the similarities and differences of populations, but not on when the similarities and differences emerged.

77 Cavalli-Sforza, Human Genes, pp. 79–80, 135; see also pp. 248–254.

78 For instance, he uses the term “Caucasoid” when referring to North Africans. Ibid., p.167.

79 Ibid., p. 145.

80 See n. 77.

81 For a good survey of research and debates on megafaunal extinctions, see Alfred W. Crosby, Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 52–69.

82 See nn. 65 and 66.

83 It is of interest that Amerind speakers appear not to have had skin boats. Nevertheless the bark canoes built around wooden frameworks, so widely used in North America and also used in Siberia, relied on a principle similar to that of skin boats.

84 On the intriguing discovery of remains of diminutive hominids on the island of Flores, 18,000 years ago, see P. Brown et al., “A New Small-Bodied Hominid from the Late Pleistocene of Indonesia,” Nature 431 (2004): 1,055–1,061.

By Patrick Manning

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Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Introduction to prehistoric art, 20,000–8000 b.c..

Laura Anne Tedesco Independent Scholar

August 2007

To describe the global origins of humans’ artistic achievement, upon which the succeeding history of art may be laid, is an encyclopedic enterprise. The Metropolitan Museum’s Timeline of Art History , covering the period roughly from 20,000 to 8000 B.C., provides a series of introductory essays about particular archaeological sites and artworks that illustrate some of the earliest endeavors in human creativity. The account of the origins of art is a very long one marked less by change than consistency. The first human artistic representations, markings with ground red ocher, seem to have occurred about 100,000 B.C. in African rock art . This chronology may be more an artifact of the limitations of archaeological evidence than a true picture of when humans first created art. However, with new technologies, research methods, and archaeological discoveries, we are able to view the history of human artistic achievement in a greater focus than ever before.

Art, as the product of human creativity and imagination, includes poetry, music, dance, and the material arts such as painting, sculpture, drawing, pottery, and bodily adornment. The objects and archaeological sites presented in the Museum’s Timeline of Art History for the time period 20,000–8000 B.C. illustrate diverse examples of prehistoric art from across the globe. All were created in the period before the invention of formal writing, and when human populations were migrating and expanding across the world. By 20,000 B.C., humans had settled on every continent except Antarctica. The earliest human occupation occurs in Africa, and it is there that we assume art to have originated. African rock art from the  Apollo 11 and Wonderwerk Caves contain examples of geometric and animal representations engraved and painted on stone. In Europe, the record of Paleolithic art is beautifully illustrated with the magnificent painted caves of Lascaux and Chauvet , both in France. Scores of painted caves exist in western Europe, mostly in France and Spain, and hundreds of sculptures and engravings depicting humans, animals, and fantastic creatures have been found across Europe and Asia alike. Rock art in Australia represents the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. The site of Ubirr in northern Australia contains exceptional examples of Aboriginal rock art repainted for millennia beginning perhaps as early as 40,000 B.C. The earliest known rock art in Australia predates European painted caves by as much as 10,000 years.

In Egypt, millennia before the advent of powerful dynasties and wealth-laden tombs, early settlements are known from modest scatters of stone tools and animal bones at such sites as Wadi Kubbaniya . In western Asia after 8,000 B.C., the earliest known writing , monumental art, cities , and complex social systems emerged. Prior to these far-reaching developments of civilization, this area was inhabited by early hunters and farmers. Eynan/Ain Mallaha , a settlement in the Levant along the Mediterranean, was occupied around 10,000–8000 B.C. by a culture named Natufian. This group of settled hunters and gatherers created a rich artistic record of sculpture made from stone and bodily adornment made from shell and bone.

The earliest art of the continent of South Asia is less well documented than that of Europe and western Asia, and some of the extant examples come from painted and engraved cave sites such as Pachmari Hills in India. The caves depict the region’s fauna and hunting practices of the Mesolithic period. In Central and East Asia, a territory almost twice the size of North America, there are outstanding examples of early artistic achievements, such as the expertly and delicately carved female figurine sculpture from Mal’ta . The superbly preserved bone flutes from the site of Jiahu in China, while dated to slightly later than 8000 B.C., are still playable. The tradition of music making may be among the earliest forms of human artistic endeavor. Because many musical instruments were crafted from easily degradable materials like leather, wood, and sinew, they are often lost to archaeologists, but flutes made of bone dating to the Paleolithic period in Europe (ca. 35,000–10,000 B.C.) are richly documented.

North and South America are the most recent continents to be explored and occupied by humans, who likely arrived from Asia. Blackwater Draw in North America and Fell’s Cave in Patagonia, the southernmost area of South America, are two contemporaneous sites where elegant stone tools that helped sustain the hunters who occupied these regions have been found.

Whether the prehistoric artworks illustrated here constitute demonstrations of a unified artistic idiom shared by humankind or, alternatively, are unique to the environments, cultures, and individuals who created them is a question open for consideration. Nonetheless, each work or site superbly characterizes some of the earliest examples of humans’ creative and artistic capacity.

Tedesco, Laura Anne. “Introduction to Prehistoric Art, 20,000–8000 B.C.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/preh/hd_preh.htm (August 2007)

Further Reading

Price, T. Douglas. and Gary M. Feinman. Images of the Past . 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Scarre, Chris, ed. The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies . London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.

Additional Essays by Laura Anne Tedesco

• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Blackwater Draw (ca. 9500–3000 B.C.) .” (originally published October 2000, last revised September 2007)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Wadi Kubbaniya (ca. 17,000–15,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Fell’s Cave (9000–8000 B.C.) .” (originally published October 2000, last revised September 2007)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Jiahu (ca. 7000–5700 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Lascaux (ca. 15,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Mal’ta (ca. 20,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Pachmari Hills (ca. 9000–3000 B.C.) .” (October 2000)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Hasanlu in the Iron Age .” (October 2004)
• Tedesco, Laura Anne. “ Eynan/Ain Mallaha (12,500–10,000 B.C.) .” (October 2000; updated February 2024)

Related Essays

• African Rock Art
• Chauvet Cave (ca. 30,000 B.C.)
• Lascaux (ca. 15,000 B.C.)
• Neolithic Period in China
• Prehistoric Stone Sculpture from New Guinea
• African Rock Art: Game Pass
• African Rock Art: Tassili-n-Ajjer (?8000 B.C.–?)
• African Rock Art: The Coldstream Stone
• Apollo 11 (ca. 25,500–23,500 B.C.) and Wonderwerk (ca. 8000 B.C.) Cave Stones
• Blackwater Draw (ca. 9500–3000 B.C.)
• Cerro Sechín
• Cerro Sechín: Stone Sculpture
• Eynan/Ain Mallaha (12,500–10,000 B.C.)
• Fell’s Cave (9000–8000 B.C.)
• Indian Knoll (3000–2000 B.C.)
• Jiahu (ca. 7000–5700 B.C.)
• Jōmon Culture (ca. 10,500–ca. 300 B.C.)
• Mal’ta (ca. 20,000 B.C.)
• Pachmari Hills (ca. 9000–3000 B.C.)
• Ubirr (ca. 40,000?–present)
• Valdivia Figurines
• Wadi Kubbaniya (ca. 17,000–15,000 B.C.)
• X-ray Style in Arnhem Land Rock Art
• 8th Millennium B.C.
• Agriculture
• Archaeology
• Central and North Asia
• Eastern Mediterranean
• Iberian Peninsula
• Literature / Poetry
• Musical Instrument
• Mythical Creature
• North Africa
• North America
• Painted Object
• Personal Ornament
• Prehistoric Art
• Relief Sculpture
• Sculpture in the Round
• South America
• Wall Painting
• Wind Instrument

Essay on Human Evolution

Students are often asked to write an essay on Human Evolution in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Human Evolution

Introduction.

Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. It’s a fascinating journey that took millions of years.

The Beginning

Our story begins in Africa about 6 million years ago. The first humans were primates, similar to apes.

Walking Upright

Around 4 million years ago, early humans started walking upright. This trait, called bipedalism, set us apart from other apes.

Use of Tools

About 2.6 million years ago, humans started using tools. This was a major step in our evolution.

Development of Language

Human evolution is a fascinating subject. It helps us understand where we come from and who we are.

250 Words Essay on Human Evolution

Introduction to human evolution.

Human evolution is an intriguing scientific concept that traces the progression of Homo sapiens from our early ancestors. It is a multidimensional process that has been shaped by natural selection, genetic drift, migration, and mutation over millions of years.

The Early Beginnings

The journey of human evolution began approximately 6 million years ago in Africa, with the emergence of the first hominins, our earliest ancestors. These hominins were distinguished from apes by their upright posture and bipedal locomotion.

The Genus Homo

Around 2 million years ago, the genus Homo appeared, characterized by a significant increase in brain size and the advent of tool use. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and eventually Homo sapiens, our species, were part of this genus. Homo sapiens are unique in their capacity for complex language, abstract thought, and creativity.

The Role of Environment

Environmental changes played a critical role in human evolution. For instance, climate fluctuations led to the development of traits like bipedalism, which allowed early hominins to adapt to diverse habitats.

Modern Humans and Migration

The story of human evolution is a testament to our species’ adaptability and resilience. It underscores the dynamic interplay between biology and environment, shaping our past and influencing our future. As we continue to unravel the mysteries of our evolution, we gain profound insights into what it means to be human.

500 Words Essay on Human Evolution

Human evolution is a fascinating and complex process that has shaped us into the beings we are today. It is a multidisciplinary field of science that encompasses biology, anthropology, archaeology, and genetics. The process of evolution involves a series of natural changes that cause species to arise, adapt to the environment, and eventually become extinct.

The Origins of Homo Sapiens

Over time, evolutionary pressures such as environmental changes and competition for resources led to the emergence of new hominin species. Around two million years ago, the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, emerged. The Homo species had larger brains and made sophisticated tools.

The Advent of Homo Sapiens

Approximately 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens, our own species, appeared. Early Homo sapiens had a combination of physical traits from earlier hominin species and new traits that we still possess today, such as a high forehead and a chin. They also exhibited advanced behaviors, such as creating complex tools and engaging in symbolic behavior like art and burial rituals.

Migration and Modern Evolution

The Homo sapiens began to migrate out of Africa around 70,000 years ago, gradually populating the entire globe. They adapted to a variety of environments and developed diverse cultures. This migration and adaptation are reflected in the genetic diversity we see in modern humans.

Modern human evolution continues today. Humans are still evolving, with natural selection acting on traits such as resistance to diseases and the ability to digest certain foods. Furthermore, our cultural and technological advancements are now a significant driver of our evolution.

The journey of human evolution is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of our species. It is a complex process that has shaped our physical traits, behaviors, and cultures. As we continue to evolve and adapt to our changing world, we carry with us the legacy of millions of years of evolution. Understanding our evolutionary history not only helps us appreciate our place in the natural world but also sheds light on our future as a species.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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ICSE Class 5 (Social Studies) – Evolution of human beings / The Earliest Humans / The Stone Ages

June 24, 2022 by studymumbai Leave a Comment

ICSE Class-5 (Social Studies SST) – Evolution of human beings / The Earliest Humans: Motes, questions and answers.

What is meant by evolution? Ans. The human evolution is a process of change by which apes slowly developed into human beings over millions of years ago.

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Question. What are our sources of information about life during prehistoric times?

Ans. The sources of information about life during prehistoric times are:

• fossils, tools and weapons left behind by the early human beings,
• bones and skeletons of human beings and animals belonging to that period.
• We also get some information about the early human beings from their shelters and cave paintings on the walls of the caves in which they lived.

What are Hominids?

Hominids are the early humans who first appeared on Earth who were ape-like creatures and could not walk straight. Scientists believed that human beings gradually developed from hominids and inhabited the earth thousands of years ago.

Classification of hominids: Scientists classified Hominids in three different categories:

• Homo habilis: Person with abilities, first to make tools of stone
• Homo Erectus: First person to stand and walk upright and use fire
• Homo Sapiens: Persons who could think (the thinking people)
• Paleolithic age (Old stone age): Hunter-gatherers who killed animals with their stone-tools. Lived on trees or rock caves. Made paintings on walls of caves.
• Mesolithic age (Middle Stone age): Beginning of agriculture, tools made of flint (rock) continued.
• Neolithic age (New Stone age): Beginning of settled life, practice of agriculture and domestication of animals. Villages started coming about.
• Chalcolithic age (stone-Copper age): Tools made of metal (copper). People were good coppersmiths and stone workers. Soon people learnt to make bronze (mix of copper and tin)

Name the first metal used by the early human beings. Ans. The first metal used by early humans was copper.

Question. Describe the nomadic life of early human beings.

Ans. a. The hunter–gatherers led a nomadic life moving from one place to another in search of food and water. b. They hunted animals and ate berries, nuts, fruits and roots. c. They wore clothes made of leaves and animal skins.

Question. How did fire affect the lives of early human beings?

Ans. Fire affected the life of early humans in the following ways:

• Fire could keep them warm.
• Fire protected them from wild animals.
• Food cooked on fire was softer and tastier.
• Fire lit up their dark caves at night.

Why did early humans use caves and trees as shelters?

Ans: Trees provided protection from wild animals but caves offered better protection from wild animals as well as from sun and rain.

Where in India have rock paintings been found?

Ans: India has the largest collection of rock paintings found mainly in the caves of Vindhya and Satpura hills in Central India (eastern Gujarat running east through the border of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and ends in Chhattisgarh).

Greatest achievement of early humans during the Old Stone Age?

Ans: Discovery of fire was the greatest achievement of early humans during the Old Stone Age.

Why is Neolithic Age considered extremely important period of history?

Ans. Due to beginning of settled life, practice of agriculture and domestication of animals, invention of wheel.

How did life change for humans during the New Stone Age?

Ans. Life of humans underwent significant changes in the New Stone Age due to the following reasons:

• Discovery of Agriculture: Humans learnt how to grow food and they were no longer hunter-gatherers’ but became ‘food producers’
• Domestication of animals: Humans learnt to domesticate animals to get milk, wool and meat. The animals also helped them to pull plough.
• Invention of wheel: Invention of wheel offered many advantages such as making carts for transportation, for pottery and other crafts.

Question. What were some of the major changes in the Neolithic Age?

Ans. Some of the major changes in the Neolithic age were:

• The early humans started leading a settled life, practising agriculture and domesticating animals.
• They built huts using twigs, grass, sticks, clay and the skin of animals. Gradually, more people started living together in one area and formed a village.
• Another important development of the Neolithic Age was the invention of the wheel.
• This helped early humans to transport goods on wheeled carts, make pottery on the potter’s wheel and also use the wheel for spinning and weaving clothes. With the advancement of agriculture people started spending more time on activities such as weaving, spinning, making ornaments and pottery.

Question. State some advantages of the domestication of animals.

Ans. Domestication of animals helped the early humans in the following ways:

• It provided them with a regular supply of meat.
• They could cover themselves with the skin of animals.
• Animal skin was also used for making huts.
• Later, cattle were used for ploughing the land.
• Animals were used to protect themselves from the attack of other tribes.

Write the difference between The Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age.

The Old Stone Age (Paleolithic)

• The time period in history when early humans used stone to make their tools is known as the old Stone Age.
• 2. Life- They led a nomadic life, wandering from one place to another, in search of food and shelter.
• 3. Shelter- lived in rock caves and trees to protect from the weather and animals.
• 4. Discovery- Later they discovered about fire and fire could provide light, warmth and protection from wild animals and cook meat.
• 5. Tools- knives, spears, arrowheads, harpoons with flint

The New Stone Age (Neolithic)

• The time period in history with the beginning of settled life, agriculture and taming animals is known as the New Stone Age.
• 2. Life- They started living together and formed villages and did farming and other activities like taming animals, pottery, etc.
• 3. Shelter- made houses of twigs, grass, sticks, clay and mud and animal skin.
• 4. Discovery- The invention of wheel and its uses lead to pottery, transporting goods and weaving clothes.
• Tools- canoes, bows, polished stone tools, ploughs.

Question and Answers

Evolution of human beings (The Earliest Humans) chapter for ICSE class 5 students. Find notes, questions and answers.

What are our sources of information about life during prehistoric times?

Describe the nomadic life of early human beings

How did fire affect the lives of early human beings?

State some advantages of the domestication of animals.

What were some of the major changes in the Neolithic Age?

Name the first metal used by the early human beings.

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Early Human's Life

In early days, human life was very hard. They spent their life in caves, wrap animal skin and tree leaves over their body and hunt animals for food. With time, they discovered many good things like fire, tools, farming etc. that made their life better than earlier. But these changes in early human's life had taken a very long time. Through 'Early Human's Life' educational series, we are trying to take some snapshots of efforts made by early humans to become civilized.

Life style and food of early humans:

Discovery of tools:

Discovery of fire:.

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The Age of Enlightenment: a Transformative Epoch in Human Thought

This essay is about the Age of Enlightenment a significant period from the late 17th to early 19th centuries that emphasized reason science and intellectual exchange. It explores how the scientific revolution set the stage for Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke Voltaire and Immanuel Kant who advocated for human reason and individual rights. The essay highlights the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions democratic ideals and social reforms including the rise of education and the spread of knowledge through salons and coffeehouses. It also touches on advancements in science and technology noting their transformative effects on society. Despite criticisms the Enlightenment’s legacy continues to influence modern thought and progress.

How it works

The Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason was a huge deal in history from the late 1600s to the early 1800s. It was all about changing how folks thought about everything—swapping superstition and old-timey beliefs for logic science and sharing ideas. This shift set the stage for major changes in politics philosophy science and how society rolls.

It all began with the Scientific Revolution a century earlier where brainiacs like Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton rocked the boat with their new ideas about the universe.

They kicked off a wave of thinking that said “Let’s figure things out with experiments and thinking not just old stories.”

The Enlightenment crew really ran with this idea of using our brains to understand everything better. Thinkers like John Locke Voltaire and Immanuel Kant said people had the power to think for themselves and challenge the big shots. Locke said everyone should have rights and a say in how things are run Voltaire fought for free speech and religion and Kant said we should all trust our own moral compass.

But the Enlightenment wasn’t just about talking—it led to real changes in how countries were run. It lit the fuse for revolutions like the American and French ones where folks said no more to kings calling all the shots. The ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution came straight out of the Enlightenment playbook pushing for fairness equality and people power.

Besides politics the Enlightenment made a big splash in everyday life. More folks got educated thanks to more books and better schools. Places like salons and coffeehouses became hotspots for folks from all walks of life to chew over big ideas. This made knowledge less exclusive and brought people together to hash out new ways of thinking.

Science and tech also took off. Medical breakthroughs like Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine saved lives and the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear with inventions like the steam engine and better ways to make stuff. It changed how people worked and lived setting the stage for the modern world we know today.

But not everyone thought the Enlightenment was all sunshine and rainbows. Some said it put too much focus on thinking and not enough on traditions or community spirit. Critics also pointed out that its ideas about freedom and equality didn’t always include everyone—especially women enslaved people and folks living in colonies.

In the end though the Enlightenment left a lasting mark on Western history. It shook things up with its love for reason science and human rights laying the groundwork for how we govern ourselves and how we see the world today. Sure it had its flaws but its legacy challenges us to keep thinking critically and striving for a better world. As we face the challenges of today the spirit of the Enlightenment still guides us in understanding and improving life for everyone.

Remember this essay is just a jumping-off point. If you need more help or want to make sure your work is tip-top consider reaching out to experts who can give you the lowdown on academic excellence like the pros at EduBirdie.

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Attention-Based Variational Autoencoder Models for Human–Human Interaction Recognition via Generation

• Banerjee, Bonny
• Baruah, Murchana

The remarkable human ability to predict others' intent during physical interactions develops at a very early age and is crucial for development. Intent prediction, defined as the simultaneous recognition and generation of human–human interactions, has many applications such as in assistive robotics, human–robot interaction, video and robotic surveillance, and autonomous driving. However, models for solving the problem are scarce. This paper proposes two attention-based agent models to predict the intent of interacting 3D skeletons by sampling them via a sequence of glimpses. The novelty of these agent models is that they are inherently multimodal, consisting of perceptual and proprioceptive pathways. The action (attention) is driven by the agent's generation error, and not by reinforcement. At each sampling instant, the agent completes the partially observed skeletal motion and infers the interaction class. It learns where and what to sample by minimizing the generation and classification errors. Extensive evaluation of our models is carried out on benchmark datasets and in comparison to a state-of-the-art model for intent prediction, which reveals that classification and generation accuracies of one of the proposed models are comparable to those of the state of the art even though our model contains fewer trainable parameters. The insights gained from our model designs can inform the development of efficient agents, the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

• embodied AI agent;
• intent prediction;
• human–human interaction recognition;
• human–human interaction generation;
• perception;
• proprioception;
• multimodal;
• variational autoencoder;
• recurrent neural network (RNN);
• long-short term memory (LSTM)

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