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Prehistory (c. 3.3 million years ago – 3000 BCE)[edit]

Main articles: Prehistory and Timeline of prehistory
Skeleton
"Lucy", the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found, was only 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in) tall.[1]

Human evolution[edit]

Main article: Human evolution

Humans evolved in Africa from great apes through the lineage of hominins, which arose 7–5 million years ago and includes chimpanzees and bonobos.[2] The ability to walk on two legs emerged after the split from chimpanzees in early hominins, such as Australopithecus, as an adaptation possibly associated with a shift from forest to savanna habitats.[3] Hominins began to use rudimentary stone tools c. 3.3 million years ago,[a] marking the advent of the Paleolithic era.[7]

The genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus.[8] The earliest record of Homo is the 2.8 million-year-old specimen LD 350-1 from Ethiopia,[9] and the earliest named species is Homo habilis which evolved by 2.3 million years ago.[10] The most important difference between Homo habilis and Australopithecus was an increase in brain size.[11] H. erectus[b] evolved by 2 million years ago[12][c] and was the first hominin species to leave Africa and disperse across Eurasia.[14] Perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago, but certainly by 250,000 years ago, hominins began to use fire for heat and cooking.[15]

Beginning about 500,000 years ago, Homo diversified into many new species of archaic humans such as the Neanderthals in Europe, the Denisovans in Siberia, and the diminutive H. floresiensis in Indonesia.[16] Human evolution was not a simple linear or branched progression but involved interbreeding between related species.[17] Genomic research has shown that hybridization between substantially diverged lineages was common in human evolution.[18] DNA evidence suggests that several genes of Neanderthal origin are present among all non-sub-Saharan African populations. Neanderthals and other hominins, such as Denisovans, may have contributed up to 6% of their genome to present-day non-sub-Saharan African humans.[19]

Early humans[edit]

Main articles: Early modern human and Early human migrations

Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago[d] from the species Homo heidelbergensis.[e][21] Humans continued to develop over the succeeding millennia, and by 100,000 years ago, were already using jewelry and ocher to adorn the body.[22] By 50,000 years ago, they buried their dead, used projective weapons, and engaged in seafaring.[23] One of the most important changes (the date of which is unknown) was the development of syntactic language, which dramatically improved the human ability to communicate.[24] Signs of early artistic expression can be found in the form of cave paintings and sculptures made from ivory, stone, and bone, implying a form of spirituality generally interpreted as animism[25] or shamanism.[26] The earliest known musical instruments besides the human voice are bone flutes from the Swabian Jura in Germany, dated around 40,000 years old.[27] Paleolithic humans lived as hunter-gatherers and were generally nomadic.[28]

World map with arrows showing human migrations
Peopling of the world, the Southern Dispersal scenario

The migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa took place in multiple waves beginning 194,000–177,000 years ago.[29][f] The dominant view among scholars is that the early waves of migration died out and all modern non-Africans are descended from a single group that left Africa 70,000–50,000 years ago.[33] H. sapiens proceeded to colonize all the continents and larger islands, arriving in Australia 65,000 years ago,[34] Europe 45,000 years ago,[35] and the Americas 21,000 years ago.[36] These migrations occurred during the most recent Ice Age, when various temperate regions of today were inhospitable.[37] Nevertheless, by the end of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago, humans had colonized nearly all ice-free parts of the globe.[38] Human expansion coincided with both the Quaternary extinction event and the Neanderthal extinction.[39] These extinctions were probably caused by climate change, human activity, or a combination of the two.[40]

Rise of agriculture[edit]

Main article: Neolithic
Approximate centers of origin of agriculture in the Neolithic revolution

Beginning around 10,000 BCE, the Neolithic Revolution marked the development of agriculture, which fundamentally changed the human lifestyle.[41] Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe,[42] and included a diverse range of taxa, in at least 11 separate centers of origin.[43] Cereal crop cultivation and animal domestication had occurred in Mesopotamia by at least 8500 BCE in the form of wheat, barley, sheep, and goats.[44] The Yangtze River Valley in China domesticated rice around 8000 BCE; the Yellow River Valley may have cultivated millet by 7000 BCE.[45] Pigs were the most important domesticated animal in early China.[46] People in Africa's Sahara cultivated sorghum and several other crops between 8000 and 5000 BCE,[g] while other agricultural centers arose in the Ethiopian Highlands and the West African rainforests.[48] In the Indus River Valley, crops were cultivated by 7000 BCE and cattle were domesticated by 6500 BCE.[49] In the Americas, squash was cultivated by at least 8500 BCE in South America, and domesticated arrowroot appeared in Central America by 7800 BCE.[50] Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes of South America, where the llama was also domesticated.[51] It is likely that women played a central role in plant domestication throughout these developments.[52]

Various explanations of the causes of the Neolithic Revolution have been proposed.[53] Some theories identify population growth as the main factor, leading people to seek out new food sources. Others see population growth not as the cause but as the effect of the associated improvements in food supply.[54] Further suggested factors include climate change, resource scarcity, and ideology.[55] The transition to agriculture created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production,[56] permitting far denser populations and the creation of the first cities and states.[57]

Stone pillar with animals carved on it
A pillar at Göbekli Tepe

Cities were centers of trade, manufacturing, and political power.[58] They developed mutually beneficial relationships with their surrounding countrysides, receiving agricultural products and providing manufactured goods and varying degrees of political control in return.[59] Early proto-cities appeared at Çatalhöyük and Jericho, possibly as early as the 10th and 9th millenia BCE.[60][h] Pastoral societies based on nomadic animal herding also developed, mostly in dry areas unsuited for plant cultivation such as the Eurasian Steppe or the African Sahel.[62] Conflict between nomadic herders and sedentary agriculturalists was frequent and became a recurring theme in world history.[63] Neolithic societies usually worshiped ancestors, sacred places, or anthropomorphic deities.[64] The vast complex of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, dated 9500–8000 BCE,[65] is an example of a Neolithic religious or civic site.[66]

Metalworking was first used in the creation of copper tools and ornaments around 6400 BCE.[67] Gold and silver soon followed, primarily for use in ornaments.[68] The need for metal ores stimulated trade, as many areas of early human settlement lacked the necessary ores.[69] The first signs of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, date to around 4500 BCE,[70] but the alloy did not become widely used until the third millennium BCE.[71]

  1. ^ Jungers 1988, pp. 227–231
  2. ^
    • Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 1, "Human beings evolved over several million years from primates in Africa."
    • Christian 2011, p. 150, "But it turned out that humans and chimps differed from each other only by about 10 percent as much as the differences between major groups of mammals, which suggested that they had diverged from each other approximately 5 to 7 million years ago."
    • Dunbar 2016, p. 8, "Conventionally, taxonomists now refer to the great ape family (including humans) as hominids, while all members of the lineage leading to modern humans that arose after the split with the [Homo-Pan] LCA are referred to as hominins. The older literature used the terms hominoids and hominids respectively."
    • Wragg-Sykes 2016, pp. 183–184
  3. ^
    • Dunbar 2016, pp. 8, 10, "What has come to define our lineage – bipedalism – was adopted early on after we parted company with the chimpanzees, presumably in order to facilitate travel on the ground in more open habitats where large forest trees were less common....The australopithecines did not differ from the modern chimpanzees in terms of brain size."
    • Lewton 2017, p. 117
  4. ^ Harmand 2015, pp. 310–315
  5. ^ McPherron et al. 2010, pp. 857–860
  6. ^ Domínguez-Rodrigo & Alcalá 2016, pp. 46–53
  7. ^
    • de la Torre 2019, pp. 11567–11569
    • Stutz 2018, pp. 1–9, "The Paleolithic era encompasses the bulk of the human archaeological record. Its onset is defined by the oldest known stone tools, now dated to 3.3 Ma, found at the Lomekwi site in Kenya."
  8. ^ Strait 2010, p. 341, "However, Homo is almost certainly descended from an australopith ancestor, so at least one or some australopiths belong directly to the human lineage."
  9. ^ Villmoare et al. 2015, pp. 1352–1355
  10. ^ Spoor et al. 2015, pp. 83–86, "The latter is morphologically more derived than OH 7 but 500,000 years older, suggesting that the H. habilis lineage originated before 2.3 million years ago, thus marking deep-rooted species diversity in the genus Homo."
  11. ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 5, "What most distinguished Homo habilis from the australopithecines was a brain that was nearly 50 percent larger."
  12. ^ Herries et al. 2020
  13. ^ Zhu et al. 2018, "Fourth, and most importantly, the oldest artefact age of approximately 2.12 Ma at Shangchen implies that hominins had left Africa before the date suggested by the earliest evidence from Dmanisi (about 1.85 Ma). This makes it necessary to reconsider the timing of initial dispersal of early hominins in the Old World."
  14. ^ Dunbar 2016, p. 10
  15. ^
    • Gowlett 2016, p. 20150164, "We know that burning evidence occurs on numbers of archaeological sites from about 1.5 Ma onwards (there is evidence of actual hearths from around 0.7 to 0.4 Ma); that more elaborate technologies existed from around half a million years ago, and that these came to employ adhesives that require preparation by fire."
    • Christian 2015, p. 11
  16. ^
  17. ^
    • Hammer 2013, pp. 66–71
    • Yong 2011, pp. 34–38
  18. ^ Ackermann, Mackay & Arnold 2015, pp. 1–11
  19. ^
  20. ^ Wragg-Sykes 2016, p. 180
  21. ^
  22. ^ Christian 2015, p. 319
  23. ^ Christian 2015, pp. 319–320, 330, 354
  24. ^ Christian 2015, pp. 344–346
  25. ^ McNeill & McNeill 2003, pp. 17–18
  26. ^ Christian 2015, pp. 357–358, 409
  27. ^
  28. ^ Christian 2015, p. 22, "Most Paleolithic communities lived by foraging, nomadizing over familiar territories."
  29. ^ Weber et al. 2020, pp. 29–39
  30. ^ Herschkovitz 2018, pp. 456–459
  31. ^ Harvati et al. 2019, pp. 500–504
  32. ^ Rosas & Bastir 2020, p. 102745
  33. ^
  34. ^ Clarkson et al. 2017, pp. 306–310
  35. ^ Christian 2015, p. 283
  36. ^ Bennett 2021, pp. 1528–1531
  37. ^ Christian 2015, p. 316, "Dispersal over an unprecedented swath of the globe...coincided with an Ice Age that...spread ice in the northern hemisphere as far south as the present lower courses of the Missouri and Ohio rivers in North America and deep into what are now the British Isles. Ice covered what is today Scandinavia. Most of the rest of what is now Europe was tundra or taiga. In central Eurasia, tundra reached almost to the present latitudes of the Black Sea. Steppe licked the shores of the Mediterranean. In the New World, tundra and taiga extended to where Virginia is today."
  38. ^ Christian 2015, p. 400, "In any case, by the end of the era of climatic fluctuation, humans occupied almost all the habitats their descendants occupy today, with the exception of relatively remote parts of the Pacific, accessible only by high-seas navigation and unsettled, as far as we know, for many millennia more."
  39. ^ Christian 2015, pp. 321, 406, 440–441
  40. ^
  41. ^ Lewin 2009, p. 247
  42. ^ Stephens et al. 2019, pp. 897–902
  43. ^ Larson et al. 2014, pp. 6139–6146
  44. ^ McNeill 1999, p. 11
  45. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, pp. 325, 336, "More recent improvements in archaeobotanical recovery have indicated that rice domestication was underway durin...the Hemudu cultural phase in the lower Yangtze valley...This points to a start of cultivation in this region of c. 10,000–9,000 years ago; in the middle Yangtze valley it could have begun someone earlier but may represent a parallel process to the lower Yangtze...it has been suggested on the basis of phytolith and starch residue evidence that broomcorn and foxtail millet were already in use in northern China prior to 7000 BCE. Nonetheless, the most abundant macrofossil evidence of broomcorn and foxtail millet is found in association with the early Neolithic sites post-7000 BCE."
  46. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 323
  47. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 59
  48. ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 21
  49. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 265
  50. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 518, "Arrowroot was the earliest domesticate [in Panama], dating to 7800 BC at the Cueva de los Vampiros site and 5800 BCE at Aguadulce...Plant domestication began before 8500 BCE in southwest coastal Ecuador. Squash phytoliths were recovered from terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene strata at Vegas sites. Phytoliths recovered from the earliest levels are from wild squash, with domesticated size squash phytoliths directly dated to 9840–8555 BCE."
  51. ^
  52. ^
    • Adovasio, Soffer & Page 2007, pp. 243, 257
    • Graeber & Wengrow 2021"Seen this way, the 'origins of farming' start to look less like an economic transition and more like a media revolution, which was also a social revolution, encompassing everything from horticulture to architecture, mathematics to thermodynamics, and from religion to the remodelling of gender roles. And while we can't know exactly who was doing what in this brave new world, it's abundantly clear that women's work and knowledge were central to its creation; that the whole process was a fairly leisurely, even playful one, not forced by any environmental catastrophe or demographic tipping point and unmarked by major violent conflict. What's more, it was all carried out in ways that made radical inequality an extremely unlikely outcome"
  53. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 218
  54. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 95
  55. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, pp. 216–218
  56. ^ Roberts & Westad 2013, pp. 34–35
  57. ^ Lewin 2009, p. 247, "The date of 12,000 years before present (BP) is usually given as the beginning of what has been called the Agricultural (or Neolithic) Revolution...The tremendous changes wrought during the Neolithic can be seen as a prelude to the emergence of cities and city states and, of course, to a further rise in population."
  58. ^ Yoffee 2015, pp. 313, 391
  59. ^
  60. ^
  61. ^ McNeill 1999, p. 13
  62. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, pp. 161–162, 172–173
  63. ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 99
  64. ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 19
  65. ^ Kinzel & Clare 2020, pp. 32–33, Monumental – Compared to What? A Perspective from Göbekli Tepe
  66. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 224
  67. ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 21
  68. ^ Bulliet et al. 2015a, p. 21
  69. ^ Barker & Goucher 2015, p. 574
  70. ^ Radivojevic et al. 2013, pp. 1030–1045
  71. ^ Headrick 2009, pp. 30–31


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