1. Human Beings Almost Everywhere 200,000 – 10,000 BCE
Big Era Two
Human Beings Almost Everywhere
200,000 – 10,000 BCE

2. What happened in Big Era One?
13B years ago: The Universe popped
12B years ago: Stars and Galaxies (Our Sun)
4.6B years ago Earth popped up
3.8B Life on Earth
Big Bang!

3. What else happened in Big Era One?
600M yrs ago: Complicated life-forms
400M yrs: organisms got onto the land
67M yrs ago: Dinosaurs ruled the earth
Then our hominid ancestors showed up.

4. How, when, and where did we become human?
close ancestors: Homo erectus.
one of the hominid groups
developing increasingly large brains
in Africa and Asia between
500,000 and 200,000 years ago.
This is a reconstructed Homo erectus skull, found in northern China. It dates to some time after 1.6 million years ago.
250k yrs ago
Today
Big Eras 3-9
10k
Brain Development
500k – 200k yrs ago
Big Era 1
Big Era 2
Photo
Franz Weidenreich Reconstruction of Homo Erectus
The Smithsonian Institution
Human Origins Program
1.8 mil. yrs ago
27k
Homo erectus

5. Homo erectus was a traveler!
Homo erectus began migrating to southerly parts of Eurasia sometime after about 1.8 million years ago.
200k yrs ago
Today
Big Eras 3-9
10k
1.8 mil. yrs ago
27k
Big Era 1
Big Era 2
Homo erectus

6. Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus
Skeletons found that look like Homo sapiens in were already living in Africa
200k years old
Between 200k & 100k yrs ago both anatomically and genetically “like us”
in eastern and southern Africa.
This is a reconstructed Homo sapiens skull, found in Israel. It has been dated to about 90,000 years ago.
Photo
Skhul V
The Smithsonian Institution
Human Origins Program
Big Eras 3-9
Big Era 1
200k yrs ago
Human Origins: Homo sapiens in Africa
200k yrs ago
Human Origins: Homo sapiens in Africa
100k yrs ago
S.W. Asia
Big Era 2
10k years
ago
Today

7. Migrations of Homo sapiens
Siberia
40,000 years ago
Europe
40,000 years ago
North America
12,000-30,000
years ago
Southwest Asia
100,000 years ago
Oceania
1600 B.C.E.-500 C.E.
Human Origins
200, ,000
years ago
Australia
as many as 60,000
years ago
Chile
12, ,000
years ago
Possible coastal routes of human migration
Possible landward routes of human migration
Migrations in Oceania

8. Why were people able to move to so many different environments
Why were people able to move to so many different environments? Language!
Homo sapiens had language
exchange complex ideas with each other.
could store and add to the ideas of previous generations.
Because they swapped ideas, they kept finding
new ways of doing things.
new ways of living.
New
Ideas
Learning
Language
Shared
Ideas

9. Language made collective learning possible.
The stores of knowledge and skills humans built up are called “culture.”
No other animal can store and accumulate knowledge and skills in this way.

10. Towers, Kuwait City, Today
Great Zimbabwe, Southern Africa, CE
Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico, 200 BCE
Photos by Ross E.. Dunn

11. How did collective learning change human culture?
1st - changes in technology were very slow.
After 100,000 yrs: the pace of change increased.
Evidence appears from about that time of humans living in east, central, and southern Africa.
-Made more advanced & varied tools
- Experimented with body decorations & abstract symbols
For example,
Blombos Cave

12. Blombos Cave seaside camp: Remains found – 90k yrs old
PROOF!!
Blombos Cave seaside camp:
Remains found – 90k yrs old
Made sharp stone spear points using methods that appeared in Eurasia only 50,000 or more years later.
Made objects from bone, the earliest use of this material known.
Scored bits of bone and ochre with marks that may have had symbolic meaning.
View looking out of Blombos Cave to the Indian Ocean
Bone points from the cave
Photos: Arizona State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Ochre piece with scrape
marks. A person may have
scraped the ochre to
get powder to use to make
body paint.

13. 40,000 yrs of Acceleration! Humans began to: Create both naturalistic
and abstract art.
Make more specialized tools.
Weave and knot fiber.
Decorate clothing.
Make jewelry.
Build semi-permanent structures.
The engraved horse panel in the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc in southern France. The image is about 31,000 years old.
Venus of the Kostenki I site in Russia dated to about 23,000 years ago. This stone female head is wearing headgear of woven basketry.
Horse panel photo (
Headgear photo
New York Times, Dec. 14, Photo: Bill Wiegand, University of Illinois.)

15. Neanderthals:
closest living relatives
Were already in western Asia and Europe
100k yrs ago were in Spain and Inner Eurasiahen Homo sapiens groups arrived in western Asia and Europe
Lived successfully in both warm and cold environments.
disappeared from the record about 28,000 years ago.

16. Did Homo sapiens meet Neanderthals?
Approximate geographical range of Neandertals, 100,000-28,000 years ago
Approximate geographical range of Homo sapiens by 28,000 years ago

17. may have met in Southeast Asia. last physical traces of Homo erectus
Date to 28,000 years ago
discovered in Java.
By that time Homo sapiens was already living in that region.
Range of last surviving Homo erectus

18. What do you think might have happened when Homo sapiens met Neandertals or Homo erectus?
Would they have:
Learned from each other?
Fought?
Traded?
Eaten each other?
Mated?

19. Homo sapiens and other species
Unsure what might have happened if Homo sapiens met Neandertals or Homo erectus, We do know that these two hominid species died out.
So did many other large animals, called megafauna, which once roamed the earth.
What might these extinctions tell us about our own species?

20. So what do you think is so special about Homo sapiens?
What does it mean to be human?
Why does human history matter?