The Subjects of this Web-site
by George Weber
What we are on
about
The subject of living or recently extinct traditional tribal
groups and their origins is, to put it mildly, not a major
presence on the internet. We are not sure why that should be so since
the number of our visitors
show that there is quite a bit of interest in the subject all over
the world. But two decades ago we did not know that but started to
collect information all the same. This web-site is the result.
A closely linked subject that has fascinated us for a long time
and that is also rarely discussed outside specialist groups is the
Great Human Migration which is in turn closely connected to
our common origin in Africa. These subjects are linked to our
third main subject: how did the modern "races" (which are strictly
speaking not "races" in the biological sense at all but local
variations within our single exceptionally homogeneous human race)
got to be where they are today. Another question that interests us
(and for which no one has yet found an answer): why are some human
groups being pushed towards extinction while others are booming?
There is a lack of variation in the human genome. There are
more than 6 billion of us of us swarming all over the planet, yet
compared to most other species on this planet we are
practically identical, genetically speaking. This is a peculiarity of
Homo sapiens that is not widely known outside specialist
circles but it should be, not least to counter the racist rubbish
that is peddled from some quarters.
We try to describe living "primitive" tribal populations that may
go back to the first migration of modern Homo sapiens out out
of Africa. This includes small populations sadly heading for
extinction and often barely known to science, let alone the general
public. Some are the target of (sometimes) well-meant but usually
disastrous attempts to bring them "up to our level of civilization"
(as some Indian politicians have called the process in the Andaman
islands). Too often the motivation behind such "uplifting" is not
well-intentioned but designed to provide cover for an attempt to get
the tribal lands for settlers. Well-meant or not, such attempts
almost always end up in the cultural and physical extinction of the
displaced groups. Those smaller tribal populations who do not go
extinct, tend to quietly fade into the lowest social strata of a
country's general population.
The silent disappearance of ancient groups is a human and a
cultural as much as a scientific tragedy. True, there are many
charities and other activist organisations that are trying, with
varying degrees of success, to ensure the physical and cultural
survival of such groups. We are not trying to compete with them but
wish them the very best of luck. What we are trying to do is to
collect as much scientific data on such groups in as many fields as
we can - and to publish digestible summaries of the results on
this Web-site. There is a huge amount of ethnological,
anthropological and other relevant data all over the world gathering
dust in museum cellars and libraries. Ethnology is not a currently
fashionable science, but in cooperation with molecular genetics,
anthropology, archaeology and other sciences, new data and knowledge
can be generated. This almost certainly will lead to completely new
insights into the human condition, its past, its origins and perhaps
even its future.
There is steadily growing scientific evidence that the human race
has developed from pre-human ancestors in Africa over aeons, although
the precise ancestral species remains controversial, of course. I t
is also relatively clear (though more controversial) that our direct
human ancestors did not leave that continent until relatively
recently (as such things go), sometime around 100,000 years ago. The
evidence for this scenario is as solid as such things can be, but it
is not rock solid. Countless details still remain vague shapes in the
fog, such as the role of and interractions between the many pre-human
species (from Australopithecus via Homo habilis,
Homo erectus, and many others to the the Neanderthals). So
while the precise human ancestry beyond100,000 remains wide open,
from 100,000 years onwards in the other direction we are on
comparatively safer ground with a little more certainty and factual
details.
We started to look for possibly still living remnant populations
of the Out-of-Africa movement (also known as the Great Migration) -
and found the Andamanese Negrito people on their then still
little-known islands in the Andaman Sea. Indications are that they
and similar populations elsewhere represent the last substantially
unchanged survivors of the first expansion of Homo sapiens out
of Africa. What we call here (see below) the Southern Route of the
Great Migration. The Andamanese on their isolated islands do not
seem to have mixed much with other populations for milennia. They are
not only fascinating in themselves, they are also, potentially, a
major scientific piece in the much larger human puzzle that is the
story of the Great Human Migration out of Africa and the development
of the modern human race.
Going beyond the Andamanese, we are also trying on this Web-site
to trace other Negrito and Negrito-like groups as well as any other
populations, living or extinct, that may still carry traces of that
great human Out-of-Africa adventure.
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Summing up:
This Web-site tries to limit itself (if "limit"
is quite the right word for our cheerfully open-ended
approach) to the time between 100,000 to 10,000 years
ago.This period is also known as the Late Pleistocene or
Ice Age. We have permitted ourselves stray exursions
beyond the self-imposed time limits, provided they are
relevant to our subject. Within those limits, our four
major areas of interest are:
1. Andamanese Negrito
people
2. Other Asian Negrito
people (the Thai, Malaysian and Philippine Negritos
as well as some Sri Lankan, Indian and Southeast Asian
Negrito-like tribes
3. Ancient tribal people
world-wide: we are interested in people
anywhere in the world that may be as ancient as the
Negrito are suspected to be. Such people are the Veddoid
in Asia, the Khoisan and the Pygmies in Africa, the
Australian aborigines, the Tasmanians, the Papuans, the
Melanesians, the Austronesians, the Fuegians as well as
some other populations, extinct and living.
4. Following up on the
Out-of-Africa theory (also known as the "Great
Migration") is also part of our effort. We look at the
Monglids, the Europids and the Amerind people and ask:
when and how did they get to where they are now and how
did they become what they are now? We take a special
interest in the early human migration out of Africa
around 100-60,000 years ago by anatomically modern humans
(Homo sapiens) and we look at the obstacles our
common ancestors had to overcome (Toba
volcano, other Homo
species, geograpahical obstacles, etc) and search for
traces of all kinds (archaeological, linguistic, genetic,
cultural, etc) that may hint at answers to the countless
open questions of who, where, when, what, how and why.
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The strange lack of
variation in the modern human genome
In 2007 there were an estimated 6,600,000,000 members of the
species Homo sapiens living on planet Earth. No other creature
larger than a rat can boast anywhere near this number. Within that
huge and apparently ever-growing number of people there are a few
genetic differences ("races") in skin colour, shape and colour of
eyes, form and colour of hair, height of stature etc that are based
on minute variations in an otherwise almost identical genome. By
contrast: it has been estimated that a small troupe of chimpanzees
(the nearest relative of to Homo sapiens ) contains more
genetic variation than that of all humans alive today. This is a
strange state of affairs that can only have one reasonable
explanation: there ad to be the mother of all genetic bottlenecks in
our relatively recent past. A genetic bottleneck means that the
number of reproducing individuals in a species is reduced for
whatever reason. A complete bottleneck is, of course, extinction. The
early humans of very roughly 100,000 years ago (which on an
evolutionary timescale is very recently) appeara to have missed
extinction by the narrowest of margins.
In our article on the the Toba
volcanic eruption of 73,000 years ago (see also map of "southern
route migration" below) we asuggest that this eruption could have
killed off most of the waves of early human migrants making their way
out of Africa at the time and reducing their already low genetic
variety still further in comparison to the populations they left
behind. Toba must have played a part in this early human drama but
the volcano is unlikely to be the whole answer. The left-behind
Africans have more genetic variety than those who migrated out of
Africa, but compared with most higher animals, even the African
genetic variety is very small. The mystery of the lack of variety in
the human genome clearly has not yet been fully explained.
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While human overall genetic diversity is very low
compared to other higher animals, what human genetic
diversity there is, is highest in Africa south of the
Sahara. This fact is his is one of the major arguments
in favour of the "Out of Africa" theory.
The chart shows the female lineage (mtDNA) for the
descendants of the northern route of the Great Migration
(see below).
The male line of descent through the Y-DNA chromosome is
less often used to establish human descent because male
haplogroups are limited to the Y chromosome and are much
less numerous and much more difficult to extract and
interpret than the female mtDNA.
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The mtDNA gene flow shows the routes various modern
people took to get to where they are now and where groups
split off from a source population.
Areas that the migrants vacated completely or where they
had no contact with other groups have not, of course, left
genetic traces of their former presence.
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Geneticist Pääbo wrote in 2001:
... the gene pool in Africa contains more variation than
elsewhere, and the genetic variation found outside of Africa
represents only a subset of that found within the African
continent. From a genetic perspective, all humans are therefore
Africans, either residing in Africa or in recent exile.
In this context, "recent" can indeed mean more than 80,000
years.
Local adaptations known as "human races" also show very low levels
of genetic variation within-and-between populations. Only 10% of the
limited human genetic variation is accounted for by differences
between populations and this even in comparison to the nearest human
relatives, the apes. These very odd genetic facts support an
extremely recent origin and a rapid population expansion for Homo
sapiens - once they had spread all over the world.
So, why haven't we started our story on this Web-site with Africa
where it all began?
Sub-Saharan Africa is the continent of the people who stayed
behind, who did not leave 80,000 years ago when the ancestors of most
of the rest of mankind left Africa. Staying behind, the Africans
developed such an enormous variety of cultures, tribes, races and
additional genetic variations (from the pygmies of the Congo to the
Maasai of Kenya, from the Ethiopians to the Khoisan of South Africa)
that we must admit to terminal trepidation at the very thought of
tackling this overwhelming mass of evidence and variety, not made
easier by a dearth of reliable literature and research. Really, we
thought to ourselves (honestly we did! right boys and girls?) we need
to leave something for our successors and their children and
children's children to do. And so it came to pass that we have
started with the Andamanese.
For similar reasons we have decided to concentrate not on the
African home our ancestors left behind first, but on their way into
the bigger world. The most archaic and longest-isolated group of
modern humans known (also one of the most neglected until recently!)
on the long human Migration Out of Africa is to be found on an
isolated group of islands belonging to India: the
Andamanese Negrito.We have named this web-site after them and
have given them pride of place. Which does not mean that other
remnant or major population groups are less important. We hope to get
round to all of them eventually. Promise!
"The Naked Ape" -
from animal to Human in Africa
One of the most touching finds of a very early human-like presence
are two sets of footprints found in Tanzania. They were made roughly
3.7 million years ago.
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The human-like footprints were imprinted in the volcanic
ash deposited by a nearby active volcano. Two persons (a
grown-up and a child) walked there, leaving their footprints
at the site of Laetoli in Tanzania, east Africa, 45 km south
of the Olduvai Gorge.
The body height of the larger individual has been
calculated from the length of pace and size of foot to have
been 1.34 to 1.56 m. There are no signs of walking on
knuckles as apes would do.
The prints were made by an adult and a child, with the
child walking inside the footsteps of the adult . The tracks
on the right are those of small antelopes. A brief rainstorm
also left some small craters caused by big raindrops before
the active volcano erupted and buried it all under large
amounts of ash.
It is possible that the remains of the two are still
nearby, buried under the ash where they fell not long
afterwards.
The species that made the footprints cannnot be
identified with certainty but the two pre-humans could
possibly have been our remote direct ancestors - or at least
be among the ancestors of one of the more-or-less human-like
species that proliferated in Africa for several millions of
years later.
The most likely candidate species for the walkers in the
ash is Australopithecus afarensis who is known to
have lived in the area 3.2 million years ago).
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The next-oldest footprints after the pre-human footprints
above have recently been discovered preserved in volcanic
ash on the (now dormant) Italian Roccamonfina volcano north
of Naples. It is not clear which early species of
Homo walked around there but the most likely
candidates are erectus, heidelbergensis and
neanderthalensis. Homo sapiens was unlikely to
have been around at that time to climb volcanoes (ref.
Nature vol. 422, p.133).
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There are nearly as many potential remote ancestors of Homo
sapiens as there are finds. The question on how the direct
ancestor of modern humans can be identified among the many ancient
candidates cannot be answered at present. Genetic evidence has not
survived millions of years and anatomical hints are not cleara enough
for an unambiguous answer.
When Neanderthal man (see immediately below) died out around
24,000 years ago, modern Homo sapiens became a lonely species
- the last of its genus. The nearest and relatively distant
contemporary relatives today are the big apes (bonobo, chimpanzee,
Gorilla and Orang Utan). Considering the large number of exctinct
hominid species and sub-species, the fact that Homo sapiens
has only the distantly-related great apes as his nearest living
relatives is surprising, to put it mildly. The murderously hostile
attitude many anatomically modern human groups have, at one time or
another, shown towards other anatomically modern humans in recent
history might explain what has happened to earlier "almost-human"
competitors.
The genetic relationships
of modern human races
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The genetic relationships within the human race today (or
at least of many major groups within it) has been published
by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza et al, 1994, The History and
geography of Human Genes, Princeton University Press.
The chart below is adapted from this work.
A more detailed chart from the same source of African
populations is shown below in the section that deals with
early humans that stayed in Africa (click
here).
The two charts contain some discrepancies in groups that
are often classified differently by linguists and
geneticists and whose status remains unsettled:
- "Melanesian" is a rather over-flexible and
under-defined term that is used differently by researchers
from different fields. When we use it here, then only as a
synonym of Papuan.
- The classification of the Ethiopians is also unclear.
In the map on the left they are classified with Negrids
while in the chart below
the same source classifies the Ethiopian Amhara and Tigray
as Europids. Human population genetics is still in its
infancy and much more research is needed to dig deeper and
clear up problem areas - as well as dig up new
questions.
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What first made the first
humans different?
For many millions of years, the big cats had
been the biggest and most efficient predators anywhere, with hyenas
and some reptiles and other large beasts coming rather a long way
behind them. Each of these species had their own specific methods of
hunting. Some modern cats such as gepards can accelerate to 100 km/h
within seconds but they cannot keep this up for more than few
minutes. Lions on the other hand are very powerful - and heavy. They
compensate their lack of speed with their pride's clever hunting
tactics.
The ancestors of the early humans were
omnivorous. They could and would eat anything not actually poisonous
that they could find or catch: plants, carrion, living animals of any
kind. As hunter-gatherering humans their speciality was flexibility -
and long-distance running. As such they had a brain good at spotting
unexpected opportunities and were able to react quickly to sudden
unexpected opportunities. As early humans became more successful they
became taller and also invested more and more energy in an
ever-expanding brain. This development probably initially started
with t the Australopithecines (see chart below) but it is
still ongoing today. No other creature on earth now has a brain as
heavy in relation to the size of its body as has Homo sapiens.
Over millions of years, the early ancestors
of Homo developed into the most persistent of all persistence
hunters. Most hunting animals can run very fast indeed but can do so
only in short spurts of few seconds or minutes at most. Others (like
hyenas) can be persistent followers of an injured animal but they
cannot run for long.The new hominids in the African plains could run
for hour after hour behind an injured animal until it was caught.
Modern Australian aborigines are said to still occasionally hunt
kangaroo in this way.
The new tactics was such a success that it
was increasingly reflected in physiological adaptations: the
two-legged upright posture which made long-distance running so much
more efficient was adapted as permanent gait, sweat glands became
much more numerous and more highly developed and the furry body hair
was largely dispensed. The change also freed the forelegs for "other
uses" . Early humans soon must have discovered that while running
they could now also throw stones. It would not have them taken long
to refine the new skills into hunting (and fighting with each other)
by throwing pointed sticks while running at the same time. As part of
making themselves fit for long-distance running, pre- or early-humans
also lost most of their body fur and to start to sweat more to
balance their body temperature Nor did they need to shiver in the
cold night-time caves: all they had to do was to use their prey's
inedible hides to keep warm at night. Such technological progress
(initially slow but steadily accelerating ever since) has been a main
characteristic of humans ever since.
Despite the hominids' change to a more
active hunting way of life, the early humans never became wholly
carnivorous. To they dismay of many modern children, grown up Homo
sapiens have remained stubbornly omnivorous (drawing the line at
carrion, however) and greens remain widely eaten. Eating anything
that is not actively poisonons has proven to be a successful survival
strategy.
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A pebble tool found in Ethiopia is thought to have been
hammered into the shape of a scraper 2.5 million years ago
(ref. Angela
M.H. Schuster (Rutgers University
)
Unbroken pebbles have almost
certainly been used as tools (hammers to crack open nuts or
as missiles) far in pre-human times, but such early use is
practically impossible to prove. Chimpanzees, however, have
been observed using pebbles as hammers to crack open
nuts.
The scale in the picture is in cm.
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Pre-humans and
earlier Out-of-Africa Migrations
The earliest primates (an order of mammals that includes living
Homo sapiens and the great apes as well as many more known and
unknown extinct species) all originally evolved in Africa according
to the genetic, archaeological and other evidenceprovided byf the
living and the dead.
There seems to have been at least two and
perhaps more earlier "Great Migrations" out of Africa if the finds of
what are thought to be Homo erectus in in India, Java and
China are not to be explained as "local developments". Why all
human-like populations predating modern Homo sapiens and his
Great Migration have become extinct millennia ago as remain an
enigma. A great deal more material needs to be found before anything
can be said about earlier out-of-Africas that is not just guessing.
Homo sapiens is the chief suspect - but there is only
circumstantial evidence and not enough to convict.
The chart below should be read as a
rough-and-ready sketch of what the present and still very skimpy
evidence indicate is the most likely scenario. But remember: one
major new piece of evidence and large parts of this and most other
charts need changing! Very little is really firmly established fact.
Compare the charts that people the internet by the dozen: Almost
every chart shows different relationships, dates and ranges, new
species are created, others fall into disuse. The distant human past
is indeed hard to nail down. We do not even know for sure which
extinct species were in our direct ancestral line (with the possible
exception of no. 10 Homo sapiens idaltu below...).
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It is a hard subject: DNA analysis does not
work (at least not yet) on very ancient remains, the physical remains
are usually in a shape and in a state of a completeness that makes
the word "inadequate" quite inadequate. On the other hand, that we
are able to find such fragile, tiny remains from so long ago is a
miracle all by itself.
For many more species, dates, details and uncertainties see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_fossils
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The chart shows a selection of Homo and
pre-Homo species. Very few are agreed among the
specialists since they have so little apart apart from a few
bones, usually, to go on. The extremely rare footprints
shown above and many tools (which are often hard to assign
to a species) are all they have to go on. However, many more
finds are certain to be awaiting discovery in Africa and
elsewhere.
The only reasonably firm fact is that the earliest humans
did come out of Africa around 100,000 years ago and that
there were no other Homo species left after Homo
neanderthalensis became extinct around 24,000 years ago
(see below) . The reasons behind these many extinctions
remain unknown, although with Homo neanderthalensis,
Homo sapiens is the chief suspect.
We have put Homo rhodesiensis into the chart in a
way that suggests it was an ancestor species of Homo
sapiens. It might have been, but not everybody
agrees.
The enigmatic remains of pre-human species in Java and
China (among a few others) suggest that there have been some
early "Out of Africa" migrations long before Homo
sapiens existed.Their origin and the reasons behind
their extinction remain open questions.
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The approximate distribution of finds assigned
to
- Australopithecus
- Homo erectus
- Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis and
Homo sapiens idaltu
Figures refer to chart above.
For the distribution of Homo neanderthalensis see
separate map below.
Coastlines shown are those of today. See graph map on
Sea Level Changes.
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Some major pre-Human and early-Human
finds
Africa between 100,000 and around 10,000 years ago, during the
last part of the pleistocene was peopled by a number of early modern
humans. Many highly sophisticated stone tools have been found and
dated by new mothods sophisticated thyt they are thought to be
(almost) certainly were made by modern humans. But hardly a
identifiable human remains. In other words: very little is known
about the people that made those those tools. Were they the ancestors
of the present-day Khoisan, of the present-day Negrids or of the
ancestors of the people who left
A selection of important pre-human and human finds (sorted in
order of antiquity and area). Dates can sometimes change as new
methods or refinements are applied. The classification of a find to a
particular species can change as new evidence comes to light or new
methods of analysis are used and classification of specific finds can
be controversial between researchers.
The coloured numbers refer to the map below which shows only finds
older than 500,000 years and which makes no pretensions at
completeness. All we can do here is give a tiny sample of the huge
and growing total.
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Africa
1 - Laetoli,
Tanzania, 3.5 mio yrs, Australopithecus afarensis
2 - Koro Toro, Chad,
3.5 to 3 mio yrs, Australopithecis bahrelghazali
3 - Hadar "Lucy",
Ethiopia, 3.2 mio yrs, Australopithecus afarensis
4 - Taung Child, South
Africa, 2.5 mio yrs, Australopithecus Africanus
5 - Koobi Fora, Kenya,
2.1 mio yrs, Homo habilis
5 - Nariokotome,
Kenya, 1.5 mio yrs, Homo habilis
6 - Saldanha, South
Africa, 500,000 to 200,000 yrs, archaic Homo
sapiens
7 - Casablanca,
500,000 yrs, Homo erectus
8 - Kabwe (Broken Hill), Zambia, 300,000 to
150,000 yrs, Homo erectus
9 - Kibish, Ethiopia, 200,000 yrs, early archaic
Homo sapiens
10 - Tighenif, Algeria, 200,000 yrs, Homo
erectus
11 - Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, 160,000 yrs, early
archaic Homo sapiens
12 - Klasies River, South Africa, 120,000 to
80,000 yrs, Homo sapiens
13 - Sibudu, South Africa, 75,000 to 65,000 yrs,
Homo sapiens
14 - De Kelders, South Africa, 1,600
years ago, Homo sapiens
Middle East
- Tabun, Israel, 120,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Qafzeh, Israel, 100,000 yrs, Homo
sapiens/neanderthalensis
- Shkul, Israel, 90,000 yrs, archaic Homo sapiens or
neanderthalensis
- Kebara, Israel, 60,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Shanidar, Iraq, 60,000 to 40,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
India
1 - Hathnora,
500,000 yrs, Homo erectus
- Narmada, 73,000 yrs, buried in Toba
ash, Homo erectus
Indonesia
1 - Ngandong, Java,
1.8 mio yrs, Homo erectus
1 - Mojokerto child,
Java, 1.8 mio yrs, Homo erectus
1 - Ngandong, Java, 1.8
mio yrs, Homo erectus
1 - Sangiran, Java,
1.6 mio yrs, Homo erectus
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Europe
1 - Atapuerca, Spain
800,000 years, Homo erectus (antecessor)
2
- Mauer, Germany, 500,000 yrs, Homo
heidelbergensis
2 - Bilzingsleben,
Germany, 500,000-300,000 yrs, Homo erectus
- Arago, Spain, 400,000 yrs, Homo heidelbergensis
- Petralona, Greece, 350,000 to 160,000 yrs, Homo
erectus or sapiens
- Steinheim, Germany, 250,000 yrs, early Homo
neanderthalensis (?)
- Swanscombe, Great Britain, 250,000 yrs, Homo
erectus
- Neanderthal, Germany, 250,000-30,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Saccopastore, Italy, 130,000-115,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Montmaurin, France, 200,000-135,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Krapina, Croatia, 145,000 to 115,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- La Ferrassie, France, 70,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Monte Circeo, Italy, 50,000 years, Homo
neanderthalensis
- Cro Magnon, France, 35,000 to 10,000 yrs, Homo
sapiens
- Gibraltar, 24,000 years, Homo neanderthalensis
Central Asia
-Teshik Tash, Uzbekistan, 45,000 yrs, Homo
neanderthalensis
China
1 -Gongwangling, 1
mio yrs, Homo erectus
2 - Zoukoudian, 750,000
yrs, Homo erectus--
- Hexian, 400,000 yrs, Homo erectus
- Dali, 200,000 yrs, Homo erectus
- Maba, 200,000 yrs, archaic Homo
sapiens
- Liujiang, 25,000 yrs, Homo sapiens
Australia
- Lake Mungo, 81,000 to 61,000 years, archaic
Homo sapiens
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The gaps in our knowledge are much larger than the body
of evidence that has been accumulated and evaluated during
the past 200 years. Answers to the countless open questions
that the discovery of - to give just one major example - the
early Chinese and Indonesian species raise can only come
from new evidence.
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One complication among
many: Neanderthal Man
The Neanderthal people were more than pre-human, but they are not
just a slightly different variety or race of Homo sapiens..
The many questions surrounding their relationship with Homo
sapiens and their origin remain largely unanswered. The
uncertainty is reflected in the scientific nomenclature: Neanderthals
are called either Homo neanderthalensis (if they are regarded
as relatively distantly related to modern humans) or as Homo
sapiens neanderthalensis if they are thought to beclosely
related. It is possible but not proven that the Neanderthals
represent an out-of-Africa migration that pre-dates the human Great
Migration. However, no Neanderthal-like forms have been found in
Africa.
The definition of the species Homo neanderthalensis has
been stretched by some researchers to cover more or less of what we
include under other Homo species (rhodessiensis,
heidelbergensis, erectus). Under our definition, what can be
called "classical" Neanderthal man has not been found outside Europe
and Western Asia. The matter of how the various species of early
humanoid groups can be classified and how they might be related to
each other is a complex and controversial area. But happily it is not
one that needs to concern us too much here.
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The Neanderthals were stocky, muscular and very well
adapted to a cold climate. It is far from clear where they
acquired this adaptation. Perhaps they developed in their
little-known eastern ranges that seem to have stretched as
far as modern Afghanistan and the high mountains of the
Hindukush. But not much evidence has been found to support
this and the question of where Homo neanderthalensis
first developed remains open.
The Great Human Migration must have begun to intrude into
Neanderthal territory from before 70,000 years ago. What
happened when the two groups met can only be guessed at.
What little evidence there is does not speak for amicable
relations. There is no evidence of mixing. On the other hand
there is plenty of evidence that over tens of thousands of
years, the Neanderthals retreated (were pushed?) towards the
west. Their last known traces were found in a cave near
Gibraltar, dated to 24,000 years ago.
Since the extinction of the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens
has been the only living Homo species.
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Past environmental changes
and human development
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The climates of the past 5 million years:
Pliocene
5.3 to 1.8 mio years ago: climate cooler and dryer but
otherwise fairly similar to today
Pleistocene
1.8 mio to 10,000 years ago; unstable climate with many
glacial cycles (the "ice age")
Holocene (today)
Started ca. 10,,000 years ago (some begin the period at
12,000 or 11,000 years ago): increasingly warm and wet
The Holocene is "our" era even if 10,000 years is much too
short a time to be sure that our pleasant Holocene climate
together with global warming concerns will last. The
Holocene may well turn out to be a brief climatic blip in an
ongoing ice age - as so many warm intervals in the depth of
the ice age have been (see chart below). So do not throw
away your warm socks yet.
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Climate exercised a tremendous influence on our ancestors
- and it is still a very major influence on even the most
technologically "with-it" Homo sapiens today.
Since the industrial revolution less than 300 years ago
the number of Homo sapiens on earth has broken all
records - and seems set to increase further. But as the
saying goes "what goes up must come down" or even "the
higher up they go, the lower they fall". Looking at the
graph, these are not comfortable conventional wisdoms.
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The colder the climate, the more water is locked up in
ice formations (mostly at the poles) and consequently the
more the average sea level falls, i.e. the more coastal
shelve areas, land bridges and other shallow waters turn to
dry land. It is noticable that with one brief exception
around 125,000 years ago, sea levels have never been higher
than they are now - and they are still rising.
For the possible effect of the Toba
volcanic eruption around 73,000 years ago click the
link.
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Climate exercised a tremendous influence on our ancestors
- and it is still a major influence on us today.
The geological era we live in now is the Holocene, a
period that has lasted for only 10,000 years since the end
of the Pleistocene ice age. Our pleasant Holocene climate
(along with warm-up fears) might well turn out to be a brief
climatic blip in an ongoing ice age.
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The ice shield in the northern hemisphere during the last
glacial period (see chart above) reached its maximum extent
just before the end of that glacial. At that stage around
10,000 years ago it covered the area shown in the map below.
At that stage, temperatures had already started to rise and
the ice has retreated, more or less steadily, ever
since.
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Skin colour is a function of latitude: the stronger the
solar radiation, the darker the skin as is charted of
measured skin colours shows clearly
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Skin colour is a genetic trait that protects against strong solar
radiation. When the pre-humans lost their furry coats in Africa
hundreds of thousands of years ago their skin must have been black
already or they became black-skinned while they shed their fur. Skin
colour is a genetic trait (not to be confused with the individual
colouring by the sun's rays!) that can change rather rapidly.
"Rapidly" here means in as little as 1,000 generations or ca. 18,000
years if we allow 18 years per generation from birth to first
parenthood. Since the start of the Great Migration out of Africa
100,000 years ago, ca. 5,500 generations have passed which the map
below shows was clearly enough time for newly-arriving populations to
adjust their skin colour. Note that these are not degrees of
"sunburn" but genetically-set (inherited) skin colours.
African skin colours of long-established populations
conform well with long-term solar radiation intensity despite a
unexplained moderate skin lightening around the Gulf of Guinea.
Australia was settled by Homo sapiens: around 50,000
years ago yet he skin colour shows up in well-defined stripes that
mirror the intensity of the sun. The stripes indicate that this was
enough time to adjust the genetic skin colour of a migrant
population.We donot, of course, know whow the dark the skin of the
Australians was on arrival. It is possible that they have lightened
their colour (except for the inexplicably very dark-skinned
Tasmanians (see Tasmanians/Genetics).
America was settled later than Australia but not later than
15,000 years ago. Late or not, the genetic skin-colour stripes are
clearly visible.
Europe and Asia (settled by modern humans for not much less
than 100,000 years) show a clear and largely undisturbed stripe
pattern.
The Great Human Migration
The Humans who
stayed in Africa
Very little indeed is known about what went on in Africa in the
roughly 100,000 years between the departure of the "Great Migration"
and the beginning of the iron age in Africa around 5,000 years ago.
Technological progress on pottery, stone tool technology and suchlike
shows that there were people there Most of what is known about the
movement of people within Africa dates back no further than around
5,000 years. That the continent was remained populated after the
migrating groups had left is clear from the archaeological finds that
indicate an uninterrupted local African human presence. What is not
known is what groups the left-behinds belonged to, nor how or when
the clear split known from around 5,000 years ago between Khoisan and
Negrids (Capoids) arose.
In northern Africa the Neanderthals left evidence of their
presence, partly in the form of a few bones but mostly in the form of
the characteristic Neanderthal stone tool technology of the
Mousterian and Levalloisian technology. Modern humans were probably
responsible for stone tools in the Azilian style. We do not know with
certainty who the anatomically modern people were that lived in
pleistocene Africa between 70,000 and 10,000 years ago. We also do
not know when or where or why the ancestral Negrids split from the
ancestral Khoisan. We only know that around 5,000 years ago the two
groups existed and that the Negrids were then pushing south.
The general impression is that Africa north of the Sahara remained
closely connected to the prehistoric Europe of that time.
It is thought that the oldest still surviving African population
today is represented by the Khoisan. Some 5,000 years ago their
ancestors dominated Africa south of the equator. With the advance of
the Negrid people from the north, the Khoisan were pushed south and
into the dry bush-and-desert areas of southern Africa and in two
small outlier populations in Tanzania, the Hadza and the Sandawe.
There they either still follow a hunting-gathering existence (the
Khoi) or they are cattle herders (the San).
For further information on human races see our Chapter 34: Wat
does Related mean? There is also a discussion there on that most
tiresomely over-rated minor human racial characteristic: skin
colour.
The genetic relationships within African
populations has been published by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza et al, 1994,
The History and geography of Human Genes, Princeton University
Press. That chart below is adapted from this work.
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The Negrids with a grey background in the chart
above and with populations numbered. 23-49 today are the
dominant people in most of sub-Saharan Africa today:
Rather surprisingly considering their importance, very
little is known of their ancient history. The Negrids remain
elusive until around 3,000 to 5,000 years ago when they
started to move south and largely replaced the original
Khoisanid population (see chart below).
The Mbuti Pygmies (population 17) are not related
to the Negrid pygmies but are closer to the Khoisanids.
The Khoisanids: the Khoi and the San
now eke out a living in South Africa and Namibia. There are
two outliers in Tansania, the Hadza and the
Sandawe who have been separated from the
Khoisan-proper since prehistoric times but still speak
languages clearly related to the unique Khoisan family.
These languages are not related to any other language family
known and are famous for their extraordinary sound system
with its clicks. Studies in molecular genetics have also
shown that of all human groups the Khoisan are closest to
the roots of the Homo sapiens family tree, i.e. they
are the oldest identifyable surviving human group today.
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Very little is known about what went on in Africa in the roughly
100,000 years between the departure of the "Great Migration" and the
beginning of the iron age in Africa around 5,000 years ago.
Technological progress on pottery, stone tool technology and suchlike
shows that there were people there Most of what is known about the
movement of people within Africa dates back no further than around
5,000 years. That the continent was remained populated after the
migrating groups had left is clear from the archaeological finds that
indicate an uninterrupted local African human presence. What is not
known is what groups the left-behinds belonged to, nor how or when
the clear split known from around 5,000 years ago between Khoisan and
Negrids (Capoids) arose.
In northern Africa the Neanderthals left evidence of their
presence, partly in the form of a few bones but mostly in the form of
the characteristic Neanderthal stone tool technology of the
Mousterian and Levalloisian technology. Modern humans were probably
responsible for stone tools in the Azilian style. We do not know with
certainty who the anatomically modern people were that lived in
pleistocene Africa between 70,000 and 10,000 years ago. We also do
not know when or where or why the ancestral Negrids split from the
ancestral Khoisan. We only know that around 5,000 years ago the two
groups existed and that the Negrids were then pushing south.
The general impression is that Africa north of the Sahara remained
closely connected to the prehistoric Europe of that time.
It is thought that the oldest still surviving African population
today is represented by the Khoisan. Some 5,000 years ago their
ancestors dominated Africa south of the equator. With the advance of
the Negrid people from the north, the Khoisan were pushed south and
into the dry bush-and-desert areas of southern Africa and in two
small outlier populations in Tanzania, the Hadza and the Sandawe.
There they either still follow a hunting-gathering existence (the
Khoi) or they are cattle herders (the San).
For further information on human races see our Chapter 34: Wat
does Related mean? There is also a discussion there on that most
tiresomely over-rated minor human racial characteristic: skin
colour.
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The Sanid people (Khoisan) are the oldest surviving
population in Africa. Their languages with their unique
click-sounds are unrelated to any other known language
family and must be assumed to be ancient. The Khoisan are
relatively light-skinned, have epiphantic folds ("slit
eyes") and some of them, especially women, still have that
very ancient human trait of steatopygia (fatty buttocks" -
for the same trait among the Andamanese see Andaman
Chapter 5)
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Area settled by Khoisanid people before the
"Bantu explosion" 5,000 to 3,000 years ago.
Until that time, much of Africa was still in its
prehistoric period and there is very little
information on population movements or other
events.
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Area settled by hunting-gathering and
cattle-herding Khoisanid people today (mostly dry
areas). The Somalis are genetically related to the
Khoisan.
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Approximate area of origin of the Negrid
people.
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Around 5,000 years ago the Bantu began to
dramatically develop their metal-working skills.
The new skills produced superior weapons but also
lead to improved agricultural and horticultural
skills which, in turn, led to a population
explosion. Growing population pressure and superior
metal weaponry led to the large-scale colonisation
of the territories of the hunter-gatherer
Khoisanids south of the equator. This movement is
often called the "Banti Explosion".
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The main thrust of the "Bantu Explosion" that
started 3,000 years ago
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Europid populations in northern and eastern
Africa and in the Middle East.
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While in northern Africa and the Middle East the Great Migration
(perhaps interrupted for a while by the eruption of Toba
volcano 83,000 years ago) continued, there are a few but clear
indications that in the rest of Africa things were happening, too.
Africa was not a quiescent backwater in the unfolding human drama.
The stone tools shown below were found in South Africa and they are a
rare but unmistakable pointer in that direction.
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At the South African Sibudu cave (among other sites in
South Africa) highly sophisticated stone tools have been
found that date back as far as and astonishing 80,000 years
, i.e. to a time during which in the north of Africa the
Great Migration was either in full swing or had just been
temporarily interrupted by the Toba volcano eruption.
Painstaking dating efforts brought a surprising result:
at Sibudu
and similar sites, individual cultures developed, flowered
and then vanished again in a (relatively) rapid sequence of
about 5,000 years each. This happened without any apparent
correlation to climatic changes.
This surprising discovery led researchers to speculate
that the growing technological sophistication might have
encouraged the most successful of the inventive groups to
"expand", to conquer better hunting grounds from their less
inventive neighbours. IN other words: to migrate, or in
still other words, to join the Great Migration then in
progress.
It is also possible that such relatively rapid and
continuous technological advances reflect not a rise and
fall of the inventiveness or fortunes of individual groups
but instead (at least in some cases) a kind of prehistoric
"arms race", with each group being pushed into improving its
hunting techniques and weapons to keep up with their hostile
and competitive neighbours?
It is an interesting thought - but proving it will be
difficult.
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The Great Migration: the
Southern Branch
The first wave of the Great Human Migration out of Africa had
started around 100,000 years ago in Africa and many separate groups
had developed during the truly "long march". The modern people of the
Southern Branch that we know of (i.e. that had survived and still
exist) had all, more or less, reached their present location before
30,000 years ago. The Dravidians in India, the Negrito in India and
Southeast Asia, the Papuans in Newguinea and some Pacific islands,
the Australians in Australia and the Tasmanians in Tasmania. Among
living populations, the Negrito, the Papuans, the aboriginal
Australians and the Tasmanians and possibly the Dravidian people of
India are most likely descendants of the Southern Branch. We only
know, vaguely, of Negrito-like groups that seem to have existed in
southern China and that have not been there for at least several
thousand years. A few possible related tribal survivors, however,
still manage to hang on in Taiwan.
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There is some slight and controversial evidence that outliers of
the southern branch may have reached the Americas, possibly as early
as 50,000 years ago. Wind and sea currents in the Pacific (especially
in the southern Pacific) could have been favourable to carrying lost
sailors eastwards towards America. The few lucky enough to have
survived such a gruelling journey, however, had not the slighest
chance to return west against sea currents and wind. America was then
uninhabited and only if a stranded vessel had both sexes on board
could the shipwrecked group have been able to set up a
self-sustaining community. The chance of such groups surviving in the
early Americas is minute - but then, in the long time of 50,000 years
some unlikely lucky circumstances may occur. And - there is some odd
if controversial evidence:
1. Human
traces at Monte Verde 2 archaeological site, oldest finds
dated to 30,000 years (see Monte
Verde) (Chile)
2.
Pedra Furada archaeological
site, Piaui, Brazil, oldest finds dated to 36,000 years
(see
Pedra Furada) (Piaui, Brazil)
3. The Pericu
tribe , an unusual group on the Californian Peninsula in
Mexico could have been among the last survivors of a pre-Amerind
aboriginal population. The tribe died out during the late 18th
century (see Pericu,
see also American
archaeology).
Among the core people of the Southern Branch are the Papuans and
the Melanesians. The connection between the two groups is
controversial and supported resp. contradicted by a wide assortment
of evidence. The matter is still further complicated by
politically-motivated wishful thinking based on not much evidence at
all. In whichever complex way the two groups are related, that they
are somehow ewlated and have intermingled for a long time is not in
question. Wherever possible we have treated the Papuans and the
Melanesians as two branches of one people even if this is an
over-simplification. But until better linguistic and genetic
information is available, it is the best of many unsatisfactory
solutions.
The Great Migration: the
Northern Branch
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The people of the northern branch of the Great Human Migration
remained close to the restlessly retreating and advancing glaciers.
The climate they had moved into certainly did not bear much
resemblance to the climate of their African home, wherever that might
have been precisely. What attracted the early northern humans to the
icy north and what kept them there for many tens of thousands of
years must have been the enormous amount of "meat on the move"
available there for intrepid hunters. Mammoth, elks Including some
giant forms), deer, wooly rhinoceros and many other animals lived in
huge herds in what istoday a warmer but largely empty Siberia.
The ancestors of today's Mongolid people (many Siberian people,
Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Burmese) as well
as, less directly, of the modern Inuit -Eskimo and the Amerindians,
lived in Siberia for more than 60,000 years. This was long enough for
them to adapt to extreme Siberian conditions with a number of
physical features: if they were still dark-skinned on arrival, they
would first of all have changed to "white" or "yellow" skin colours .
If they did not need something in Siberia it was protection against a
burning sun! The "slit eyes" of the Mongolids are also probably an
adaptive measure against cold and especially glare.
It all adds up to an amazing feat of adaptation by early Homo
sapiens.
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A most critical moment in the rise of modern humanity
took place between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago: the world's
climate warmed dramatically and the Siberian mammoths and
other plentiful food animals that had been hunted for so
many tens of thousands of years died out or became much
scarcer. Homo sapiens had to adapt or perish.
The two main Siberian human groups, Mongolid and Europid,
had to looked for new hunting grounds. The Mongolid moved
mostly south towards what is now China and Southeast Asia.
On the way they seem to have hived off a group that moved
east into the Americasand there became the Amerind people.
Two much smaller groups followed later: the Inuit (Eskimos)
and the Aleuts.
For the area where Mongolids from the north and
descendants of the southern route met, see below under
Austronesians.
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An example of the complexities involved:
The Turkish language family is known to most for one of its
members: the official language of Turkey. Few apart from linguists
know that other members of the Turkic family are also spoken in
eastern Siberia, including even on the most isolated group of islands
imaginable: the New Siberian islands. The Turks may well have
straddled the the "border" between the Siberian Mongolids and the
Siberian Europids, thus acquiring charactisterics of both major
groups and making it impossible to neatly assign tthe area to one or
the other background. Thereis also the possibility that this same
effect could also have been caused by milennia of trade, ideas and
armies in transit. There is no way of telling.
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Siberia today still has a large number of ethnic groups
speaking an amazing variety of languages. Many of these
groups are small and the people and their languages are
known only to a few specialists. However, Korean and
Japanese are major languages but both are also language
isolates (i.e. not known to be closely related to any other
language of family, nor to each other). The Ainu in Japan
and southern Sakhalin are a mysterious people, there being
no known genetic or linguistic relationship with any other
known population.
The events following the climatic change in Siberia
between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago must be connected with
this remarkable patchwork of people and languages in
Siberia.
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Offshoot
of two branches:
the Austronesians
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Long after the descendants of the Southern and of the
Northern branches of the Great Human Migration had settled
down,more or less where their descendants still are today, a
remarkable development took place in and around the island
of Taiwan, off the coast of China and possibly (though this
has not been established archaeologically) along the coasts
of southern China: a new people arose out from what may have
been a war that turned into a remarkable mingling of people:
descendants of the southern and the descendants of the
northern route that had become "the Chinese" wrangled,
battled or fought (we do not know which) over what is now
southern China. The ancient Chinese won and the area has
been Chinese for thousands of years ,with some scattered
"minorities". So far - nothing unusual.
What is most surprising is that the "defeated"
southerners then living in southern China were not simply
culturally or physically absorbed by the winners. But even
if the Chinese were the clear winnners in this struggle,
there was something quite unique in the outcome: the
"losers" in the struggle inexplicably not only survived
their loss, they survived elsewhere and rose to become the
world's most daring, innovative and successful seafarers the
world had ever seen. What circumstances might have caused
these exceptional results are a mystery . The crucial events
took place long before the invention of writing - but the
results are clear enough.
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Taiwanese Austronesians
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Earliest traces of modern humans in Taiwan go back to
around 30,000 years but the affiliations of these earliest
inhabitants remain unknown. They are most likely to have
been part of the Southern Migration, i.e. they were related
to the Negrito, Papuans and Australians. As part of that
Southern Route, we would expect the earliest traces of
modern humans in Taiwan to appear around 50,000 years ago,
at the same time when the earliest Australians appear on the
archaeological radar and that is indeed the time frame of
the earliest human traces on the island.
The prehistoric Taiwanese of 5,000 years were at the very
centre of one of the most important prehistoric events in
human history: the "Austronesian explosion". At that time
the civilization of Ur in Mesopotamia was in its first
flower while Chinese civilization had only just begun to
takes if first steps. It was also at a time when the
earliest wet-rice farmers ae known to have settled along the
coast of the East and the South China Seas.
Until the 17th century, Taiwan was largely ignored by the
outsdide world and was not regarded as part of China even by
the Chinese imperial authorities, although the Chinese
became increasingly if rather informally influential on the
island since the late 17th century. There were some attempts
before then to set up colonies in the island by the Dutch
and the the Spanish. The Japanese took the island from the
Chinese by force in 1895 and it remained a Japanese colony
until the end of World War 2. When the Chinese communists
took over mainland China, the nationalist government
retreated to the island and has been a "separate China"
there ever since.
The Taiwanese aborigines were never asked for their
opinionson all these changes. Today, the island has a total
population of 22 million people of which 98% is Chinese and
500,000 or 2% Austronesian.
There are five major groupings of the Austronesian
language family in Taiwan with 11 still living living
languages. These are spoken in Taiwan only. All the
other ca. 950 individual Austronesian languages spread
between Madagascar and Hawaii belong to the single sixth
grouping of Austronesian, the (the Malayo-Polynesian, that
is spoken only outside Taiwan - but there from Madagascar to
Hawaii and almost everywhere in between.
Today 13 indigeneous Formosan languages (grouped in 5
language families) still survive:
Map based on S.H. Wurm and S. Hattori, 1981. Language
Atöas Pacific Area, Australian Aacdemy of the
Humanities and Japan Academy, Canberra
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Modern Human Races in AD
1500
The year AD 1500 marks the "beginning of the end" of the world as
it had developed since the beginning of the Great Migration 100,000
years ago, or at least since the end of the pleistocene ice age
10,000 years ago. Since that fateful turn of a century only a little
more than 500 years ago, the world has changed beyond recognition.
Entire continents have been populated by immigrants, leaving the
native survivors a small minority in their own continent. In those
500 years, thousands of languages have become extinct and nearly as
many tribal groups have vanished forever. The tribal way of human
life has been the only way until around 5,000 years ago when kingdoms
and empires started to appear. Prehistory in some areas began to turn
into history.
The initial spark for this astonishing explosion came from Europe
where sophisticated long-distance sailing ships were first developed.
One great unanswered question is "why the Europeans?" Why not the
Chinese or the aboriginal Australians, or any of the many other human
groups? Nobody knows.
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The "Indids" of India are not really a separate race but
a n enormously entangled mixture of at least 5 groups
(Negritos/Weddas, Dravidians, Mongolids, Europids and
Australasians): Dravidian elements are strongest in the
south and a major influence in Sri Lanka, while Europid and
Mongolid are stronger in the north and in Sri Lanka.
However, none of the many groups completely dominates
anywhere in the Indid area.
The complex mixture is not surprising since the Indian
subcontinent was at the centre of the Great Southern
Migration. Moreover, when the Mongolid part of the Northern
Great Migration began to move out of Siberia, even though
the the Indian subcontinent was only at the fringes of that
movement, it nevertheless received many Mongolid migrants
and influences.
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Last changed 1 January 2009
