When We Arrived

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Around 90,000 years ago, modern humans appeared in the Near East. They weren’t the first humans to make this journey, and as they moved north and west, they encountered earlier immigrants. In some places, the newcomers settled right next to their archaic cousins, living in close proximity for tens of thousands of years. Then suddenly, around 03030,000 years ago, the older humans disappeared. Modern humans went on to populate the entire world.

This brief summary seems straightforward, but almost every phrase is contested by one group of paleoanthropologists or another. Despite more than a hundred years of research, there’s no agreement about why our Paleolithic ancestors left Africa, where they went, or even who they were.^a

Archaeologists routinely draw conclusions based on fragmentary material. The further back in time you go, the more incomplete the evidence becomes. Archaeologists studying very early humans typically work with no more than a few broken bones and some stone tools. As a result, almost everything we say about our earliest ancestors is highly speculative.

The various names of the first human beings—for example, Homo erectus (upright person) and Homo habilis (handy person)—are based on a scientific system of classification called taxonomy. In a series of volumes entitled Systema Naturae, the Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (1701–1778) placed us firmly in the animal kingdom, along with other creatures that move, digest and breathe. Modern scientists continue to classify us with other animals through our order, Primates, a category that includes apes and monkeys. In the final four categories of increasing specificity—family (Hominidae), genus (Homo), species (sapiens) and subspecies (sapiens)—we are alone. It’s hard to imagine that once there were other members of our family, genus and species, but there were. Scientists use a general term, “hominid” (members of the family Hominidae), to refer to all of them.

The first hominids evolved in Africa. By about 3 million years ago a variety of them were living in the East African savanna. In the currently accepted taxonomical scheme, they fall into two genera: Australopithecus (southern ape-like hominid) and Homo (the earliest human).

The earliest member of our genus identified so far is Homo habilis. These hominids had larger brains than their australopithicene cousins, and they made distinctive stone tools: primitive but functional hand-held choppers that belong to what scientists call the Oldowan Tool Industry.^b

About 2 million years ago, Homo habilis evolved into a new hominid called Homo erectus. The first of our ancestors to migrate out of Africa, Homo erectus was larger than most of the earlier hominids and had a significantly larger brain. The earliest evidence for Homo erectus in Africa is a well-preserved, nearly intact skeleton of an eleven-year-old child, called Nariokotome Boy, who died on the bank of Lake Turkana in Kenya about 1.6 million years ago. His skull is thick and slopes back sharply from large brow ridges, and he has no chin. From the neck down, however, his skeletal structure is very similar to ours.

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There’s quite a bit of archaeological evidence about Homo erectus, who eventually populated the world from China to Spain (they never made it to the western hemisphere) and created a new and more complex tool industry, called the Acheulean. Acheulean hand axes were the Swiss army knives of their time, with a tip for piercing, thin edges for cutting, and thicker edges for scraping or chopping. They were surprisingly beautiful—so symmetrical and finely flaked that it seems obvious that their makers valued something beyond strict utility.

These ancient humans also controlled fire, making Homo erectus the first of our ancestors to manipulate the environment in a significant way. Fire provides light and warmth. When used in cooking, it destroys harmful microorganisms. Cooking also makes certain indigestible foods digestible (like grain, for example), thus expanding the range of foods available to Homo erectus and allowing for survival in marginal climates.

We think that Homo erectus lived in small, extended family groups, working together and sharing resources. Sometime around 400,000 B.P.,^cat Torralba and Ambrona (neighboring sites in a valley northeast of Madrid, Spain), teams of Homo erectus hunters may have killed dozens of elephants and horses, ten wild oxen, and several rhinoceroses by driving them into swamps and spearing or stoning them to death. They then butchered the animals and smashed the discarded bones, probably to extract the marrow. No weapons were found at these sites, but two 400,000-year-old 032spears excavated in Germany give some idea of how Homo erectus may have killed their prey. Made of spruce and designed for throwing, the spears are over 6 feet long and carefully shaped to make them aerodynamically stable.

We don’t know exactly when the first bands of Homo erectus moved north out of Africa. The earliest evidence in the Near East comes from the site of Ubeidiya, just southwest of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. The earliest Homo erectus levels there date to more than a million years ago, but the remains are too fragmentary to tell us much about how these early humans lived. At another Homo erectus site in Israel—Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, north of the Sea of Galilee—archaeologists uncovered thousands of tools, a few hominid bones and the remains of meals, all dating to about 780,000 B.P. Here, Homo erectus seems to have eaten rabbits and over 100 species of plants, including wild grapes, wild olives, water chestnuts, water lilies and jujubes.

Most of the notable Homo erectus finds—such as Java Man (c. 500,000 B.P.) and Peking Man (c. 350,000 B.P.)—are from Asia. However, in 1965 bulldozers digging the foundations for a new apartment building in Nice, France, uncovered a Homo erectus site called Terra Amata. Construction was halted for a six-month rescue excavation, after which work on the apartment building resumed, destroying the remaining evidence.

The artifacts from Terra Amata date to about 300,000 B.P. and are very well preserved. There are no human remains, except for one footprint, but the presence of Homo erectus is indicated by the many Acheulean tools, some of which seem to have been knapped on the site. Terra Amata consists of a series of living areas associated with shallow fireplaces shielded by low pebble and sand windscreens. Many of the hearths and floors are covered with the broken and burned bones of red deer, elephants, rhinoceroses, ibexes, boar, rabbits, birds and turtles. There are also fish bones, as well as oyster, mussel and limpet shells.

The excavator of Terra Amata suggested that for a couple of decades a band of about 20 people returned seasonally to the site, during the spring and early summer, where they lived in lightly-built oval huts.¹ If so, this is the earliest evidence of architecture ever found. Unfortunately, the destruction of the site makes further study impossible.

After more than half a million years of seemingly unchanging existence, some Homo erectus populations evolved into new hominids. Because these new humans are taxonomically very close to modern humans, scientists refer to them as archaic Homo sapiens—in other words, as early members of our species (though not of our subspecies).

Remains of archaic Homo sapiens have been excavated in Africa, Europe, the Near East and Asia. They have larger brains, steeper foreheads and flatter faces than Homo erectus. In the earliest sites, their tools are indistinguishable from those made by their predecessors. Around 200,000 years 034ago, however, they invented a vastly more efficient tool industry called Levallois. The earlier tool-makers had knocked pieces (or flakes) off a core stone to reach the desired tool shape. In the Levallois industry, the flakes themselves became the tools. Flake tools can be produced much more rapidly than core tools, and the new technology allows for a wider variety of specialized shapes.

One of these groups of archaic Homo sapiens is particularly important to the Near East and Europe. The Neandertals, who lived from about 130,000 to 30,000 B.P., were physically distinct from Homo erectus, from the other archaic Homo sapiens, and from modern humans. Early in the 20th century, a French paleontologist named Marcellin Boule reconstructed the Neandertal as a primitive ape-like creature.² Boule chose atypical fossils—the bones of an elderly man with such severe arthritis he couldn’t straighten his back—and greatly exaggerated the simian qualities of his imagined ape-man. As a result, the term “neandertal” has become synonymous with brute stupidity, and many people imagine these hominids as shambling sub-humans.

In fact, Neandertals (Homo sapiens neandertalensis) belonged to the same genus and species as modern humans³ and were like us in most ways. The main differences involved skull shape and body stature. The Neandertal skull was long and low in profile, as opposed to our high rounded cranium. The forehead sloped back over heavy brow ridges that curved over the eyes and met above the bridge of a wide nose, and the cheekbones were massive. Neandertals had large teeth, but almost no chin. Their bodies were short, stocky and heavily muscled, and they had enormous upper body strength.

The Neandertal tool industry, called the Mousterian industry, is a refinement of the Levallois techniques used by other archaic Homo sapiens. Using smaller, more precisely knapped flakes, Neandertals made more than 60 different tools, including blades and toothed saws. They may have been quite successful hunters: Many Mousterian points, including one from Hayonim Cave in Israel, show the kind of damage caused by spearing large game animals. Neandertals killed giant cave bears, saber-toothed cats and wolves. Undoubtedly, they also snared small animals and gathered plants for food. And there’s some scattered evidence that they ate one another.^d

At the same time, they were the first hominids to value human life. They seem to have supported group members who 035couldn’t contribute to the food supply, as is suggested by examples of severely injured Neandertals who survived long after they were disabled. Archaeologists have also identified 59 cases in which Neandertals buried their dead. Bodies were laid to rest accompanied by food and tools (Shanidar Cave, Iraq, and La Chapelle-aux-Saintes, France), positioned ritually (Monte Cicero, Italy, and Teshik-Tash, Siberia) and buried in groups (La Ferrassie, France, and Mughaert es-Skhul, Israel).

The clearest evidence of Neandertal compassion comes from the Near East. Shanidar Cave, located at the Iraqi end of the Zagros Mountains in Kurdistan, has been occupied continually for more than 100,000 years. This long sequence of occupation has built up over 50 feet of debris, the upper 20 feet of which postdate the Neandertals and include debris left by modern residents (while the cave was being excavated from 1953 to 1960, seven Kurdish families, a hundred goats, dozens of chickens, and as many as ten horses and ten cows were living there). The lower 30 feet date to between 100,000 and 45,000 B.P. and contain ash from large hearths, Mousterian tools and the bones of wild pigs and goats. Excavators also discovered the partial skeletons of seven Neandertal adults and two infants. Four of these had been entombed by rock falls, but the other five seem to have been buried.

One of the best-preserved skeletons belonged to an elderly man between 35 and 40 years old. He’d broken many bones, all of which had healed years before he died. A blow to the left side of his head had crushed his eye socket, displacing his left eye and probably causing blindness. The right side of his body had also been injured: His right arm had withered; his lower arm and hand was missing; and his knee, lower leg and foot were so damaged that he would have had difficulty walking. Someone so severely disabled could not have survived without the help of his community.

Around the time that Neandertals appeared on the scene, modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were evolving from Homo erectus. Modern Homo sapiens differ physically from archaic Homo sapiens in several ways. Our brain is larger than that of any hominid except for the Neandertal. We have a high, rounded skull and a forehead that rises vertically (rather than sloping gradually back) above smaller brow ridges. Our chin is more prominent and our teeth are smaller than those of earlier hominids.

Unfortunately, there’s no unambiguous fossil evidence showing the evolution of modern humans. The earliest evidence may come from the Klasies River Mouth caves in South Africa, where the remains of long-term hominid occupation—including human bones, animal bones, carbonized plants and stone tools—date to between about 125,000 and 95,000 B.P. But the human bones are so fragmentary that specialists disagree about whether they are Homo sapiens sapiens.

In the absence of clear fossil evidence, scholars have developed two theories to explain the evolution of modern humans. According to the “Out-of-Africa” scenario, modern humans evolved in Africa, and only in Africa, sometime before 100,000 B.P. They then migrated to the Near East, Europe and Asia, where they eventually replaced local hominid populations—that is, both Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens, including the Neandertals. According to the “Multiregionalist” scenario, on the other hand, Homo erectus populations around the world, including those in Africa, gradually evolved through a series of stages into modern humans. As these evolving Homo sapiens populations came into contact with one another they mated, and the genetic mingling eventually resulted in fully modern people.⁴

If the Out-of-Africa theory is correct, no genetic relationship exists between modern and archaic humans, because Homo sapiens sapiens evolved from Homo erectus only in Africa. If the Multiregional theory is right, then archaic and modern humans are genetically related as a result of world-wide 036evolution. Scientists are conducting DNA analyses to help determine which of the two scenarios is more likely, but the results so far have been inconclusive (see the second sidebar to this article).

Archaeology can tell us something about the relationship between archaic and modern humans. In northern Israel, Neandertals and modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) seem to have lived side-by-side for millennia, using the same tools and eating the same foods. This is the only place in the world where there is clear evidence of such long-term coexistence.

Two caves—Qafzeh, near Nazareth, and Skhul, on the slopes of Mount Carmel—were inhabited by early modern humans. At Qafzeh, archaeologists found flint tools and the fragmentary skeletons of about 24 people dating to around 92,000 B.P. The ten partial skeletons from Skhul are almost as old. These are the oldest modern Homo sapiens sapiens fossils found outside Africa; they also predate most of the African evidence for modern humans.

Three other caves (Amud, Tabun and Kebara, all on Mount Carmel) were inhabited by Neandertals. The occupation of Tabun, which is only a few yards from the Skhul cave, may go back as far as 150,000 B.P. The earliest Neandertal levels at Amud and Kebara are about 60,000 years old. Since the Neandertals had disappeared from Israel by 40,000 B.P., it seems that archaic and modern humans lived next door to one another for at least 20,000 years, and possibly for as long as 60,000 years.

The cultural evidence from the two sets of caves is identical. The inhabitants hunted a wide range of animals, including gazelle and deer, and collected plants for food. They used Mousterian flake tools for woodworking, carving bone and antlers, and processing hides, as well as for hunting and butchering. And they buried their dead in similar ways.

It’s hard to imagine that these two human groups, living so close to one another and behaving (as far as we can tell) identically, didn’t interact. In fact, a few skeletons may show a mixture of traits, indicating that the people at Skhul and Tabun interbred—which is possible because they were members of the same species.

Obviously, a modern body doesn’t signal the appearance of people like us. People who looked modern but behaved like archaic Homo sapiens lived for tens of thousands of years in the Near East. How, then, do we pinpoint our arrival? The best way is to look for radical cultural changes, and we find one around 45,000 years ago, when a new tool industry called the Aurignacian appeared.

Like the Mousterian industry, the Aurignacian industry was based on blades. But the manufacturing techniques were new, and the toolmakers invented a series of new, compound tools like bows and arrows. They also made new bone tools, including pins and needles, spatulas and points.

Aurignacian technology is amazingly uniform. Tools found at Ksar Akil in Lebanon and in Kebara cave in Israel are virtually identical to those found in Europe. This is not as surprising as it might seem—the Aurignacian industry probably originated in the Levant about 50,000 years ago. Once fully developed, Aurignacian technology spread through Europe from east to west. Starting about 43,000 B.P., it appeared in southeastern Europe. By 40,000 B.P., it had reached central Europe, northern Spain and the 037Mediterranean basin. The new technology arrived in southwestern France about 5,000 years after that.

The first fully modern humans (often referred to as Cro-Magnons, after the site in France where they were first recognized) seem to have arrived in Europe at about the same time as Aurignacian technology. Once there, they lived separately from the local Neandertal population. The Neandertals continued to use Mousterian tools and live in semi-permanent camps. The Cro-Magnons, with their Aurignacian technology, moved from place to place following the migration routes of their prey.

But the main cultural difference between the two populations has to do with art and symbolic thought. The Neandertals made simple geometric pendants (sometimes called amulets), and they probably decorated their bodies and clothing. The fact that they buried their dead suggests some concept of an afterlife. And bone flutes from a Neandertal site in central Europe may indicate symbolic thought, because in all living cultures music is associated with symbolism. Without a population of living Neandertals, however, we will never know to what extent they recognized and used symbolism.

We modern humans, on the other hand, are masters of symbolic thought, as is illustrated in our art. For this reason, physical anthropologists identify fully modern early humans not by the kinds of tools they used but by the presence of painting and sculpture.

The Cro-Magnons were the first true artists. Excavators have found scores of decorative items, including pendants made from shells, fish vertebrae, bone, ivory and the teeth of foxes, wolves and deer. There are bracelets and daggers made of mammoth ivory, pierced antler rods and thousands of beads. One eastern European grave contained the skeletons of three teenage boys surrounded by 10,000 ivory beads, probably originally attached to their clothing. Archaeologists estimate that each bead took about an hour to fashion.

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By 35,000 years ago, people in Europe were covering the walls of caves and rock shelters with extraordinary images of animals. They used pieces of charcoal, paint sticks, powdered paint blown through bone tubes and liquid paint applied with the hands or with hair and feather brushes. They portrayed horses and ponies, woolly mammoths and bison, wild goats, stags and hinds, reindeer, musk oxen, woolly rhinoceroses, lions, cave bears and birds. Over 100 animal species are represented, but only a few human figures have been found. Cro-Magnon artists decorated dagger hilts and arrow-straighteners.^e They carved small steatopygous figurines—fat, nude women—out of stone. And they made dozens of complicated geometric designs, which some archaeologists interpret as calendars, population tallies or historical notations.

This art is so sophisticated that it must be the result of millennia of experimentation, but no evidence of less-developed art has been found. And there’s no agreement about what might have caused this creative explosion, although specialists have suggested everything from the stress of overpopulation and climate changes to a cerebral mutation. Whatever the genesis, the appearance of art signals the presence in Europe of people exactly like us.

What about in the Near East, where the Aurignacian technology was born? Surprisingly, almost no art has been found there. There are a few bones and stones with geometric decorations, and one possible animal depiction—a limestone slab on which an ungulate has been crudely incised—but that’s all. In fact, there’s really very little archaeological information of any kind about life in the Near East between 30,000 and 13,000 B.P.

But one category of contemporaneous Near Eastern objects is especially interesting. From the southern Sinai to northern Israel, excavators have uncovered a series of basalt and limestone objects associated with the processing of red ocher. This iron oxide was common in Europe, where it was made into red and yellow paint and was used in funerary rituals. In the Near East, archaeologists have found mortars, grinders, a few limestone scrapers, a chisel and some flints—probably used to cut ocher lumps—all with red ocher stains. We can only speculate on how Near Eastern Cro-Magnons used the resulting paint, perhaps to decorate their bodies or to color their clothing.

At one or two sites the mortars have no ocher residues. These may have been used to grind food, probably wild grain. And this is very interesting, indeed. For a few thousand years later, these Near Eastern peoples invented agriculture, changing human life forever.

But that’s another story.

Around 90,000 years ago, modern humans appeared in the Near East. They weren’t the first humans to make this journey, and as they moved north and west, they encountered earlier immigrants. In some places, the newcomers settled right next to their archaic cousins, living in close proximity for tens of thousands of years. Then suddenly, around 03030,000 years ago, the older humans disappeared. Modern humans went on to populate the entire world. This brief summary seems straightforward, but almost every phrase is contested by one group of paleoanthropologists or another. Despite more than a hundred years of research, there’s […]