On becoming human: geographical background to cultural evolution

Summary

Only in Africa have Pliocene hominid fossils been recovered so far. The oldest well‐dated Australopithecine fossils come from the Middle Awash valley of Ethiopia and are 4 million years old. The earliest evidence of stone toolmaking, from the same region, dates to c. 2.5 million years ago, which was a time of cooler, drier climate in the Ethiopian uplands, and of rapid ice build‐up in the northern hemisphere. By 1.5 million years ago Homo erectus was using fire and large bifacially worked stone flakes, cultural attributes which may have facilitated the spread of these Pleistocene hunter‐gatherers across Eurasia. From last interglacial time (125 000 years BP) onwards, Homo sapiens made use of increasingly specialized and more diversified tool kits, crossing land and sea to occupy Australia by 40 000, Siberia by 35 000, and the Americas by 20 000 years ago. Ritual, art and music flourished among the Late Pleistocene Upper Palaeolithic hunters of Eurasia, Africa and Australia. Holocene domestication of plants and animals triggered the social and economic changes which made possible the emergence of urban civilization.