Humans colonise the World

Prehistory
978-3-14-100890-6 | Page 26 | Ill. 1
 | Humans colonise the World | Prehistory | Karte 26/1

Overview

There are two major splits in the human family tree, and both occurred in Africa. The first and decisive one was the separation of the Apes from the great apes (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) about 7 million years ago. Around 4 million years ago, the Australopithecines, hominids (pre-humans) who were more modern than apes but still too primitive to make tools, populated parts of the Earth. About 2.5 million years ago, the African continent was already home to an astonishing variety of different pre-human species.

Pre-humans leave the continent

Around this time, the second major split occurred when the first representatives of the genus Homo appeared in South and East Africa with Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis. Unlike the hominid, the early man-made tools. Homo erectus, which evolved in Africa at least 1.8 million years ago, was probably the first representative of the genus to leave the continent to colonise foreign regions. First, they reached the Arabian Peninsula, then China and Java. About 900,000 years ago they populated Italy, then Spain. Homo erectus had a height of up to 1.80 metres, a comparatively large brain, and he was a master of fire. In Europe, he became the progenitor of Homo heidelbergensis (around 600,000 - 200,000 years ago), from which the Neanderthal man evolved. Homo neanderthalensis was adapted to life under ice-age conditions - fossil remains of this type of man have been found in Europe and the Middle East.

Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens

While the Neanderthal man populated Europe, the development into anatomically modern humans was completed in Africa. The oldest fossils so far that can be unequivocally assigned to Homo sapiens sapiens are 160,000 years old and come from Ethiopia. While the thesis that modern humans could have developed independently on different continents from Homo erectus of the first emigration phase ("multi-regional hypothesis") was discussed for a long time, it is now considered fairly certain that Homo sapiens developed in Africa and spread across the world from there.

First, he migrated to the Near East, from there he moved on to West and Southeast Asia. During the Würm and Weichselian glaciations, large masses of water were held in glaciers, and the water level was therefore around 100 metres below today's level. This turned shallow seas into wide land bridges, which favoured the spread of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia and Oceania. From the Sunda Islands, which he reached about 50,000 years ago, he reached Australia (ancestors of the Aborigines) by various routes and across the archipelagos of the southern Pacific to Polynesia. From there, Homo sapiens advanced on simple boats to Hawaii and New Zealand (Maoris). America was the last continent to be colonised by modern man. 18,000 years ago, the path through what is now Canada was still blocked by the ice sheet. But about 15,000 years ago, an ice-free passage, the Mackenzie Corridor, opened up between the huge ice sheets that covered the north of the continent. Through it, humans, probably following in the footsteps of migrating herds of animals, moved to the Americas, which they colonised from north to south within a relatively short time.

In Europe, on the other hand, Homo sapiens had already appeared about 40,000 years ago. Its first representative were the Cro-Magnons, named after a French rock shelter where skeletons were discovered, who expanded the Stone Age range of weapons and tools, developed a sense of beauty and aesthetics, created the first artefacts (for example, cave paintings, Venus figurines) and possibly knew rituals and festivals. For about 10,000 years, they lived close to the Neanderthal man, whose extinction about 30,000 years ago still puzzles researchers. Whether he was gradually driven out by Homo sapiens, which was superior in all cultural techniques and had a higher fertility rate, among other things, or fell victim to climate change is still debated.

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