human prehistory

Australian rock art

Introduction
Through the millennia, as groups of people settled new lands and conquered inhabited ones, joined together and split
apart, established religions, tamed wild beasts and organized themselves into civilizations, one thing remained
constant: they reproduced.

Reproducing means copying genomes. And copying genomes means making mistakes. Whenever parents hand
copies of their own DNA down to their children, a few errors inevitably enter the genetic code. Sometimes those
mutations are fatal, or so debilitating that the people who inherit them are unable to reproduce themselves. In those
cases, the mistakes disappear from the human gene pool as quickly as they arise. More rarely, the errors help people
survive and/or reproduce more easily; such mistakes can become increasingly widespread over time through natural
selection.

A History Written in DNA

But mistakes can also appear in less vital parts of the genetic code, where they have absolutely no bearing on an
individual's fitness. Known as neutral mutations—neither good nor bad from an evolutionary standpoint—they are
simply passed on, first to the children of the person in whom they first appeared, then to that person's grandchildren,
and so on. If the first person to inherit a particular neutral mutation is sufficiently fecund—and his or her descendants
are too—after a few hundred generations a single DNA copying error can easily be shared by millions of people on
multiple continents.

By looking at how neutral mutations are distributed in the present-day population, geneticists can assemble a human
family tree that shows how various ethnic groups and populations are related to one another. Following that tree all
the way to its root reveals that all of us—every person on the planet—descends from a small group of people who
lived in eastern Africa no more than 100,000 years ago.
Boys Versus Girls
Actually, there are many genetic trees—one for each section of the genome. But when parents mix their DNA, the
majority of the genetic code is so scrambled that it isn't easy to trace lines of descent (see the overall ancestry
section to learn about ways that information can be used). Only two small pieces of DNA are passed intact from
parent to child; fathers pass their Y-chromosomes directly to their sons, and mothers pass an unusual loop of genetic
material called mitochondrial DNA to their children of both sexes. So there are two genetic trees that preserve a
relatively intact record of the mutations that have accumulated over the generations—one for men and one for
women.

You would expect the mitochondrial and Y-chromosome trees to be similar, and they are. But men and women have
reproduced somewhat differently over the millennia, and that has created observable differences in their respective
genetic trees. For example, military campaigns have taken men across continents while their female relatives stayed
behind, resulting in some remarkably widespread Y-chromosome lineages. A particular Y-chromosome found widely
in Asia today is likely to have belonged to Genghis Khan and many of the men who joined him in his conquests.

We can't reconstruct the past with genetics alone. But by combining the genetic trees with information collected by
archaeologists, geologists, linguists and other scholars we can splice together an amazingly detailed account of
human prehistory.

Acacia tree, Africa

2 million years ago...

About two million years ago, a new kind of human appeared on the savannas of eastern Africa. Homo erectus was
taller than earlier species and more suited to traveling long distances on two feet—a significant advantage at a time
when gradually drying climate was causing forests to shrink and grasslands to expand. Members of Homo
erectus also had bigger brains than their predecessors and could make tools out of stone and wood, two traits that
soon made them the dominant species in eastern Africa.
 Homo erectus

1.8 million years ago...

Ours wasn't the first human species to expand from Africa to other continents. Homo erectus proved so successful on
the savannas of eastern Africa that within a few hundred millennia the species had expanded into Asia and Europe,
ultimately reaching as far as present-day China and Indonesia. For more than a million years Homo erectus was the
planet's most successful primate, able to persist in a wide variety of climates and environments.

Homo heidelbergensis

600,000 years ago...

By 600,000 years ago our ancestors in Africa began developing larger brains and more rounded skulls to contain
them. Like Homo erectus before them, these more human-like predecessors of Homo sapiens expanded into Europe
and Asia—where they may have differentiated into local forms. Over 500,000 years of continued change, the African
representatives of this archaic human group became increasingly similar to people living today, eventually
becoming Homo sapiens—Latin for wise human.
Neanderthal (left) and Homo sapiens

250,000 years ago...

Until relatively recently Europe has had a much harsher climate than it does today, with long periods of Arctic
conditions relieved only by short outbreaks of temperate weather every 100,000 years or so. But the Neanderthals, a
sister species of Homo sapiens that last shared a common ancestor with modern humans about 500,000 years ago,
managed to thrive in Ice Age Europe from about 250,000 years ago until after the arrival of modern humans about
40,000 years ago. Neanderthals were sturdy and big-brained; they were intelligent enough to make stone tools and
bury their dead. But it is not known if they were capable of language.

Early modern human skull

200,000 years ago...

Genetic analysis indicates the mitochondrial DNA of everyone living today traces back to no more than a small
population of women who lived in Africa almost 200,000 years ago. By then Homo sapiens looked very similar—but
not identical—to people living today. The oldest completely modern human fossils come from Israel and date to about
90,000 years ago.
Incised ochre from Blombos Cave, South Africa

80-50,000 years ago...

The period between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago was an eventful time for the human species, though it is difficult to
say exactly what events occurred and the order in which they transpired. The mitochondrial DNA record indicates a
sudden expansion of the L2 and L3 haplogroups as humans extended their range throughout most of Africa.
Archaeological evidence from southern and eastern Africa suggests a wave of cultural and technological innovation
at about the same time; people began cooperating with one another through trade and other activities, decorating
their bodies with jewelry and pigment and inventing new ways of collecting food. Those new skills may have been
especially critical during the early part of the period, when rapid climate oscillations were punctuated by a severe cold
snap after the eruption of an Indonesian super-volcano about 74,000 years ago. By about 60,000 years ago a small
group of people, perhaps numbering only a few hundred, crossed the Red Sea to the Arabian peninsula. Following a
coastal route, these initial migrants and their descendants made remarkably swift progress into Asia, reaching
present-day Malaysia by 55,000 years ago.

Australian rock art

50,000 years ago...
Humans first arrived in southeast Asia right at the peak of a major ice age. The globe's average temperature was as
much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at the time; thanks to the increased volume of water frozen in the polar ice
sheets sea level dropped hundreds of feet, exposing vast stretches of territory that are submerged today. That meant
the ocean passage from Asia to Australia was much shorter than it is today. Even so, people would have had to cross
at least 60 miles of open water to reach the island continent. Archaeological evidence indicates they first made the
voyage no later than about 45,000 years ago.

Cave painting in Altamira, Spain

40,000 years ago...

Neanderthals had already been living in Europe for at least 200,000 years when they began encountering Homo
sapiens migrating into the continent from the south and east. Though smaller and less physically adapted to the cold
ice-age climate of the time, these newcomers had a remarkable ability to shape natural materials to their needs and
wants. They carved statuettes, painted cave walls and made jewelry from stone, bits of shell and animals' teeth. They
crafted tools and weapons not just from stone but bone, antler and ivory. Within 10,000 years Homo sapiens had
spread all the way to modern-day Spain and France. Though Neanderthals apparently did acquire some of their
neighbors' advanced technologies, they soon found it hard to keep up.
Artist's rendering of a Neanderthal

30,000 years ago...

Recent archaeological finds suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans lived in close proximity for at least a few
millennia in Europe, perhaps for as long as 15,000 years. But by 30,000 years ago Neanderthals appear to have
been confined to the extreme southwest of the continent by either deteriorating climate conditions, competition from
humans or outright warfare with them—perhaps a combination of those factors.

Present-day Siberia

18,000 years ago...

The Neanderthals went extinct about 28,000 years ago, just as the globe was slipping into the depths of the Ice Age.
For several thousand years global average temperatures fell to as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit below current
levels and mile-thick glaciers expanded over much of North America and Eurasia, reaching their maximum extent
about 18,000 years ago. Even outside the ice-covered regions the climate was extremely dry, making survival difficult
except in a few more temperate areas. In Europe those areas included Iberia, Italy and parts of the Balkans.
Significant populations also remained in the Caucusus and the Near East. But some people clearly did find ways to
survive even in far northern regions; the ancestors of today's Native Americans were living in Siberia at the time.
The Bering Land Bridge

15,000 years ago...

When and how people first reached the Americas remains somewhat unclear, but it is most likely that they arrived
about the time the Ice Age began winding down 15,000 years ago. Recent archaeological and genetic evidence
suggests that people had been living in northeastern Siberia for as long as 15,000 years before that, thriving in the
extremely cold climate by hunting mammoths and other large game. And because sea levels were lower during the
Ice Age, thanks to the extraction of water from the oceans by the massive polar ice sheets that covered much of
North America and Eurasia, people could cross from Siberia into Alaska via a land bridge across the present-day
Bering Strait. But the path southward into the heart of North America was blocked by the very same ice sheets until
about 15,000 years ago, when the Ice Age began to wane. As soon as it did people spread throughout the continent,
reaching the southern tip of South America within a few thousand years. The settlement of the Americas was so fast
that some scholars have suggested the migrants traveled by small boat down the Pacific coast rather than walking.

Briksdal Glacier, Norway

10,000 years ago...
By 10,000 years ago the Ice Age, a dominant force in human evolution since the origin of the species, was over. The
climatic epoch that began at that time, and has continued until the present, brought not just warmer but much more
stable environmental conditions than humans had ever experienced before. It also brought the extinction of many Ice
Age creatures, such as mammoths and giant deer, that people had depended on for millennia as a source of food.
Within a few thousand years people around the globe had abandoned their nomadic, hunter-gatherer way of life for a
settled and much more economically productive agricultural existence.

The Fertile Crescent

10-9,000 years ago...

Southwestern Asia was the first region to develop agriculture, specifically in the Fertile Crescent, a sickle-shaped
zone running from Mesopotamia through the Levant and into the Nile Valley. The first domesticated crops were
emmer and einkorn wheat, soon followed by barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas, bitter vetch and flax; cows, goats and
sheep were also domesticated. The increased food supply soon caused a population explosion and expansion whose
effects can still be seen in the human genome today.

Chinese farmers
9-8,000 years ago...
Two different farming traditions developed in China, one in the south based on rice and another farther north based
on millet. Pigs were also domesticated in both regions.

Indo-European languages, 3500 BC and 1500 AD

8-4,000 years ago...

Once agriculture began it was prone to spread into neighboring regions where the same or similar plants could be
cultivated either through adoption by neighboring hunter-gatherers, migration by farmers into unsettled areas, or both.
That's what appears to have happened in Europe, where the genes of present-day inhabitants indicate a mix of
indigenous and Near Eastern ancestry. But language is a different story. With the notable exception of Basque and a
few others, whatever languages Europeans spoke before the arrival of agriculture have gone extinct. The major
tongues of modern Europe all belong to the Indo-European language family, which appears to have originated in the
Near East and spread along with agriculture both westward to Europe and east to India.

Tequila, Mexico
6-5,000 years ago...
American agriculture originated in present day Mexico with the domestication of corn about 8,000 years ago, but it did
not become widespread until a period of relatively wet climate conditions about 6,000 years ago. Agriculture also
appeared later in eastern North America and the northern Andes with the domestication of potatoes and guinea pigs.

Ethiopian farmland

5-4,000 years ago...

Agriculture arose in sub- Saharan Africa with the domestication of a variety of crops including various millets,
sorghum, groundnuts, yams, dates, coffee and melons.

Bantu language expansion

4-2,000 years ago...

Agriculture expanded out of West Africa with the Bantu-speakers, a group of people who originally lived in present-
day Cameroon. The expansion was slow because of the difficulty of clearing tropical forest for farming, but eventually
it encompassed most of Africa south of the Sahara. Today Bantu languages are spoken in virtually all of sub-
equatorial Africa, with the exception of the Kalahari. Genetic evidence of Bantu ancestry is also found throughout the
region.
Traditional Polynesian Canoe

3,000 years ago...

Human prehistory is full of impressive ocean voyages all the way back to the exit from Africa, which could have been
accomplished by crossing the mouth of the Red Sea between northeastern Africa and the Arabian peninsula. But the
colonization of Polynesia would have required seafaring on an entirely different level. Separated by distances of 200
miles or more, the islands of the South Pacific are as remote as any place on Earth. Yet people began colonizing
Polynesia about 3,000 years ago, moving eastward from Asia and Oceania over the course of two millennia. Based
on linguistic and archaeological evidence, some scholars believe the migration may have had its ultimate origins in
Taiwan. But genetic data, especially from the Y-chromosome, suggest the Polynesians originated in Southeast Asia.

Prague synagogue built 1270 AD

2,000 years ago...

After the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, Jews were scattered from their homeland to
various locations around the Mediterranean and beyond. Some ended up in Italy, where they gradually made their
way north over the next millennium into the Rhine Valley to found what is known today as the Ashkenazi Jewish
community. By the 20th century the number of Ashkenazi Jews had grown to 8 million from an estimated starting
population of 25,000. And by studying present-day members of the community, geneticists have shown that even that
small population sprang from an even more exclusive group. It appears that 40% of today's Ashkenazi are descended
from just four women who lived less than 2,000 years ago.

Columbus 'discovers' America

500 years ago...

During the age of exploration European seafarers set out to chart the globe and encountered people who struck them
as unimaginably foreign. Little did they know they were meeting their own cousins—maybe their thousandth cousins,
but distant relations nonetheless. During the subsequent 500 years colonization and globalization have wiped out
many of the cultures and languages that developed over 80 millennia of human prehistory. But the genetic record of
our shared prehistory remains ready to be deciphered, as new technologies allow us to explore the human genome in
ever increasing detail.