Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
where there is evidence of part-modern, part-archaic humans as far back as a hundred twenty-five thousand
years. In caves on the seacoast of South Africa, remains of modern humans who scavenged an existence off
shellfish and small animals have been dated at least that far back. And the fossil finds for the conclusion of
an “African genesis” have recently been buttressed by more controversial research by microbiologists who
have traced a trail of human DNA back to Africa. The prevailing view is that modern humans began to
spread out from Africa over tens of thousands of years, gradually supplanting more archaic forms, includ-
ing the Neanderthal. This fossil record eliminates the possibility that we present humans descended from
the Neanderthals, since modern human beings were on the scene in several areas long before Neanderthals
arrived in those regions.
But not everyone is satisfied with the contention that we are all “out of Africa.” The DNA evidence
supporting the “African Eve” has been shown to be flawed. And there is another view. Paleontologists
studying skulls found in a variety of areas argue that modern humans may very well have developed inde-
pendently in several places all over the world. This central debate is a seismic fault line splitting paleonto-
logy today.
While this essential mystery may eventually be cleared up with new fossil finds or advances in micro-
biology that allow far more sophisticated analysis of the genetics of human evolution, some answers are
easier. It is certain, based on dating of bone fragments from central Australia, that early humans reached
the island continent by 60,000
BC.
In Europe, the first modern humans, called Cro-Magnon, lived from
about forty thousand years ago in a period of time known as the Upper Paleolithic. Another ice age had
come, and they adapted well to it. In successive waves, some of them apparently crossed into North and
South America either by way of the ice-age land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska or perhaps
even by boat. While a date of twelve thousand years was long accepted as the time frame for humans in
the Americas, carbon testing of fragments found in caves in Chile has pushed that date back to as much
as thirty-three thousand years ago. More radical, but largely undocumented, theories contend that humans
were in the Americas even earlier—another mystery waiting for evidence to fill in some large blanks.
But back to the Neanderthal. For a period of time the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnon people over-
lapped in Europe and the Middle East. Then the Neanderthal trail goes ice-age cold. Whether the Cro-
Magnon and other modern
Homo sapiens
flat out killed off their Neanderthal neighbors, forced them into
less hospitable surroundings where they withered out of existence, or intermingled with the Neanderthal
until they were absorbed into the Cro-Magnon gene pool, is still a part of the mystery of human evolution.
But we do know that the Cro-Magnon and other modern people went on. Somewhere around thirty thou-
sand years ago, in a variety of places around the world, these prehistoric ancestors made a quantum leap in
civilization. They invented art. Elaborate cave drawings of animals and astonishingly sophisticated carved
figures—both fertility figurines and delicately carved animals—burst onto the scene. And by around ten
thousand years ago, these ancestors had begun to live in villages, to keep animals, and to trade and farm.
Geographic Voices
From
Out of Africa
(1937) by Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen Blixen, 1885-1962)
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a
hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time
you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid
and restful, and the nights were cold.
The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not
its like in all the world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up
through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent. The colours were dry
and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which
was different from that of the trees in Europe; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal
