Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ice
Polar desert
Ice
Steppe
tundra
Glacial
lake
Steppe tundra
Glacial
lake
Rainforest
Woodland
Scrub
Grassland
Steppe tundra
Desert
Ice
Beachcomber
route
Mountains
Lake
Desert
Himalayas
N:77ka R:83ka
Arabian
desert
R:81ka
R:65ka
M:76ka
Desert
M:55ka
Abdur
L3:83ka
Gate of
Grief
M:79ka
N:75ka
M29'Q:66ka
Grassland
Grassland
M:48:ka
N/S:63ka
P5'7:48ka
Desert
Figure 112 Stephen Oppenheimer's map of the Great Migration, including a possible later
extension to the north toward China and Japan. The letters and numbers refer to the ancient
mitochondrial lineages carried by the various groups and the approximate times when they
arose: for example, lineage L3:83ka arose in Africa approximately 83,000 years ago. I sus-
pect that the beginnings of the migration followed a more northerly route than the one shown
here that skirts the southern coast of Saudi Arabia. That coast, currently extremely desic-
cated, must have been even more forbidding during the dry climate of the Ice Ages. (From
Stephen Oppenheimer, “The Great Arc of Dispersal of Modern Humans: Africa to Australia,”
Quaternary International 202 (2009): 2-13 , Figure 3.) © Stephen Oppenheimer.
fertile regions of eastern Anatolia and northern Syria, and fi nally down
into the lush country of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. But these
early migrants out of Africa must have encountered well-settled popula-
tions of Neanderthals that had been living in Syria and as far east as Iran for
millennia. 5
The confl icts that might have taken place between these two groups of
peoples are now lost to history. But I suspect that the Neanderthals were any-
thing but pushovers. We know that they made axes with stone blades and
wooden hafts, and buried fl owers along with their dead. 6 We know nothing
about their martial skills, but we do know that they had survived for a long
time in the Middle East before modern humans arrived.
 
 
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