The Ancient Period, Before 600 BCE: 1.1: Human Adaptation and Migration in the Paleolithic World (Sources 1–8)

Did new technology, improved nutrition, or some genetic mutation allow modern humans to explore the world? (Source 2)

Possibly, but other scholars point to more mundane factors that may have contributed to the exodus from Africa. (Source 2)

Possibly, but other scholars point to more mundane factors that may have contributed to the exodus from Africa. (Source 2)

A recent DNA study suggests that massive droughts before the great migration split Africa’s modern human population into small, isolated groups and may have even threatened their extinction. (Source 2)

Only after the weather improved were the survivors able to reunite, multiply and, in the end, emigrate. Improvements in technology may have helped some of them set out for new territory. (Source 2)

Ochre is a form of iron ore that makes a fine paint. It can be used on human bodies or on walls. And those chunks of ochre themselves have been scribed with abstract designs. (Source 3)

The cave has also yielded up a seventy-five-thousand-year-old snail-shell necklace—the oldest ever found. (Source 3)

These uses of an aesthetic, symbolic language would hardly have been possible without speech, as well. (Source 3)

Moreover, from around 50,000 years ago—the period referred to by archaeologists as the Upper Paleolithic—an unprecedented cultural explosion began to manifest itself in human communities. (Source 5)

Moreover, from around 50,000 years ago—the period referred to by archaeologists as the Upper Paleolithic—an unprecedented cultural explosion began to manifest itself in human communities. (Source 5)

Moreover, from around 50,000 years ago—the period referred to by archaeologists as the Upper Paleolithic—an unprecedented cultural explosion began to manifest itself in human communities. (Source 5)

This resulted in art work, sophisticated jewelry, advanced stone tool technology, evidence of complex ritual systems and social structures, fishing and boat-building, the manufacture of projectile javelins for hunting, and other trappings of a relatively sophisticated material culture. (Source 5)

This resulted in art work, sophisticated jewelry, advanced stone tool technology, evidence of complex ritual systems and social structures, fishing and boat-building, the manufacture of projectile javelins for hunting, and other trappings of a relatively sophisticated material culture. (Source 5)

This resulted in art work, sophisticated jewelry, advanced stone tool technology, evidence of complex ritual systems and social structures, fishing and boat-building, the manufacture of projectile javelins for hunting, and other trappings of a relatively sophisticated material culture. (Source 5)

Ancient humans settled in North America around 130,000 years ago, suggests a controversial study—pushing the date back more than 100,000 years earlier than most scientists accept. (Source 7)

…Most scientists subscribe to the view that Homo sapiens arrived in North America less than 20,000 years ago.... (Source 7)

The study focuses on ancient animal-bone fragments found in 1992 during road repairs in suburban San Diego. The find halted construction, and palaeontologist Tom Deméré of the San Diego Natural History Museum led a five-month excavation. (Source 7)

The find halted construction, and palaeontologist Tom Deméré of the San Diego Natural History Museum led a five-month excavation. (Source 7)

Currently, some of the biggest questions facing palaeoanthropology involve trying to work out how and when early humans left the continent. Was it a single dispersal? Or multiple? A recent discovery of a jawbone fossil in Israel suggests that there could have been a migration as early as about 180,000 years ago. (Source 8)

Surprisingly, the tools date back to 385,000 years ago—which is around the same time as this technology is thought to have first [been] developed by archaic or possibly modern humans in Africa. (Source 8)