ch 8: This chapter reviews evidence associated with the Neanderthals, extinct hominins who lived in Europe and Western Asia before humans settled these regions after 40–50 Ka. It compares evidence for Neanderthals’ survival strategies with those Ancient Africans practiced. Many of the differences between Neanderthals and Ancient Africans seem to have arisen from Neanderthals’ living in small, highly mobile groups and from their investing less time and energy in technology.

ch 4: This chapter introduces a new approach to investigating “how questions” about prehistoric human population movements. Rather than speculating about specific population movement routes, “survival archaeology” asks how prehistoric humans solved essential survival problems as they moved to and settled in new habitats. Ethnographic studies of preindustrial humans as well as the modern-day wilderness survival and “bushcraft” literature shed light on what these ancestral survival skills were. The chapter argues that humans overcame prehistoric survival challenges by using complex combinations of ancestral survival skills. It closes by proposing some reasonable assumptions about how earlier humans used those skills.

ch 9: This chapter reviews how humans settled Northern Eurasia between 12 and 45 Ka, comparing their survival strategies with those Neanderthals deployed under similar circumstances. Both hominins shared the same suite of ancestral survival skills, but they used them differently and in distinctive ways. Humans devised calorie-conserving superior insulation from cold (clothing, artificial shelters) and innovative strategies for extracting calories from plant food–impoverished landscapes. They used artifacts as “social media” to create and maintain extensive alliance networks, a strategy that resonates with contemporary audiences but also one with deep roots among ancestral survival skills.

ch 7: This chapter reviews the evidence for the peopling of Southeast Asia and Australasia before 30 Ka. These regions’ sparse fossil record lacks firm geochronology, but it appears that humans established themselves in Southeast Asia sometime between 45 and 75 Ka. Archaeological evidence from these regions contrasts with that from Southern and Southwest Asia; nevertheless, Southeast Asian and Australasian sites preserve some of the world’s oldest-dated representative artworks and the oldest evidence for oceangoing watercraft. Humans’ arrival in Southeast Asia coincides with last appearances of several other hominin species. Their arrival in Australia precedes mass extinctions of that continent’s marsupial megafauna (large animals).

ch 1: This chapter introduces the book’s main themes: differences between dispersals and migrations and their roles in how humans settled the world during prehistoric times. It distinguishes paleoanthropologists “who questions” (questions about prehistoric humans’ identities) from “how questions,” questions about how prehistoric people overcame specific survival challenges. It argues that paleoanthropologists have spent far too much time and energy investigating “who questions” than “how questions” and that progress toward understanding our evolved unstoppability requires more research on how questions. The chapter also explains differences between traditional narrative approaches to explaining human evolution and the comparative approach this work employs.

ch 6: This chapter surveys the evidence for Homo sapiens behavior between 30 and 500 Ka in Southwest and South Asia (the East Mediterranean Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian Subcontinent). These regions have much in common with those parts of Africa on roughly the same latitude, and their paleoanthropological record differs little from one another or from that of Northern Africa. Moving into these regions seems to have required few major changes to Ancient Africans’ survival strategies. Alternatively, South and Southwest Asia could have been part of a larger Afro-Asiatic region in which H. sapiens evolved out of H. heidelbergensis.

ch 2: This chapter reviews the hard evidence of the dates, fossils, artifacts, and genes that paleoanthropologists use in developing hypotheses about prehistoric human population movements. It also touches briefly on the principles that guide interpretations of this evidence. Each of these topics is the subject of entire scientific disciplines, and so, this chapter focuses on the basics: key terms and concepts that recur in this book’s later chapters.