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53 results

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  • 3 - Pleistocene hominin dispersals, naïve faunas and social networks

  • from II - Origins: Species Movements in the Pleistocene
  • Edited by Nicole Boivin, Rémy Crassard, Michael Petraglia
  • Book:
    Human Dispersal and Species Movement
    Published online:
    04 May 2017
    Print publication:
    27 May 2017, pp 62-89

  • Summary

    Abstract

    Biogeographic studies of hominin dispersals address a variety of spatial and temporal scales. These studies are mostly concerned with establishing when dispersals occurred, and which types of environments were preferred by hominins. In this chapter, I argue that studies of dispersals need to consider the likely responses of prey species to incoming hominin groups, and the cognitive, social and technical skills of the hominins involved. When the earliest hominins in Eurasia (and later, the earliest humans in the Americas and Australia) dispersed into new areas, they encountered a fauna that would have been initially naïve about the threat posed by a new predator. This naivety would have made predation easier, and facilitated further expansion by hominins, and later, Homo sapiens. The second point argued in this chapter is that because hominins are the only animals that are known to have changed their behaviour substantially in the course of their evolution, it is inadequate to treat them as biogeographically equivalent to less cognitively advanced species like rabbits or rhinos. This is particularly the case when discussing the expansion of H. sapiens into new areas such as Siberia, Japan, the Philippines, Australasia and ultimately the Americas. In these examples, attention needs to be directed towards establishing the type of networks that human groups established for obtaining and sharing information and resources.

    Keywords: Out of Africa 1, Out of Africa 2, naïve faunas, vigilant faunas, social networks

    INTRODUCTION

    Dispersals underpin most current narratives of human evolution. They are fundamental to the story of how our ancestors originated in Africa, developed into a bipedal tool-making carnivorous primate, moved into Asia and Europe after 2 Ma, and eventually, by the end of the Pleistocene ca. 10,000 years ago (10 ka), colonised every continent except for Antarctica (see Boivin, Introduction to this volume). The record for human evolution in Eurasia is usually portrayed as the outcome of two major dispersal events: the first, often referred to as Out of Africa 1, documents the dispersal after 2.0 Ma of Homo erectus – the earliest documented inhabitant of Asia – as far east as northern China and Java, Indonesia, and as far west as Spain by 1.4 Ma; the second, commonly known as Out of Africa 2, concerns the expansion of our own species, Homo sapiens, from Africa across Eurasia after ca.

  • 17 - Asian Palaeolithic dispersals

  • from Part II - The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
  • Edited by David Christian, Macquarie University, Sydney
  • Book:
    The Cambridge World History
    Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    09 April 2015, pp 414-432

  • Summary

    This chapter describes the origins of the modern, Western study of language, belief, and knowledge. "Europe" refers to the continent, itself with fuzzy boundaries, but when appearing in the world history of knowledge "European" usually refers also to the places most colonized by Europeans in the last two centuries, and to those places' peoples and their ideas. The chapter discusses how historians and others have treated four key moments in the history of knowledge and belief, and specifically at what role the Wider World plays in their scholarship. The four inflection points are familiar: hominization, the Axial Age of religious development, the European Scientific Revolution, and recent and continuing secularization. The secularization thesis was formed in a European scholarly milieu, based on ideas about contemporary and past Christianity, and only then expanded to the Wider World. The Wider World reinforces the secularization thesis, begs questions of the Scientific Revolution, and delights in the level playing field of the Axial Age.

Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins
  • Edited by Robin Dennell, Martin Porr
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    24 February 2014
  • This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the 'Out of Africa' model, this book emphasises the context and variability of the global evidence in the search for human origins.

The Palaeolithic Settlement of Asia
  • Robin Dennell
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 December 2008
  • This book provides the first analysis and synthesis of the evidence of the earliest inhabitants of Asia before the appearance of modern humans 100,000 years ago. Asia has received far less attention than Africa and Europe in the search for human origins, but is no longer considered of marginal importance. Indeed, a global understanding of human origins cannot be properly understood without a detailed consideration of the largest continent. In this study, Robin Dennell examines a variety of sources, including the archaeological evidence, the fossil hominin record, and the environmental and climatic background from Southwest, Central, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as China. He presents an authoritative and comprehensive framework for investigations of Asia's oldest societies, challenges many long-standing assumptions about its earliest inhabitants, and places Asia centrally in the discussions of human evolution in the past two million years.

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