… stone tools, because it marks a significant turning point between our shared past with the rest of the animal kingdom. (Worth mentioning, the idea that humans are the only animal that use tools is controversial!) These tools, used by our early ancestors, indicate the beginning of the Paleolithic Era, also known as the “Stone” Age.

Our ancestors spread across Africa, continuing to evolve into other Hominin subspecies. About a million years into the Paleolithic, the globe was plunged into an ice age. (We were amazed to learn that the average global temperature during the ice age was only  11° F or 6° C colder than the average global temperature in the 20th century!).

Until about 1.6 million years ago, well into the ice age, all human subspecies lived in Africa. Then Homo Erectus traveled up through the Levant and spread across Eurasia. Anthropologists refer to this event as Out Of Africa One.

As human groups continued to evolve across Afro-Eurasia, some learned to control fire. Like all truly ancient history, there are many contrasting theories about when this happened. Most scientists put it at 400,000 years ago, but others think it was much earlier.

Across Afro-Eurasia, hominin groups continued to evolve, including Denisovans, Neanderthals, and many, many others. Anthropologist, Tom Higham, describes the world Homo Sapiens were born into as a “Middle Earth,” populated by many types of humans, including the group affectionately named hobbits. Many early discoveries previously attributed to Homo Sapiens, like art, jewelry, flutes, and stalagmite circles, are now hypothesized to be made by other early human groups.

Between 23,000 and 13,000 years ago, humans crossed from Northeast Asia into the Americas. There are many theories about when and how this happened, but by 13,000 years ago, a surprisingly cohesive architectural package had spread across most of North America. This is called the Clovis Culture.

Somewhere between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago, the last of our cousin subspecies died out, and we were left alone on Earth.

Around 12,000 years ago, the ice age ended. Many people began to cultivate foods. The shift to agriculture for many early humans was a long, gradual process. “Hunter/gathers” had long practiced landscape manipulation to encourage the growth of the plants and animals they favored. Many of the first early humans to cultivate plants were semi-nomadic. They migrated regularly and grew crops seasonally. Many would plant crops, leave for long periods, and return to reap the harvest.

There are many examples of people working together on large projects without the trappings of city specialization and government. While Stonehenge is famous, there are many… other… stone… circles… across the world. The relationship between the origins of structural inequality and the invention of agriculture is debated. Many historians, such as Jared Diamond, view agriculture as a terrible mistake. Others, such as David Graeber and David Wengrow, argue the evidence does not suggest a relationship between agriculture and inequality.

Over time, many people began to live in permanent settlements. Villages, then clusters of villages, appeared on every continent. Some of these like Catalhoyuk lasted for more than a thousand years.

Stone tools were replaced by copper tools. Arsenic, and eventually, tin was mixed into the copper to make bronze. This time is the famous Bronze Age. This is the official beginning of what almost everyone means when they talk about “history.” The Bronze Age is the time period when humankind began to write literature, build pyramids and temples, send large armies into war, enslave their fellow humans, and permanently alter the ecosystems of the lands they occupied. 

Several of these massive early civilizations formed independently around the same time. We will look at each of them individually next episode.