a.brief.history.of.human.evolution.and.economic.progress

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A Brief History of

Human Evolution and

Economic Progress:The Greatest Bubble - Human

opulation - Is Beginning to

eak

H.S. Dent Publishing, LLC

Harry S. Dent, Jr.


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Table of Contents

2 A Brief History of HumanEvolution and Economic

Progress: The Greatest Bubble --Human Population -- Is Beginning

to Peak

3 An Important Time toTake a Longer Look at Trends

6 Smart Apes to ArchaicHumans - 6 Million to 2

Million Years Ago

9 How Apes Evolved intoHumans

10 How Ice Ages Have Driven

the Emergence of New Speciesand Models of Man

11 The Last Four Major IceAges

13 The Early Stone Age - 2

Million Years Ago to 250,000Years Ago

14 The Emergence ofModern Man and The Middle

Stone Age

14 The First SuccessfulModern Migration Out ofAfrica 80,000 Years Ago

16 To Southeast

Asia/Malaysia/Australia by68,000 - 74,000 Years Ago

19 The Second GreatMigration: 50,000 to 40,000

Years Ago

20 The Third and GreatestMigration: 35,000 to 22,000

Years Ago

23 The First Counter-

Migration and Clash of EthnicCultures in the Last Ice Age

24 The Really Great Leap -The Agricultural Age andWriting

25 Why Apes and Humans

First Emerged in Areas likeAfrica then Developed to the

Greatest Degree In SoutheastAsia

26 The Mid-East as theBirthplace for Agriculture and

Urbanization

27 The Emergence of Towns,Cities, Specialization of Labor

and Writing

28 Urbanization: Towns to

Cities to Regional Empires toGlobalization

29 The Exponential Trend in

Population Growth Since 1000B.C.

34 The 3000-Year WesternCivilization Cycle

35 How Western Civilization

Emerged in Greece andExpanded Through Rome

36 The Long Shakeout of theDark Ages

37 The Long Maturity Boomin Western Civilization - 1000-

Year Cycle

37 The Industrial Revolution

Lead by Britain

38 The DemocracyRevolutions and the Decline

of Monarchies

39 A Summary of Inflation

and Standard of LivingProgress in Modern Times

40 Progress in Standard of

Living in the Last 1000 Years

40 500-Year Macro-Technology Cycles - From

Centralization toDecentralization

42 The 300-Year CyclesBefore and After the Industrial

Revolution

43 The 80-Year NewEconomy Cycle

43 The Baby Boom Spending

Wave

(C) Copyright, 2004, H.S. Dent Publishing

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A longer view of history only reinforces

the greater reality and principle of

exponential growth and progress

over time vs. the straight-line viewthat our minds prefer

- Harry S. Dent, Jr.


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A Brief History of HumanEvolution and EconomicProgress: The GreatestBubble HumanPopulation Is Beginningto Peak

The world is approaching a criti-cal turning point. Population isbeginning to slow for the firsttime since the last ice agearound 20,000 years ago. Atthat time all ethnic culturesaround the world were in thehunting and gathering stage ofhuman evolution a stage thathad lasted millions of years withlittle warfare and conflict amongwandering tribes that were more

egalitarian in nature. Since theend of that ice age around13,000 years ago, agriculturehas emerged creating the firsttowns, cities, empires, central-ized governments, institutional-ized religions, armies andincreasing advances in technolo-gies. A great bubble in humanpopulation has emerged expo-nentially and now thathuman bubble is almost certainto peak in this century alreadyin Europe and to follow in

Japan, China, the U.S., SouthAmerica, India and Africa overthe rest of this century.

What does this mean for ourfuture? Is most of world growthgoing to shift to Asia in the com-ing decades while Western cul-tures slow and decline? Willthere be growing cultural clash-es and conflicts between the lag-

ging third world countries andthe prosperous developed coun-tries as we have already seenwith recent terrorist threats?Will productivity from new tech-nologies and globalization allowour standard of living to groweven in an era of slowing demo-graphic trends ahead?

In this special report we aregoing to give you a simple, butvery powerful education andoverview of the entire expanse ofhuman history and evolution and even how we evolved intohumans. And much of it is also

counter to common wisdommuch like our new economiclogic. But it is also similarly verycommon sense, logical and clari-fying. You might at first think:why should I be concerned withlonger-term trends in historywhen Im just trying to surviveand live the best life I can in thecoming decades? From this sim-ple overview you will see that weare in a very auspicious, but yetincreasingly ominous time inhistory that will affect your lifefor decades to come, and yourkids lives for even moredecades. We are likely at amuch more major turning pointin history and economics thanwe were in the 1920s to 1930stransition from bubble boom togreat bust, 80 years ago on ourNew Economy cycle.

In the Western economies we

are approaching a period morelike the 70-year correction afterthe South Seas Bubble in 1720,and even more so, like the lat-ter, less stable peak and plateauperiod of the Roman Empirefrom 100 to 450 A.D that wasfollowed by a 500-year period ofregression in growth andprogress. Weve seen the peak ofexponential growth trends inpopulation and it is clearly slow-ing down for the first time since

the Dark Ages began to set inwith the only strong growthahead in Southeast Asia andIndia and only until around2065 (not even China past 2020or 2030). The explosion indemographic growth and urban-ization that started with theAgricultural Revolution 10,000

years ago is coming to a head

and it will have major conse-quences for decades and cen-turies to come.

Our research has been seminalin proving that demographicgrowth drives our economy long-

term, including the more radicalinnovations that come from newgenerations of younger people and especially every other gener-ation or every 80 years in mod-ern times. When populationgrowth slows, history has shownthat major adjustments and set-backs follow from slowinginnovation (from lower numbersof young people) to slowinggrowth in spending and produc-tivity (from slowing numbers ofthe most productive workersand highest spending con-sumers) to rising social burdensfrom aging populations.

But the good news is that thisinformation revolution, the firstmajor one since the printingpress, is likely to continue tobring rises in our standard ofliving for decades to come, andlikely longer, as we covered in

Chapter 8 ofThe Next GreatBubble Boom. Yet the great chal-lenges of integrating many dif-ferent cultures and economiesinto a global economy are muchgreater than most would pre-sume as the clashing of globalcultures, ranging from the ten-sions between Europe and theU.S., to the rising terroristthreats from more backwardIslamic and third world coun-tries who feel that their ancient

cultures are being threatened bythe expanse and dominance oflarger Western nations. Hence,the coming decades and evencenturies are likely to be moredifficult than most economistsand technologists are presumingfrom the very strong trends inpast decades and centuries.


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The real question comes back towhat actually drives economicgrowth and human evolution.And our answer from studyinglong expanses of history is grow-ing population (demographics,and especially the rise of new

generations into their peakspending and productivity ages)and radical innovations in tech-nologies that create new infra-structures in communication,transportation, energy, busi-ness/political models andlifestyles/living areas.

If we look at human historythere have been several bigbang events that have launchedus into greater phases of popu-lation growth and expansion intechnologies and standard of liv-ing. The first was our largebrains and stone tools 2.5 mil-lion to 1.5 million years ago. Thenext was arrow-head-like toolsand the emergence of modernhumans or Homo sapiens. Thenext was finer blade tools, art,ornamentation and greater cul-tural development around50,000 years ago from which we

first began to populate theentire world. But perhaps thegreatest big bang was TheAgricultural Revolution around10,000 years ago that launchedurban living, specialization oflabor, centralized governments,armies/weapons and exponen-tial population growth and den-sity. The countries and regionsthat have dominated world GDPand military power since havetypically been the ones that

emerged first in thatAgricultural Revolution. Andthat revolution occurred first inareas like the Mid-East where,by luck and geography, therewas the greatest availability ofplants and animals that couldbe domesticated and the great-est potential to spread agricul-tural to lateral lands with simi-lar climates. In fact, the dis-

eases that were brought by thenew powers from domesticatedanimals (who had developedimmunity) wiped out moreindigenous peoples than theyultimately conquered withweapons in most emerging

countries.

You will be able to see where weare on all of the major cyclesdriving economic growth from a4 million year ape to humanevolution cycle to a 2 million

year Stone Age cycle to a10,000-year Agricultural cycle toa 3,000-year WesternCivilization cycle to a 500-yearlarger information technologycycle, to the most current 230-

year bull market cycle since theIndustrial Revolution, as well asthe 80-year, 40-year boom/bustcycles we covered in The NextGreat Bubble Boom. And moreimportant, you will have a betterperspective on life and changewithout having to spend many

years getting an advanceddegree in history or economicsor archaeology or whatever. Itwill take just an hour or so in

simple reading to get anoverview of what really mattersin long-term trends and how alllong- and short-term trends playout the same way as well asaffect each other.

You will be able to see that all ofthese cycles follow the sameexponential growth, bubbleand four-stage S-Curve/lifecycle patterns, and are still bull-ish at least for the rest of this

decade, and in the larger view,for possibly much longer butat a slower pace and in differentregions of the world. The humanrace appears close to peaking innumbers for a long time in thesecond half of this century, andthat is significant. But we aretoo young as a species to likelybecome extinct for a very longtime despite many prophecies

otherwise. Yet many of thelonger-term cycles we studybeyond the baby boom genera-tion spending cycle and themost recent technology cyclecould be peaking around theend of this decade in much of

the Western world as well andthat makes this coming season-al shift more ominous.

The clearest trend is that thebroader demographic cycles thathave been driving our economyfor a very long time are moder-ating with the first marked slow-ing of births and demographicsin Europe, Japan, and the U.S.to a lesser degree. We are alsoseeing clear slowing in birthsacross the board even in majoremerging countries and regionsfrom China to India to Africa.Hence, we are nearing the endof the greatest human popula-tion expansion in history. Ourpopulation may or may not bepeaking forever, but it will atleast be peaking in this centuryfor a long time to come. Theimplications are bound to beenormous! We havent seen

such a phenomenon since thelast ice age set in over 20,000years ago. However, we did seepopulation flatten during theDark Ages with enormous impli-cations for slowing economiesand a severe regression ofurbanization and civilizationthroughout most of Europe.

An Important Time to Take aLonger Look at Trends

The Agricultural Revolutiongreatly expanded births per fam-ily and population density. TheIndustrial Revolution started toslow births in its latter stageswith the widespread prosperitythat followed, and theInformation Revolution couldultimately have a decentralizingimpact on population density asmore people move to exurban


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areas. This means that once thedeveloping world of almost 5 bil-lion people (out of over 6 billiontotal) today adopts the industri-al and information revolutionmodels of the developed coun-tries which they are doing

rapidly from China to India we could be in for much slowereconomic growth around theworld. This is likely to occurfrom around 2065 onward andby 2020 to 2030 in China.

We are very likely to see atumultuous period of transitionto an era of more stable ordeclining population that couldat the least last many decades,and more likely centuries. Thatis why we think that a long-termoverview of history and cycles isso critical at this juncture inhistory. The greatest boom inhistory could indeed turn intoone of the greatest downturnsand an extended time of eco-nomic, political and culturalclashes within countries andamong countries alreadyoccurring clearly in the Mid-East, and now spilling over into

America/Europe with the terror-ist threats, and likely later intoAsia.

We have been predicting for

years that the peak in theNikkei index in Japan couldbe a peak that will not be

exceeded in most of our life-times. That will almost cer-

tainly be true for most ofEurope, and likely for the Dow

and broader markets in the

U.S. after 2010.

Developing countries are follow-ing rapidly as they industrialize,having fewer kids, and facingthe same environmental con-straints we are facing but evenmore so. As demographic growthcontinues to a lesser extent inmuch larger populations in

China, Southeast Asia andIndia, the expansion of theworld economy will continue incycles, but competitive advan-tage and profits will shift moreto companies and governmentsin those countries. Only the

most multinational companiesthat retain their leadership willbenefit from the continuedexplosion of Asia following thedemographic slowing in Europe,North America and Japan. By2020 Chinas economy willexceed the U.S. in purchasingpower parity, and by 2050Indias will likely as well. Hence,the economic dominance of theU.S. today will plateau by theend of this decade and recede ina matter of decades to follow.Military and political power willinevitably follow on a lag.

There will be continued bullmarkets from the echo boomspending cycle in the U.S. fromaround 2023 to the late 2030sto early 2040s or so, and evenstronger bull markets in devel-oping countries that explodeinto industrialization and infor-

mation-based economies overthe coming decades fromSoutheast Asia to India. From2010 to 2020 China, SouthKorea, Japan and SoutheastAsia will be the best place to beinvested, but from 2020 to 2050India, Pakistan, Indonesia andperhaps Africa, should see thestrongest growth.

It certainly is possible that suchworld growth in an increasingly

global economy could translateinto higher stock markets andgrowth in the U.S. But thepotential slow plateau and/orfall of Modern Day Rome, theU.S. and West Europe, will tosome degree slow the growth ofthe rest of the developing worldinitially and cause a time ofretrenchment in globalization,

urbanization and technologicalprogress for a while. This will bedue to the very difficult chal-lenge of integrating so manyvery different nations and cul-tures into a more global econo-my where they see priorities in

life and the world verydifferently.

That could then lead to alonger-term period like the DarkAges after the fall in Rome fromthe mid-400s to the 900s A.D a five hundred-year bear marketin economic progress! For peoplewho argue that global growthwill make up for the demograph-ic downturn we are projectingafter 2010, remember, that evenin todays increasingly globaleconomy, Japan just experi-enced a 13-year bear marketwith persistent economic slow-ing and an 80% decline in theNikkei, while the rest of theworld was booming. And theyhave a more export-orientedeconomy than we do.

We have already seen the barebeginnings of a major backlash

against globalization and newtechnologies from the more fun-damentalist third world culturesthat feel threatened by our newtechnologies and more liberallifestyles, with only the tip of theiceberg being the terroristattacks that erupted on9/11/01. There is more to comeand this trend is very likely toworsen dramatically in thedownturn we are predicting from2010 to 2022 or so. The U.S.

and the developed world couldbe like Rome waiting to bebrought down quickly or slowlyby the Huns, and then ulti-mately advance again in newand better directions down theroad.

The biggest question from ourresearch is simply whether this


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will happen sooner or later, andhow long this global clash ofcultures, economics and poli-tics will take to play out. Buthistory is clear in demonstratingthat flattening demographicgrowth tends to result in longer-

term periods of corrections andadjustments, like the Dark Ages.

The Great Plague in the mid-1300s was an example of ashort-term environmental disas-ter (from rapidly expandingtowns and cities that couldnthandle their sewage) thatcaused infectious disease tospread rapidly through rats andinsects creating a short-termdecline in population and aneconomic decline. The fastestgrowing developing countries areseeing more rapid urbanizationturn into environmental andcongestion nightmares that aregreater than what we have expe-rienced over a longer time frameto accomplish such growth.

The Western technology growthcurve has stimulated this glob-alization, industrialization andurbanization trend around the

world into larger populations inthe East. New technologies arealready contributing to lesseningenvironmental impacts in devel-oped countries and newwin/win environmentalapproaches are emerging eventoday that will help even more.But such impacts may come toolate at first in developing coun-tries. It may just be that thebacklash of such irrational, andat the extreme violent, third

world cultures are warningappropriately, we are growingto fast and that the Lexus isthreatening our olive tree.

Such a clash does seeminevitable in the coming decadesand even centuries from the3000-year, 1000-year, 500-year,300-year, 80-year and 40-year

cycles we will look at moreclosely in this special report and even from much longer-term cycles. In fact, to get thegreatest overview of history andcycles and where we are at we will briefly review the entire

history of human developmentin a very simple and summaryform with cycles that are as longas 2 million years way back inthe evolution from apes tohumans when change camemuch, much slower than today.Human progress has been veryexponential, to say the least.

A longer view of history onlyreinforces the greater reality

and principle of exponentialgrowth and progress over time

vs. the straight-line view thatour minds prefer. And expo-

nential growth always ulti-mately turns into a bubblethat ultimately crashes.

We have learned from studyingcycles in the past, that thegreatest surprises or threats cancome from larger cycles that weare not aware of, like a ten-foot

set of waves that suddenly hitsthe beach after a long series ofthree-foot waves, not to mentiona tidal wave very infrequently.Most experienced surfers knowwhen such sets of larger wavesare likely to roll in daily andseasonally, and our economiccycles similarly become morepredictable as we study themfrom a longer-term perspective.

The key insight is that the

shorter-term and longer-termcycles of the past are progress-ing in an exponential fashionsuch that they dont appear ableto sustain themselves too muchlonger for now at this critical

juncture in human history despite our unprecedentedprogress in recent decades andcenturies. It doesnt mean the

end of human civilization asmany are forecasting, or eco-nomic progress. But it does sug-gest a major slowing in demo-graphic growth and a quality oflife revolution, that may para-doxically first bring some signifi-

cant threats to our quality andsecurity of life at first. This isalready becoming evident in thelate stages of the greatest boomin history with the growingthreat of terrorism.

The fundamental demographicand innovation/technologicalprinciples we study can bringmuch simpler insights into whatappears to be a long, complexevolution of human beings andeconomic progress that fewscholars can even seem tograsp. This is the type of simpleoverview that should be taughtin high school and college, butisnt as of yet. You can see thecritical demographic trends andtechnological innovations thathave shaped human historywithout being a scholar orstudying volumes of historybooks just this summary

report and some credible booksthat we reference. In fact, youcan end up a lot clearer thanmany scholars with the advan-tage of such a Big Picture viewas many experts are often lost inthe incredible detail that theirresearch necessarily entails (andwe are very thankful for theirvery detailed research that hashelped build this informationrevolution in knowledge and ourresearch as well).

To get the overview of humanevolution we have to start withthe very, very slow emergence ofearly humans (hominids) andmodern-day Homo sapiens,which actually started to emergebetween 2 to 6 million yearsdepending on how you define it.We wont spend much time on


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that, just enough to put it intoperspective. We will focus moreon the first significant event inmodern human history thatpaved the way first for the popu-lation of the world by modernhumans and then for modern

civilization: The emergence ofmodern humans out of Africaaround 80,000 years ago andthe critical migrations andadvances that followed to popu-late the world with different eth-nic cultures, out of which thefirst vestiges of urban civiliza-tion emerged only in the last5,000 to 10,000 years.

The most summary insight is

that we are nearing the peakof a very long-term boom

much like the boom in Greeceand Rome that started around

550 to 600 B.C. and peaked inthe mid-400s A.D. a 1000-year boom!

The present boom began longbefore even the IndustrialRevolution that we showed inChapter 2 ofThe Next GreatBubble Boom. It began coming

out of the Dark Ages between900 and 1000 A.D. (after anapproximate 500-year bear mar-ket) and it appears to be peak-ing in this century (around 2065according to population projec-tions), and likely in the comingdecade for Europe and possiblyeven for the U.S. That would putus in an era much like the latterera of Rome only now it is theU.S. that is the world leader of aglobal, free trade capitalistic

empire.

This explains why our standardof living is the highest in theworld, but also why we are thetarget of discontent amongmany fundamentalist countriesand cultures that are still livingin a much earlier era of evolu-tion, culture and economics.

A clash between the third worldand the first world, especiallywith the U.S., has already begunand will inevitably grow as eco-nomic conditions deteriorateafter 2010. So, expect thegrowth of terrorist, political and

military threats, especiallybetween 2010 and 2022 or so aswe warned in Chapter 5 ofTheNext Great Bubble Boom. Thisreport focuses in much greaterdepth on the issues of thehuman population bubble peak-ing and the clash of world cul-tures that was introduced in theEpilogue ofThe Next GreatBubble Boom. Lets start bylooking briefly at the true dawnof human history.

Smart Apes to ArchaicHumans 6 Million to 2

Million Years Ago

Changing cycles in climate andweather have clearly been thegreatest driver of human evolu-tion and economic progresswhen we look at longer timeexpanses in history. We are liv-ing in a time that is relatively

warm compared to the last 6 to8 million years that has general-ly seen cooling trends, markedby re-occurring ice ages thathave shaped natural and

human evolution far more thanany other factor up until therecent millennia of massivetechnological advances, popula-tion explosion and environmen-tal challenges which such awarm period has progressively

allowed. Human population hasbeen growing exponentially forabout 50,000 years.

There has been a growing bub-ble in human population espe-cially since the AgriculturalRevolution that has grownextreme since the IndustrialRevolution as we showed inFigure E.1 in the Epilogue ofThe Next Great Bubble Boomandwe repeat in Chart 1.Worldwide population is forecastto peak around 9 billion by2065. This population bubblerepresents an even longer-termtrend that now seems moreclearly to be coming to a peak incoming decades and representsa much, much bigger phenome-non than the technology bub-bles we discussed in Chapter 2ofThe Next Great Bubble Boom.

This peaking is being created byfalling birth rates around theworld as we urbanize and growmore prosperous. And birthrates are falling everywhere,


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from Africa to India to China toEurope to North and SouthAmerica on a predictable curve.Birth rates are the slowest inEurope and Japan, but are

catching up everywhere in theworld as we get more urbanprosperous and prefer fewerkids that we can raise betterwith exploding costs of educa-tion. What happens if humanpopulation actually peaks anddeclines? Our economy will haveto switch towards productivityand technological innovationeven more to continue to pros-per, but slower growth in inno-vative young people will workagainst that trend.

Scientific research since Darwin(especially evolutionary, archae-ology, anthropology, biology andgenetic research) over the last150 years has brought incredi-ble insights into how weemerged from apes into modernhuman beings as well as evolu-tion in all of nature. Astronomyand physics has given us even

greater insights into the earth,solar system and universe fur-ther back than most of us wouldever want to consider all theway back to the Big Bang (theultimate bubble in the making).

These insights were conceptsthat most religious and scientificscholars didnt want to admit fora long time from the earthbeing round, to the earth revolv-ing around the sun, to humansevolving from apes, and on and

on. But the greatest insight forhuman evolution is that thetransition from apes to humansproceeded extremely slowly (likeany S-Curve at first) and it wasextremely difficult, just like anew venture or childhood.It literally took forever 6 mil-lion years for truly modernhumans to emerge from themost intelligent apes which we

branched off of along with ourclosest cousins, chimpanzees,with many, many lines of archa-ic humans, including mostrecently the Neanderthals (our

closest modern cousins), dyingout in the process. And its been65 million years since mammalsin general started to emerge intodominance out of the suddendecline and mass extinction ofthe dinosaurs! This represents aclassic exponential or bubbleprogression 60 million yearsfrom the peak of dinosaurs tothe peak of apes and then 6million years to a peak ofhumans in population growth.

We tend to make great leaps inpopulations and economic

progress in 1/10th of the timeas progress grows exponentially,or conversely we make ten timesthe progress in the same periodof time. That is the true natureof growth that is always bubble-like if you look back far enough

and we will! But if we lookback at the S-Curve, such expo-

nential growth only occurs inthe first stages (from .1% to 1%and from 1% to 10% adoption).As new trends truly enter main-stream penetration, they start tohit limits to growth, namelysmaller remaining markets topenetrate and environmentalconstraints. As the S-Curve pro-gresses from 10% to 50% thereis 5 times the growth in thesame period of time vs. the 10times growth before. In the 50%

to 90% Maturity Boom there isonly 1.8 times growth, and soon to lesser and lesser degrees.

Growth always occurs in more

exponential progressions untillimits of growth start to set

in. Exponential growth (bub-ble-like) is the only reality in

nature and it takes long peri-ods of time to see that

straight-line trends only

seem to exist in shorter-term time frames and arent

at all the nature of growth andevolution.

Between about 23 million yearsago (the first ape fossil found)and 6 to 8 million years ago,apes (primates) and many mam-mals flourished in the forests ofAfrica during the latter stages ofa long, very warm age datingback to about 270 million yearsago (after the last very long-termice age season ended). Apeshave always been vegetariansand survived largely on gather-ing leaves and fruits from rainforests. Hence, this representedthe true and very, very longgathering phase of highermammals. About 200 million

years ago, the continents oftoday broke off from a largermass centered from the SouthPole extending somewhat north-ward more into the IndianOcean (to Southern America,Southern Africa, Southern India

and Southern Australia today).

The continents started to movenorthward to eventually formour seemingly more stable conti-nents of today. These tectonicplate movements caused Africato float around in the SouthernIndian Ocean until 15 million

years ago when it bumped intothe Mid-East and stuck to thelarger Eurasian continent.Africa with its more nurturing

tropical climate as well as thestrong challenge of its wet anddry seasons caused it to becomethe optimum environment forthe emergence of all types ofhigher life, and the likely birth-place for primates which ulti-mately migrated around theworld.


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Then the first critical eventoccurred that spawned the merebeginnings of ape to human evo-lution. The world started coolingfor the first time in 260 million

years between about 8 millionand 7 million years ago. When

the world starts cooling, polarice caps grow and lock up morewater, which in turn causeslower rainfall and expandingshorelines from lower water lev-els. The earth has gone throughmany shorter-term ice age orcooling periods since then,many of which we will cover.But this was the beginning of avery long cooling period that weare still in despite short-termwarming trends.

We may or may not be slowlycoming out of it, but the longer-term trend is clearly likely to becooling, not warming. Coolingand drying conditions lead tothe contraction of forest areas,and the expansion of plains (orgrass areas), and also to theexpansion of deserts from for-mer plain areas. This contractsthe water and food supply

increasing competition amongliving plants and animals to sur-vive. Around 7 million years agowe saw the beginning of thebiggest Darwinian challenge inthe history of apes, mammalsand ultimately humans.

Climatic shifts, sudden eventslike meteorite strikes, and moreimportantly, the sudden emer-gence of new dominant, morefit-to-survive species to follow

have caused five documentedmass extinctions throughoutearths history. And as much asmany environmentalists may notlike it, this emergence of new,better species is how we makeprogress through history. Thistime around most species arethreatened and even apes havenearly gone extinct due to the

population explosion of humanssince the last ice age.

The previous major extinctionoccurred around 65 million

years ago when a large meteoritehit the earth and caused major

short-term climactic changes (a2-year nuclear winter) wherevegetation shrank killing off thedinosaurs and many otherspecies. In such a brief, colderperiod the smaller, more noctur-nal warm-blooded mammalsthat had been emerging sudden-ly had the advantage. In thiscase it wasnt that the dinosaursover expanded, destroyed theirenvironment or wiped out eachother in massive wars. It wasthat a major external shockwiped them out and suddenlymade way for mammals to growand expand where they couldntbefore due to the dominance ofthe dinosaurs. Obviouslywarmer-blooded animals wouldbe better able to survive in ashort-term colder climate.Before that there was thePermian Period around 250 mil-lion years ago when the sudden

emergence of reptiles in a warmera following the last mega iceage caused mass extinctions ofamphibians and other species.

Climatic shifts towards coolingfavor new species both in short-er and longer-term cycles.Longer-term cycles of coolingand warming seem to be causedby massive continental and tec-

tonic plate shifts that in turncause major volcanic activity.Shorter-term cycles are causedby changes in the earths tiltand orbit around the sun. Inperiods of cooling, the strongestgene pools and cultures/tech-nologies of adaptation tend tosurvive in the warmest, mostaccommodating areas, likeSoutheast Asia during the lastice age. But the bare beginningsof human evolution occurred asapes, the most intelligentspecies at that time, started toadapt to the first long-term cool-ing period in almost 300 million

years.

How Apes Evolved intoHumans

Chart 2summarizes the keylandmarks in the evolution ofapes to humans to modern civi-

lization that serves as the bestoutline and overview for thisreport. It shows how we devel-oped larger brains and key new


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chart 2


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tools and technologies to get toour very high standard of livingtoday. As this chapter progress-es we will look at each of thesekey milestones and how our his-tory was shaped by them.

The apes, which were the mosthighly evolved of mammals inbrain size (mammals began toemerge 200 million years agoand primitive monkeys 50 mil-lion years ago), had to startmoving out of the rain forestsinto the plains of Africa to sur-vive around 6 - 8 million yearsago. Hunting for grasses, seedsand eventually animals in theplains required higher mobilityand skills than gatheringleaves, fruits or insects from theforest. At first the apes wouldhave ventured briefly out intothe plains and then back hometo the forests. This created thebeginnings of a broader andmore challenging gathering erafor vegetation that followed formillions of years with a likelyminor emergence of scavengingfor meat from dead carcasses.

That challenge and new behav-ior saw a reduction in many apespecies between 6 and 8 million

years ago and two branches ofmore intelligent apes to emergearound 6 million years ago:chimpanzees and earlyhominids. (Chimpanzees are ourclosest long-term cousin wedid not emerge from them weand they emerged from intelli-gent apes/gorillas). Hominidsand chimpanzees both had

brain sizes closer to the size ofchimpanzees today and greaterrelative to size than any otheranimals. So, 6 million years orso ago the first step in ape evo-lution towards humans, largerbrains, occurred due to coolingtemperatures and the challengeof the receding of forests inAfrica.

The next major step occurredtwo million years later whenhominids clearly started walkingon two legs, around 4 million

years ago. These were morehuman-like apes like thefamous Lucy (Australopithicus

afarensis) excavated in Africarecently and dating back to 3million to 4 million years,although the first clear walkinghominid was Australopithicusanamensis dated just over 4million years ago (there is recentarchaeological finds that suggestpotential bi-pedal chimpanzeesand other hominids as far backas 6 million years ago).

A new behavior was encouragingthis radical shift and it likelycame for two reasons. The firstwas to use hands and arms tocarry grains or scavenged meatfrom the plains back to thetroop and mates in the forest.

The second was the necessity towave sticks and throw stonesboth to scare off predators com-ing into the forests off of theshrinking plains and to scare offscavengers from their kills when

venturing out into the plains formeat and food. Most scientiststend to credit such radical shiftssimply to random mutationsthat catch on when conditionsare favorable, but a broaderview of genetics and psychologystrongly suggests that the newbehaviors emerge first and thenare supported by mutations andbetter genetic combinations.(Obviously today we can teachmany four-legged animals to

walk on two legs for short peri-ods of time with no new muta-tions or genetic changes).

Walking on two legs ultimatelyallowed greater long-distancevision from a higher stance forgoing out into the plains, butmost importantly, freed up thehands for eventually creating

and using primitive stone andstick tools, as did opposingthumbs for grasping and shap-ing such tools. We are moreused to rapid changes in tech-nology and learning today, but ittook almost 2 million years for

clear archaeological signs thatlarger-brained hominids wereusing basic stone tools forbutchering and perhaps killinganimals, as well as cutting andgrinding seeds and grains.

Hence, the first big bang, theearly Stone Age began around

2 to 2.5 million years ago.That was a monumental stepand the major development

there was that the size of thebrain in two narrow species of

even more intelligenthominids, Homo and

Paranthropus, suddenlyexpanded rapidly to near pres-ent-day size, especially

between 2.5 million and 1.5million years ago. This most

clearly occurred due toincreased strategic thinking

for scavenging and hunting,but it also likely occurred due

to the very early stages of thedevelopment of very crudeuttering and signaling that

would create a level of socialcooperation for hunting and

to survive in increasinglycolder climates and scarcevegetation. This is when

hominids first became morehuman than ape- or chim-

panzee-like.

In fact, the size of todays

human brain is slightly smallerthan it ultimately became500,000 years ago with laterincremental expansions, as thecalories and amino acids to sus-tain such larger brains in an eraof scarce food supplies mayhave proved unfavorable to larg-er brain evolution after a point.In fact, humans are on the very


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extreme of brain size to bodymass ratios. Hence, most of theexpansion of what is today thehuman brain occurred in a brieftime in history around 2 million

years ago (between 2.5 millionand 1.5 million years ago). The

new behaviors that would havemost likely encouraged suchrapid brain development wouldhave been scavenging, huntingand very crude speech and sig-naling (earlier than most scien-tists have presumed in thepast). And that brain expansion,among random mutations thatmust have occurred, would havebeen supported by an evolutionfrom a diet of fruit and leaves toan increasing protein diet ofseeds and meat to survive onthe plains. A larger brainrequires greater calories andamino acids, and hence, wouldthrive on more protein.

To summarize the rough 2 mil-lion-year cycles: Surviving onthe plains first meant moving inand out of the forests to collectmore vegetation (by 6 million

years ago) and encouraged larg-

er brains to survive. Bringingback food and scaring off preda-tors and scavenging by scaringaway carnivores from their killsby walking on two legs andwielding sticks and stoneswould have naturally followednext (by 4 million years ago),but with only minor increases inbrain size. Increasinglyhominids evolved into scaveng-ing and hunting for animals andthe development of primitive

stone tools for butchering andkilling them (by 2 million yearsago) with a more than doublingin brain size (that would thenmore gradually grow to morethan triple) and the beginningsof very crude language andhuman-like social behavior andcooperation.

The human to ape evolutionfirst occurred in approximate2 million year cycles: The

maturation of apes 8 millionyears ago; higher brained

chimpanzees and hominids 6million years ago; walking

hominids 4 million years ago;and very high-brain hominids

or archaic humans with stonetools 2 million years ago.

Development of stones tools andcooperative scavenging andhunting clearly required a muchgreater level of social coopera-tion, and hence, very likely thefirst vestiges of spoken languagebeyond babbling into signalingand perhaps two to three wordutterances. But it certainly tookthinking in more steps aheadstrategically which wouldrequire more brain capacity andshort-term memory (RAM).Chimpanzees even today donthave enough brain capacity andshort-term memory to rememberpast two steps of logic, words,symbols, or thoughts at a time.Hence they never developedhuman capacities, although they

are clearly our closest cousinsand the most intelligent mam-mals today after humans.

That was the beginning of TheStone Age the first majoradvance in intelligence, strategicthinking, human-like tools andlikely primitive language. It rep-resented the first great leap inhuman history following from aseries of two million-year cyclesand it started just over 2 million

years ago only with Homo andParanthropus. And only Homo(largely Homo erectus) survivedby 1 million years ago after firehad emerged, and mastery offire could have been the keyinnovation for surviving. Out ofeight major lines of Homo thatfollowed, only one survived past28,000 - 30,000 years ago Homo sapiens.

The first line was Homorudolfensis about 2.5 million

years ago with the longest sur-viving being Homo erectus fromabout 1.9 million years ago toits Asian migration and offshootgoing extinct about 50,000 years

ago. Homo neanderthalensis(Neanderthals) and Homo sapi-ens were offshoots of Homohelmei (about 250,000 yearsago) and the Neanderthals werethe last line to go fully extinct30,000 years ago leavingHomo sapiens, the only sur-vivors of the last ice age. RecentDNA evidence now clearly showsthat all Homo sapiens emergedonly in Africa and migrated outof there to populate the entireworld today over the last 80,000

years, and especially since50,000 years ago when LateStone Age tools allowed migra-tions to move and survive inlandin much larger numbers ratherthan just along the limitedcoasts.

How Ice Ages Have Driven the

Emergence of New Species andModels of Man

The good news about evolutionis that life grows more complex,more intelligent and more pros-perous at the highest levels. Thehorrible truth is that it has beenvery brutal and a constantDarwinian challenge. Mosthumans (modern and archaic)have not died of old age.

They have died of diseases andepidemics, wars and conflicts,starving or freezing to death in

that approximate order of mag-nitude. Before the agriculturalrevolution that brought largeepidemics and diseases fromdomesticated animals and largescale warfare, cooling periodsand ice ages created the greatestchallenges to survival. Theseperiods periodically squeeze usto the bone and whittle us down


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(as well as all other plants andanimals) to the very most fit tosurvive, typically killing off thelast most dominant largespecies. Hence, the old adagewhat doesnt kill you makes

you stronger. Then in the

warmer periods that follow, thesmall remaining species with thenew behaviors and best randommutations grow and flourishexponentially, until the nextcooling period whittles themdown again.

Recall that it was the first majorcooling cycle 7 to 8 million yearsago that caused the first moreintelligent apes (hominids andchimpanzees) to emerge withbrains closer to the size of chim-panzees today by 6 million yearsago with many ape species goingextinct. The next cooling cyclearound 4 million years agoforced the behavior of walkingon two legs and theAustralopithicus speciesemerged. In the next coolingperiod beginning a little over 2million years ago the Homo linesemerged with pebble stone tools

starting with Homo rudolphen-sis, then Homo habilis andHomo ergaster and finally Homoerectus who invented the handaxe (another major innovation)around 1.4 million years ago.Homo ergaster was the first tomigrate out of Africa intoEurope and Asia, but Homoerectus became the Model Tthat dominated the world for along period.

Around 1.2 million years ago,the next minor cooling set in(encouraging the discovery andincreasing use of fire by 1 mil-lion years ago) and Homo erec-tus started to decline andincreasingly lost its dominanceto Homo rhodensius and thenHomo heidelbergensis inEurope, while Asian Homo erec-

tus survived in smaller numbersin the more benign climates ofSoutheast Asia. These rising off-

shoots may have better mas-tered fire to survive this colderperiod in Europe. Then the mostsevere ice age hit around600,000 years ago that put anend to Homo rhodensius, leav-ing Homo heidelbergensis tobest master and refine fire by500,000 years ago.

Chart 3shows climate datathat have been collected from icecores in Greenland. Before we

get to the impacts on evolution,there is an interesting insighthere from the temperature vs.methane and CO2 statistics. Itis argued today that humanbeings with modern industrialtechnologies and fuels areuniquely causing global warm-ing. The first insight here is thatwe have had very similar cyclesof warming (and cooling) in thepast when we had only veryprimitive tools and our popula-tion was insignificant. The sec-ond insight is that methane andCO2 grow in the same approxi-mate proportion to rising tem-peratures, again even withoutmodern technologies and withtiny human populations. Thethird insight is that we actuallysaw a warmer and wetter period

about 6,000 to 9,000 years agoand that temperatures andhumidity have already

retrenched a bit from there,despite the fact that they arerising again over the last centu-ry. How much of this warming is

just natural cycles vs. humantechnology?

The real point is that we arelikely entering a long-term trendtowards cooling, not warmingand that we may have alreadyseen a peak in temperaturesthousands of years ago.

However, glaciers continue tomelt due to continued higherthan average temperatures. Veryshort-term warming trends inthe last 100 years are at leastpartly due to rising greenhousegases and fuel emissions fromthe rapid rise in human livingstandards. This short-termwarming could paradoxicallyhelp cause a more rapid, short-term shift towards cooling inparts of the world by slowingprocesses like the Gulf Streamin the Atlantic that recycleswarmer tropical waters north-ward and cooler glacial waterssouthward. Warming tempera-tures over the last century tendto cause greater glacial meltingwhich tends to slow the GulfStream currents. This could


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chart 3


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cause Europe and NorthernAmerica to get substantiallycolder in a relatively short peri-od of time and this has occurredin the past.

But what this graph really says

is that warming comes in cycleswithout human instigation andthat it is warming and thegrowth of life that stems from itthat cause rising methane, CO2and greenhouse gases. Pollutionand environmental limitationson growth are a major reasonthat exponential growth of lifealways reaches limits and thendeclines. Whether it is massnumbers of humans or mam-mals or reptiles or ants, whenthe world gets warmer lifeexpands and life throws offwaste products. If it werenthuman waste or fuels, it wouldbe ant farts or something! Whenthe world cools, life contractsand waste declines. This is notan argument for allowing ram-pant pollution. Pollution is toxicand failing to recycle wastesproperly is shortsighted and hasalways eventually led to minor

or major disasters for humancivilizations. And environmentalchallenges will be a huge threatand issue with the peak stagesof the human population bubblestill ahead and with such rapidgrowth in countries like Chinaand India for decades to come.

It is also a clear trend in historythat we dont worry enoughabout environmental degrada-tion until it sets in and is diffi-

cult to reverse. Hence, we arelikely to recognize and pay theprice of our lack of environmen-tal responsibility in the decadesand centuries to follow the com-ing peak in growth and expan-sion just as we have throughouthistory. But despite that, thepoint here is that humans arenot a unique or sole driver of

global warming or rising emis-sions, although our growth andwastes are part of the cycle justas for other large and dominantspecies in the past. Past speciesprior to humans would not havehad the brain capacity to even

anticipate environmental limits.

Slowing population (which isclearly emerging) and cooling(which is more likely as we movefarther out in time) will have thebiggest impact on reducing pol-lution levels in the future. Andevery new set of technologieshas been cleaner than the past.Automobiles and oil were farless polluting than horsemanure and wood/coal burning.Information technologies andnew potential fuels likeHydrogen and new technologiesranging from solar to fuel cellsto nanotechnologies (amongmany others) will allow us tomake products far more effi-ciently with less waste and toreduce pollution levels relativeto production levels.

As we briefly covered in Chapter

8 ofThe Next Great BubbleBoom, the produce-to-order,lean-production systems andbottoms-up organizational net-works will also greatly reducewaste in business and produc-tion, and hence, pollution levelsrelative to consumption. This isalready happening and will togreater degrees in the comingdecades. But the population andindustrial explosion in Asia willmore than offset the environ-

mental progress we will make inthe more developed countries, atleast in the coming decades.And history also shows that asour standard of living rises witheach new technology revolution,that we consume vast increasesin new products and services and hence, still end up withmore pollution over time.

The Last Four Major Ice Ages

Now back to the measurablehistory of our climate and itsimpacts. There have been fourmajor ice ages in the last500,000 years that have nar-

rowed evolution towards modernhumans. The first was an iceage that peaked around 440,000

years ago. Then the next hit350,000 years ago. Those twoice ages progressively killed offHomo heidelbergensis, despitethe mastery of fire. Out of thatlast one emerged Homo helmei,the innovator of the first signifi-cant arrowhead-like MiddleStone Age tools that representedthe next great leap in technol-ogy. Homo neanderthalensisfirst split off into Europe andthen Homo sapiens emerged inAfrica 150,000 to 200,000 yearsago.

The third ice age came between170,000 and 140,000 years agoand wiped out Homo helmei andmost of the population of thefew surviving Homo lines, leav-ing largely the Neanderthals in

Europe and Homo sapiens inSoutheast Africa. The AfricanHomo sapiens discovered a newbeachcombing diet addingshellfish which ended up beingcritical to their survival ahead.

The last ice age hit between22,000 and 14,000 years ago,peaking around 18,000 yearsago and the rapid warmingperiod that followed would setthe stage for the AgriculturalRevolution, the greatest leap in

human history. The last of theNeanderthals went extinctbetween 28,000 and 30,000

years ago just before that lastice age as Homo sapiensincreasingly moved into Europestarting around 50,000 yearsago and seemed to crowd outtheir hunting grounds.


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But before the last ice age,Homo sapiens or modernhumans, began to flourish inthe next warming period follow-ing the 150,000 year-ago ice ageon this new shellfish diet, even-tually bringing another major

advance in stone blade tech-nology in the Late Stone Agestarting around 50,000 yearsago. A small tribe of Homo sapi-ens first migrated out of Africaaround 80,000 years ago alongthe coasts of the Indian Ocean,and then later with their evolv-ing new blade technology madean exponential migration andpopulation advance off thebeaches inland starting around50,000 years ago to all of thecontinents. We became theassembly line of human trendscreating the greatest bubble inpopulation since. We were theonly Homo or human line tomake it to the fourth ice agewhich peaked around 18,000

years ago and entered a rapidwarming era by 13,000 yearsago. In the next warming period,especially from 10,000 to 5,000

years ago, the first agricultural

and urban civilizations emerged.

In fact, by time the next twomillion year cycle (from Chart 2)is very roughly due we find our-selves today in the recent periodof modern technologies that hasemerged into a great humanpopulation bubble with veryhigh civilization and the begin-nings of a global economy forthe first time in history. Onlythe last 50,000 years has seen

signs of exponential growth inhuman population (due togreater advancements in lateStone Age tools, art and socialcooperation). Only the last 5,000to 10,000 years has seen thereal rise of modern urban cul-ture (with the AgriculturalRevolution), after millions of

years of very slow developmentthrough the Stone Age and the

very long hunting and gather-ing era of the last two million

years that some remote and iso-lated cultures today still exhibit.

The Early Stone Age 2Million Years Ago to 250,000

Years Ago

Now we lets go back and take acloser look into the Stone Agestarting just over 2 million yearsago, when many Homo linesemerged clearly as scavengersfirst using sticks and stones toscare away other carnivoresfrom their kills, just as theylikely initially used sticks andstones to scare off predatorsencroaching into the forests.

Then Homo erectus (and off-shoot lines) increasingly becamehunters. The first to migratealmost 2 million years ago intoEurope and Asia Out of Africa

was again Homo ergaster (thecousin of Homo erectus) whoeventually branched or com-bined into the Asian Homo erec-tus, but didnt survive as long inthe harsher climates of Europeand Central Asia. Homo ergaster

was soon followed by largerwaves of Homo erectus whomost dominated Europe andCentral Asia into a major ice agea little over a million years ago.

They could migrate successfullyas they had developed primitiveshaped and flaked pebble toolsfor scavenging and hunting.Homo erectus and other lineswere hence, able to follow herdsof animals and migrate to new

grounds as competition grewlocally and as climate allowed orforced. And these stone toolsadvanced only to minor degreeswith sharper points, hand axes(first around 1.4 million yearsago), and bones used as ham-mers and anvils for a long peri-od of time until the MiddleStone Age beginning between300,000 to 250,000 years ago

when Homo helmei broughtarrowhead-like flaked tools(shaped and pointed on bothsides). Soon after, Homo nean-derthalensis (Neanderthals) firstemerged, and then modernhumans or Homo sapiens, both

branching off of Homo helmei.Homo sapiens first emerged as aspecies as early as 200,000

years ago. The Neanderthalswere hence our closest cousin,but not an ancestor or descen-dant.

So two million years ago stonetools started to emerge, andaround that time the first docu-mented migration out of Africabegan followed by larger ones.

That lead to minor evolutions inprimitive tools that had alreadybeen developed in Africa asthese migrating tribes movedinto different and more challeng-ing and colder environments.But those migrations eventuallyfailed and Homo erectus startedto yield to Homo rhodensius,and eventually both came to adead end like most archaichuman species. The last clear

traces of Asian Homo erectus inwarmer Java were found datingback to 40,000 to 50,000 yearsago, but recent excavations haveuncovered a pygmy-like offshootperhaps of Asian Homo erectus,but more likely an earlier linedue to much smaller brains,that could have survived upuntil 13,000 years ago (the endof the last ice age). The last evi-dence of Neanderthal, wasaround 28,000 to 30,000 years

ago in Southern France andSpain.

The Emergence of Modern

Man and The Middle StoneAge

During the build-up to the iceage previous to the last one,between around 200,000 to150,000 years ago, modern man


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(Homo sapiens) first clearlyemerged in Southeast Africawith likely roots extending intoSouthwestern Africa. We willshow later that DNA frommaternal lines traces modernman back to Africa about

190,000 years ago (with a150,000 to 200,000 range), andpossibly earlier. And just aheadwe will show that the most com-plex and earliest languages inthe world date back to around150,000 years ago in SouthAfrica. So, this clearly appearsto be the most likely period thatHomo sapiens or modernhumans emerged.

That next to last ice age peakedaround 150,000 years back, butlasted from around 170,000 to140,000 years ago. It whittledthe human population in Africadown to estimates of 2,000 to20,000, more likely around10,000 people, and down tototally or near totally Homosapiens in Africa, with smallvestiges of Neanderthals inEurope, and more substantialpopulations of Asian Homo erec-

tus in Southeast Asia. Then fol-lowing from 130,000 years into120,000 years ago the worldentered a brief very warm andwet period (more so than today)when the few early modernhumans that survived that iceage would have flourished andexpanded mostly up the coastsof East Africa eating shellfishand in the fertile Great RiftValley in inland East Africa. Butthen again from 120,000 years

to 70,000 years ago the worldstarted to gradually cool, andthen more progressively from45,000 years into 18,000 yearsago into the next ice age withanother brief warm/wet periodaround 51,000 to 45,000 yearsago.

This long period of mostly

increasing cooling and its chal-

lenges lead to the emergence ofthe dominance of Homo sapiensor modern humans in the world.Beyond the recent DNA researchthat we will cover, longer-termresearch in languages has devel-oped the capacity to approxi-mately date regional cultures bythe complexity of their language.

The greater the variety of wordsand regional dialects within alanguage, the older that cultureand language tend to be given

that they would have longer todevelop such complexity. Thegreatest trace in linguisticresearch for modern man hascome from the San bush tribes(now in Southwestern Africa)who have the most complex lan-guage and clicking sounds ofany modern human dialect.Chart 4shows that their lan-guage dates back to about150,000 years ago right at thepeak of that severe ice age, andmuch older than SoutheastAsian and other languages.Africans are clearly the oldestmodern cultures andPolynesians the newest (we willrefer back to this graph and theemergence of other cultures aswe go on). These most ancientmodern Africans likely firstemerged well before the previous

ice age 150,000 years ago, and

became the prime survivors nearthe equator in East Africa. Infact, their early command of lan-guage at that point was likely tohave been the decisive factor totheir being the very few to sur-vive that ice age through greatersocial cooperation in huntingand migrating.

The First Successful Modern

Migration Out of Africa 80,000Years Ago

So the real seed or spark ofmodern human evolution (inven-tion) likely started around200,000 to 150,000 years ago.But then the next significantevent occurred (innovation), thefirst modern-day successfulmigration out of Africa between 95,000 and 70,000

years ago (most likely about80,000 according to genetic dat-ing) as a small tribe of humans,naively but courageously out ofsurvival needs, crossed the RedSea from Eritrea north ofEthiopia at the small isthmusthere into the Southern Arabiancoasts and hills into Yemen astheir food supply started to van-ish with cooling temperatures,and the seas were falling enough


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to cross from receding water lev-els. These first modern migrantsstill only had Middle Stone Agetools (although more refined),but more important, rudimenta-ry modern language and a criti-cal new twist on the Middle

Stone Age diet: shellfish.

At the peak of the major ice age150,000 years ago, it appearsthat for the first time many ofthe surviving humans wereforced out of the shrinkingplains onto the East coastlinesof Africa where modern humansmade the great discovery that

you could collect shellfish off ofreefs when the tides receded (alot easier than hunting animals).

The beaches were also easier tomigrate and travel up and down,encouraging greater communi-cation and trade in tools andinnovations. A new beachcomb-ing culture emerged wherehumans could use the sameMiddle Stone Age tools to scav-enge and hunt animals whilealso gathering shellfish. Thenprogressively over time theylearned how to spear fish with

stone barbs, and fish with netsand hooks.

In fact, signs of Middle StoneAge tools, butchered animal andshellfish remains were found inreef fossils near Eritrea datingback to at least 125,000 yearsago right near the peak of thatbrief, warm and expansive peri-od. So this beachcombing diet ofsurf and turf likely extendedfarther back and became a new

growth trend, around 150,000years ago as the world was cool-ing extremely. Then in thewarming period that followed,population growth would havenaturally expanded and moregroups would have migratednorthward along the coasts (andinland) towards the Red Sea inNortheast Africa where there

was one very fertile area ofgrassland inland between theplateau of South Ethiopia andthe Great Rift Valley north ofMt. Kenya. But above there wasonly desert. Hence, the greatestpopulation expansion and the

greatest food sources werebetween Kenya and Ethiopia(inland and along the coasts)after that extreme ice age wheremodern humans likely concen-trated.

Then the coldest period (mini-iceage) between that extreme iceage and the last one 18,000

years ago, occurred between80,000 and 60,000 years backpeaking around 70,000 yearsago. This was very likely the rea-son that the first small tribethat populated the rest of theworld finally migrated out ofAfrica across the Red Sea.Stephen Oppenheimer in hisremarkable book, The Real Eve(Carol and Graf, 2003) bringsthe greatest and most thoroughevidence for this first greatmigration that within 5 - 10,000

years took modern man all the

way to Australia and SoutheastAsia beachcombing along thecoasts of the Indian Ocean.Oppenheimer, among others wewill note, brings very recent andrevealing DNA research that canmore accurately date and timemigrations of humans, especial-ly where archaeological evidencehas been erased by rising sealevels and glaciers, or hasnt yetemerged.

Let us give due credit herebefore we move on. This bookhas been our greatest singlesource for the millions of yearsof ape to human developmentwe have covered thus far and forthe human migration trends wewill cover ahead. There aremany skilled scientists andresearchers that have tracked

ape and human history, butOppenheimer seems to bring thegreatest confluence of climatic,geological, geographical, archae-ological, anthropological and lin-guistic research we have seen.We regard The Real Eveas truly

a breakthrough book and onethat anyone should be sure toread if you are more interestedin the topics of genetics, humanevolution and migration. Therewas also a Discovery Channeldocumentary called The RealEvethat featured his work,among others. We also studiedin depth two other great booksthat provided many insights:The Journey of Man, by SpencerWells (Princeton UniversityPress, 2002), and MappingHuman History, by Steve Olson(Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

Why did the first NortheastAfricans wait 40,000 years afterthe warm period 120,000 yearsago to migrate out of Africa?Oppenheimer shows evidencethat the Red Sea had been los-ing salinization (salt levels) andplankton. The combination of

these two factors due to increas-ing cooling would have causedthe beachcombing there to getscarcer just as the beaches tothe south had gotten crowdedall the way up the coasts of EastAfrica. And moving north wasnot an option due to theSaharan Desert. Around 80,000

years ago, that one tribe finallymade the jump walking, andperhaps using crude rafts,across an isthmus that would

have only been about 10 mileswide at that time due to fallingsea levels.

They were also likely hesitantbefore as there would have likelybeen previous Homo erectus orNeanderthal lines living on theother side. But scouts likelyfinally confirmed that these


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people had left or died out dueto the cooling and dry period(and not having beachcombingskills). This first tribe wouldhave most likely settled first onthe coasts and the grassy hillsof Yemen on the east side of the

South Arabian Peninsula. Andthey would have had to settlethere for a substantial period oftime to drift down to just oneoriginal female and male line ofgenes that ultimately survivedoutside of Africa. They wouldhave had no motivation to moveuntil they saturated that areaand other potential migranttribes from East Africa would behesitant to move there with anexisting and expanding tribealready inhabiting. But as thistribe grew and expanded overtime, they would eventually haveto move further east along thecoasts, first crossing theArabian Sea in rafts towardsSouthern Pakistan and India.

Many other migration theorieshave proposed that modern mancame through Northeast Africainto the Middle East. But

Oppenheimer shows that wouldhave been nearly impossible asthere was nothing but desertNorth of Ethiopia and allthroughout the Middle Eastincreasingly after that warmperiod 120,000 years untilabout 50,000 years ago. Thereare only two migration gates(without modern sailing) out ofAfrica, the North Gate into Sinaifrom Northeast Egypt, and theSouth Gate from Ethiopia across

the isthmus of the Red Sea. TheNorth gate did open in the verywarm period 120,000 years agoand the first modern migrationdid occur but archaeologicalsigns show clearly that it gottrapped and died out by 90,000

years ago as the deserts re-emerged. Only the South gatewas open 51,000 to 80,000

years ago. Not only that, theonly habitable places to migrateat that time would have beenalong the coasts of the IndianOcean, not inland into the Mid-East or into Pakistan or Indiagiven the great extent of the

deserts at that time.

To SoutheastAsia/Malaysia/Australia by68,000 74,000 Years Ago

To corroborate this Southernexodus and first migration alongthe coasts of the Indian Ocean,the DNA evidence today showsthe oldest and closest correla-tion to African genetic lines arefound in the native Aboriginalcultures of Australia and inNegrito tribes in areas likeIndonesia, the Andaman Islandsand Papua New Guinea. Theoldest archaeological evidence ofmodern humans has been foundin a Southeast China site datingaround 67,000 to 68,000 yearsago and in Australia tracingback 62,000 years or possiblylonger by different estimates.More telling, about 65,000 years

ago a number of largeAustralian animals started tobecome extinct, which wouldonly suggest the arrival of mod-ern man before that time (AsianHomo erectus never made it toAustralia by any archaeologicalevidence, only as far asIndonesia). In addition, the sealevels would have been lowenough to feasibly make a sail-ing trip across to NorthAustralia from East Timor (tip of

Indonesia) only around 70,000years ago, making this the mostlikely time for entry of modernman into Australia.

This means that the first majormigration of modern humanshad to be from East Africa intoSouthern Arabia along thecoasts towards India, Southeast

Asia and Australia. And suchmigrations would have had tooccur at least 75,000 years to80,000 years ago to get there bythen given the great distance.Oppenheimer also points to themassive Toba volcanic explosion

that occurred approximately74,000 years ago and is easierto date accurately. This was thelargest volcanic eruption in thelast 2 million years. Moreadvanced pebble tools that werenot unlike the Asian Homo erec-tus tools, but more similar tothe Middle Stone Age that camefrom Homo sapiens before50,000 years ago, were found inthe ash near Sumatra where

Toba occurred. This would alsosuggest that modern humanshad made it into at leastMalaysia before Toba, and thatin turn would argue for an exo-dus out of Africa closer to80,000 years ago.

But heres the big insight fromToba. It created a huge gapbetween the first modernhumans east and west of India,isolating the first smaller groups

to make it to Indonesia, NewGuinea and Australia for at leastthousands of years, and possi-bly tens of thousands of years.

The blast was massive andcaused a regional nuclearwinter, resulting in colder tem-peratures short-term. That blastmoved northwestward and cov-ered almost all of India in 3 to10 feet of ash causing a totalextinction of people along thecoasts of India on both sides

(and animal and plant lifethroughout India) and wouldhave made life very difficult andhorrifying for even broaderareas in all directions. Dont

you think that would have beenenough to make modernhumans think that the Godswere angry and that the worldwas coming to an end? That


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volcanic eruption made MountSt. Helens look like a mole hill!

For thousands of years humanswere very likely scared to moveanywhere into this haunteddead zone and the story of this

tragic and prophetic event wasprobably told for thousands of

years to follow, like biblical sto-ries today. Hence, the survivingpeople to the west around theArabian Sea between Yemen andPakistan still beachcombers likely stayed put or were moti-vated to venture somewhatinland up river valleys and theArabian coasts where possibleas the population grew backslowly at first after the blast.DNA evidence we will cover laterclearly shows a major gapbetween genetic lines in Eastand West India that would alsosuggest a migration intoSoutheast Asia before Toba andisolation between populationsfor a long time.

In fact, there is no archaeologi-cal evidence of late Stone Agetools (that first emerged at least

50,000 years ago) or of Homosapiens in areas like India untilabout 30,000 years ago, butthat would also be due to thefact that such tools and skeletalremains would largely or totallynow be submerged underwateralong coastal areas on whichthese migrations developed byrising seas since the last ice age.Hence, there is no fully conclu-sive way as of yet to determinewhether the first migrants

reached Australia before or afterToba as archaeological researchonly confirms out of Africamodern humans and tools backto about 62,000 to 65,000 yearsago. But the weight of evidenceclearly favors Oppenheimerstheory of a singular migrationmore like 80,000 years ago. Buteven if it occurred just after

Toba, more like 70,000 years

ago at the latest, the conse-quences would not be thatmuch different for human histo-ry and evolution.

There werent signs of exponen-tial growth in the modern

human population until around50,000 years ago when later,more critical migrations beganoutside of Africa that lead to thefull population of the world onall continents. The oldest Homosapien archaeological and LateStone Age remains in the Eastafter Australia have been foundin Papa New Guinea (40,000

years plus) and then in areaslike Thailand (37,000 yearsplus), and as far west as SriLanka (31,000 years ago). Butagain remember that the settle-ments along the coastlines earli-er would have been flooded overby rising seas since so most evi-dence would not be accessible.

This split in time periodsbetween East and West wouldstrongly suggest that there werelater, larger migrations east-ward, well after the Toba disas-

ter and Toba did create a splitbetween East and West for aprolonged time period. But thegenetic evidence clearly showsthat this and later migrationsstemmed from the same originaltribe that first moved out ofAfrica, and not from furthermigrations out of Africa (untilmuch more recent times).

DNA evidence from the female

and male lines clearly sug-

gests one and only one migra-tion of modern day humans

Out of Africa that then pro-gressively populated the rest

of the globe with modernhumans. Hence, all non-

Africans descend from thisone African tribe and all Homosapiens descend originally

from Africans.

Why DNA Research Representsa Breakthrough in Tracking

Human Evolution andMigrations

Where do all of these very newinsights about human migration

and evolution come from? Therehas been a recent discovery ingenetic research that has devel-oped enough over recent yearsto tell us more than archaeologi-cal findings about where andhow modern humans emergedand migrated over the last200,000 years. In the femalegenetic lines there is one smallpart called mitochondrial DNAor mtDNA that is not reshuffled(called non-recombining) in thereproductive process, and henceis passed down unchanged frommother to daughter and so on.

There are mutations that occurrandomly, but at a predictablestatistical rate over time ofabout one per thousand, evenon this non-recombining part.

These two facts allow geneticiststo trace individuals today backto common ancestors with rea-sonably predictable time frames

through the various mutationmarkers that are present whichemerged at different time peri-ods.

Through mtDNA analysis ofmany women around the world,Oppenheimer has been able tofirmly establish that all peopletoday descended from one greatgrandmother Eve between150,000 and 200,000 years ago

more likely around 190,000years ago that only traces

back to Africa. Many later muta-tions or daughter lines showup in Africa, but then the firstshowed up in people outside ofAfrica between 70,000 and95,000 years ago hence, show-ing that there had to be the firstexodus out of Africa in that timeframe.


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History and genetics clearlyshows that despite all of thegreat migrations that have

occurred, most people clearlyprefer to stay put once they

reach their destination (espe-cially women) and have only

moved (typically in smallernumbers) when they were

forced to for new food sourcesor from wars. Thats whygenetic tracing works so well

over time.

But there are two other princi-ples in DNA that Oppenheimerused to argue that there wasonly one small successful migra-tion out of Africa when manyarchaeologists and geneticistshaving argued that there wereseveral over time. The first is thefounder effect. When a smallgroup splits off from a largergroup, only a smaller portion ofthe more varied gene pool of thelarger group will go with them,reducing the size and variety oftheir new gene pool. The secondis genetic drift. In a smaller,isolated population over timedifferent female (and male) lines

will die out or fail to reproduce,narrowing down to a morehomogenous gene pool (asoccurs today in small towns,isolated regions and islands).

Oppenheimer concluded thatsince there was only one initialmaternal line that has survivedtoday outside of Africa, that asmall tribe (founder effect) musthave migrated across the RedSea into Yemen and stayed

there for at least hundreds ofyears until the gene pool nar-rowed down to that one line(genetic drift). Only after thendid new daughter mutations(two at first between Yemen andWest India found only outside ofAfrica) increasingly emerge asthat one tribe migrated, expand-ed and populated the world over

the last 80,000 years. And thatshow he tracks and times themigration patterns, through themany emerging daughter muta-tion markers over time. Theodds of different tribes migratingout at different times ending up

with only one maternal line istoo extreme to make multiplemigrations out of Africa a credi-ble theory.

But there is another story fromgenetic research that is clearlyparallel, but quite a bit differentover time and that comesthrough the male lineages. TheY chromosome has a part thatdoes not recombine called NRYthat can be tracked similarly.

There are two differences in themale tracking and genetic histo-ry. Male lines tend to go extinctfaster than female becausethroughout history a smallerpercentage of the men havefathered more of the children aswomen can only bear so manychildren and the strongestmales get favored sexually (bychoice/attraction or force/rape).Men also have tended to

migrate, hunt, and come and go,while women have remained inplace with their children. Thismeans that there are more malemutation markers and moredetailed tracking of regionalmigration patterns. The onlyproblem is that the Y chromo-some research is more recentand the timing techniques arenot nearly as reliable as on themtDNA for females. Hence, thereis a tendency for many YRA

researchers to underestimatethe timeframes especially for theearlier migrations.

The Y Chromosome or Adamstory is similar. All modernmales descend from one greatgrandfather traced back toAfrica, not anywhere else (likelybetween 150,000 and 100,000

years ago). Adam came later asmale gene and mutation lines goextinct faster and have moremarkers. Later male son muta-tion lines from Adam later thatemerged outside of Africa areonly found outside of Africa.

Hence, Oppenheimer relies moreon the female migration lines fordating and more persistentmigration routes, and the malemore for confirmation andinsights into more specificmigration routes of ethnic clans.

To demonstrate both the

fierceness and efficiency ofgenetics and natural selection:Out of many Homo lines over

more than 2 million years,only Homo sapiens survived

down to numbers of around10,000 at first to become

modern man. Out of manyfemale and male lines inAfrica over the last 150,000

to 200,000 years, only oneline on each side survived to

migrate out of Africa and pop-ulate the entire world.

We were clearly speciallyselected over a long period oftime through endless challengesand deaths to become the domi-nant species today. How manynew ventures does it take to cre-ate a Microsoft? And like allother dominant species, nationsor companies, we will not lastforever but fortunately, thereare no candidates yet in view toreplace us. And computers arenot organisms or species,

just very advanced tools createdby our dominant species likestone tools or agriculture or fac-tories. Computers dont have asoul, or desire or will. They sim-ply do what we program them todo and only in narrow left-brainlogic at this point. So we dontsee a rise of the machines asthe next stage of evolution.


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(Note here, that we are not DNAor archaeological or anthropo-logical experts. We respect anddepend upon the research ofthese and many other scientists,and suggest that you considerreading these books and many

others to form your own opinionif you have such interests. Weconstantly look for the biggerpicture from many fields ofresearch and strive to draw themost conclusive and summaryinsights from them to give you agreater overview of history andevolution from all possibleangles. The minor differencesthat such experts may have overcertain changes in certain timeperiods are often not that rele-vant to our bigger picture, butcan be relevant to issues inthose fields. Even where wedraw our own conclusions, werespect their very detailedresearch and expertise and dontwant to represent our researchas superior or as detailed inthese fields. But our greateroverview of history and modelsfor change often give us somedifferent insights than experts in

these fields).

The Second Great Migration:

50,000 to 40,000 Years Ago

Chart 5summarizes the seriesof migrations that occurred inpopulating the world all stem-ming out of that first tribe thatmigrated from East Africa intoYemen. Each successive migra-tion got bigger and brought newinnovations and skills. Although

the first migration (labeled 1)out of Africa around to Australiawas a major breakthrough eventin human history, it was smallat first and a natural continua-tion of the trend back to thesevere ice age 150,000 years agoof adding shellfish to the dietand moving up the coasts ofEast Africa to survive. This cre-

ated a new coastal highway vs.the previous routes of expansionthrough the grass plains. Thiscoastal route became the newpath of least resistance and like-ly continued all the way aroundto the tip of South America (byas early as 30,000 years ago),until the climate suddenlychanged about 50,000 yearsago. Inland areas in South Asiawere mostly desert up until thattime and going north or inlandwas too difficult. Yet only somany people could thrive inthese narrow coastal areas andthat first great migration lastedfrom about 80,000 years ago toaround 30,000 years ago.

Again, the first part of thebeachcomber migration likelyreached Indonesia and Malaysiabefore Toba 74,000 years ago,and then Australia and

Southeast China around 68,000to 70,000 years ago, and wasisolated for thousands of yearsor longer at first. But it wouldhave continued to expand upthe coasts of China into Koreaand Japan and so on. After

Toba, new beachcombing migra-tions began to occur (from newdaughter and son lines) along

the beaches re-populating Indiamoving east from Pakistan, andmoving back west fromIndonesia. And then the migra-tion continued along the beach-es northward into China, Korea,

Japan, Siberia and ultimatelyinto North America long beforemost archaeologists have previ-ously suspected. The near-extinct Tehuelche people of

Tierra del Fuego near the south-ernmost tip of South Americahave robust features most simi-lar to the early beachcombers ofAustralia (Aborigines) and theNew Guinean highlanders.

These people could have arriveddown the Pacific coasts as earlyas 30,000 years ago. The oldestlanguages in South Americadate back to approximately30,000 years.

But around 50,000 years ago, a

more critical second migration(labeled 2) began inland alongthe Eastern coast of the EastArabian Sea into the MiddleEast, ultimately bringing mod-ern humans into SouthernEurope. This migration occurredbecause of a brief very warmand wet period that hit betweenabout 51,000 and 45,000 years


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chart 5


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ago, opening up grasslands andriver valleys into the Middle Eastfor the first time since the verywarm and wet period 120,000 to130,000 years ago. But thismigration from clear geneticmarkers did not come from the

North Gate of Africa. It camefrom around West Pakistan orSouthern Iran, likely from smallgroups that first moved inland abit to flee the Toba disaster.

This first inland migrationspawned a later third wave thatultimately populated all conti-nents.

The successive waves ofinland migration between

50,000 and 30,000 years agowere the ones that would

most populate the world.

They first moved up the EastArabian Sea coast into Iran andIraq, and then into Turkey. Theythen moved in two directions:south into Syria, Israel andNortheast Africa; and east intothe Balkans, and then into theNorth Mediterranean towardsSouthern France and Spain.

Hence, this migration first set-tled the Middle East andSouthern Europe between45,000 and 50,000 years ago.

This first modern Europeanmigration is generally called theAuregnacians after an archae-ological site discovered inSouthern France showing thefirst modern humans datingback to 46,000 to 47,000 yearsago. This migration formed thefirst ethnic bases for Mid-east-

ern and Southern Europeangroups who generally lived clos-er to the Mediterranean Sea andstill maintained a partiallybeachcomber lifestyle.

The important developmentshere were the following:

1) The next major advance or

big bang in Late Stone Age toolsfor hunting clearly emerged herewith a great variety of smallerand sharper blades to adapt to amore challenging inland envi-ronment with more varied ter-rain and game.

2) Compared to the limited landarea along coastlines, thisopened up vast new terrains forthe expansion of hunting andgathering, and hence, spawnedthe beginnings of exponentialpopulation growth in modernhumans.

3) The emergence of increasing-ly specialized hunting, sewingfor clothing and greater socialcooperation added to the previ-ous hunting and shellfish gath-ering skills for dealing withharsher climates and more var-ied terrain.

4) A new generation of humansthat was more comfortableinland, than on the beachesemerged and they would gen-erally continue such inlandmigration on a much larger

scale, while the beachcomberswould largely continue coastalmigration until forced inlandinto warmer river valleys later.

The Third and GreatestMigration: 35,000 to 22,000Years Ago

Even though the weather gotcooler again and more challeng-ing about 45,000 years ago, thisnew generation of modern

humans now had enough toolsand skills to adapt and continueto expand throughout SouthernEurope and Eastern Europe tosome degree at first. Then thebig bang of migrations hit.

There was another major waveof migrations that went in multi-ple directions inland, morenorthward (around the west end

of the Black Sea) and more east-ward and northward intoCentral Asia between 35,000and 22,000 years ago. Thesemigrations originated out ofareas today between Pakistan,Afghanistan and Southern Iran.

These Central Asian migratorsbecame the most fierce and spe-cialized big game hunters andbranched both westward intoNorthern Europe (called theGravettians after an archaeologi-cal site in France) and eastwardinto Siberia by 30,000 years ago

and very likely across theBering Straights of Alaska intoAmerica well before the last iceage set in (22,000 to 24,000

years ago). Hence, this is themigration wave that most settledthe larger world inland ratherthan just along the warmercoasts of Asia and theMediterranean. These groupshad to deal with much greaterchallenges, especially in colderclimates with greatly alternatingforests, grasslands and tundra.Hence, their tools and survivalskills had to develop to greater

degrees and that made them themost fit to survive long-term.

Increasing archaeological, lin-guistic and DNA evidence is nowstrongly suggesting that Americawas first populated before thelast i

a.brief.history.of.human.evolution.and.economic.progress

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