Human origins and early cultures Recorded History is only the tip of an iceberg reaching back to the first appearance on earth ofthe human species. Anthropologists, prehistorians and archaeologists have extended our vista of past by hundreds of thousands of years: we cannot understand human history without taking account of their findings. The transformation of human kind (or, more accurately, of certain groups of humans in certain areas) from hunters and fishers to agriculturists, and from a migratory to a sedentary life, constitutes the most decisive revolution in the whole of human history. The climatic and ecological changes which made it possible have left their mark on the historical record down to the present day. Agriculture made possible not merely a phenomenal growth of human population, which is thought to have increased some 16 fold between 8000 and 4000 BC, but also gave rise to the familiar landscape of village communities which still characterized Europe as late as the middle of the right century and which even today prevails in many parts of the world. Nowhere are the continuities of history more visible. The enduring structures of human society, which transcend and outline political change, carry us back to the end of the Ice Age, to the changes which began when the shrinking ice-cap left a new world explored and tamed. The earliest Hominine fossils y discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia y are fragmenting 4.5 million years old remains of Ardipethicus ramidus. y Australopithecenes, or 'southern apes' y Australopithecus afarensis -skeletal and fossilized footprints was dated between three and four million years. - This species is the probable ancestor of the robustly built Australopithe cenes boisei, Aethiopicus and robustus because of its large teeth and herbivores diet, and our genus, Homo, meaning 'man'. y In 1950 revealed that these closely related but nonetheless distinctive species not only lived at the same time but side by side in the same habitats y 2 to 3 million years ago, there is evidences of important evolutionary trends in Homo, y Encephalization - the process where the brain became much biggerEarly Technologies y Gona, Ethiopia - the earliest stone tools were found in this place which suggests that 2.5 million years ago meat was a central part of Hominine's diet, with sharpened stones used to cut flesh and pound marrow-rich bones from carcasses either scavenged orbrought down and defended against carnivores. y Southern Africa - burnt bones was found in this place which indicate that by 1.5 million years ago hominines learned to 'cook'.
