Transcript The Peopling of the World

The Peopling of the
World
Prehistory – 2500 BCE
1.1 – Human Origins in Africa
• How do we know things without written
records?
– Scientific clues
• Excavating traces of early settlements
• Bones, fossils
• Artifacts
– Def: human made objects (i.e. tools, jewelry)
– Carbon and potassium dating (issues?)
– Anthropologists = people who study culture,
humanity
Hominids
• Def: humans and other creatures
• Name given to very early humans
• Family: Hominidae
– Means “great apes” – chimps, gorillas, orangutans
• Walk upright
• Footprints
– much like ours today
• Opposable thumbs
– Imagine life without them!
Human Development
• Homo habilis – “man of skill”
– 2.5 million years ago
– May have used tools
• Homo erectus – “upright man”
– 1.6 million years ago
– More intelligent
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Developed technology
1st to migrate from Africa
1st to use fire
May have had spoken language
Technology
• Def: ways of applying knowledge, tools,
and inventions to meet needs
Homo sapiens (“wise man”)
• Scientific classification
• Kingdom
– Animalia
• Phylum
– Chordata
• Class
– Mammalia
• Order
– Primates
• Family
– Hominidae
• Genus
– Homo
• Species
– H. sapiens
• Subspecies
– H. s. sapiens
• Trinomial name
– Homo sapiens sapiens
The Stone Age
• Why is it called the “Stone” Age?
• Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age)
– 2.5 million years to 8000 BCE
– Period of the last ice age
• i.e. last time the glaciers advanced
• Neolithic Age (New Stone Age)
– 8000 – 3000 BCE
– Change… agriculture (will talk about in 1.2)
Neanderthals
• Early Homo sapiens
• NOT stereotypical cave men
• Vanished around 30,000 years ago
– Most likely because they were replaced by….
Cro-Magnons
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40,000 years ago they emerge
Prehistoric humans (Homo sapiens)
Made many useful tools
More effective hunters
– Populations grew faster with more food
The Search Continues
• Historians, archaeologists,
anthropologists, other scientists and
continuously studying and uncovering new
information about early/prehistoric humans