• Why did Europe colonize Africa and Asia rather than the other way around?
• Why is geography the most important factor in human history?
• How has the rest of the scientific community received Diamond's theory?
  

Spark Notes Barnes and Noble Readers Companion

Sparknotes

Chapter One

UP TO THE STARTING LINE

    A suitable starting point from which to compare historical developmentson the different continents is around 11,000 B.C.(*) This date correspondsapproximately to the beginnings of village life in a few parts of the world,the first undisputed peopling of the Americas, the end of the PleistoceneEra and last Ice Age, and the start of what geologists term the RecentEra. Plant and animal domestication began in at least one part of the worldwithin a few thousand years of that date. As of then, did the people ofsome continents already have a head start or a clear advantage over peoplesof other continents?

    If so, perhaps that head start, amplified over the last 13,000 years, providesthe answer to Yali's question. Hence this chapter will offer a whirlwindtour of human history on all the continents, for millions of years, fromour origins as a species until 13,000 years ago. All that will now be summarizedin less than 20 pages. Naturally, I shall gloss over details and mentiononly what seem to me the trends most relevant to this book.

    Our closest living relatives are three surviving species of great ape:the gorilla, the common chimpanzee, and the pygmy chimpanzee (also knownas bonobo). Their confinement to Africa, along with abundant fossil evidence,indicates that the earliest stages of human evolution were also playedout in Africa. Human history, as something separate from the history ofanimals, began there about 7 million years ago (estimates range from 5to 9 million years ago). Around that time, a population of African apesbroke up into several populations, of which one proceeded to evolve intomodern gorillas, a second into the two modern chimps, and the third intohumans. The gorilla line apparently split off slightly before the splitbetween the chimp and the human lines.

    Fossils indicate that the evolutionary line leading to us had achieveda substantially upright posture by around 4 million years ago, then beganto increase in body size and in relative brain size around 2.5 millionyears ago. Those protohumans are generally known as Australopithecus africanus,Homo habilis, and Homo erectus, which apparently evolved into each otherin that sequence. Although Homo erectus, the stage reached around 1.7 millionyears ago, was close to us modern humans in body size, its brain size wasstill barely half of ours. Stone tools became common around 2.5 millionyears ago, but they were merely the crudest of flaked or battered stones.In zoological significance and distinctiveness, Homo erectus was more thanan ape, but still much less than a modern human.

    All of that human history, for the first 5 or 6 million years after ourorigins about 7 million years ago, remained confined to Africa. The firsthuman ancestor to spread beyond Africa was Homo erectus, as is attestedby fossils discovered on the Southeast Asian island of Java and conventionallyknown as Java man (see Figure 1.1). The oldest Java "man" fossils--ofcourse, they may actually have belonged to a Java woman--have usually beenassumed to date from about a million years ago. However, it has recentlybeen argued that they actually date from 1.8 million years ago. (Strictlyspeaking, the name Homo erectus belongs to these Javan fossils, and theAfrican fossils classified as Homo erectus may warrant a different name.)At present, the earliest unquestioned evidence for humans in Europe stemsfrom around half a million years ago, but there are claims of an earlierpresence. One would certainly assume that the colonization of Asia alsopermitted the simultaneous colonization of Europe, since Eurasia is a singlelandmass not bisected by major barriers.

    That illustrates an issue that will recur throughout this book. Wheneversome scientist claims to have discovered "the earliest X"--whetherX is the earliest human fossil in Europe, the earliest evidence of domesticatedcorn in Mexico, or the earliest anything anywhere--that announcement challengesother scientists to beat the claim by finding something still earlier.In reality, there must be some truly "earliest X," with all claimsof earlier X's being false. However, as we shall see, for virtually anyX, every year brings forth new discoveries and claims of a purported stillearlier X, along with refutations of some or all of previous years' claimsof earlier X. It often takes decades of searching before archaeologistsreach a consensus on such questions.

    By about half a million years ago, human fossils had diverged from olderHomo erectus skeletons in their enlarged, rounder, and less angular skulls.African and European skulls of half a million years ago were sufficientlysimilar to skulls of us moderns that they are classified in our species,Homo sapiens, instead of in Homo erectus. This distinction is necessarilyarbitrary, since Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens. However, theseearly Homo sapiens still differed from us in skeletal details, had brainssignificantly smaller than ours, and were grossly different from us intheir artifacts and behavior. Modern stone-tool-making peoples, such asYali's great-grandparents, would have scorned the stone tools of half amillion years ago as very crude. The only other significant addition toour ancestors' cultural repertoire that can be documented with confidencearound that time was the use of fire.

    No art, bone tool, or anything else has come down to us from early Homosapiens except for their skeletal remains, plus those crude stone tools.There were still no humans in Australia, for the obvious reason that itwould have taken boats to get there from Southeast Asia. There were alsono humans anywhere in the Americas, because that would have required theoccupation of the nearest part of the Eurasian continent (Siberia), andpossibly boat-building skills as well. (The present, shallow Bering Strait,separating Siberia from Alaska, alternated between a strait and a broadintercontinental bridge of dry land, as sea level repeatedly rose and fellduring the Ice Ages.) However, boat building and survival in cold Siberiawere both still far beyond the capabilities of early Homo sapiens.

    After half a million years ago, the human populations of Africa and westernEurasia proceeded to diverge from each other and from East Asian populationsin skeletal details. The population of Europe and western Asia between130,000 and 40,000 years ago is represented by especially many skeletons,known as Neanderthals and sometimes classified as a separate species, Homoneanderthalensis. Despite being depicted in innumerable cartoons as apelikebrutes living in caves, Neanderthals had brains slightly larger than ourown. They were also the first humans to leave behind strong evidence ofburying their dead and caring for their sick. Yet their stone tools werestill crude by comparison with modern New Guineans' polished stone axesand were usually not yet made in standardized diverse shapes, each witha clearly recognizable function.

    The few preserved African skeletal fragments contemporary with the Neanderthalsare more similar to our modern skeletons than to Neanderthal skeletons.Even fewer preserved East Asian skeletal fragments are known, but theyappear different again from both Africans and...