7:  Out of Africa

 

Let’s look at Africa again. 

 

 

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that the green area in the center is essentially boxed in.  It is blocked on all sides and there is no way to get from there to the outside world.  At least

 

On the north is the hot and arid Sahara.  On the other three sides are oceans. 

If you look very close, however, you will see a tiny ribbon of green that moves up from the green area and cuts through the great desert.  It is tiny because you are looking at it from 2,500 miles up.  This will be the route our ancient ancestors took when they leave Africa.  It is the Nile river. 

This the only way out.  it is the way our ancestors went when they left Africa about 2 million years ago. 

There were different groups of homos that left Africa.  They are:

 

1.  Homo egaster (the worker man)

2.  Homo habilis (the capable man). 

 

We don’t have DNA from either of these groups.  This means that we can’t do genetic tests to determine if they are two separate species, members of the same species that have different ways of life for different reasons, like the chimps and bonobos.

I think you can see what is coming:

 

Two Different Societies Leave Africa

 

One of these two groups, the homo egaster, left artifacts that indicate that its members were clearly migratory.  We don’t find artifacts of homo egaster or their descendants the denisovans in fixed and well built homes, or in communities with roads and public facilities.  They are not found in desirable areas like fertile river valleys, which could be colonized and turned into ‘countries.’ They traveled in small groups and most of the evidence we have from then indicates they were clearly not ‘living’ in the places where they left artifacts, they were just traveling through. 

They lived in the wild open spaces.  They probably were hunter gatherers, and traveled very long distances following game they were hunting.  Homo egaster are the ancestors of the denisovans, who followed the same lifestyles and who left artifacts in many of the same places.  The denisovans are the ancestors of the modern nomads of Mongolia and Siberia, many of whom live the same general lifestyle, living in portable homes called ‘yurts’ and traveling by dogsled or, if they can afford them, snowmobiles. 

In the places where homo egaster lived, it wouldn’t have been possible to form and defend a specific part of the world as a ‘country.’ For this to happen, they would need a piece of land that is monopolizable.  It must be practical for the people living on the land to build borders and defend them, and the land must produce enough to support them without them having to leave it undefended.  The places where homo egaster lived clearly do not qualify. 

They were like the bonobos, both in terms of disposition and culture.  Of course, they probably would have liked to live in the best areas, where food and everything else they need is plentiful.  But, for some reason, they shunned these areas and stayed in remote areas. 

Homo habilis lived entirely differently.  They formed colonies as they went and built permanent facilities, including very large and durable walls to surround the areas where they lived.  We can study their former habitations because many were built along the banks of the Nile where it flows through the dry Sahara.  It doesn’t rain in many of these areas for centuries, so the dwellings don’t degrade very rapidly.  Their artifacts show they clearly ‘settled’ the areas where they lived.  They stayed there.  They had homes where they slept every night.  They clearly had military forces patrolling the walls: we can find evidence of defensive fortifications that allowed them to rain down fire on their enemies while remaining safe themselves.  They clearly had societies like the chimps, built in the same principle: territorial sovereignty.  The homo habilis divided into groups, each of which took possession of a territory, then treated it as if they had sovereignty over it.  They acted much like the people of the world’s countries do today. 

The homo habilis were the ancestors of the people called the neanderthals.  Neanderthal remains are found in great quantities in Europe.  The neanderthals built the many thousands of city states of ancient Europe.  When later technology made it impossible to defend a small state, larger entities closer to modern countries evolved and many of the smaller ‘city states’ (a state the size of a modern city) were abandoned.  You can find the ruins of their old city walls today, all over Europe.  There are so many of them, that most even aren’t marked and used as tourist attractions today.  They are just left to be destroyed by the weather. 

Both of these early groups of the homo genus left Africa starting about 2 million years ago.  The homo egaster went first.  They were migratory people descended from migratory people.  They were clearly very comfortable with traveling over vast distances and, within a very short time, they were all over Asia.  The homo habilis had different backgrounds.  They were clearly not comfortable with travel and their remains are not scattered all over.  They tended to stay in communities and settlements. 

Both groups were capable of using fire.  Both had kits that allowed them to make fire anywhere they went (discussed in the text box below) and appear to have always had one of these kits available to them wherever they went.  Fire was an important part of their lives.  They used it for light, heat, cooking, and heating water to keep themselves clean. 

 

How to make fire: This is easy if you have something that is flammable (a light oil like what you would skim from the top of a pool works well, but anything that burns well works; you could soak some cotton in some rendered fat from an animal or use coconut or other oil containing plants), a piece of flint (a common type of rock) and a rock with a high iron content or, better yet, a piece of iron itself.   

If you can make a spark you can ignite the flammable item.  Early homos would have used some kind of oil (perhaps rendered fat from an animal, oil squeezed from an oil-rich plant like flax, or skimmed from the top of a natural oil pool) mixed with a piece of cotton, flax, or other fiber.  They could carry this in a leather pouch and, when they want fire, open it, rub the flint on the iron to create a spark and ignite the oil soaked fabric. They could use this to ignite wood and then put out the oil-soaked fabric to use it again.  The basic idea here is identical to the working principle of a Zippo lighter.  If you remember the television ads, you can light a Zippo in a hurricane and, using the same principle, early homos would have been able to make fires under any conditions. 

Early explorers who visited a great many different places with natural law societies (like Captain Cook) discuss the use of fire by natives in their logs.   Fire making kits were essential equipment and even natives who had no other tools to speak of carried their kits with them everywhere they went. 

You may wonder how people without metal pans might heat water.  In his book Travels and Adventures, Alexander Henry explains some trips he made to spend time with tribes in the far north of Canada in the middle of the winter and discusses how they lived.  They had a ‘shower room,’ actually a teepee, with buffalo hides hung from the top so that they held water.  They filled the hides with water and put rocks heated in a fire into the water to heat it.  The hides were set up so that water could be diverted into a smaller hide that had holes in it for a shower.  Even when the weather was incredibly cold, they could have (and, according to Henry, did have) showers every day.

 

How Territorial Sovereignty Societies Spread

 

Homo habilis, and their descendants the neanderthals, had societies built on the idea of dividing themselves into different teams to fight over exclusivity (sovereignty) over pieces of territory.  These are the same kinds of societies chimps have and the same kinds of societies that dominate the world now. 

These societies spread in a very specific way.  If we want to understand how they developed into the societies we have now, it helps to understand how these systems expand. 

These societies spread by the process of ‘colonization.’  They can start with a few people (or animals; territorial sovereignty societies are suitable for both) in a fixed and defined area.  If food is plentiful and conditions are otherwise healthy, their population will grow.  As long as there are no massive wars to cull their populations, eventually the population will be so high that there wasn’t enough food for all.  At this point, they start to fight among themselves for food.  They generally don’t’ do this as individuals however.  They break into different gangs under different leaders.  The groups then fight each other in a kind of ‘civil war.’  The two sides fight each other for the home territory.  The winners take all.  The losers are sometimes all killed.  (These are ‘to the very last man fights.)  But sometimes some of the losing group flees.  I need a term to refer to these ‘landless refugees from territorial sovereignty societies.’  I will use the Japanese term ‘Ronin’ for this, as this is the closest term in common use I could find to represent the concept. 

 

In Japanese feudal systems, the soldiers were called ‘samurai.’  The samurai were vassals of feudal lords.  The lords had their feuds (the territory they controlled) and had to fight to retain control of their territory.  If the lords were killed or defeated and driven from their lands, their samurai had no master and no income.  (Lords would normally not survive the fights.  It was so dishonorable to let down the people under the masters by losing he land that they preferred death and committed sepuku, a ritual suicide.)  The samurai and others who had fairly high rank that fled after their masters were displaced became something called ‘Ronin.’ 

 

These Ronin were used to a certain lifestyle.  They would look for a piece of land that they could control so they could live as they lived before.  At first, when people with territorial sovereignty societies are moving into an vast territory, they would find vacant land that met their requirements.  They would identify land, make borders, and adopt it as their home territory.  They would make a kind of clone of the system they left behind in the new area.  The method of growth is called ‘colonization.’  The human society spreads in much the same way that bacterial colonies spread.  They move into an area that is rich in food.  Their population grows and grows until the food can’t support more.  Then, some members of the colony will head to areas outside the colony and start a new colony.  (This happens both for bacteria and humans).  The colony will grow until the population is too large for the food supply and the process will repeat.  This can keep going as long as suitable land is available.  When they run out of land, the Ronin have no way to get their old lifestyles back unless they can organize with others into armies and use these armies to take over existing colonized areas.  

DNA doesn’t last forever and we haven’t yet found enough intact DNA to sequence from truly ancient members of the homo genus.  (We get our samples of Pan DNA from modern pans, not ancient ones.)  The oldest DNA from members of the homo genus come from individuals that have been classified as either ‘neanderthal’ or ‘denisovan’ depending on the genetic profile. 

Since we don’t have any DNA from either Homo Egaster or Homo Habilis, we can’t really tell if they were separate species, or perhaps the same species but different subspecies, as denisovans or neanderthals.  I think that, until we have information that they were not the same, it makes sense to leave this question open and focus on the members of the homo genus that we can positively identify, the later subspecies, neanderthals and denisovans.  We know both of these human-like beings existed.  We know their genetic profiles and their ways of life.  These two subspecies appear to be the ancestral species of modern humans.  (We have their genes in our DNA.)  Let’s consider where and when they live in large numbers and go over come evidence about the way they lived. 

 

Neanderthals

 

In 1856 in the Feldhofer Cave of the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany, some quarry workers found some unusual bones.  They contacted the local university who analyzed the bones and determined they were from a male being that was not an ape and not a human, but something in between.  There are certain anatomical features that modern humans all share.  Beings with these features are called ‘AMH’s, which stands for ‘anatomically modern humans.’   The remains found in the Feldhofer Cave did not have the modern anatomical features.  But they were very similar to modern humans in almost every other way.  Scientists eventually decided that these were the bones of an ancient precursor to humans.  They named this man after the valley where the remains were found, the Neander valley.  They called him ‘neanderthal man.’  

Over the course of the next century and a half, large quantities of neanderthal remains and artifacts were found all over Europe.  Some additional remains were found in the area now called the ‘Middle East.’  The map below shows their known range, as inferred by bones and other remains of neanderthals that have been found. 

 

 

Neanderthals clearly lived in settlements.  Large numbers of individuals lived together.  They had homes that were well built and durable.   They made complex tools including weapons.  Their artifacts show that they were very violent and war was a frequent activity.  Their wars were like the wars of the chimps, in that they appeared to be brutal and savage fights to the death with no empathy or compassion shown. 

 

Denisovans

 

In 1970, some people who were no a sport hunting trip in a remote part of Siberia were exploring a cave that the locals called  Denisova Cave. They found some bones that looked like they might be human bones.  They reported the remains to the authorities to determine if they might be evidence of a crime. 

The authorities determined they were not human bones, at least not from modern humans, because they didn’t have the anatomical features we associate with AMH’s.  They did look very similar, however.   They asked researchers from Germany to come to the site to see if they might be neanderthal remains.  Later, neanderthal remains would be found in lower levels of the same cave, but the remains in question, the first found at the site, were clearly not neanderthal remains.  They decided to name the being that that these bones were once part of ‘Denisovan man.’  

The Denisova Cave has since yielded a treasure trove of archeological evidence.  It has been visited by human-like beings, off and on, for at least 285,000 years.  Some of these beings stayed in the cave for months at a time and used it as their home.  They hunted and fished in the local forests and river, gathered roots, mushrooms, berries, and other foods, and brought all these different foods to the cave to cook into meals.  So far, archeologists have excavated more than 22 layers with artifacts, each from a different era.   This has led to one of the richest archeological sites found so far anywhere.  There is a reason this particular cave preserved artifacts so well.  It is in an area that is very, very cold and very dry. 

 

Neanderthals, Denisovans, And ‘Modern Humans’

 

Neanderthal remains and artifacts show they were brutal and violent, organizing and participating in horrific mass murder events.  They killed and killed and killed; it was what they were known for.  Their bodies looked something like those of modern humans.  But, until genetic analysis showed otherwise, people wanted to draw a line between them and us. 

The research reports all stressed that neanderthals are extinct.  (Even modern reports say this, but it isn’t true.  Modern humans all seem to have some neanderthal DNA.  Since their species is the same as our species (we are both homo sapiens), it can’t be true that their species is extinct.  Before this evidence came out, however, people tried hard to find a way to draw a line between them and us.  So far, we can’t find a line.

Denisovan remains were found far more recently.  They were not savage fighters.  But they didn’t seem to be quite up to the standards of modern humans.  They appeared to lack ingenuity and normal curiosity.  They were hunter gatherers, not even intelligent enough to build permanent cities or form governments.  The articles I read also claimed, without evidence of any kind, that beings had been extinct for long periods of time.  The implication was clear:  these simple beings simply couldn’t compete with the wise, noble, and cultured beings that WE are. 

DNA evidence has shown that this is wrong.  All modern humans tested so far show some neanderthal DNA, some denisovan DNA, or both.  No one tested doesn’t have any DNA from either.  These beings are not extinct.  They are still here.  We are them. 

You can have your DNA tested.  The testers will tell you your ancestry.  All evidence I have read so far has indicated  that all of us have at least some neanderthal DNA.  (It may be a tiny amount, but we all have some.)   Most people also have denisovan DNA. 

Our mental abilities appear to be associated with the use of complex tools and the benefits we gain from using these tools.  Fire is the most complex tool in the human tool kit.  It is a very complicated thing.  We are still not fully in control of it.  It has uses that we still haven’t found, after three million years living with it.  But it is so powerful and so useful that nature was able to push aside other adaptations to give animals that have the ability to use fire and other complex tools priority over those that adapted other ways and were not as capable at using this particular tool.  A doubling of the brain size was necessary to create beings with the capability to control fire.  But nature was patient.   Over the course of a million years, this happened. 

Evolution didn’t stop after this.  Each newborn was genetically unique, with its own DNA profile. Some had genes that made them more able to make additional connections and use tools (including the tool of complex language) even better than others.  The generations get smarter and smarter.  In the next two million years, the brain sizes increased by the same amount, reaching its current size about 200,000 to 300,000 years ago.  As the saying goes, ‘size isn’t everything.’  Our brains also got more complex.  We got smarter. 

Anthropologists that find remains must classify them.  By creating classifications, they create the illusion that evolution goes by steps.  The being starts as a pan paniscus, for example and becomes a homo egaster.  At some point, she becomes a homo erectus, then a homo neanderthalis, then a homo sapiens neanderthalis.  Eventually, she crosses a certain line and is an ‘anatomically modern human.’  But these steps aren’t real.  Changes are slow and take millions of years. 

Here is the point: there is no hard line.  We are them and they are us. 

 

Colonization

 

Territorial sovereignty societies spread by colonization.  The people with these societies are both genetically and culturally predisposed to find a home territory, separate their territory from the rest of the world with borders, and then patrol the borders to keep these two parts world separate and to make sure that the people inside the borders are in total charge of everything that happens there. 

They want to be in such a state that they are ‘independent and sovereign.’  They want to be in an ‘independent and sovereign state.’  

 

The Colonization of Europe

 

The image below is an image of the area where the first territorial members of the homo genus would have found themselves after they had made it down the Nile Corridor.  The Nile empties into the Mediterranean sea at Alexandria, in Egypt.  Note the deep green color of the Nile Delta:  this is some of the richest rice land on Earth.  (Constant sunshine doesn’t often coincide with endless water and enormous amounts of very fertile land in very many places.) 

But once they hit the sea, they would be stock.  There is no adjacent land that is productive enough to colonize.  To the east, the Sahara runs all the way to the sea.  The only river from the mountains that makes it all the way to the sea is the Nile:  The rest all dry up in the desert.  To the north is the Mediterranean, impassable without fairly complex boats.  To the east is the Sinai Peninsula, blistering hot and bone dry desert.  Eventually, some people would find that if they went past the Sinai, they would eventually get to the Jordan River valley, where there was fresh water and some land that was able to support crops.  But if you look at the image, you will see only scattered patches of green surrounded by brown and tan desert.  Most of the land couldn’t support settlements and much of it still isn’t settled today. 

They could form a few colonies, but then they would run out of land for new ones.  Those with land good enough to support them would soon finding themselves in fights with others to try to take land from the others.  This kind of geography would lead to some very serious conflicts.  Those with good land lived, those without good land died, and there was plenty of bad land around all the good land where people could organize for conquest.  We might expect these battles to be incredibly fierce and they may continue without pause for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.  If you look at today’s news, you will see that this area still has some of the bitterest and most furious wars on Earth and they never seem to stop. 

The ‘partly’ colonizable lands continue along the coastal areas of the Mediterranean through what is now Lebanon, Syria, and far eastern Turkey.  The settlers would have fought bitterly over these lands and, even today, the fights continue.  They wouldn’t reach any really large parcels of highly productive land, where the colonies could be right one against the other, until they reached southern Europe.  Then, as you can see, it is green green green, as far as the eye can see. 

Europe has a unique climate.  It has a fairly high latitude going into an area that would normally be too cold to grow a lot of crops.  But a massive flow of warm water called the Gulf Stream’ rises up from the tropics.  The Gulf stream both warms the area, giving it a far longer growing season than any other area with this latitude, and it brings constant rains.  The territorial members of the homo genus (the homo habilis and then neanderthals) wanted rich land.  When they found it, they colonized it.  They built borders around land and defended it.  To them, Europe was paradise. 

 

The Sizes of the First European States

 

The chimps had strict limits on the sizes of their ‘countries’ because they had to feed their members on whatever the land grew naturally.  They didn’t have the mental ability to put together farming operations, plant seeds, tend them, harvest the crop, and convert the crop into food. 

The humans had brains that were two to three times larger and presumably at least two times more powerful than the chimps.  They could use fire, which meant they could take advantage of foods that the chimps couldn’t. One important example is rice.  Neither pans nor humans can digest raw rice.  But if it is cooked, it can be a staple crop that supports us almost indefinitely.  Other grains can be cooked the same way.   They can also be ground into flour which is them mixed with water and a little yeast, then baked into bread.  Grains can be stored for long periods.  A group of people with some land that can produce grain can become sedentary farmers, staying in the same place all year long.  They can harvest grain and then use it, throughout the year, both for bread for themselves and for food for chickens, pigs, sheep, and other animals that they domesticate.  They can live in the same place and eat well-balanced meals every day. 

They basically have to monopolize the land to do this.  they need to protect it from outsiders.  If they don’t, the outsiders can attack during the harvest and take everything, killing everyone in the unprotected grain producing area.  They need borders and need to defend them all the time to make sure that the grains and other foods they have stored are safe from bandits, Ronin, and other countries.  They have to live the same basic way that the chimps lived, building and defending borders. 

They would still have limits on the sizes of their countries, for the same reason as the chimps had limits.  If the country was too large, they would have to have enormous numbers of border guards to monitor the border.  When trouble came, they would still have to travel a long way to get to and bring soldiers to deal with the problem.   Too large of a country and they wouldn’t be able to defend it. 

They could have larger countries than the chimps, however, because their greater technology would allow them to produce a lot more food in a given area.  This means they could support a great many more soldiers and support personnel.  However, they wouldn’t be able to support enough to have countries of the size of modern countries. 

We will see shortly that we have artifacts that can tell us how large their countries were.  They built walls that were massive around their states and many of these walls still exist.  Even in places where the walls were torn down, we can easily tell where the walls used to be because other structures were built in their place.  Recently, governments have wanted to build roads for densely populated areas.  But this is difficult because all of the land is in use and it is very hard to get enough land that is in a line to make a road that is useful.  This is where the walls come in.  The old walls that were still standing when the machine age began were obvious places to build walls.  They were circles surrounding cities.  You can look at maps of Europe and easily see where the walls used to be by looking at the road systems. 

The countries that the humans built were larger than the countries the chimps built.  They were closer to the sizes of the political units we call ‘cities’ than the ‘states’ of the world today.  Historians generally call these early states ‘city states.’ 

 

Keywords    Human evolution, Homo genus, Early hominids, Fire use in human evolution, Out of Africa theory, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, DNA evidence in evolution, Brain size evolution, Territorial behavior in early humans, Human migration patterns, Prehistoric tool use, Ancient human societies, Human ancestors, Evolutionary biology, Paleogenetics, Human origins, Prehistoric fire control