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3.2 How Humans Spread: ArchaeologyVersion 1.4 October 2022                                           (Previous Version) These are the questions we ask in the introduction (Section 0.1.6 – paragraph 15): How did the first humans spread around the world, just by walking? Did they walk across water? Who invented the first tools? Who invented agriculture? Where does our food come from? Why did farming develop earlier in Asia, later in the Americas and Africa, and hardly at all in Australia? What impact did farming and settlements have on societies and ordinary people? This Chapter covers history from about 50,000 years ago to about 5,000 years ago, essentially before writing. We learn about these times from a variety of scientific evidence, especially the bones of humans and other animals, artefacts which last such as pottery, but also biology and linguistics. As people spread around the world they took their survival skills with them and adapted on the way. Initially all humans were small bands of hunter gatherers. Later humans began to domesticate plants and animals and turn into farmers, living more or less in one place, settled in villages. When they could, as people explored away from their home villages, they took their survival skills with them, and domesticated newly discovered plants and animals. But some of the new places were hostile to farming, so the people resumed being hunter gatherers. How it panned out depended mostly on the geography of the land – the climate, weather, landscape, and the local plants and animals. The change from hunting and gathering to farming communities tied people to one spot. Larger infrastructure projects were organized by constructive leaders. But ordinary people could not escape local despots. There was more specialization: not everyone was involved in food production. The daily focus was on ongoing seasonal tasks and heavy work such as planting, harvesting and building maintenance, which our bodies were not designed for. Ongoing close contact with domesticated animals allowed their diseases to cross over to humans then spread in the close knit communities. Scientists and historians can tell a rich story of how humans spread across the world and why some societies prospered more than others, but there are many gaps, and the story will be revised over time.
We propose to look at how we know what we know about history under the following headings:
As stated in the chapter overview, this is the current summary of our conclusions in this area: Humans spread out of Africa into Eurasia, Australia, the Americas and many islands, adapting to but also changing their new environments, developing farming sooner in areas where plants and animals were easier to domesticate, in Eurasia and New Guinea, later in the Americas and Africa, and partially in Australia.  more                                                             Statement 15
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