First Peoples
Populating the Planet
to 10,000 B.C.E.
First Migrations
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“Homo sapiens emerged in eastern and southern
Africa 250,000 years ago.
Stayed there exclusively for about 150,000 years
Africa was home to the “human revolution,” in
which culture became more important than
biology in shaping human behavior
Humans began to inhabit environments not
touched by earlier hominids
Technological innovation: use of stone and bone
tools
Hunting and fishing, not just scavenging
Patterns of exchange
Use of ornaments, perhaps planned burials
Between 100,000–60,000 years ago: beginning of
migrations out of Africa
Adapted to nearly every environment on earth
Much took place in the difficulties of the last Ice
Age
First Migrations
Into Eurasia
• Humans started migrating into the Middle East
around 51,000 years ago
• Best evidence comes from southern France and
northern Spain
• Developed new hunting habits, new hunting
technologies
• Left hundreds of cave paintings: depictions of
animals and humans and abstract designs (maybe
early form of writing)
• Creation of female figurines (“Venus figurines”);
earliest dated at least 35,000 years ago
Into Australia
• Humans reached Australia about 60,000 years
ago from Indonesia
• Still completely a gathering and hunting economy
when Europeans arrived in 1788
• Complex worldview: the Dreamtime - stories,
ceremonies, and art tell of ancestral beings
First Migrations
Into the Americas
• Settlement of the Americas began somewhere
between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago
• mode of migration ( Bering Strait or by sea down
west coast of North America)
• Evidence of humans in southern Chile by 12,500
years ago
• Clovis: the first clearly defined and widespread
culture of the Americas (12,000–11,000 years
ago)
• Hunted large mammals (mammoths, bison)
Into the Pacific
• The last phase of the great human migration,
started ca. 3,500 years ago
• Migration by water from the Bismarck and
Solomon islands and the Philippines
• Spoke Austronesian languages (can be traced to
southern China)
• Settled every habitable area of the Pacific basin
within 2,500 years
• Pacific settlers took agriculture with them, unlike
other migrations
• Followed a deliberate colonization plan
• Created highly stratified societies or chiefdoms
(e.g., Hawaii)
• Massive environmental impact on previous
uninhabited lands
The First Human Societies
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Paleolithic societies were small (20 to 50 people)
All relationships were personal, based on kinship
BUT, there were rules and structures
The available technology allowed for a slow rate
of population growth
Paleolithic groups were seasonally mobile or
nomadic
Highly egalitarian societies
Women were the primary food gatherers, which
meant they provided the bulk of the family
income
“The Original Affluent Society”?
Gathering and hunting (foraging) people worked
fewer hours than people in agricultural or
industrial societies, so they had more leisure time
As humans spread, this led to the extinction of
various large animal species
The First Human Societies
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There is clear evidence that Paleolithic people
had a ceremonial life (spiritual or religious)
There were part-time shamans, and most
societies believed in a deity
Most were based on creation, and were usually
portrayed as women
Most Paleolithic people likely developed a cyclical
view of time
Transition from Foraging to Agriculture
Settling Down: The Great Transition
• Gradual change as populations grew, climates
changed, and peoples interacted
• Collection of wild grains started in northeastern
Africa around 16,000 years ago
• Last Ice Age ended 16,000–10,000 years ago
• Followed by a “global warming” period
• Richer and more diverse environment for human
societies
• population rise
• beginnings of settlement
• Settlement led to societal change
• larger and more complex societies
• storage and accumulation of goods led to
inequality
• Settling-down process occurred in many areas
12,000–4,000 years ago
• Jomon culture in Japan
• Scandinavia, Southeast Asia, North America,
Middle East
• bows and arrows were invented
independently in Europe, Africa, and Middle
East
• The process of settlement was a major turn in
human history
The San of Southern Africa
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Numbered 50,000 to 80,000 at the start of the
21st century
Khoisan language family, still practice a gathering
and hunting lifestyle and use stone tools
Anthropologsits first studied them in the 1950s
and found that they did not have to work very
hard to achieve their standard of living
Work divided equally between men and women
Lived in small camps with no formal leaders
A successful hunter would disparage his own skill
No boasting was allowed, and there was no idea
of private property
Their economic system was based on leveling
wealth, not accumulating it
San society characterized by mobility, sharing,
and equality
No formal leaders, priests, or craft specialists
Relative equality between the sexes, most
marriages are monogamous
Belief system:
• Creator God, Gao Na, is capricious
• lesser god Gauwa is destructive but
sometimes assists humans
• gauwasi (spirits of dead ancestors) are most
serious threat to human welfare
• “curing dances”
• state of warfare with the divine
The Chumash of Southern California
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Show a later Paleolithic stage than the San, with
permanent villages
Chumash lived near present-day Santa Barbara,
California
• richer environment than the San
• 20,000 when the Spaniards arrived in the
sixteenth century
Central technological innovation: the planked
canoe (tomol)
• stimulated trade between the coast and
islands
• made deep-sea fishing possible
Living conditions were more elaborate than the
San
• round, permanent, substantial houses (for
up to 70 people)
• a market economy, despite being gathering
and hunting peoples
• beginning of class distinctions (e.g.,
bearskin capes, burials)
• emergence of a permanent, hereditary
political elite
Chumash largely solved the problems of violence
in the region