1Becoming Human

In summer 2017, the story of human origins was rocked by findings that may well push back, and relocate to a different region of Africa, the earliest evidence for Homo sapiens. The new arguments about the time and place of our origins were grounded in the work of a team of paleoanthropologists who traveled to Jebel Irhoud in Morocco to establish a more precise date for hominin remains that had been unearthed by miners in the 1960s. What the team found were stone tools and fossilized skull fragments (including a jaw) belonging to five individuals. Thermoluminescence dating of objects found with the bones, as well as uranium series dating of a tooth, showed that the possible Homo sapiens at Jebel Irhoud lived as early as 315,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years earlier than the previously accepted date of 200,000 years ago based on finds in East Africa.

Research on ancient DNA (aDNA) is also rewriting long-standing theories of human evolution and hominin migration out of Africa. For instance, DNA analysis of a 2,000-year-old skeleton from sub-Saharan Africa has pointed to a split in the branches of Homo sapiens lineage more than 250,000 years ago. And some paleogenomic researchers, using aDNA analyses together with statistical models, would push back the date for Homo sapiens long before that. As a result of these exciting new findings based on a diverse range of research methodologies, the genetic split indicated by the 2,000-year-old sub-Saharan skeleton supports the idea that the spread of Homo sapiens in Africa occurred longer ago and is more complicated than the 200,000-years-ago origin for Homo sapiens that scholars accepted just a decade ago. The modern scientific creation narrative evolves as new evidence unearthed through excavation adds more data to the story that scholars work to piece together.

Most of the common traits of human beings—the abilities to make tools, engage in family life, use language, and refine cognitive abilities—evolved over many millennia and crystallized around the time Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa more than 100,000 years ago. Only with the beginning of settled agriculture did significant cultural differences develop between groups of humans, as artifacts such as tools, cooking devices, and storage containers reveal. Put simply, the differences we think of as separating humankind’s cultures today are less than 15,000 or 20,000 years old.

This chapter lays out the origins of humanity from its common source. It shows that many different hominins preceded modern humans and that humans came from a recent stock of migrants traveling out of Africa and across Eurasia in waves. Flowing across the world, our ancestors adapted to environmental constraints and opportunities. They created languages, families, and clan systems, often innovating to defend themselves against predators. One of the biggest breakthroughs was the domestication of plants and animals and the creation of settled agriculture. With this development, humans could stop following food and begin producing it where they desired.