Pleistocene epoch
1.6 million to 11,000 years ago

'The perfection of hunting spelled the end of hunting as a way of life....The hunters at the end of the Old Stone Age...broke rule number one for any prudent parasite: Don't kill off your host. As they drove species after species to extinction, they walked into the first progress trap.'

Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress, pp.39-40.

1.6 MILLION YEARS AGO

Fluctuations in worldwide weather temperatures marked the beginning of a series of glacier advancements called Ice Ages, followed by periods of warmth called Interglacial Periods. A typical glacial and interglacial period may persist for thousands of years.
During the last 1.6 million years since the present time, glaciers and ice sheets have advanced at least five times - the last of which occurred 11,000 years ago. In the last Ice Age, sheets of ice have unfolded over Canada and northern parts of the United States, Europe and Russia, creating temperatures as low as -19°C at night in the winter and perhaps not much higher than 10°C during the day in the warmer months (in places like Germany and other areas with a similar geographic latitude). (1)
As a result of the Ice Age, many animals migrated to the tropics for greater warmth. However certain species adapted to the cold, such as Wolly Mammoths and humans.
During the beginning of the first glacial advancement nearly 1.6 million years ago, many extinctions occurred.
NOTE: This kind of oscillatory behaviour in the world climate is natural because plants and animals affect chemistry of the air and therefore affect temperature. Earth is a balancing system. Certain things may disrupt the climate such as dust and soot from man-made fires, but the Earth has a way of balancing the effects.
If humans had no impact on the environment, then Earth at the present time would be half-way through the current interglacial period. Another 10,000 years and Earth could be heading for the next Ice Age. However, our technology and our activity in the 20th and 21st century will no longer see these natural oscillations continue.

1.5 MILLION YEARS AGO

An almost complete and one of the better preserved skulls of Homo Erectus. This one, from East Turkana, Kenya, is nearly 1.5 million years old. Source: Gowlett 1984, p.60.
Early humans have now evolved (or appeared side-by-side with Homo Augasta) to the level of Homo Erectus. The name is rather unfortunate for it conjures up images of sexually promiscuous male hominids marauding the countryside. Although there may be some truth to this, the term Homo Erectus was devised to help explain the fact that these creatures had definitely walked upright and virtually did so throughout all their waking-life!
On this particular evolutionary branch, these upright-walking creatures had larger brains than their predecessors (but still smaller than those of modern humans). A noticeable jutting ledge of bones over their eye sockets were still apparent. However they had smaller canine teeth, and their jaws were receding. Homo Erectus is known to inhabit caves for its protection and warmth, especially during the glacial periods.
Homo Erectus is believed to have migrated to Asia between 1.7 and 1.5 million years ago.

1.1 MILLION YEARS AGO

The consensus among Western scientists is that modern humans emerged from Africa around 200,000 years ago to populate the world known as the Eve theory in memory of the classic Western religious story of Adam and Eve to explain the origins of humans. However, Asian scientists, notably the Chinese, argue their fossils of early humans existed over 300,000 years ago to around 1.1 million years ago as if other hominids existed and evolved into Homo Sapiens. One supporter of this "we already existed in Asia" theory is paleontologist Wu Xinzhi. Interestingly the findings of skulls in Asia dating back to this time do appear to suggest hominds in Asia were evolving and becoming more and more like Homo Sapiens.
Were there a single region in the world for the origin of all modern humans? Or were there several cradles for modern mankind within Europe and Asia and not just Africa?
Considerable debate still remains as to who exactly existed where and when and whether early hominds had already populated much of the world at this time to evolve independently into modern humans.

1.05 MILLION to 780,000 YEARS AGO

Scientists believe another reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles occurred during this time when the north pole was over Antarctica again. But this one lasted for only about 200,000 years, a short period of time in geological terms! (2)
Mammals living at this time were not as big as the great dinosaurs of the Jurassic Period or even the giant mammals of nearly 5 million years ago, but were still considered much larger than animals of today. Only the elephants of our times could possibly compete with some of the animals of this time such as the giant ground sloth (now extinct).
This is the time when the sabre-toothed cats would make their mark on the world stage as the most dangerous known predator. Weighing as much as 300 kilograms for a fully-grown adult, the sabre-toothed cat would eventually see the demise of the flightless terror birds.
However, the sabre-toothed cats would have a couple of disadvantages: the two long teeth would force these animals to eat the fleshier parts of a prey leaving behind a lot of wasted meat and bone. Also these predators are short range runners despite their explosive power of acceleration. The amount of energy required to chase prey would see the sabre-toothed cats catching large prey every few days just to recouperate their energy and prepare for the next kill.
NOTE: The largest Australian marsupial flesh-eating lion known to scientists as tharlac oleo lived in the tree-filled Nullabor region of Australia at this time. This is a lion rising to half the height of a human on four legs. A stabbing incisor at the front of the jaw and powerful claws have the power to hold prey and puncture terrible holes in the skull or cut the spinal cord and back teeth capable of shearing off huge chunks of flesh. It can balance itself on two legs on its long tail and stand taller than a human. The animal could climb trees and jump down on its prey. This is a big, robust muscular predator. It survived until the first humans arrived in Australia.
Then the climate would get colder and drier. Less vegetation on the ground would see many of the larger herbivores become extinct due to limited food, leaving behind a number of smaller animals to thrive in the harsher environment. Only a few large herbivores with the right tools (eg. fur and a long tusk to scrap snow off the grass) would have a better chance of surviving the colder conditions.
As temperatures went down for the next ice age, sabre-toothed cats would suffer under the conditions by not finding enough food.

700,000 to 500,000 YEARS AGO

With a modest increase in brain capacity in such areas as muscle coordination (ie. the cerebellum and the motor control strip running along the top part of the cerebrum) and ability to concentrate on complex tasks (ie. an expansion of the frontal lobes), as well as favourable interglacial periods that allowed the great African continent to open up to a whole new world in Europe and the Middle East in the north, Homo Erectus eventually moved to the furthest parts of the world including India, China and Java (and soon to Australia), where they may have learned to intermingle with other similar people or kept to themselves and continued to master the use of fire for warmth, protection and for cooking. (3)
Scientists at the London Institute of Brain Chemistry have recently proposed a new theory for why the brain size has increased. The suggestion has been that early humans were able to develop bigger brains because they chose to eat more fish.
There may be some truth to this since it is now known that fish contains valuable proteins, fats (eg. Omega 3 DHA) and minerals important for building and powering the human brain, or as one anonymous individual has remarked, "Fish is the rocket fuel for the brain."
Then there is the veritable fact that fishing is still a major part of modern human life. With nearly 90 percent of the human population choosing to live in or near the oceans or major waterways probably because of the relative ease in obtaining seafood in vast quantities, it would seem natural to suggest that fish may have played an important role in early human brain development for at least 500,000 and possibly as far back as 5 million years ago.
However fish alone is not enough. Or as they say, "Man cannot live on fish alone" (or was that bread?). To make the brain bigger, it has to learn to absorb and process more information in order to extract or create new patterns relevant to survival and/or to improve one's social status in a group of other humans.
One way of doing this is to remember the large number of dangerous predators existent at this time. The other way, is to develop a communicative language. Either way, it is a question of whether the individual learns to make the choice of using the brain to solve problems and remember a number of essential patterns needed to survive a harsh and difficult environment, and not just eat fish, which determines exactly how large the brain needs to be to handle the situation. Like the old saying goes, "Use it, or lose it." Otherwise, there would be no evolutionary advantage in growing a big brain by eating lots of fish.
If you think about it, the human brain has to take away a huge amount of energy from the human body to perform its tasks. Yet it is a well-known fact of chemistry and in biology that systems would prefer to minimise the amount of energy it needs to achieve a certain result.
And that in itself is a good enough reason why evolution would not favour a large brain irrespective of how much fish we eat unless there is something else making us use the brain to make it bigger. We call this the application of our brain to acquiring and creating new patterns known as learning.

500,000 YEARS AGO

The world's oldest DNA was uncovered in 2007 under a kilometre of ice in southern Greenland showing much of the land was indeed green during the summer as the name implies with a temperate forest consisting of spruce, alder, pine and yew. Before ice covered all of Greenland as we see today, the lushes forest was also teeming with butterflies, moths and the ancestors of beetles, flies and spiders.
As researcher Professor Eske Willerslev said:
'We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland, which is currently hidden under more than two kilometres of ice, was once very different to the Greenland [of] today.
'Back then it was inhabited by a diverse array of conifer trees and insects.' (Smith, Deborah. Greenland really was green, world's oldest DNA reveals: The Sydney Morning Herald. 7-8 July 2007, p.7. & Jha, Alok. Greenland really was green once: The Canberra Times. 7 July 2007, p.19.)

The DNA to support these plants and animals was uncovered from cores drilled into the ice cap and into the muddy bottom. Through careful analysis of this material, the DNA of the ancient insect variety has been estimated to be between 450,000 and 800,000 years old. An Australian researcher who joined the Danish-led team to help extract and analyse the ancient DNA, Michael Bunce, said:
'Preserved DNA from plants, animals, insects and bacteria that died hundreds of thousands of years ago can aid in our understanding of how the earth's environment has changed.' (Smith, Deborah. Greenland really was green, world's oldest DNA reveals: The Sydney Morning Herald. 7-8 July 2007, p.7.)

For example, Bunce has now realised how the ice did not melt during the last interglacial period of 116,000 to 130,000 years ago when temperatures were believed to be 5 degrees higher than today. For if it did, the ancient trees and insects would have been replaced by new varieties of flora and fauna. Instead, life of half a million years ago was preserved in Greenland's giant natural freezer.
The implications of this simple yet important discovery is that it may take longer for the ice sheets in Greenland to melt under present-day global warming conditions. But does it mean there will be no sea level rises today? Not so. The last interglacial period may not have seen ice on Greenland melt, but the ocean levels did rise by 5 to 6 metres higher than today from other sources, possibly from Antarctica.
As Willerslev stated:
'As the earth warms from man-made climate change, these sources would still contribute to a rise in sea levels.' (Smith, Deborah. Greenland really was green, world's oldest DNA reveals: The Sydney Morning Herald. 7-8 July 2007, p.7.)

Scientists have estimated that Greenland of 500,000 years ago had a summer temperature of 10 degrees celsius and -17 degrees celsius in the winter.
More details can be found in the journal Science published on 6 July 2007.
NOTE: Where there is ice over the oceans, the melting will occur more quickly than on land.

400,000 to 200,000 YEARS AGO

Perhaps with all that intermingling with other previously isolated groups, a new species called Homo Sapiens evolved from Homo Erectus (or Homo Augasta) around 400,000 years ago until mostly these hominids walked around some 200,000 years ago. These new hominids had an expanded skull to accommodate a larger-volumed brain, and the entire skull structure became lighter and delicate. No longer are thick brow ridges visible.

Artist impression of Homo Sapiens in Africa. Image available from here.
The jaw structure of Homo Sapiens reduced noticeably in size and appeared less protruding, resulting in a smaller more modern human face. It is as if the foods they consumed were softer (eg. more fruits and berries) or were prepared in such a way as to make mastication easier (ie. they had used fire as a means of cooking their food).
NOTE: Some scientists have placed the origins of Home Sapiens at around 160,000 years ago during a time when significant changes had allegedly taken place within the brain after studying the skull structures dated to around this time.

160,000 YEARS AGO

The brain structure of early humans is believed to have advanced to a more complex level around this time. As French paleontologist Anne Dambricourt Malassé stated:
'The brain grew much more complex. It had a better blood supply. So, naturally, after this biological evolution a cultural evolution came very quickly. Homo Sapiens was born' (Homo Futurus, a documentary film by Thomas Johnson and produced by Hind Saih in 2005, televised on SBS 6 May 2007)

Anne Dambricourt Malassé
Those changes to the brain would occur primarily in the region where abstract thinking takes place, which is mainly in the frontal cortex combined with a larger corpus callosum for transferring information between the cerebral hemispheres.
From this abstract thinking came the emergence of the worldwide human phenomenon known as rock art — considered by scientists as the first signs of a cultural revolution.

A typical home for humans during the Ice Age. (Image from the French documentary film Homo Sapiens: He Domesticates Nature produced by France 3 Production Sud-Ouest, France 5 TSR RTBF, To Do Today Productions (Belgium), CAB Productions (Switzerland), Productions Pixcom (Canada), Ballistic Pictures (South Africa), Tang Media (China), Danit Rossner (Israel). 2004. ).
From this moment on, humans had more time to be creative (because larger animals meant less hunting to do). People began drawing on rocks and cave walls of animals including humans hunting the animals as we see in those images of spears thrown through the air.
Eventually a time came when the drawings simplified and got easier to draw with reasonable speed until it was decided by some humans to really get abstract in their drawings. A language soon developed from the drawings as well as the sounds generated by humans where people could describe the things they saw, heard and felt as well as express their emotions and ideas with other communicative hominds.

150,000 to 100,000 YEARS AGO

The end of another Ice Age occurs at around 150,000 years ago (4), during which time another major migration of hominids from the great food bowl of central and southern Africa had moved into Europe and elsewhere.
However hominids have been living in Asia well before the great migration from Africa. It is not clear whether there was a migration from Asia back to Europe and Africa. Or perhaps some Asian hominids found it a little too comfortable and safe living in relative isolation in Asia (as indicated by the amount of meditating many Asians seem to perform to help them understand the true meaning of life)? Or maybe some hominids did migrate, but not to Europe or Africa. Perhaps some may have travelled to North America and eventually to South America through the land bridge created during the Ice Age between Russia and Alaska.
Could this explain why many Europeans and Africans are seen as highly competitive and more likely to engage in warfare (an expected consequence of applying excessive spontaneous L-brain skills when solving problems of a survival nature) compared to Asians who prefer a more cooperative and creative approach to life (in what scientists call a more R-brain and frontal cortex "thinking" skill)?

A reconstruction of Neanderthal Man as displayed at the American Museum of Natural History. Source: Tattersall 1995, p.157.
While some migration did take place after the end of the last Ice Age, it should be noted that Europe was already scantily populated by a two-legged mammal with a brain large enough to carve out its own existence. This species was known as Neanderthal Man (scientific term Homo neanderthalensis) (5). A mostly meat-eating cave dweller of stocky and muscular build living in Europe since 200,000 years ago, Neanderthal Man was known to have hunted Wolly Mammoths and other animals in the north for its survival during the great Ice Age.
Latest scientific research by Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum and his colleagues revealed at interesting find. Published through the online research journal Nature on 13 September 2006 titled Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe Finlayson and his team believe the Neanderthals would not disappear from Europe until 28,000 years ago and possibly as recently as 24,000 years ago when the last members of the species died. They figured the species were probably pushed to the harsher Mediterranean Coast by modern humans and eventually dealt the final blow towards the end.
The timing for Neanderthals likely last stand is significant.
Research by the Finlayson team involved no less than 30 radiocarbon datings of animal bones; charcoal samples from artificial fires found dotted in and around Gorham's Cave in the British territory of Gibraltar; classic Levallois blade-like flakes often used by Neanderthals and other materials within the lower portions of the Pleistocene deposits called pure Mousterian (the name given to a lithic industry in Europe said to be always associated with Neanderthals) strongly suggesting Neanderthal's occupation in and around the cave site. Radiocarbon dates have put these occupations in the lower levels between 23,000 and 33,000 years ago.
This latest finding pushes the presence of Neanderthals in the cave at least 2,000 years later than previously documented by other scientists. As Clive Finlayson said:
'Maybe these are the last ones.' (Ritter, Malcolm. Neanderthals survived thousands of years longer than scientists thought: USA Today. 13 September 2006.)

One contentious aspect of the research is how no Neanderthal bones were found in the cave to help give the Finlayson team conclusive evidence. Without this evidence, It leaves open the possibility that anatomically modern humans could have inhabited this isolated cave around 24,000 to 28,000 years ago. Also Paul Mellars, a professor of prehistory and human evolution at Cambridge University, believes the radiocarbon dating evidence for the charcoal could have been contaminated by younger material in which case the age is more like 31,000 or 32,000 years old.
But given the large number of samples at the right level within the Pleistocene deposits and how there is no evidence of artifacts from modern humans at this level, Finlayson is confident Neanderthals could have existed up to around 24,000 years ago or, to be conservative as Finlayson puts it, around 28,000 years ago.

These images depict a group of Neanderthals hunting for food. Images available from here.

118,000 YEARS AGO

According to an analysis of pollen and carbon-dating techniques of charcoal found in the Lake George basin of the southern tablelands in New South Wales, Australia was occupied by humans that have migrated from south-east Asia and Papua New Guinea. With the existence of charcoal, this proves humans were already using fire as a powerful tool to clear the land.
This was around the time of another interglacial period when ice sheets retreated around 120,000 years ago.

100,000 to 90,000 YEARS AGO

Oldest known personal adornment pieces, evidence of symbolic thinking, were excavated from archaeological sites at Skhul in Israel and Qued Djebbana in Algeria. The pieces are 1 centimetre diameter shells known as Nassarius gibbosulus with holes pierced into them by humans to allow a natural fibre string to pass through them to form a necklace or something similar. The discovery was made by Marian Vanhaeren at University College London and her colleagues while searching the world museum collections.
As co-author of the study, Francesco d'Errico of the National Center for Scientific Research in Talence, France, said:
'Our paper supports the scenario that modern humans in Africa developed behaviors that are considered modern quite early in time, so that in fact these people were probably not just biologically modern but also culturally and cognitively modern, at least to some degree.'

Vanhaeren added:
'Symbolically mediated behaviour is one of the few unchallenged and universally accepted markers of modernity. A key characteristic of all symbols is that their meaning is assigned by arbitrary, socially constructed conventions and it permits the storage and display of information.'

The finding is based on three shells analysed. Two of the shells from Skhul in Israel were 100,000 years old and the third shell excavated in the 1940s from Algeria was 90,000 years old.
Further details of the finding can be read in the 23 June issue of the research journal Science.
Picture above shows two perforated shells from Skhul. (Picture from Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d'Errico)

70,000 to 60,000 YEARS AGO

Australia is still a relatively wet country with large areas of lushes vegetation. Although Australia would never experience the same wet and lushes rainforest-like conditions as had occurred during the Jurassic and Triassic period, it was still wet enough to support a large inland sea.
This inland sea benefited many relatively large Australian animals, from the bizarre to the more familiar varieties.
Firstly, the inland sea was a large body of freshwater helping the animals with an adundant supply of fresh drinking water. And secondly, it helped to maintain extra moisture in the air as needed to create extensive rainfalls along the Blue Mountains and in northern Australia. As the rains fell heavily and regularly during the warmer summer months, a myriad of rivers on the Western-side of the Blue Mountains would replenish the inland sea.
Thanks to these wetter conditions prevalent throughout much of Australia, large docile mammals and many fire-sensitive plants had once roamed the continent at this time until they all became extinct by around 60,000 years ago. The extinctions probably occurred either because:
there was already a change in climate over Australia during the Pleistocene epoch due to natural events (eg. the relatively inactive Blue Mountains were being weathered away to hills thereby reducing the likelihood of rain to replenish the inland sea));

this was the time for the arrival of the first Australian aborigines (6) with their technology of fire migrating from the food-bowl of south-east Asia and Papua New Guinea (a feat which could have affected the Australian climate as the Aborigines used fire to gather food and so inadvertently helped the more fire-resistant vegetation to dominate the landscape); or

a combination of both.

## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
May 2003
Some scientists would prefer to blame nature for the cause of Australia's increasingly drier and more fire-prone landscape. Perhaps, as the scientists suggest, the ancient Australian animals had increased in numbers and slowly eaten their way through the vegetation, exposing the ground water to greater evaporation. Then, as the great inland sea located near Lake Eyre had less fresh water coming from the Western side of the Blue Mountains because of reduced rainfall and less moisture in the air, a time came around 60,000 years ago when regular lightning strikes during the monsoon season created increasingly bigger bush fires. A nice explanation if you didn't want to blame humans for anything. But can we really ignore the impact of the aborigines on the Australian environment? Are humans really that innocent of the great climate change occurring in Australia over a long period of time not to mention other continents of the world?

60,000 to 55,000 YEARS AGO

Some geneticists have recently argued that around 59,000 years ago, the Y-chromosome of the male hominid had evolved to a super-successful version allowing an increase in certain "male characteristics". The latest research indicates the Y-chromosome is believed to be linked to a variety of important "male characteristics" like aggression, bigger muscles (should scientists call this male hominid the super Homo Erectus?), a higher sperm production and so on.
While this male trait in the Y-chromosome was being transmitted across future generations of early humans, a number of hominid groups have appeared and disappeared over many thousands of years. The meeting between hominid groups may lead to assimilation, or more often than not, conflict (especially among the male species — probably from Europe and Africa).

Artist impression of Neanderthals.
Conflict would probably arise because food was well understood to be a valuable commodity and any unnecessary loss in food might be detrimental to the survival of one, the other, or both groups. For some groups, the easiest way to maintain food supplies in a prescribed territory was to use their L-brain social skills to fight off or, in some cases, kill others (known as the demonic primate theory). Those groups not adapted to warfare were either wiped-out or migrated to various parts of the world like China, America and Australia, or became specialists in gathering scant food in desolate regions like the sandy or icy deserts of the world.
Actually, this link between food supply and aggressive behaviours in a number of early male hominids right up to the appearance of modern humans in the early 21st century could dictate where human society will progress in the next 50 to 100 years. Already, scientific studies of gorillas and chimpanzees in the African rainforests of Congo with its vast natural food supply are revealing a much more peaceful and gentle species compared to their more aggressive gorilla and chimpanzee counterparts in the drier and harsher lands of the African interior.
The same is true for humans. We can see this from the archaeological finds of ancient civilisations in Peru. Due to the El Nino effect, severe and long-term droughts along the Western coast of South America such as the one that occurred 600AD have forced civilisations in Peru to practice the religious ritual of human sacrifices simply because the hungry people wanted a relationship with their gods in the hope rain would return. People need rain for the survival of the civilisations.
As the stresses continued, aggressive and violent L-brain human behaviours worsen. The economies of civilisations in Peru had to collapse causing people to turn on each other and fight for the best agricultural lands, fishing spots and so on. Should the aggressive L-brain behaviours persist and conditions in the environment worsen, it will eventually cause the end of any human civilisation no matter how strong, religiously devoted or rich the people of the civilisation may have been.
NOTE: No civilisation can afford to destroy its environment if it wishes to survive for eternity.
Will we continue to follow the same aggressive tendencies of our ancestors (and other primates) protecting and hoarding all the food on this planet for our own selfish wants or needs because of how little there is left for everyone? Or can we use our brain in a different way to solve the food problems and improve our environment — perhaps through a more R-brain approach with ideas of "recycling" etc?

Early humans fighting off animals (or other humans?).
While it is quite possible for some early humans to be getting more aggressive as food supplies began to dwindle in certain parts of the world as well as to deal with the numerous predators at this time, they did get increasingly more smarter as the increasing brain size of early humans would indicate.

46,000 TO 75,000 YEARS AGO

Latest DNA analysis of thousands of people around the world to determine their genetic variability (or degree of mutations) and so mathematically reconstruct the evolutionary tree of humans suggest the timeframe for humans to migrate to various parts of the world from Africa (the accepted origin for modern humans) was between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. While hominids may have already existed throughout Europe and Asia (which may support the multi-regional theory in earlier times), the first direct descendants leading to modern humans emerged from Africa and migrated to Europe and the Middle East (about 55,000 years ago), Asia and Australia (about 50,000 years ago) and eventually to North America and South America.
Why did humans move out of Africa? It was probably a question of finding a reliable food supply, moving away from the increasing competition and finding a place (or territory) to call your own where you can develop a unique culture, language and arts.
You see, the climate and environment of Africa had already begun to get drier. It meant food was already on the decline and finding it was getting harder. Humans had to get smarter to find ways of gathering food and defending themselves from predators and other hominids that were all looking for food to survive. Fortunately, one of the easiest solutions would be to migrate to the coast where the ocean provided a reasonably stable supply of seafood to keep the early humans alive. Adapting to one type of environment next to the ocean (eg. a relatively constant temperature throughout the year) would have been relatively easy.
As a member of the international research team studying the mitochrondrial DNA of isolated and native people in the Malaysian peninsula known as Orang Asli and those on the Andaman Island off India's east coast, Australian National University's David Bulbeck said:
'It's much easier to move quickly along a coast.' (Smith, Deborah. Earth's first beachcombers ended up in Australia: The Sydney Morning Herald. 14-15 May 2005, p.13.)

Once humans reached the coast, they had to make the decision of moving out of the African continent. Why? To minimise the competition from other hominds and possibly to search for a new territory people can call their own (ie. the origin of countries).
Scientists believe as competition for food and territory increased, early humans learned to travel along the coasts around the Indian Ocean starting from East Africa at a rate of 700m to 4 kilometres per year until they reached Australia. Another group did went off in a different direction towards Europe from around the Saudi Arabia and Pakistan region nearly 46,000 to 55,000 years ago.
The technique used by scientists to make this claim is based on the degree of variation or mutations that have taken place on the mitochondrial DNA of seemingly isolated and/or different groups. Generally the more variation there is in this type of DNA the longer the group has been away from the main common group. Combine this with the location of the original groups still alive today in isolated communities and scientists can now piece together the path where humans have migrated.
As Dr Peter Forster, an archaeogeneticist at Anglia Ruskin University, said:
'You can take a look at modern DNA from people alive today and mathematically reconstruct what our ancestors would have had in terms of types and variance of genes.
'We found out that all humans outside Africa are derived from a single migrant group leaving Africa. So they weren't separate migrations. We dated this migration out of Africa to about 50 or 60,000 years ago. So [it is] very recent.
'We know with 95 per cent confidence they must have taken less than 5,500 years to cross from Africa into Australia.' (Catalyst. ABC TV Science Program. 21 February 2008.)

Dr Peter Forster (Source: Catalyst, ABC TV Science Program, 21 February 2008)
The Multi-Regional Theory (as opposed to the Out-of-Africa theory) only becomes valid when we talk about the origins of humans on the scale of tens of millions of years ago and especially when the continents were much closer together.

55,000 YEARS AGO

Humans were definitely getting smarter. Despite their lighter skeletal frames and faster bodies compared to the Neanderthals, the humans were growing a bigger brain. Now new survival techniques and tools were helping humans to better protect themselves from the predators, fight off other human-like species (or did we systematically exterminate other human-like creatures to maximise our own survival?), and gather food more efficiently.
Among some of the survival techniques employed by our human ancestors at this time include:
building a fence around human-made huts or near the entrance of caves;

using fire to keep predators away at night;

staying in a group, as size and the level of closeness to certain individuals provides greater protection against predators. As Louise Barrett, a primatologist from Liverpool University once said:
"[Being eaten by a predator] is the driving force for our social lives" (7);

developing more sophisticated tools to better defend against predators and possibly use them to hunt other animals; and

delegating specialised tasks to certain hominid members of the group.

Although Neanderthals were a great survivor for over 160,000 years, there time was coming to an end mainly because they continued to live either on their own or in very small groups and found it difficult to quickly learn new ideas and ways of surviving. Humans, on the other hand, were more organised and better adapters of the changing world.
These humans would not only adapt better to different environments but would also change the environment by building dams, cutting down trees and building large and more complex fortresses and mini-cities.
With vastly improved and efficient ways to gather food and to protect other valuable resources, there would have to be a time when early humans would learn to relax and dream nearly 60,000 years ago. And with this great dream time came the practising art of religion and hunting rituals as indicated by elaborate cave paintings and burial grounds of numerous modern hominid groups.
In fact, a large number of people throughout the world would practice similar rituals as well.

50,000 YEARS AGO

The brain size of human beings seemed to have peaked at around 50,000 years ago. Instead of getting larger, the brain improved its internal organisation. Could it be that humans were getting so efficient in gathering food and in protecting themselves from various other predators that the use of the brain as a purely L-brain tool for quickly acquiring patterns and implementing skills in hunting, gathering, communicating and fighting was no longer required?
It is known that the brain does certainly increase in size. This is due primarily to the neurons making countless new connections to other neurons as it learns to cope with its environment and, in so doing, is creating and storing numerous and very specific patterns for survival. And certainly, if you could remember and regurgitate patterns (whether or not you undertand them), you were likely to be highly respected and even given the role of leading the group to better pastures. Yet something happened nearly 50,000 years ago to stop the brain from getting considerably larger and instead opt for a reorganising of itself.
Because it is known by the scientists that the brain needs a huge amount of energy to perform its work, perhaps in times of famine the brain of early humans had forced improvements to its internal structure. In that way, the brain could avoid extracting more energy from the human body to help develop a larger brain.
Or could it be that people at this time had discovered how much knowledge was being gathered from previous generations and needed a new way to remember (let alone apply) all these bits and pieces of seemingly unrelated information quickly?
And what about the possibility that people in this era were finding an increasing amount of free time to think about things and not have to worry about their survival situation, which may have seen more and more people learning to use their brain in a slightly different, holistic and more creative way, perhaps taking on a more R-brain approach to life as psychologists would call it? Could humans, while sitting down and learning to relax, thought about things more carefully, visualised their patterns, and so eventually have discovered something else about the brain and their environment?
Let us assume some humans did have the time to apply more R-brain skills, what would be the benefit?
R-brain skills is all about applying the power of creative visualisation to help paint the big picture in our minds of what life is about as well as simplifying and linking all our seemingly unrelated and essential patterns into a single unified pattern. Now remembering just one main unified pattern linking all things together is certainly much easier for us to remember than storing a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated patterns in the brain. So could this have been the next big discovery for humans at this time?
If humans did discover the ease in remembering one main pattern rather than many individual unrelated patterns of life, it is possible that many humans at this time had developed and refined certain R-brain techniques to assist in the formulation and recording of this unifying pattern for the benefit of future generations. For example, talking about our dreams with elders, meditation, dancing and chanting at night around a fire, taking natural hallucinatory drugs, drawing pictures on rocks and cave walls and so on could all be examples of techniques to help humans enter this spiritual world of the R-brain needed to develop this single, unifying pattern learned from the balanced leaders.
Could this help to explain why the brain size of humans at this time had not significantly increased?
Well, certainly it is known throughout human history how many of the great life cycles of ancient civilisations would start with a dramatic period of great creativity and diversification (ie. R-brain skills), and later undergo an equally dramatic period in the reduction of diversity and into the more specialised areas (ie. L-brain skills) as needed for people to not only survive, but also have what they want while fending off outsiders who also want the same things.
During these transitions from diversification to specialisation, some of the more creative people in the civilisations may have moved on, died out, or learned to think in a more specialised way. But those who were able to become specialised in the right areas tended to flourish particularly well within the group for a long time. However, a too strong reliance on L-brain skills could cause the people of the civilisations to lose sight of where they are going, become too highly structured, highly populated, too complicated, become too focused on having what they want, be unable to solve increasingly complex social and environmental problems in an original and creative way, and eventually become extinct after exhausting their food supply or battling with other similar civilisations having their own specialised belief systems.
Unless there is a way to rekindle this R-brain approach to life and so help save the L-brain civilisations from eventual self-destruction, it seems likely that the only people who can survive the best are those small groups of individuals who can apply a balance of R-brain and L-brain skills throughout life.
Could a strong creative and visual R-brain approach to life have contributed to a better organised and more efficient brain in the history of humankind? Only further research can tell if this is true. (8)

49,000 YEARS AGO

The famous Arizona crater in the United States is formed by a small asteroid travelling at 25 metres per second. The energy generated by the impact is equivalent to a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb being detonated on the ground. However, the energy was not big enough to cause problems to life on Earth. (9)
This is also the time for a major Ice Age. During the Ice Age, sea levels were lower and ice sheets would have extended from the polar regions to the temperate regions. During the big freeze, humans would hunt the large social mammals known as Wolly Mammoths. The flesh of Wolly Mammoths then became a valuable source of food, the fur for warmth, and the long and large white tusks of the animals were a useful material for building huts.

Humans hunting a Wolly Mammoth. (Image from the French documentary film Homo Sapiens: He Domesticates Nature produced by France 3 Production Sud-Ouest, France 5 TSR RTBF, To Do Today Productions (Belgium), CAB Productions (Switzerland), Productions Pixcom (Canada), Ballistic Pictures (South Africa), Tang Media (China), Danit Rossner (Israel). 2004. ).
There has been almost 50 Ice Ages since it began nearly 2.5 million years ago. The Ice Age of 50,000 to 49,000 years ago is considered to be the coldest according to the scientists.

40,000 YEARS AGO

Modern humans were beginning to migrate from Africa into Europe to etch a living together with the Neanderthals. Neanderthals were already living in Europe for the previous 150,000 years.

35,000 YEARS AGO

The interglacial period of 30,000 years ago looked to be a rather warm one. Scientists believe the ice covering the North Pole had disappeared at this time.
Just before things began to warm up again, true modern man such as Cro-Magnon in Europe appeared.

Earth around 18,000 years ago, by which time another Ice Age had sprung up covering much of Russia, Canada and the northern parts of the United States, all of Sweden and Finland and parts of Germany, France and Poland. Image available from http://www.geologie.uni-stuttgart.de/down/maps2/pl13.jpg.
Cave paintings certainly flourished at this time. It is almost like there was too much food and not enough conflict to keep early humans preoccupied during this time. Were people becoming now more creative during the warmer interglacial periods?

The "Chinese Horse" from Lascaux, France found in a Magdalenian cave. This prehistoric painting depicts one of the favourite foods of early humans in Europe at this time - the (fat) horse. Other sources of food included the rhinoceros, cave bear, deer, wolly mammoth, bison, reindeer and Ibex. Source: Gowlett 1984, p.125.

25,000 - 18,000 YEARS AGO

The last Ice Age begins. The coldest period occurs between 18,000 and 20,000 years ago. It was so cold that the waters in the Mediterranean Sea receded and enough time for tundra and some forested vegetation to grow and reindeer to graze where the sea floor exists today.
Humans learn to move away from caves and use stones and rocks in a local area to build long-lasting huts. This allowed humans to create their own durable shelter without interfering with other hominids and some predators wanting to inhabit caves.

18,000 YEARS AGO

On 28 October 2004, archaeological digs in the inner sanctum of a large Limestone Cave on the remote Indonesian island of Flores by a research team — led by Mike Morwood of the University of New England, Radien Soejono of the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology, and Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong — found the remains of a pygmy-sized or 91cm tall female hominid nicknamed "the Hobbit" (a specimen labelled LB1) together with another six other hominids of roughly the same size.
Known to the scientists as Homo floresiensis (although there is still considerable scientific debate as to whether it should be given a new scientific name as if it is a new species of hominids), the small female hominid died only a mere 18,000 years ago at age 30 years.
Standing no higher than a metre tall, it would appear as if the female and the rest of her community of hobbits were living in the cave in relative isolation for over 74,000 years. Now there is good evidence to suggest these hominids may have lived much longer on the island and possibly living with the original Homo Erectus people with the discovery by archaeologist Mike Morwood and his team in 1998 of 840,000 year old stone tools on the island.
And that's not the only thing. As Homo Sapiens continued to develop a bigger brain, by 18,000 years ago, the brain of Homo floresiensis didn't seem to get much bigger, if anything, it may have reduced in size compared to Homo Erectus. Was life getting easier on the island thst the small hominids didn't need to use their brains to solve complicated problems?
A closer inspection of these ancient hominids revealed one significant difference. Pygmies of the modern era tend to have head sizes disproportionately larger compared to their bodies. In contrast, these ancient hominids had a more natural size head in proportion to their bodies. Although scientists would describe the brain as less than half a modern human (and certainly less than a modern pygmy), it didn't meant these hominids were dumb. A closer analysis of the inside of the skulls of the hominids using computer technology in an attempt to create virtual endocasts of what the brain probably looked like showed the brain was remarkably sophisticated for its size. This seems to be reflected in the stone tools they made and how they used fire to improve their survival.
As chairman of anthropology at Florida State University and a specialist Dean Falk said on 4 March 2005:
'This discovery of this species has flummoxed the field.' (Gorner, Peter. Feuding scientists go head to head: The Canberra Times. 5 March 2005, p.18.)

After reviewing the latest radiological tests and virtual endocasts on the small hominids' brain and compared them with virtual endocasts for Homo Erectus, modern pygmies, modern humans and modern humans suffering from microcephaly, Dr Falk remarked:
'The scaling of the brain to body isn't at all what we'd expect to find in pygmies, and the shape is all wrong to be a microcephalic. This is something new.
'The brain is the size of a chimp's, and that's what I thought we'd be looking at. But instead there were fancier things on the Hobbit's brain. It was much more like the brains of advanced creatures. I've never seen that in anything this size.' (Gorner, Peter. Feuding scientists go head to head: The Canberra Times. 5 March 2005, p.18.)

The virtual endocast image of the brain of Homo floresiensis (left) compared to modern man (right).
The areas of the brain containing unusually high convolutions and size are in (i) the frontal cortex where higher thinking skills take place; and (ii) the temporal lobes where memory, emotions, speech and hearing are processed. These areas are considered important for cooperative and communicative behaviour in a group situation, and independent behaviour such as tool-making and the ability to plan and take one's own initiative.
Based on this information, Dr Falk is confident the hobbits are a new species and not as an Indonesian palaeoanthropologist Professor Teuku Jacob claimed were modern humans with microcephaly.
Other scientists are not too sure. By ignoring the enlargements and sophistication in those areas of the brain suggesting possible advanced functions, some scientists think the brain is far too small to have the ability to create stone tools or do anything else very much, let alone communicate with other members of the group. As anthropologist Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan said:
'It's a teeny brain. It didn't make those tools. Your dog would have had a better chance of making those tools.' (Gorner, Peter. Feuding scientists go head to head: The Canberra Times. 5 March 2005, p.18.)

Yes, but dogs don't have hands like these little hominids did. And when you have proper hands to use for manipulating the environment and oneself, different parts of the brain develop differently. We cannot discount the possibility these hominids could have achieved complex tasks such as tool-making.
Actually, the size of the brain does not necessarily prove whether it can or cannot do something. As we have seen in evolutionary history, modern human brains have not grown significantly larger after 50,000 years ago despite the wealth of tasks we are now required to perform. Rather the brain has improved its internal structure making it more efficient in how it performs its tasks. The same appears to be true for these tiny hominids.
Who knows? Maybe future palaeoanthropologists in a million years time might look back at our own brains of the 21st century and see them as unusually small compared to the sorts of tasks we were expected to perform.
Apart from this brain debate among the scientists, one thing is certain. For some inexplicable reason, these previously successful hominids (or should we describe them as "hobbits") died out at around 13,000 years ago, just a mere 2,000 years before the end of the last Ice Age.

Thomas Sutikna from Jakarta's Centre of Archaeology looks face to face at one of the Homo Floresiensis skulls (Source: AP and The Canberra Times). An artist impression picture of the male version of this creature is shown above.
Why?
Well, the island of Flores isn't exactly the place one would feel the cold from the Ice Age. We are talking about the tropics not far from the equator where the temperature is moist and hot virtually all the time. So the weather couldn't be what killed these little hominids. Foodwise, there seemed to be a hell of a lot to be found on the tropical island especially if they kept their numbers and/or body size to a reasonably small and manageable level. Clearly the hominids weren't starving for food. And there is no evidence that a volcano had destroyed the island. The only closest volcano to be possibly active at the time would have affected the area around Liang Bua, but no where else, making scientists think Homo floresiensis should have survived on other parts of the island including the Limestone Cave.
One reporter suggested in a newspaper article that "With a brain capacity of less than 400 cubic centimetres, they eventually went extinct."
We can safely say the brain was not the cause for the hominids extinction. The brain capacity of these hominids, although admittedly four-fifths the size of an adult chimpanzee (roughly 350 cubic centimetres, or 50cc less than the Australopicithines), was more than adequate to survive the tropical island of Flores as they searched and hunted for food such as rodents, bats and baby elephants (and why not some of the tropical fruits as well?).
Actually some experts believe the brain was possibly big enough to permit these people to develop a communicative language as American scientist Dr Falk noticed in his computer image of the hominids' brain. So clearly something else must have wiped them out.
Now an interesting theory has emerged suggesting that it could have been our ancestors known as Homo Sapiens (especially among the more communicative and socially-adept L-brain types with a desire to hoard and/or protect the natural resources to themselves for the sake of power and greed) with an allegedly massive brain capacity of 1,400 cubic centimetres, which may have had a direct or indirect influence on the future of these small hominids.
It is possible some Homo Sapiens may have thought in their own minds how smart it would be to get rid of the competition. Or perhaps it is a form of "ethnic cleansing" prehistoric style?
If this is true, the decision to conquer the rest of the island by the more war-faring and communicative L-brain Homo Sapiens must have put the small hominids in a rather precarious position. Either the poor little hominids had to fight back to protect what was theirs only to be destroyed by the Homo Sapiens as the invaders easily reduced the competition; they had to move on once again to other islands but discovered there went any more islands to hide; or they were easily captured and seen as a food delicacy for the Homo Sapiens.
Yes, we can only ask who is the smarter one now? Homo Sapiens or Homo floresiensis?
Perhaps some Homo Sapiens should have evolved a smaller brain to reduce their tendency to use it as a tool for fighting, conquering and using the resources in any way they pleased and with absolutely no thinking about the long-term consequences of such actions. It would have at least given Homo floresiensis a better fighting chance to stop the invaders.
However all this is pure conjecture. For all we know, a disease could have easily wiped out the hominids leaving behind the Homo Sapiens to take over the island. More work needs to be done to determine the likely cause of the extinction which somehow hasn't affected the Homo Sapiens at this time.
Even the idea that perhaps poisonous gases and hot ash from the island's volcano could have wiped out the small hominids nearly 12,000 years ago, although plausible, seems a bit far-fetched considering how the Homo Sapiens continued to thrive on the island. There are also areas on the island where the hobbits could have survived. So why did they disappear?
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
27 February 2005
Bones of contention (a brilliant term used by Australian 60 Minutes reporter Mike Woolley) have emerged when co-leader of the team responsible for unearthing the hobbits Professor Soejono insisted in having an Indonesian palaeoanthropologist named Professor Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta analyse the remains in early December 2004 against Morwood's wishes, which was meant to be send to an Australian expert in Jakarta, Indonesia.
January 2005 came and passed and scientists were impatiently waiting for Professor Jacob to relinquish the bones for the rest of the scientific community to analyse. Jacob signed an agreement to return the bones by 1 January 2005. When it was finally returned by March 2005, scientists discovered crucial bones needed to explain the shape and size of the hobbits and how they walked were severely damaged (ie. the pelvic and jaw bones) during the transportation of the valuable items to and from Jacob's laboratory.
Before the bones were returned, Professor Jacob and a couple of Australian researchers — Maciej Henneberg of the University of Adelaide and Alan Thorne of the Australian National University — made the claim on 6 November 2004 that these dwarf hominids were suffering a brain degeneration disease called microcephaly. In other words, these small people were no different from modern humans.
However, the entire skeleton of the hominids does not indicate degeneration of the rest of the body from the same disease (which one must assume targets the brain and ultimately the skull, not the entire body). Perhaps the Indonesian scientist was trying to say these people were ordinary Homo Erectus people having a genetic mutation allowing them to grow to a small size so they can better adapt to the tiny islands. Or was he hoping other scientists would not see the importance of the find because of the damage done to the bones?
Seriously the genetic explanation might turn out to be closer to the truth. If one looks at the bigger picture instead of focussing on just the brain size of the hominids, it would appear the hominids weren't the only animals to have become smaller creatures. Possibly because the island of Flores is not large enough to support big animals because of its limited food supplies, it would appear other animals such as elephants shrunk in size through microevolution and selective breeding in order to become more sustainable on the island.
Does this mean all the animals suffered the same brain degeneration disease as did the hominids assuming the Indonesian scientist is correct in his assumption? Highly unlikely.
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
29 April 2005
Another scientist contending the hobbit find does not represent a new species is Maciej Henneberg, a biological anthropologist and anatomy expert from the University of Adelaide in Australia. He claims the dwarf-size remains represent a modern human being, Homo Sapiens, suffering from microcephaly. From his definition of the term, microcephaly means a condition in which the head is abnormally small. Well, according to a reference book, microcephaly is an "abnormal smallness of the head". But it also adds, "...often associated with pathological mental conditions".
Computer images of the brain of this creature seems to go against the idea of any "pathological mental condition". US scientists are of the view the creature was very intelligent.
Perhaps the skeleton does represent a normal human being naturally-adapted to the island through mutations to live as small people.
Now Indonesian scientists claim they have found during an 18-24 April 2005 expedition 77 pygmy families in a village situated on the eastern side of the island of Flores. Apparently the community was never discovered until now. The people were living in the village of Rampapasa, about 1 kilometre from the village of Liang Bua where the skeleton was originally found.
Could these be the descendents of the dwarf-sized skeleton? The only slight problem is in the use of the term pygmies to describe these people. Pygmies are described as having small bodies with oversized heads. The skeleton found near Liang Bua suggest the body is small and the head is undersized. Yet the brain structures suggest it did not suffer from "pathological mental conditions".
So which is it? A pygmy or a new species?
The only way to settle this dispute is to make comparisons of the skull, jaw and teeth structure of the old female dwarf creature and the pygmies discovered alive on the island. And what could DNA testing reveal?
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
26 May 2005
One scientist has suggested the skull and jaw of the female hobbit looks more like Homo Habilis — a more primitive hominid than Homo Erectus. Homo Habilis could have travelled to Flores to become the Hobbits.
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
13 October 2005
The latest findings on the Hobbit bones suggest the creatures were highly muscular and quite strong, more so than modern humans. Another interesting thing is how some scientists studying the bones are suggesting the creatures could be the last remnants of Australopithecus. If this is true, it would rewrite the history books. Currently it is believed Australopithecus had died out over 1.5 million years ago and never moved out of Africa (why shouldn't it?). Now we are faced with a new possibility.
A total of eight individuals, all of roughly the same size (if not smaller), have been found in the area, putting in serious doubt the sceptics view that the creatures had suffered from microcephaly.
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
18 May 2006
Primatologist Robert D. Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago is of the view the "Hobbit" is probably an ordinary person suffering microcephaly. He supports this by saying the shrinking of animals on the island should cause only a moderate reduction in brain size. However, Martin is worried the brain size of this "Hobbit" is much smaller than expected. For the law to follow, the Hobbit should have been no taller than 30cm, not 91cm.
Martin also thinks the tools found near the site of the Hobbits were too sophisticated to be created by these creatures. They had to be formed by the hands of Homo Sapiens. Perhaps Martin is suggesting the Hobbits were smart enough to come down from the cave and steal the items from Homo Sapiens?
Martin also adds that the single modern skull of a 10-year-old child suffering microcephaly as used by Dean Falk of Florida State University for comparison purposes where she concluded the Hobbit's brain had features associated with advanced thinking and therefore had to be a new species was a poor choice. For a start, the child's skull was unusually small to make any comparisons. He believes microcephaly can appear in dozens of forms. And why a child? More skulls should have been used to make the comparisons before Faulk and the hobbit discovery team can claim the Hobbit is a new species.
For example, Martin claims his team found the skull of a 32-year-old microcephalic woman and noticed similarities in the brain casts of both the Hobbit and the woman.
Other scientists — including Professor Mike Morwood, co-leader of the Australian and Indonesian team that discovered the remains — are not entirely convinced of Martin's argument. The first report may have suggested a miniaturization of Homo Erectus. However the second report suggested the possibility both species of humans living at the time could have descended from a common ancestor.
Nearly all modern individuals with microcephaly never live to become adults and, anyway, the scientists needed the cast of a brain of roughly the same size as the Hobbit's — thus explaining the use of a child's skull for comparison.
And just to make it harder for Martin to produce a counter argument, other scientists said the line drawings made by Martin's team lacked detail about the "transverse sinuses, cerebellum and cerebral poles" considered important structures for understanding whether the Hobbit did suffer a brain-stunting disorder or is a genuine new species.
Scientists believe actual photographs and more detailed sketches would have helped to "draw meaningful conclusions".
Professor Morwood also adds that Martin ignored the archaeological evidence pointing to the fact that generations of the individuals appeared to have lived in the cave for 90,000 years. Given the short lifespan of microcephalic people, it is unlikely "the Hobbits" could have survived for such a long time.
Finally, Professor William Jungers of the Natural History Museum examined the lower limbs of the other 8 hobbits found near the 30-year-old female Hobbit and noticed not only were they smaller than the female, but their feet were big as if implying a long period of adaptation to walking on the island.
It seems unlikely microcephalic people could survive long enough and produce offsprings that can carry on adaptations such as these.
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
November 2008
The latest studies suggest these small hominids were indeed a new species. It is neither a branch from Homo Erectus that shrunk in size on the island or from a group of Homo Sapiens suffering pathological dwarfism. It is an independent species possibly from an even older hominid group.

15,000 - 16,000 YEARS AGO

An alliance is formed between humans and one or more wolves. Over many generations to follow, those wolves would become domesticated animals called dogs.

NOTES

Could a combination of man and nature be influencing the worldwide weather patterns leading to the creation of interglacial and glacial periods of such short duration since 1.6 million years ago? Perhaps nature, through its great forests, help to store enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reduce the global temperature that may lead to an ice age. But with man burning a great quantity of whatever wood was available at the time to keep warm during the cooler periods and to efficiently gather and cook food, it would release enough carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere to trap the heat from the Sun and break the Ice Age conditions.
Even the mere presence of enough soot from burning wood fires around the world, if it lingers in the low lying areas, could possibly absorb enough heat from the sun because of its black colour to reverse an Ice Age. According to research leader Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Stanford University in California, a computer modelling experiment suggests that at least 15 and possibly as much as 30 per cent of global warming could be caused by human-induced burning of wood from fireplaces and other sources. For further details, click here to read an article from The Canberra Times dated 17 February 2001 about the work of Jacobson and his colleagues.
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
Just before an Ice Age begins or soon thereafter, the amount of plankton in the oceans is known to suddenly decrease in numbers resulting in less food for the rest of the animals in the water. Such a discovery has led some scientists to believe the cause of the Ice Age is from the death of so many plankton throughout the oceans of the world. Or what is really happening is that the plant part of plankton itself is considered by scientists to be a good indicator of the levels of carbon dioxide in the air. If the population of plankton in the world oceans should suddenly go down and there are no other factors influencing the situation (eg. unusually high population of animals dependent on plankton or the level of toxic substances dumped by humans is not high), there is probably not enough carbon dioxide in the air to feed the creatures. And when there is less carbon dioxide, world temperatures drop and with it the likelihood of an Ice Age commencing throughout the world is increased.

Tattersall 1995, p.122; Norman 1991, p.149.

Actually, thanks to some excellent scientific work by British archaeologists Anthony Stuart, Simon Parfitt and others of University College, a study of 32 black flint artifacts found in the sediments of prehistoric River Bythan not far from the town of Pakefield in the UK and other interesting finds emerging from the eroding coastal cliffs in Suffolk in Eastern England suggests humans colonised northern Europe (ie. north of the Alps) including England and Germany nearly 700,000 years ago. This pushes the established timeline for human colonisation in the area by 200,000 years where the earliest traces of human habitation were once thought to be a mere 500,000 years ago according to evidence found on a site off the English shoreline known as Boxgrove.
At around 450,000 years ago, ice sheets nearly 1 kilometre high advanced south to as far as Pakefield. During this time, a land bridge existed between England and Europe allowing humans to cross into England.
Further details of the finding can be found in the mid-December 2005 edition of the British science journal Nature.

Scientists onboard a French ship have drilled out several 30- to 60-metre core samples into the massive 5-kilometre deep canyon wall created by the separation of Antarctica from Australia. Analysis of the number of fossilised life contained at different core sample depths is supporting the theory that the Earth warmed up at around 150,000 years ago.

The latest DNA testing on human-like bones discovered In Europe during this time suggests there are no Neanderthal-specific genes in modern humans. This suggests the intermingling of Neanderthal Man with other human-like species (including our own) were probably non-existent as if the harsh climate and unforgiving environment filled with deadly predators forced hominids to stick to their own kind (or the Neanderthals were very ugly in the eyes of the human-like species).
If, however, food supplies were limited, certain "L-brain thinking" hominids probably made their mark on the world stage (and probably in our modern genes) by fighting off or killing other hominid species, leaving behind the more dominant L-brain hominids to benefit from the available resources.

Not more than a million Australian aborigines would live on the continent at any one time. The dreamtime as Australian Aborigines would describe in modern times began during the early times when the continent was more lushes, wetter and filled with more exotic creatures.
The dreaming would be more extensive when the monsoons arrive and aborigines would spend days inside caves waiting for the rain and fresh ground water to subside.

Grimes 2002, p.36.

Bruce Lahn, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, argues the human brain is still evolving and may get bigger in size (or become more better organised, or perhaps both?). After studying a human condition known as microcephaly where the brain is unusually small compared to a standard brain, researchers have discovered two mutated genes in those humans affected by microcephaly suggesting these genes could be the cause for the brain anomaly.
The genes have been named microcephalin and ASPM.
Are these genes still mutating in normal humans today? To answer this question, the researchers decided to investigate these two genes in apes and compare them with those of normal human beings. What they found were significant changes in the genes suggesting much evolution had taken place in the brain. The next step for the researchers was to compare the genes among a thousand normal human beings living in 59 countries. The results showed the genes weren't significantly differently. However, the genes had enough mutations to suggest the human brain may still be evolving.
Comparing the changes in the genes to the apes, Lahn and his researchers has estimated a version of the microcephalin gene may have evolved around 37,000 years ago, at about the time humans began to apply art and music extensively in their lives. Whether this means an increase in the size of the brain has yet to be determined. Although one must wonder how they managed to determine a date like this based on mutations in the genes and not on actual brain capacity of the skull.
At any rate, this version of the gene exists in about 70 per cent of the human population today. As for the remaining 30 per cent of people, the ASPM gene had mutated and suggests this occurred nearly 5,800 years ago. Researchers suggested this was the time people began to farm, write and build cities.
Does this imply the two genes control the level of L-brain and R-brain thinking we do in our lives?

Despite a petition from 91 international scientists (including astronomers) asking the Australian Prime Minister John Howard to maintain a program to search and map the asteroids and other objects as there is no such program available anywhere in the southern hemisphere, the Australian Federal (Howard) Government has chosen to withdraw financial support. It is believed the estimated A$200,000 per year it would cost to support the program will not bring any benefit to the community.
Is that a wise move?
According to an article published in The Canberra Times dated 22 June 2002, an asteroid with a modest diameter of between 50 and 120 metres had somehow managed to escape detection by scientists (despite being observable by some telescopes) until three days after its closest approach on Friday 14 June 2002 of nearly 120,000 kilometres (a distance much less than the Moon). If the asteroid, affectionately named Asteroid 2002MN, was heading straight for Earth, it would have hit us with little or no warning.
As Steve Maran, a member of the American Astronomical Society, said in a telephone interview:
'It's a good thing it missed the Earth, because we never saw it coming.'

Although such a hypothetical impact by Asteroid 2002MN would not be quite as catastrophic compared to the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs nearly 64.5 million years ago, the explosion would still be big enough to destroy a major city like New York (up to a distance of around 25 kilometres from ground zero) and still create serious damage to much of its surrounding urban sprawl (between 25 and 50 kilometres). In fact, some scientists have likened this kind of explosion to the one that occurred in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, which managed to destroy approximately 2000 square kilometres of forest.
But that's nothing compared to the kinds of explosions we are capable of creating on Earth. Given our tendency to be somewhat jittery with any kind of unexpected explosion, should one of our political "L-brain" (ie. R-wing) leaders suddenly decide to interpret this natural event from an asteroid as the start of a nuclear war (perish the thought!), we could all experience many more explosions. And we can be sure those explosions will definitely not be another natural event. God forgive us if we should ever let such a man-made event take place.
And don't think that was the last asteroid to threaten the Earth. Scientists are now saying there is a slim chance the asteroid could return and hit the Earth sometime in 2061.
Whether it will or it won't, this is not the time to be guessing or, as Australians would like to say, "It'll be right, mate!"
The time has come for real action. Together with solving our social and environmental problems on Earth, we also need a concerted global effort to detect all maurauding rocks and ice in our solar system and develop a contingency plan in the event humanity has to face one of these objects for the sake of saving our only habitable planet.
## SPECIAL UPDATE ##
25 JULY 2002
Scientists have discovered another asteroid. This time it is much bigger, nearly 2km long. Although scientists have yet to confirm the exact orbit of this asteroid, scientists say there is a 1/10 to 1/1,000,000 chance that it will hit the Earth sometime on 1 February 2019. Now this one will create some damage. If this asteroid were to land in the Pacific Ocean, expect some very large tidal waves to hit the coastal regions around the Pacific rim. The tidal waves will be so large, it could quite literally wipe out Sydney, Los Angeles and the hundreds of towns lying on the coast. It would make the tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean of 26 December 2004 look like another ocean wave compared to this asteroid.
Now that's one way of solving the human population problem on the coast. Just get an asteroid near the Earth and watch the humans quickly decentralise from the coast and into the rural areas inland. Who needs Government intervention to entice people to a more rural lifestyle!