Our earth is estimated to have originated, by whatever means, about 4,600,000,000 years ago and the eons since have been variously described and classified by geologists, paleontologists and archaeologists into eras and periods and epochs. Unfortunately each discipline has tended to use its own classification and at times this motley of terms has been quite confusing. On the next pages, tables have been constructed in an attempt at some clarification. In the story of man we are concerned only with the geological epochs labeled "Pleistocene" and "Holocene" of the Cenozoic, or recent era. The archaeological ages of man can be only roughly fit into the geological schema and we have attempted to present this relationship on the second of the charts.

The positions and relationships of land masses and seas have changed markedly throughout the time of the earth's existence. Some two hundred million years ago the Eurasian continent was separated from a combined land mass called "Gondwanaland" which consisted of the present South America, Antarctica, Australia and India, by a great ocean joining the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and running through the area which is now the Mediterranean Basin. This great sea is called "Tethys" and it had a northern arm (Paratethys) which ran through the present Black, Caspian and Aral seas areas. The story of India's later collision with the Asian continent is in the section on Central and Northern Asia. Recent study of cores from the floors of the Mediterranean and Black seas has given clues as to the course of events there. When Africa collided with Eurasia, the Tethys was closed at Gibralter and the Near East area so that at first a large inland sea was produced, covering the Mediterranean Basin and much of Eastern Europe. Then, with severe climatic changes of six million years ago the Mediterranean area became dry, actually desert, for a million years, while the Black - Caspian - Aral regions became a stagnant, shallow but gigantic type of swamp. Then when the northern streams became re-activated the Paratethys drained into the Mediterranean Basin and both areas were converted to a network of fresh-water lakes at something like five and one-half million years ago. About 600,000 years ago, a great lake in the Carpathian Mountains silted up and the Danube spilled over into the Black Sea. As the last glaciers receded about 89000 B.C. the Mediterranean, which had apparently been slowly refilling as the Atlantic poured over Gibralter Straits, now broke over the Bosporus again to add salt water to the Black Sea. This gave rise to an anoxic stratum of stagnant, brackish water below the surface which remains to this day and precludes marine life in the lower levels. (Ref. 100)

With reference to the charts on the next pages we should point out that they are in part inaccurate for the world as a whole. While bronze working was present all over the continent of Europe proper by 1,600 B.C. the northern half of Britain and all of Scandinavia as well as western Iberia and North Africa remained neolithic or chalcolithic. More remote parts of the globe undoubtedly still had an early Stone Age culture. The Hittites in Asia Minor had iron as early as 1,300 B.C. but it was worth forty times its weight in silver and its use spread very slowly from this center. The Assyrians brought the Iron Age to Egypt only in the 7th century B.C. and it was not used in central and southern Africa until one to three centuries after the birth of Christ. China had the Shang Bronze Age Culture about 1,600 B.C. but did not have iron works until the 6th century B.C.

We must discuss now the mystery of where and when modern man appeared on the world scene. Although an upright, walking man called Homo erectus was wide spread in Asia, Africa and Europe some one-half million years ago, using fire and simple hand-axes and tools, the first fossils which appear to be those of a race more closely related to our modern races (Homo sapiens) have been found at Swanscombe in England and Steinheim in Germany. An apparent close "cousin" of these men and a variant of Homo sapiens, the Neandertahaler, lived during the last Ice Ages throughout Europe, North Africa, the Mid-east and apparently a few even in Asia, but this particular race for some reason did not survive. Nevertheless, the Neanderthal man was a skilled hunter, used fire, cooked food and buried his dead. Only 50% survived to age twenty and nine out of ten of those remaining died before their fortieth birthday. They were subject to rickets, something that may have resembled congenital syphilis and were probably cannibalistic. There is some evidence in the fossils of the Near East that some authorities interpret as indicating that modern man, in the sense of our own sub-species, Homo sapiens sapiens, evolved from or out of Neanderthal man around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, but this is not the consensus. Most anthropologists assume that over several eons a new breed of man, which might be called the "Ur-race", spread out to populate the Eurasian land mass, replacing or extinguishing any pre-existing hominoids. A further development of this theory necessitates the assumption of the isolation of various groups behind geological barriers, each adopting and adapting to their separate environments and gradually differentiating into present day races. Thus, the stay-at-homes became the Caucasoids, those moving into Central Asia and northern China became the Mongoloids through adaptation to severe cold, while the groups moving into hot Africa became Negroids. But these are only theories and a few authorities would disagree. Chief among these, perhaps, is Dr. Carleton Coon of Harvard who believes in the multiple origins of the various races.

Modern man in Europe was initially represented by the Cro-Magnons - with large bones, high brows and powerful physiques, standing as high as six feet four inches, similar to some Europeans of today. Other representatives of modern Homo sapiens sapiens were also present at about this time, including one smaller and almost frail in comparison. This was Combe Capelle man, apparently related to the Mediterranean peoples of today.

Although these new men, identified in Europe by about 37,000 years ago, carried a number of new types of tools, more importantly, according to recent extensive studies of these tools and remaining implements, this man had the brain which man has today, a brain capable of art, imagery and notation and of seeing the world in a time-factored and time-factoring way. We shall hear more about these features later. (Ref. 130)

After 10,000 B.C. with the retreat of the ice, vegetation patterns began to alter. Reindeer followed mosses and ferns at the ice edge and people dependent on them followed. With warm winds, great fields of wild grain appeared in various areas of the Near East. Eventually the people began deliberate cultivation and domestication of livestock, but the original practices soon turned fertile land into desert and a controlled irrigation system had to be discovered. Raw grain and the human digestive system are not compatible so one might ask how grain could be cooked in the days before pottery. On occasions large shells, stomachs of animals, pit stones, etc. were in limited use, but probably the chief method was to heat the threshing floor to a high enough temperature to roast the grain at the same time that the chaff was splintered. The result would be a coarse groat, needing no further cooking but too dry to swallow. Add water and knead to a stiff paste and one has something comparable to the Greek maza), Roman puls, the Mexican tortilla, Scots oat cake, East Indian chapate, Chinese pao-ping, Ethiopian injera and the American Indian Johnnycake' all of these were probably descendants of Neolithic bread, just with differing basic grains. (Ref. 211)

The origins and differentiation factors in the races of man continue to raise unsolved questions and continual new concepts. Certain features, such as skin color, which we superficially tend to use to categorize racial groups may be simply environmentally adaptive traits correlated with climatic conditions. Skin color varies, even within each race, with the latitude of the habitat. The Mongoloid peoples of Southeast Asia are much darker than those of northern China; Caucasoids of southern India and southern Arabia are quite black; central American Indians are darker than those farther north. Similarly, fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair are climatic adaptations by natural selection to a cloudy, dimly lit northern environment, where every bit of Vitamin D from sunlight is needed and must not be filtered out by melanin in the skin, if the individual is to survive.

There are traits, however, which are non-adaptive and are known as "race markers".Among these are [1] distinctive teeth (shovel-shaped incisors occur with 80% frequency among Mongoloids and American Indians) and [2] hair form, with coarse, straight hair of large diameter in Mongoloids and American Indians, small diameter hair in Causasoids and flat cross-section hair producing the "woolly" appearance in Africans and Melanesians.

In addition only the Caucasoid and the Australian aborigine has much body hair and premature balding. Of course the final differentiation is to be found in blood group traits and factors which we shall examine a little later in more detail. The greatest differences in these blood-groups and traits lie not between races as such, but between the people living east and west of the great Asian mountain-desert barrier. Thus it has been suggested that the earliest division of Homo sapiens was a differentiation into Eastern and Western races. Certainly as the precursor of modern man spread across Africa and then Eurasia, not only his body changed, but his method of doing things, his tool kit and his food supply.(Ref. 215, 130)

We come now to the question of the origins and divisions of the present-day races of man and as might be anticipated, there is no complete uniformity of thought on this subject. There is probably no point in discussing any concepts at this time that are not based on blood gene studies. A classification developed by William C. Boyd (Ref. 16) is as follows:

Another classification of race occurs in the very recent publication of Hugh Thomas (Ref. 213) although it is based on Coon's differentiation of 1968. Coon felt that each of the racial groups to be listed developed from entirely separate stems on the primate tree.

Robin Hallett (Ref. 83) of the University of Michigan, an authority of African history, would classify number 3 and 5 above somewhat differently, distinguishing three separate non-Caucasoid, non-Mongoloid races in Africa. There are (a) Negroid, (b) Bushmanoid (the Capoids of Thomas and Coon), described as short with yellowish brown color, thin lips, flat noses and high cheek-bones, and (c) Pygmoid, people who are very short, with yellow-brown skin color and downy body hair, living in the equatorial rain forests. Hallet says that at the time of Christ the Bushmanoids were the dominant type in central, east and South Africa. Today they are represented only by the people of the Kalahari desert. The Hottentots, which were a subgroup, have disappeared. The true Negroids, of course, are characterized by dark brown skin, broad noses, thick lips and kinky hair, originally living in the savannah to the north and west of the equatorial forests.

In the next portion of this chapter we shall examine some of the prehistoric features mentioned in the early paragraphs more in detail and from the standpoint of the various geographical areas.

In the geographical areas inhabited chiefly by the Caucasians it will clarify matters some to further differentiate this race according to some of the older classifications. H.G. Wells (Ref. 229) described three main subdivisions of the white race - the northern "blonds" (Nordic), the Mediterranean and north African "dark whites" and a somewhat disputed intermediate Alpine, brachycephalic race. McEvedy (Ref. 136) says the important subdivisions are Semites (Arabian peninsula), Hamites (Africa north and east of the Sahara), Indo-Europeans and Finns 1 of the far north. The significance of the term "Indo-European" and a further breakdown within the group will be discussed later in the text.

Forward to 8000 to 5000 B.C.

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Last edited by James Cooper on Oct 14, 2008 9:27 pm -0500.