Page 62 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-2 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Key Events in the Foraging Era

300,000– Modern human beings appear in Africa.
200,000 BCE
Stone tool technology becomes more sophisticated.
250,000 BCE
Humans have spread across Africa.
200,000 BCE
Humans begin migrating out of Africa to Eurasia.
100,000 BCE
Development of more sophisticated technologies begins to accelerate.
50,000 BCE
Large-scale extinction of many large land animals begins.
50,000– Australia is settled.
40,000 BCE
Siberia is settled.
30,000 BCE
30,000– More sophisticated tools such as the bow and arrow are invented.
20,000 BCE
North America is settled.
13,000 BCE
South America is settled.
12,000 BCE
The foraging era ends with the development of agriculture.
10,000 BCE

However, archaeologists can extract a surprising amount changes with increasing precision. In addition, the dating
of information from fragmentary skeletal remains. A techniques developed during the last fifty years have
close study of teeth, for example, can tell us much about given us increasingly precise dates, which allow us to con-
diets, and diets can tell us much about the lifeways of struct absolute chronologies of events during the entire
early humans. Similarly, differences in size between the span of human history.
skeletons of males and females can tell us something Although archaeological evidence tells us mostly about
about gender relations. By studying fossilized pollens and
For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
core samples taken from sea beds and ice sheets that have
Foraging Societies, Contemporary p. 764 (v2)
built up during thousands of years, archaeologists have
Genetics p. 809 (v2)
managed to reconstruct climatic and environmental

250,000 Years of Human History
(not drawn to scale)
= 10 billion humans Foraging Era
Modern humans spread across Africa ■ >95% of human history

■ 12% of population

250,000 bce 200,000 bce