Titans of the Forests by Gregory V. Short

Author:Gregory V. Short [Short, Gregory V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Business & Economics, Development, Economic Development, General, Economic History, Sociology, Medical, Physiology
ISBN: 9781648890055
Google: 1a_aDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Vernon Press
Published: 2020-10-06T02:38:38+00:00

Chapter Six

The Middle Paleolithic Nomads

“Homo sapiens”

“Today, we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.”

Richard E. Leakey (1944- )

Kenyan Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist

Ecological change is a universal constant, which can uniformly create life, sustain life, or terminate life. The evolutionary genesis of the hominid species as well as our own civilizations has been environmental change. For if our environment hadn’t periodically turned colder and drier, the early australopithecines would never have eventually evolved into the Homo sapiens. As a species of the primate family, we haven’t conquered our surroundings. Instead, we have learned to adapt to the crushing tides of change and overcome the competition around us.

At the onset of the Great Pleistocene Ice Age, our species began to experience several evolutionary leaps as a result of a large number of climatic changes brought about by the present Ice Age. For the next 2.5 million years, we progressively evolved from the H. habilis into the H. ergaster/erectus and then into the H. heidelbergensis. Subsequently, they would evolve into the H. sapiens and then finally into the present day Homo sapiens sapiens. However during this same period, our economy had also evolved from one of scavenging into nomadic hunting and then finally into farming and herding. These fantastic physical and economic leaps were the result of the numerous ebbs and flows of the glaciation periods, which induced our almost constant adaptation to the changing environment.1

Once the massive glaciers began to creep across the earth’s surface, the nomads and animals of Eurasia were forced to migrate towards the equator. Even though the climate was milder and there was initially an abundance of vegetation, it wouldn’t have taken a very long time before the northern nomads clashed with the southern hunter-gatherers (see chapter 4, page 57-58) in the central and southern regions. And since the competition for food was greatly intensified during these periods of extreme cold and over-crowding, the struggle for survival would have been extremely harsh, especially for the northern nomads.2

Needless to say, the southern hunter-gatherers had a tremendous advantage over the northern nomads in terms of surviving and finding new sources of food within their own environment. And although these unwelcomed northern nomads were highly mobile, organized, and armed to the teeth, their numbers were without question greatly reduced by the time the glaciers began to recede back to their poles. Therefore, it is of little wonder that our southern hunter-gathering ancestors would eventually evolve into an even more adaptable, imaginative, and healthier population, than their more northern nomadic cousins.

It has been estimated that approximately 200,000 years ago, the Homo sapiens (wise human) first appeared. While inhabiting the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia, they replaced the earlier hominid species that had dwelled in their particular regions. This occurred almost immediately after the Mindel-Riss interglacial period had ended and the Riss glaciation period was about to begin.

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