Pre-history: homo sapiens

Let’s jump a few thousand years and get to around 400,000 to 200,000 years before our time. This is when early homo sapiens (a variety known as Neanderthals…because of where their fossils were found, in Neander valley caves in Germany) eventually evolved in Africa as sons of homo erectus with bigger brains. With this bigger and more industrious brain and previous know-how of path to north-eastern Africa, they traveled away from harsher central African climate. First, they settled in north-east Africa of present day Ethiopia, Somalia, Aritrea and Djibouti. And, from there, using their now mastered skills of rafting crossed Red Sea to land on the coasts of Near East in Yemen. Straits of Red Sea separating Africa and Asia, known as Gate of Grief, is only 20 kms wide right now. 70,000 years ago when this historical event happened, lot of water was still trapped in snow from the Great Ice Age. So, the Gate of Grief could’ve been even narrower than 20 kms. Once this pass was established, humans (and, from now on I’m going to use this term exclusively for homo sapiens), traveled fast and happy along the coasts of Arabia and Persia to enter India around 50,000 years ago.

Humans were happy to arrive in India because they found abundance of water, flora, fauna and wildlife to sustain. Entering India from Iran and Pakistan into Gujarat, humans stayed west of Sindhu river and populated west coasts first, before finally crossing over to east side and spread northward reaching delta region Ganga-Brahmaputra in West Bengal. From there, they spread further into south-east Asia till they reached Australia around 46,000 years ago. During this period mainland Asia was still connected to islands off of coast of south-east Asia. And so was, New Guinea and Australia by narrow straits of land. By 40,000 years ago humans have formed camps in Europe, China and Japan. Americas were populated at the end.

By this time (30,000 to 24,000 years ago), Neanderthals became extinct from their last colonies in Iberian peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal) from increasing population pressure of modern humans (homo sapien sapien).

Pre-history: homo erectus

homo habilis species developed into homo erectus (= person who stands straight, who was around 5.5 feet tall) little more than 2 million years ago. Although they used same material, these early humans developed more sophisticated stone tools; especially evident from their biface (or two sided) stone tools that were ground on both sides. On the defensive side, a revolutionary development was that of building a controlled fire by 1.8 million years ago. This enabled homo erectus to come out of their caves and venture out in open. How? Because, other animals were, and are still afraid of fire. Other side-benefits of fire were: cooking food to sanitize, keeping warm in colder climate, providing light to draw those cave drawings.

Somewhat disputed, but interesting speculation is that these humans also developed rafts to travel over water. Whether they had help from these river or ocean-crossing rafts or not, homo erectus’s historical contribution is that they were the first human family members to leave African continent and venture into Eurasia around 1.2 million years ago. Cause for this migration was drying of African rain forests during the Great Ice Age (Pleistocene). They populated areas as far as France in Europe and Vietnam and China in Asia. Settling in frigid Europe, north Asia and Australia was tougher for this tropical hominids, but most of the Asian continent was welcoming to the new settlers.

With better social organization and technology of tools, homo erectus was hunting with better efficiency than homo habilis. In fact, attaining better efficiency in all skills acquired by their ancestors, was the single most achievement of homo erectus. Otherwise, from hominid development point of view, nothing much happened over a million year or so when homo erectus populated tropical earth.

Pre-history: homo habilis

So, as humans took a different path of evolution from chimpanzees and entered into Old Stone Age (or Paleolithic Era), they were…well…using first stone tools. These were our ancestors of homo habilis (handy person = person with tools of little over 4 feet tall) species about 2.5 to 2.6 million years ago. They were among many other human species. The social experimentation of humans have already begun by this time and they started living in groups. They relied on gathering plants and hunting wild animals to feed themselves. Apart from stone as the primary material for tools, they also used animal bones, wood, leather and vegetable fibers. At this stage, though, large portion of their meat diet came from scavenging from other animal's kills rather than actual hunting.

At this point of evolution, our ancestors were very similar chimpanzees, but subtly different in two defining ways - walking on two legs and depending on tools and other members of their "herd" in addition to their own abilities.

Pre-history: Our Superfamily - Homonoidea

We, humans, are part of animal super-family called hominoidea. Within this super-family there are other members such as chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons. Gray (or Hanuman) langur, a commonly found "monkey" in most parts of India (including my balcony) with black face gray hair is NOT part of this hominoidea family. But, they are part cercopithecoidea family, just like baboons. If you had seen a chimpanzee in a zoo, it won’t take you long to realize that they are our closest relatives. By this I mean no offense to humans…or chimps who are reading this. Chimpanzees in fact belong to the same tribe as humans. This tribe of hominids may have first came down from trees around 10 million years ago in the region of modern day Ethiopia. Fortunately, or unfortunately, humans developed into separate homo genus from chimpanzees of Pan genus about 6 million years ago in African savanna. With this, began a 3 million years of evolution of modern homo sapiens or what we call present day “humans”.

You have to bear with me as I try to grind through some of the pre-historic human development and its impact on India. Lot of this material may be dry and full of terminology straight out of museums filled with cavemen. I promise that once we are out of Bronze Age and well into Iron Age, things will be lot less dry and more personal.