To seek out new species, and eat them.
they wanted to snow ski
They couldn’t afford the mortgage payments.
Consider the Americas, which were NOT inhabited by proto-humans. General thought (contested) is that humans arrived about 12000BC, or 14,000 years ago. Even allowing 2,000 years to reach Tierra Del Fuego, about 10,000 miles - that’s 5 miles a year. One-day hunting or fishing trips probably went farther than that. Some gaps - across the jungles at the south of Panama, maybe - would be most challenging, but presumably by then they had decent ocean-going watercraft and going 50 or 100 miles down the coast to establish a new campsite would not be a problem. Even with a land bridge, it’s likely that’s how they crossed into Alaska, follwoing the coast. Similarly, they would have crossed along Indonesia to Autralia about 40,000BC where boat technology was definitely required.
I asume they spread like wildfire in America, with unlimited game that at first did not know to fear humans (read Darwin’s description of Galapagos birds), and not a lot of diseases to worry about.
The most remote tribes are also the least technical because they are probably hiding from others with better weapons, pushed into the farthest corners. The Aztecs, Inca, central US mound builders, pueblo indians, and Iroquois had pretty good organization and advanced agriculture.
Wasn’t some migration just an extension of annual movements? For example, most of Europe during the summer is a great place to hunt and gather. But to survive the winter is a challenge - at least some of them were surely happy to head back south for winter. A nomadic hunter-gatherer group could easily move a couple hundred miles between different areas over the course of a year. I suspect the “bounds” of human habitation were quite fuzzy for a long time.
Makes me wonder how long ago proper names evolved. In a group of 25, would there be need for names? Would offspring know their parents’ voice well enough that " Hey put that frog sweat-tipped spear down right now !! " would not need to be supported by a proper name?
There’s documentation in ancient hebrew going back what, 5000 years? 6000? Back then, was a son called Isaac Ben Abraham or are the very ancient names we assign to those people not at all what they were really called?
And 6,000 years is nothing. Should we reason that first names existed 25,000 years ago?
Sorry for the hijack. Maybe this needs its own thread?
Cartooniverse
I recall reading a book – I think it was by Rory Nugent – in which he came across a small island in the middle of the Brahmaputra inhabited by a family, all of whom had the same name modified by some relationship term. Something like Big Joe, Little Joe, Grandma Joe, Baby Joe, Mama Joe, etc.
Those H. Erectus left Africa about 2M years ago. The fossils found in Georgia (former Soviet Republic, not the US state) are about 1.8M years old and do seem to have some primitive traits, relative to H. erectus.
True when the first moderns left Africa (about 100k years ago), but those populations are not the “Out of Africa” population(s). When the “Out of Africa” population(s) left, about 60k years ago, there were no longer Neanderthals in the Levant.
From what I heard recently, they wouldn’t. A first population of Sapiens ended up in what is roughly Israel now (where there were neanderthals) but apparently this first population eventually died out. Our actual ancestors, according to this theory, would have later moved from Africa to Arabia (which had better resources than nowadays) before spreading everywhere.
If this is correct, then our actual ancestors wouldn’t have met neanderthals just after leaving Africa, but only when they “migrated” north.
Yup - as a thumb suck, let’s say every generation (20 years) moves 40 km further, so that’s an average of 2km a year. In 50 000 years of *just *that kind of dispersal, you’ve circled the globe twice and are halfway through your third go.
Why not? The need to convey the “me/not me” distinction would be imperative in any even vaguely human-like sophont species, IMO. Hell, bottlenose dolphins have personal names (that they choose for themselves). I have no problem believing chimps could, too. Captive apes certainly display a naming imperative.
ETA - I don’t think that names arise from what others call you, but from a desire to individuate yourself.
This can(and is) actually studied. If you look up how to say “mom” in half a dozen languages you will see a definite pattern. By this means scholars are assembling a language called Proto-Indo-European or PIE. Nobody thinks its perfectly correct, but its a great best guess.
Likewise you can do that with names. Consider the name “Anna” and its variants “Anna”, “Ana”, “Anya”, “Anne” and so on.
Someone mentioned grandma joe, and thats the next step. You add some qualifier to the simple names. “Tanya”, “Lana”, and so on. Later on it gets more sophisticated with names like “Maryanne”. Coincidence? Consider “Tara”. “Mara”, "Kara, “Sara”,“Sarah”, “Mara”, “Lara”, “Maura”, “Laura” and such.
There is this beautiful flow of subtle linguistic change.
It seems likely that names like “Ana” and “Ara” would be very ancient indeed. I’m imagining hot twin sisters myself.
Most languages are not Indo-European, so the first language(s) must be much older than PIE.
I don’t know about that. According to some recent television I have seen, they are raising their profile a bit. And not liking the response they are getting from the newcomers.
I’m always imagining hot twin sisters, but that’s just me.
Back to the OP. I saw a TV program a while back which made the case that humanity expanded out of Africa because it was able to. It mooted that the ice age had lowered the sea level so much that there was a land bridge across the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, and that the Saudi peninsula was extended and subject to the monsoons. And because of the monsoons there were fresh-water springs, which are now underwater. So humans were able to explore pastures new.
It’s possible that it was the bold intrepid humans who went off and discovered new lands.
But it’s equally possible that our ancestors were the losers of primitive society. The better, smarter, and more physically fit cavemen may have kicked our ancestors out of the tribe and we were forced to go find someplace else to live.
FuzzyOgre writes:
> This can(and is) actually studied. If you look up how to say “mom” in half a
> dozen languages you will see a definite pattern. By this means scholars are
> assembling a language called Proto-Indo-European or PIE. Nobody thinks its
> perfectly correct, but its a great best guess.
This is kind of a strange way to put it. You make it sound like the study of Indo-European is a recent thing. In fact, it’s usually considered as starting in 1786 (although there are some precursors). By 1927 most of the major outlines of the subject were worked out:
Ah, but there were exceptions.