Chapter 1The Peopling of the

World, to 4000 B.C.E.

KENNEWICK MANlooked down at the first piece, the braincase, viewing it from the top. Removing it from the bag, I was immediately struck by its long, narrow shape and the marked constriction of the forehead behind a well-developed brow ridge. The bridge of the nose was very high and prominent. My first thought was that this skull belonged to someone of European descent. . . .

Chip Clark, Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

First Travels to the Americas

This is a block of red ocher, a pigment made from iron oxide. Now the color of rust, the surface would have originally been a vivid blood red. This block, 2.5 inches (6 cm) long, formed a small crayon that was used, perhaps, to decorate the body.

THE FIRST ART OBJECTS IN THE WORLD

Anna Zieminski/AFP/Getty Images

These abstract triangle markings may be purely decorative or may represent a way to count something, perhaps the passage of days.

THE FIRST ART OBJECTS IN THE WORLD

Anna Zieminski/AFP/Getty Images

THE FIRST ART OBJECTS IN THE WORLDThis object was found in Blombos Cave, some 186 miles (300 km) from Cape Town, where the cave’s occupants hunted and fished around 75,000 B.C.E.

© Centre for Development Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

Traces of charcoal from the battling woolly rhinoceros (lower right) have been dated to about 30,000 B.C.E., making this one of the earliest cave paintings found anywhere in the world. The panel also portrays the same horse in four different poses, rare sketches done by an individual artist. Many of the paintings in the Chauvet caves display this artist’s distinctive style.

An Ancient Artist at the Chauvet Caves of France

AP/Wide World Photos

Woman with a Horn, Laussel Cave, Dordogne River Valley, France. An Ancient Pregnancy?Standing 17.5 inches (44 cm) high, this block of stone, along with five others, came from a rock shelter occupied by people between 25,000 and 21,000 B.C.E. Similar carvings of women with wide hips and pendulous breasts have been found throughout the Dordogne River Valley region in France, but only this woman holds a bison horn. Interpreting the markings on the horn as calendrical records (perhaps of moon sightings), some analysts propose that her hand on her stomach indicates that she may be pregnant.

Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France/Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

The residents of the Monte Verde site used the atlatl spear-thrower to kill game. The atlatl had two parts, a long handle with a cup or hook at the end, and a spear tipped with a sharp stone point. The handle served as an extension of the human arm, so that the spear could be thrown farther with much greater force.

A Powerful Ancient Weapon: The Atlatl

Illustration by Eric Parrish from James E. Dixon, Bones, Boats and Bisons: Archaeology and the First Colonization of Western North America[Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1999], p. 153, Figure 6-1.

The Natufians, who lived in Palestine and southern Syria, began to practice agriculture around 12,500 B.C.E. and gradually learned how to raise animals and plant crops over the next several thousand years. Agriculture eventually spread beyond the Levant and Mesopotamia to southern Anatolia, where agriculturalists built the world’s earliest city at Catalhoyuk.

Ancient Southwestern Asia

Dating to 6500 B.C.E., these figures were probably used in rituals and commemorated the dead. Their makers fashioned a core of reeds and grass, covered it with plaster, and then painted clothes and facial features on it. The eyes, made from inlaid shells with painted dots, are particularly haunting.

The Earliest Depictions of People? The Plaster Statues of Ain Ghazal, Jordan

Photo by John Tsantesi, courtesy Dr. Gary O. Rollefson, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington

Agriculture developed independently at different times in the different regions of the world. In some places, like western Asia, residents gradually shifted to full-time cultivation of crops and raising domesticated animals, while in others, like New Guinea, they continued to hunt and gather.

Early Agriculture

This artist’s reconstruction shows what Catalhoyuk looked like in 6000 B.C.E., when it had a population of around five thousand people. The settlement had no streets, and the houses had no doors at ground level. Instead, residents walked on top of the roofs to get from one place to another. Entering houses through a hole in the roof, they climbed down a ladder to get inside.

The World’s Earliest City: Catalhoyuk, Turkey

From Vanished Civilization: The Hidden Secrets of Lost Cities and Forgotten People. Reader’s Digest Association, Ltd., London, 2002.