Hominids
Modern humanity (known as Homo Sapiens) is approximately 200,000 years old, so in terms of a species, our presence in the world is very recent. An earlier human species from which we are thought to be descended is Homo heidelbergensis, itself a sub species of Homo Erectus, which existed from about 2 million years ago. The earliest human species that appears to have demonstrated human like qualities was an earlier species called Homo habilis which evolved 2.8 million years ago. Also evolving from Homo heidelbergensis were the Homo Neanderthalensis, who evolved about 400,000 years ago. Newer improved forms of dating fossils, bones and DNA have, in recent times, dated the emergence of the various species to much earlier than has traditionally been thought. However all these human species are thought to descend from an even earlier form of Hominid called Australopithecus which first appeared in east Africa about 4.2 million.
Human Species Share the world
When Homo Sapiens evolved they shared the world with Homo Neanderthalensis, thus for most of our existence we shared the world with another form of humanity, until Homo Neanderthalensis died out about 27,000 years ago. Neanderthals seem to have emerged from those Homo Heidelbergensis that had migrated out of Africa, thus by 400,000 BC they already had populations living in Europe and Asia. It may have been the presence of the Neanderthals in Europe and Asia that slowed the migration of Homo Sapiens from out of Africa. It is likely that Homo Sapiens made several migrations from Africa to Asia starting from about 130,000 years but the first of these were not permanent. Modern humans did not reach Europe until about 47,000 years ago.
Both Neanderthals and modern humans would most likely have been territorial and would have tried to avoid each other where possible. In times of shortage there may have been territorial conflicts between the two groups. But for at least 7,000 years in Europe, and probably much longer in Asia, the two human species must have come into regular contact and even conflict. When Homo Sapiens finally reached Europe it must have been around this time that Neanderthal populations began to decline, thus allowing modern humans to move where previously the way had been blocked. This coincided with a rise in global temperatures and it could have been this which upset the Neanderthal way of living.
The Spread of Modern Humans
Modern humans reached the near and middle east at least 100,000 years ago, and probably reached central and southeast Asia by about 60,000 years ago. This suggests that the co-existence of the two groups of humans within these same lands must have lasted tens of thousands of years in Asia. How regularly they actually met is debatable – Perhaps in times of plenty they traded, archeological finds suggest that in some places they used very similar tools. By 40,000 the ice sheets that covered most of Europe began to recede, slowly at first. Once the Neanderthals had disappeared, modern humans were free to move further north into Europe as the sheets receded. This process of melting ice sheets became ever faster from about 27000 years ago until about 13000 years ago when the lands making up the British Isles were freed for human migration.
These periods of migration and settlement in pre-history make up most of time modern humans have existed. All we know about this much longer period of our history has been built up from archaeological and DNA analysis. From this we can get an understanding of the movements and a way of life that remained largely unchanged over tens of thousands of years. But we know very little, if anything, about their thoughts and attitudes, and the names of individuals are long since lost. These things only start become known to us when people began creating symbols to communicate measurements and quantities – and lists and instructions. From these, pre-history becomes history and stories of a more complete past start to come down to us.
History Starts
That humans could create and put thoughts into some form physical expression as long ago as many tens of thousands of years in the past has always been known, flint tools and cave paintings show an ability to interpret and make sense of the world around. Indeed, it is now thought that it is not just modern humans that painted in caves; a non-figurative painting in a cave on the Iberian peninsula is though to date from 64,000 years ago, some 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe, and therefore attributed to Neanderthals.
Writings
Whilst painting may give us some idea of what thoughts may have entered the minds of earlier modern humans, it is only with writing that details of past events and who they concerned can be recorded for posterity. Writing as a system of recording only started to come into use less than ten thousand years ago. Initially in its earliest stages its emerged as ‘proto-writing’ with certain symbols used to convey a message. It was not until around 3500 BC that true writings, in the form of a series of figures pressed onto clay tokens, emerge. These tokens first appear in Mesopotamia, used by the Sumerians, and they that first developed this method of keeping accounts from basic record keeping to a more general form of writing. It is from these tokens that more complete accounts of events, stories and thoughts were written on larger clay tablets, presented in a form that could be read and recalled again and again so that they would not be forgotten. Thus we entered an age history could be recalled.