Chapter 26
In all that we call ‘history’ – everything we clearly remember about ourselves as a species – humanity has not once come close to total annihilation. In various regions at various times there have been terrible natural disasters. But there has not been a single occasion in the past 5000 years when mankind as a whole can be said to have faced extinction.
Has this always been so? Or is it possible, if we go back far enough, that we might discover an epoch when our ancestors were nearly wiped out? It is just such an epoch that seems to be the focus of the great myths of cataclysm. Scholars normally attribute these myths to the fantasies of ancient poets. But what if the scholars are wrong? What if some terrible series of natural catastrophes did reduce our prehistoric ancestors to a handful of individuals scattered here and there across the face of the earth, far apart, and out of touch with one another?
We are looking for an epoch that will fit the myths as snugly as the slipper on Cinderella’s foot. In this search, however, there is obviously no point in investigating any period prior to the emergence on the planet of recognizably modern human beings. We’re not interested here in Homo habilis or Homo erectus or even Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. We’re interested only in Homo sapiens sapiens, our own species, and we haven’t been around very long.
Students of early Man disagree to some extent over how long we have been around. Some researchers, as we shall see, claim that partial human remains in excess of 100,000 years old may be ‘fully modern’. Others argue for a reduced antiquity in the range of 35–40,000 years, and yet others propose a compromise of 50,000 years. But no one knows for sure. ‘The origin of fully modern humans denoted by the subspecies name Homo sapiens sapiens remains one of the great puzzles of paleoanthropology,’ admits one authority.1
About three and a half million years of more or less relevant evolution are indicated in the fossil record. For all practical purposes, that record starts with a small, bipedal hominid (nicknamed Lucy) whose remains were discovered in 1974 in the Ethiopian section of East Africa’s Great Rift Valley. With a brain capacity of 400cc (less than a third of the modern average) Lucy definitely wasn’t human. But she wasn’t an ape either and she had some remarkably ‘human-like’ features, notably her upright gait, and the shape of her pelvis and back teeth. For these and other reasons, her species – classified as Australopithecus afarensis – has been accepted by the majority of palaeoanthropologists as our earliest direct ancestor.2
About two million years ago representatives of Homo habilis, the founder members of the Homo line to which we ourselves belong, began to leave their fossilized skulls and skeletons behind. As time went by this species showed clear signs of evolution towards an ever more ‘gracile’ and refined form, and towards a larger and more versatile brain. Homo erectus, who overlapped with and then succeeded Homo habilis, appeared about 1.6 million years ago with a brain capacity in the region of 900cc (as against 700cc in the case of habilis).3 The million or so years after that, down to about 400,000 years ago, saw no significant evolutionary changes – or none attested to by surviving fossils. Then Homo erectus passed through the gates of extinction into hominid heaven and slowly – very, very slowly – what the palaeoanthropologists call ‘the sapient grade’ began to appear:
Exactly when the transition to a more sapient form began is difficult to establish. Some believe the transition, which involved an increase in brain size and a decrease in the robustness of the skull bones, began as early as 400,000 years ago. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough fossils from this important period to be sure about what was happening.’4
What was definitely not happening 400,000 years ago was the emergence of anything identifiable as our own story-telling, myth-making subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. The consensus is that ‘sapient humans must have evolved from Homo erectus’,5 and it is true that a number of ‘archaic sapient’ populations did come into existence between 400,000 and 100,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the relationship of these transitional species to ourselves is far from clear. As noted, the first contenders for membership of the exclusive club of Homo sapiens sapiens have been dated by some researchers to the latter part of this period. But these remains are all partial and their identification is by no means universally accepted. The oldest, part of a skullcap, is a putative modern human specimen from about 113,000 BC.6 Around this date, too, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis first appears, a quite distinct subspecies which most of us know as ‘Neanderthal Man’.
Tall, heavily muscled, with prominent brow ridges and a protruding face, Neanderthal Man had a bigger average brain size than modern humans (1400cc as against our 1360cc).7 The possession of such a big brain was no doubt an asset to these ‘intelligent, spiritually sensitive, resourceful creatures’8 and the fossil record suggests that they were the dominant species on the planet from about 100,000 years ago until 40,000 years ago. At some point during this lengthy and poorly understood period, Homo sapiens sapiensestablished itself, leaving behind fossil remains from about 40,000 years ago that are undisputably those of modern humans, and supplanting the Neanderthals completely by about 35,000 years ago.9
In summary, human beings like ourselves, whom we could pass in the street without blinking an eyelid if they were shaved and dressed in modern clothes, are creatures of the last 115,000 years at the very most – and more probably of only the last 50,000 years. It follows that if the myths of cataclysm we have reviewed do reflect an epoch of geological upheaval experienced by humanity, these upheavals took place within the last 115,000 years, and more probably within the last 50,000 years.
Cinderella’s slipper
It is a curious coincidence of geology and paleoanthropology that the onset and progress of the last Ice Age, and the emergence and proliferation of modern Man, more or less shadow each other. Curious too is the fact that so little is known about either.
In North America the last Ice Age is called the Wisconsin Glaciation (named for rock deposits studied in the state of Wisconsin) and its early phase has been dated by geologists to 115,000 years ago.10 There were various advances and retreats of the ice-cap after that, with the fastest rate of accumulation taking place between 60,000 years ago and 17,000 years ago – a process culminating in the Tazewell Advance, which saw the glaciation reach its maximum extent around 15,000 BC.11 By 13,000 BC, however, millions of square miles of ice had melted, for reasons that have never properly been explained, and by 8000 BC the Wisconsin had withdrawn completely.12
The Ice Age was a global phenomenon, affecting both the northern and the southern hemispheres; similar climatic and geological conditions therefore prevailed in many other parts of the world as well (notably in eastern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South America). There was massive glaciation in Europe, where the ice reached outward from Scandinavia and Scotland to cover most of Great Britain, Denmark, Poland, Russia, large parts of Germany, all of Switzerland, and big chunks of Austria, Italy and France.13(Known technically as the Wurm Glaciation, this European Ice Age started about 70,000 years ago, a little later than its American counterpart, but attained its maximum extent at the same time, 17,000 years ago, and then experienced the same rapid withdrawal, and shared the same terminal date).14
The crucial stages of Ice Age chronology thus appear to be:
1 around 60,000 years ago, when the Wurm, the Wisconsin and other glaciations were well under way;
2 around 17,000 years ago, when the ice sheets had reached their maximum extent in both the Old World and the New;
3 the 7000 years of deglaciation that followed.
The emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens thus coincided with a lengthy period of geological and climatic turbulence, a period marked, above all else, by ferocious freezing and flooding. The many millennia during which the ice was remorselessly expanding must have been terrifying and awful for our ancestors. But those final 7000 years of de glaciation, particularly the episodes of very rapid and extensive melting, must have been worse.
Let us not jump to conclusions about the state of social, or religious, or scientific, or intellectual development of the human beings who lived through the sustained collapse of that tumultuous epoch. The popular stereotype may be wrong in assuming that they were all primitive cave dwellers. In reality little is known about them and almost the only thing that can be said is that they were men and women exactly like ourselves physiologically and psychologically.
It is possible that they came close to total extinction on several occasions during the upheavals they experienced; it is also possible that the great myths of cataclysm, to which scholars attribute no historical value, may contain accurate records and eyewitness accounts of real events. As we see in the next chapter, if we are looking for an epoch that fits those myths as snugly as the slipper on Cinderella’s foot, it would seem that the last Ice Age is it.