4 Prologue Beginnings
First Peoples
The first human beings emerged over 3 million years
ago, probably in Africa. Some eventually devised stone
tools, thus inaugurating the Paleolithic revolution, a
life based on hunting and gathering nuts, berries,
and edible plants. About 40,000 years ago human
beings of a different sort—people similar to us in
their aptitude for tools and language—appeared in
Africa, Europe, and Asia displacing those humans who
had preceded them.
The earth was colder than it is now, and the
northward advance of these Eurasian hunters was
halted by immense sheets of ice, some as broad as
Australia and over 10,000-feet thick—the height of
ten Empire State buildings. These ice slabs, which
had been expanding for tens of thousands of years,
gouged deep holes in the earth’s crust.
Paleolitic hunters in Asia pushed deeper into the
arctic tundra, pursuing big game—especially woolly
mammoths. Weighing nearly ten tons, about as
much as a school bus, a single mammoth provided
enough meat to feed two dozen hunters nearly all
winter. Its fur could be worn as clothing and its fat
could be burned for heat. Its bones, when stretched
with fur, functioned as simple tents. A woolly mam-
moth was a kind of movable mall, and Paleolithic
hunters regarded it with the avidity of shoppers at a
clearance sale.
Some Paleolithic hunters eventually crossed into
what is now Alaska. What occurred next is a matter of
conjecture. (See Mapping the Past, “Debate over the
Earliest Route to the Americas,” p. 6.) Eventually these
Paleo-Indians, moving south, happened upon lush
grasslands, on which grazed vast herds
of large mammals: mammoths and
equally enormous mastodons, with
massive legs and stout feet; giant
beavers the size of bears; 20-foot-long
ground sloths weighing over 6,000
pounds; strange monsters such as
glyptodonts, which resembled armadil-
los but weighed over a ton; and also
countless camels, horses, cheetahs,
caribou, and deer.
The Demise of the Big Mammals
Loosed upon herds of unwary ani-
mals, Paleo-Indians (hereafter, simply
Indians) slaughtered them or stam-
peded them over cliffs. They chiseled
long stone blades especially designed
to penetrate thick hides. Archaeologists
have named these hunters after their ingenious blades,
first found at Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis blades have
been found in nearly every state of the United States
and even at the southern tip of South America.
Around 12,000 years ago, however, the big mam-
mals were disappearing from the Western Hemisphere.
Thirty-three species became extinct, including mam-
moths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, giant beavers,
horses, and camels. Perhaps the hunters killed off the
big mammals; or perhaps the heavily furred animals
were ill-suited to a warming trend.
The disappearance of these mammals nearly coin-
cided with the closing of the route from Beringia to
the Americas, as melting ice worldwide raised ocean
levels hundreds of feet, flooding the low-lying land
that had joined Asia and Alaska. No more big mam-
mals could make their way into the Americas.
These two factors profoundly influenced the
course of human development in the Americas: The
absence of big mammals deprived Indian peoples of
ready sources of food and draft animals, and the geo-
graphical isolation of the Americas meant that the
Indians would not be exposed to the waves of bio-
logical diversity—plants, animals, bacteria, and
viruses—that repeatedly washed over Europe, Asia,
and Africa.The Archaic Period: Surviving without Big Mammals
With the big mammals gone, Indians struggled to
find alternative sources of food. Prolonged droughts
or severe winters resulted in starvation. North ofA woolly mammoth consumed about 400 pounds of grass a day. This mammoth skeleton is
thirteen feet high.