Evolution And History

The Spread of Upper Paleolithic Peoples 221

involve crossing large bodies of water, this was the case for

the spread to Greater Australia and the Americas.

The Sahul

Much earlier, possibly by at least 60,000 years ago, peo-

ple managed to get to Australia, Tasmania, and New

Guinea, then connected to one another in a single land-

mass called the Sahul (Figure 9.9).^39 To do this, they had

to use some kind of watercraft because the Sahul was

separated from the islands (which are geologically a part

of the Asian landmass) of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and

Bali. At times of maximum glaciation and low sea lev-

els, these islands were joined to one another in a single

landmass called Sunda, but a deep ocean trench (called

of intricately stacked mammoth bones. Where the ground

was frozen, cobblestones were heated and placed in the

earth to sink in, thereby providing sturdy, dry floors. Their

hearths, no longer shallow depressions or flat surfaces that

radiated back little heat, were instead stone-lined pits that

conserved heat for extended periods and made for more

efficient cooking.

For the outdoors, they had the same sort of tailored

clothing worn in historic times by Arctic and sub-Arctic

peoples. And they engaged in long-distance trade, as

indicated, for example, by the presence of seashells and

Baltic amber at sites several hundred kilometers from

the sources of these materials. Although Middle Paleo-

lithic peoples also made use of rare and distant materi-

als, they did not do so with the regularity seen in the

Upper Paleolithic.

The Spread of Upper

Paleolithic Peoples

Upper Paleolithic peoples expanded into regions previ-

ously uninhabited by their archaic forebears. Colonization

of Siberia began about 42,000 years ago, although it took

something like 10,000 years before humans reached the

northeastern part of that region. While this spread did not

Reconstruction of an Upper Paleolithic

hut with walls of interlocked mammoth

mandibles.

© Goran Burenhult

(^39) Rice, P. (2000). Paleoanthropology 2000—part 1. General Anthropology
7 (1), 11; Zimmer, C. (1999). New date for the dawn of dream time. Science
284, 1243.
Sahul The greater Australian landmass including Australia,
New Guinea, and Tasmania. At times of maximum glaciation
and low sea levels, these areas were continuous.
Sunda The combined landmass of the contemporary islands
of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Bali that was continuous with
mainland Southeast Asia at times of low sea levels correspond-
ing to maximum glaciation.
R
h
m
©^
Goran
Burenhult