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The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521843638. Turner II, Christy G.; Ovodov, Nicolai D.; Pavlova, Olga V. (2013). Animal Teeth and Human Tools: A Taphonomic Odyssey in Ice Age Siberia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-03029-9.
Early humans were social and initially scavenged, before becoming active hunters. The need to communicate and hunt prey efficiently in a new, fluctuating environment (where the locations of resources need to be memorized and told) may have driven the expansion of the brain from 2 to 0.8 Ma. Evolution of dark skin at about 1.2 Ma. [39]
Modern humans then repopulated Europe from the east after the eruption and the ice age that took place from 38,000 to 36,000 BCE. [102] A mitochondrial DNA sequence of two Cro-Magnons from the Paglicci Cave in Italy, dated to 23,000 and 24,000 years old (Paglicci 52 and 12), identified the mtDNA as Haplogroup N, typical of the latter group. [103]
Fossil footprints show humans in North America more than 21,000 years ago, the earliest firm evidence for humans in the Americas and show people must have arrived here before the last Ice Age.
On the geologic time scale, the Holocene epoch starts at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age (c. 10,000 BC) and continues to the present. The beginning of the Mesolithic is usually considered to correspond to the beginning of the Holocene epoch.
The oldest human skeletal remains are the 40ky old Lake Mungo remains in New South Wales, but human ornaments discovered at Devil's Lair in Western Australia have been dated to 48 kya and artifacts at Madjedbebe in Northern Territory are dated to at least 50 kya, and to 62.1 ± 2.9 ka in one 2017 study. [26] [27] [28] [29]
Prehistoric people occupied the site toward the end of the last ice age, and temperatures would have been 5 to 7 degrees Celsius colder than they are today, Pelton said.
Fossilized footprints in Saudi Arabia show human traffic on the cusp of a subsequent ice age. Like carbon dating, scientists use isotopes and context clues to calculate the approximate age of fossils.