The Neanderthals move into Europe around 150,000 BCE.

The game-hunting occupants of the Grotte du Lazaret (English: Cave of Le Lazaret), now in the eastern suburbs of the French town of Nice and now overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, dating to about this time, make tents, probably of animal hides stretched over a wooden framework, with the tent entrances facing away from the cave opening.

A wolf skull is situated inside the doorway of each tent.

Lice have been the subjects of significant DNA research that has led to discoveries on human evolution.

For example, recent DNA evidence suggests that pubic lice spread to humans approximately two million years ago from gorillas.

Additionally, the DNA differences between head lice and body lice provide corroborating evidence that humans started losing body hair, also about two million years ago.

Genetic analysis suggests that the human body louse may have originated about one hundred and seven thousand years ago from the head louse after the invention of clothing, with the ancestor of all human lice emerging about seven hundred and seventy thousand years ago.

New, local tool traditions, including the Mousterian, appear in the frigid environment of glacial western Asia and Europe, as human populations begin to exploit a variety of habitats.

Mousterian toolmakers, including the Neandertalers, ingeniously adapt their implements to a wide variety of tasks: cutting and preparing meat, scraping hides, working wood, and many others.

Mousterian tools found in Europe and made by Neanderthals date from between 300,000 BP and 30,000 BP.

They are also produced by anatomically modern humans in Northwestern Africa and the Near East.

Assemblages produced by Neanderthals in the Levant, for example, are indistinguishable from those produced by Qafzeh type modern humans.

It may be an example of acculturation of modern humans by Neanderthals, because the culture after one hundred and thirty thousand years reaches the Levant from Europe (the first Mousterian industry appears there 200,000 BP) and the modern Qafzeh type humans appear in the Levant another hundred thousand years later.

Modern human culture begins to evolve at an accelerated pace, marking a significant shift in behavior and innovation.

Some anthropologists, notably Jared Diamond, author of The Third Chimpanzee, describe this period as a "Great Leap Forward." During this time, modern humans adopt new cultural and technological practices, including:

• Burying their dead, often with grave goods, suggesting ritual or symbolic thought,
• Crafting clothing from hides, improving survival in colder climates,
• Developing advanced hunting techniques, such as trapping pits or driving animals off cliffs, and
• Creating cave paintings and other forms of artistic expression.

As human culture advances, different populations begin to introduce novelty into existing technologies. Unlike earlier hominins, modern humans show regional variations in artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons, and bone needles, demonstrating a previously unseen diversity of tools and personal items.

Anthropologists identify several key markers of modern human behavior, including:

• Tool specialization,
• Adornment with jewelry and symbolic imagery (such as cave drawings),
• Organized living spaces,
• Elaborate rituals, including burials with grave gifts,
• Exploration of harsh or previously uninhabited environments, and
• The development of barter trade networks.

Debate continues over whether these advancements were the result of a sudden cognitive "revolution"—sometimes called "the big bang of human consciousness"—or whether they emerged through a more gradual evolutionary process.

South America Minor (49,293–28,578 BCE)

South America Minor includes southern Chile (incl. Central Valley), southern Argentina (Patagonia south of the Río Negro/Río Grande), Tierra del Fuego, Falkland/Malvinas, Juan Fernández.

Anchors: Patagonian steppe, Andean icefields, Strait of Magellan–Beagle Channel, Fuegian archipelago, Pacific fjords, Atlantic shelf banks.

Geographic & Environmental Context

• Cordilleran ice sheets dominated the southern Andes; outlet glaciers sculpted fjords and moraines.

• Patagonian steppe: cold, windy; periglacial dunes/loess.

• Sea-level lowstand exposed broad Atlantic shelves and expanded Magellan–Beagle shorelines.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• LGM: strong westerlies, low temperatures, aridity inland; permafrost/seasonal frost common on steppe.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Human occupation in this early window is unlikely; robust evidence appears much later (>14.5 ka at Monte Verde to the north).

• Productive kelp highway ecologies existed (shellfish, pinnipeds, seabirds), but sustained use likely post-LGM.

Technology & Material Culture — N/A (pre-human).

Movement & Interaction Corridors — N/A (pre-human).

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions — N/A.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Ecological scaffolding (kelp forests, shelf banks, guanaco steppe) set the later human adaptive palette.

Transition

• Deglaciation and shelf flooding will open fjord/archipelago routes, enabling the well-documented Holocene maritime foragers of the southern cone.

The archaeological site of La Ferrassie, located in the Dordogne region of France, provides some of the most compelling evidence of Neanderthal burial customs and ritual behavior. Dating to approximately 50,000 years ago, the site contains eight Neanderthal skeletons, including adults, children, and infants, all of whom appear to have been intentionally buried.

The Young Male Burial and Funeral Offerings

One of the most striking burials at La Ferrassie is that of a 15- to 16-year-old boy, who was laid to rest with a beautifully fashioned stone axe near his hand. His grave also contained charred wild cattle bones, which may be the remains of a funeral feast, suggesting that Neanderthals engaged in ritualized mourning practices.

Nearby, additional burials included the graves of three children and two adults, potentially forming a family burial plot—a rare find in Neanderthal archaeology.

The La Ferrassie 1 Skeleton: A Key Neanderthal Discovery

One of the most important individuals found at the site is La Ferrassie 1, an adult male Neanderthal whose skull, discovered in 1909, remains the largest and most complete Neanderthal skull ever found.

• His large brow ridge, sloping forehead, and protruding midface exhibit the classic Neanderthal traits.
• His teeth were heavily worn, particularly the front incisors, which display a slanted wear pattern not caused by chewing.
• One hypothesis suggests that he habitually held an object, such as an animal hide, between his teeth while scraping it with a tool—a possible behavioral adaptation indicating that Neanderthals used their teeth as tools.

Symbolism and Ritual at La Ferrassie

The complex burial practices at La Ferrassie hint at a Neanderthal belief system:

• One child’s skull was found separately from its lower skeleton and had been covered with a limestone slab with markings on its underside.
• This suggests some form of symbolic behavior or ritual practice, reinforcing the idea that Neanderthals had a relatively advanced cultural framework.

Legacy of the La Ferrassie Neanderthals

The intentional burials at La Ferrassie provide significant evidence that Neanderthals treated their dead with care, possibly engaging in mourning, funerary rituals, and symbolic behavior. These findings challenge older stereotypes of Neanderthals as primitive and instead suggest that they possessed a level of cultural and cognitive complexity previously attributed only to Homo sapiens.

Today, the remains from La Ferrassie are housed at the Museum of Man in Paris, where they continue to provide valuable insights into Neanderthal life, death, and ritual practices.

Southern Africa (28,577 – 7,822 BCE): Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene — Rising Seas, Flood Pulses, and Shell-Midden Shores

Geographic & Environmental Context

During the long swing from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Early Holocene, Southern Africa cohered as a single water-anchored world.
Two complementary spheres organized lifeways:

• Temperate Southern Africa — the Cape littoral and fynbos, Namaqualand, Highveld grasslands, Drakensberg–Lesotho massif, Karoo, and the Maputo–Limpopo basins—where rising seas carved modern embayments and lagoons and river valleys remained fertile through climatic swings.

• Tropical West Southern Africa — the Okavango Delta, Zambezi–Chobe–Cuando/Linyanti–Caprivi wetlands, the Etosha Pan system and Owambo/Cuvelai drains, and the fog-nourished Skeleton Coast—an aquatic–savanna frontier driven by flood pulses and ITCZ rains.

Together these belts formed a ridge–river–coast continuum: shell-rich coves and estuaries at the Cape, grassland and spring corridors inland, and pulsing floodplains and pans to the north.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Bølling–Allerød (c. 14,700–12,900 BCE): Warmer, wetter conditions greened fynbos and Highveld grasslands; Okavango inundations broadened and Caprivi wetlands expanded; woodland belts thickened around Etosha and along the Owambo/Cuvelai drains.

• Younger Dryas (c. 12,900–11,700 BCE): A brief cool–dry pulse contracted marsh edges and inland water bodies; coastal reliance intensified along the Cape and Namaqualand; floodplain use narrowed to perennial channels and levees.

• Early Holocene (after 11,700 BCE): Climatic stabilization brought stronger summer rains in the north and reliable winter–spring moisture in the south; flood regimes regularized, lagoons matured, and grasslands recovered.

Subsistence & Settlement

A continent-spanning broad-spectrum portfolio matured, balancing semi-sedentary anchoring with seasonal mobility:

• Coasts (Temperate south): Strandloper adaptations flourished—large shell middens formed along the Cape and Namaqualand, with fish, mussels, limpets, seals, and seabirds as staples. Semi-sedentary cove camps persisted near rich shorelines and estuaries; inland rounds targeted antelope and dug geophytes in fynbos and grasslands.

• Floodplains & pans (Tropical west): Semi-recurrent levee camps followed fish runs (catfish/tilapia), flood-recession grazing of antelope, and riparian fruits. The Caprivi supported large wet-season encampments on high levees; Etosha margin hunts focused on springbok, zebra, oryx near permanent water; the Skeleton Coast remained a short-visit zone for carrion and shellfish.

Across both spheres, settlement knit together resource-rich nodes—coves, levees, springs, and rock shelters—reoccupied across generations.

Technology & Material Culture

Toolkits were light, durable, and tuned to water:

• Microlithic bladelets and backed segments for composite arrows and spears.

• Fish gorges, bone harpoons, woven basket traps, and stake weirs for estuary and floodplain capture.

• Grinding slabs for wild plant processing; basketry and cordage for transport and drying racks.

• Ostrich eggshell (OES) flasks for water carriage and abundant OES beads as exchange media.

• Early rafts/dugouts likely in calm estuaries and distributaries.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

Mobility braided coasts, valleys, pans, and deltas into one exchange field:

• Coastal corridors linked shell-midden coves with river mouths and inland passes to the Highveld and Drakensberg.

• Flood-ridge “causeways” among Okavango palm islands, Caprivi levee paths, and Omuramba routes to Etosha organized pulse-following rounds.

• The Maputo–Limpopo system and interior river valleys moved beads, pigments, dried fish, and hides between grassland and shore.

These routes created redundancy: when drought pinched a basin or a run failed, another habitat or partner camp stabilized supply.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Symbolic life was vivid and place-anchored:

• Rock art in Drakensberg and Cederberg shelters flourished—polychrome animal–human scenes, trance dances, and eland-linked ceremonies.

• Shell middens functioned as ancestral markers at coastal landings; bead strings and pigment caches accumulated at island groves and pan-edge shelters in the north.

• Seasonal feasts at fish peaks and flood-begin events renewed access rules to weirs, springs, and groves—ritual governance of resources.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Security rested on storage + scheduling + multi-ecozone use:

• Smoked/dried fish and meats, rendered fats, roasted seeds, and stored geophytes buffered lean months and Younger Dryas stress.

• Seasonal anchoring at rich coasts and pulse-following mobility across wetlands and pans spread risk.

• Edge-habitat focus (back-bar lagoons, riparian woods, pan margins) maximized predictable returns as conditions shifted.

Long-Term Significance

By 7,822 BCE, Southern Africa had stabilized as a water-anchored forager world: shell-midden communities lined the temperate coasts, and floodplain societies tuned lifeways to the Okavango–Caprivi–Etosha pulse. The shared operating code—portfolio subsistence, storage, seasonal anchoring with mobile spokes, bead-mediated exchange, and shrine-marked tenure—set the durable foundation for later Holocene traditions of coastal strandlopers, floodplain specialists, and, eventually, pastoral and farming horizons on the distant skyline.

Temperate Southern Africa (28,577 – 7,822 BCE) Upper Pleistocene II — Deglaciation, Coastal Abundance, and Semi-Sedentary Middens

Geographic and Environmental Context

• South Africa (Cape littoral, Highveld, Drakensberg, Karoo, Namaqualand).

• Lesotho and Eswatini.

• Most of Namibia and Botswana, except the far northern sectors (Caprivi, Etosha, Okavango, Skeleton Coast — those are in Tropical Southern Africa).

• Southern Zimbabwe and southwestern Mozambique (Maputo–Limpopo region).

Anchors: Cape littoral & fynbos, Drakensberg–Lesotho massif, Highveld grasslands (Witwatersrand, Free State), Namaqualand semi-desert, Kalahari southern margins, Great Karoo, Maputo–Limpopo basins, southern Zimbabwe plateau (Great Zimbabwe heartland).

• Rising seas drowned coastal plains, forming modern embayments.

• Grasslands contracted somewhat, but river valleys remained fertile.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Bølling–Allerød: wetter, warmer; grasslands greened.

• Younger Dryas: brief cold–dry pulse; coastal reliance intensified.

• Early Holocene: stabilization, rainfall increased.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Strandloper adaptations: large shell middens along Cape and Namaqualand coasts; fish, mussels, seals, seabirds.

• Inland foragers hunted antelope, collected geophytes in fynbos and grasslands.

• Semi-sedentary seasonal camps emerged at resource-rich coves.

Technology & Material Culture

• Microlithic bladelets; fish gorges, bone harpoons.

• Grindstones used for wild plant processing.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Coastal canoe/raft possible for estuaries.

• Inland passes tied grassland foragers with coastal strandlopers.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Rock art flourished in Drakensberg and Cederberg shelters.

• Middens used as ancestral markers.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Seasonal anchoring at rich coasts, plus inland mobility, buffered Younger Dryas stress.

Transition

By 7,822 BCE, shell-midden communities lined coasts, precursors to later strandlopers.

South America Minor (28,577–7,822 BCE) | Upper Pleistocene II: Deglaciation, Kelp-Edge Shores, and Steppe Gateways

Geographic & Environmental Context

South America Minor includes southern Chile (incl. Central Valley), southern Argentina (Patagonia south of the Río Negro/Río Grande), Tierra del Fuego, Falkland/Malvinas, Juan Fernández.

Anchors: Patagonian steppe, Andean icefields, Strait of Magellan–Beagle Channel, Fuegian archipelago, Pacific fjords, Atlantic shelf banks.

• Cordilleran icefields retreated, carving deep fjords along southern Chile; proglacial lakes dotted the eastern steppe.

• Atlantic shelves broadened; coastal banks enriched fisheries.

• Strait of Magellan–Beagle shores gained new landing coves.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Bølling–Allerød warming opened grasslands and woodlands; Younger Dryas reintroduced cold/dry steppe; strong westerlies persisted.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Human presence in the wider south-cone by >14.5 ka (e.g., Monte Verde just north of this subregion) expanded into our zone:

  • Pacific fjords/kelp coasts: shellfish, fish, sea lions, seabirds; shore whaling/scavenging; seaweeds.

  • Patagonian steppe: guanaco hunts; rhea; small game; waterfowl at lakes.

  • Magellan–Beagle: fortified coves used for seasonal aggregation; strand-midden nuclei formed.

Technology & Material Culture

• Flake–blade microlithic industries; bone/antler points; fish gorges; harpoons; hide scrapers; fire-hearths/ovens in coves.

• Early raft/canoe craft (probable) for short crossings.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Kelp highway along Pacific; fjord/archipelago stepping-stones to Fuegian realm.

• Steppe: spring–lake circuits; Andean passes to leeward zones.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Rock-shelter paints/engravings in steppe margins; shell-midden feasting signatures.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Dual coastal–steppe scheduling hedged against cold pulses and resource crashes; storability (smoked meat/fish) prolonged residency.

Transition

By 7,822 BCE, southern cone foragers had staked coast–steppe dual economies, poised for canoe lifeways in Fuegian channels.

Mylodons and Hyppidions (South American horses that will disappear in 8,000 BCE), among other animals known to have been extinct since at least 10,000 BCE,  as well as guanacos and llamas, are the quarry of hunters and nomadic gatherers of around 11,000 at the Piedra Museo settlement in Santa Cruz province of present Argentina.

The Los Toldos settlement, thought to be fourteen thousand six hundred years old, is one hundred kilometers to the north.

Even older is ...