The African Origins of Humanity, Prehistory–10,000 BCE

The first human characteristic of hominins, specifically, the ability to walk for short periods or distances on hind legs.

In the Australian Dreamtime, the shaman constructs an imaginary reality of the lineage's origins and roots, going back to the time when the world was created and the creator devised all customs, rituals, and myths.

A technique which consisted of flaking a hard piece of rock (especially flint, chert, or obsidian) on both sides into a triangle-shaped hand axe, with cutting edges, a handheld side, and a point.

Broken forests with interspersed bush and grasslands.

A stone technique where stone workers first shaped a hard rock into a cylinder or cone.

Early stone-carving technique, which consisted of splitting a stone into two, thereby producing sharp edges on both fragments. See also Acheulian and Levallois toolmaking.

Landscape in which the topsoil unfreezes during the summer and supports dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, mosses, and lichens.

Forerunners of humans after genetically splitting from the chimpanzees.

The hypothesis that the people who eventually colonized the Americas spent approximately 10,000 years stranded on the Bering Land Bridge (Beringia), the now-submerged plain beneath the Bering Sea.

Old Stone Age, 2.5 million-11,500 years ago.

Prehuman species of the genus Australopithecus that existed before those classed under the genus Homo.

The original settlers of Australia, who arrived some 60,000-50,000 years before the arrival of European settlers at the end of the eighteenth century CE.

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