The Unstoppable Human Species: Deleted chapter epigrams, chapter summaries.

© Copyright 2022 John J. Shea.

Note: Copyright claim applies ONLY to non-quoted text, in red, below.

In preparing The Unstoppable Human Species book, my editors at Cambridge University Press recommended removing epigrams I had put at the start of each chapter.  They were “decorative” (as they put it), and securing permissions to use them would unduly delay book production.  Fair enough.  Still, I had fun selecting them and they do sort of set up the contents of each chapter.  So, below, I have reproduced the epigrams by chapter.  When I get my hard copy of The Unstoppable Human Species book , I will print them out and paste them onto the first page of the relevant chapter.  Others may wish to do the same.

Book Abstract

The Unstoppable Species explains how humans became invulnerable to all but the most severe, biosphere-level, extinction threats.  John Shea argues we owe our unstoppability to our global diaspora, a condition humans accomplished during prehistoric times.  How did they do it?  How did early humans survive long enough to become our ancestors?  Long before agriculture allowed large-scale migrations, early humans dispersed in small numbers over short distances again and again over thousands of years.  As they dispersed, they used a suite of Ancestral Survival Skills to overcome challenges they faced in new habitats.  By placing “how did they survive?” questions front and center, The Unstoppable Species offers up an original and thought-provoking perspective on human evolution.

Chapter 1. An Unstoppable Species.

(no epigram)

         This chapter introduces the book’s main themes, differences between dispersals and migrations and their roles in how humans settled the world during prehistoric times.  It distinguishes paleoanthropologists “who questions,” questions about prehistoric human identities) from their “how questions,” questions about how prehistoric people overcame specific survival challenges.  It argues paleoanthropologists have spent far too much time and energy investigating who questions than how questions and that progress towards understanding our evolved unstoppability requires more research on how questions.  The chapter also explains differences between traditional narrative approaches to explaining humans evolution and the comparative approach this work employs.

Chapter 2. Hard Evidence: Dates, Fossils, Artifacts, Genes.

Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth.

Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade (1989, Paramount Pictures, Screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan).[1]

         This chapter reviews the hard evidence, the dates, fossils, artifacts and genes that paleoanthropologists use in developing hypotheses about prehistoric human population movements.  It also touches briefly on the principles that guide interpretations of this evidence.  Each of these topics is the subject of entire scientific disciplines, and so, this chapter focuses on the basics –key terms and concepts that recur in this book’s later chapters.  NOTE: From this chapter onwards, this work abbreviates dates in the thousands of years as “Ka” (12,700 years ago = 12.7 Ka) and dates in the millions of years ago as “Ma” (1,800,000 years ago = 1.8 Ma).

Chapter 3. Who are these people?

Well, who are you?

I really wanna know.

Tell me, who are you?

'Cause I really wanna know.

Chorus: Who are you? Who, who, who, who?

The Who (1978) “Who are you?”  Album: Who are You?

         This chapter puts humans in our evolutionary context, answering such “who questions” as we need to answer before investigating “how questions.”  First, it explains where we fit in terms of broader patterns of primate evolution.  Next, it shows how human behavior differs from that of other animals.  Finally, it considers how we humans differ from one another.  The most important differences among humans are cultural differences.  Culture has several distinct properties for which we should expect to find evidence in the prehistoric record.  Failing to find such evidence can suggest problems in our methods for investigating human evolution and prehistory.

Chapter 4. How did they get here?

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Talking Heads, “Once in a lifetime,” Album: Remain in Light (1981) Sire Records.

         This chapter introduces a new approach to investigating “how” questions about prehistoric human population movements.  Rather than speculating about specific population movement routes, “Survival Archaeology” asks how prehistoric humans solved essential survival problems as they moved to and settled in new habitats.  Ethnographic studies of pre-industrial humans as well as the modern-day wilderness survival and “bushcraft” literature shed light on what these Ancestral Survival Skills were.  The chapter argues that humans overcame prehistoric survival challenges by using complex combinations of Ancestral Survival Skills.  It closes by proposing some reasonable assumptions about how earlier humans used those skills.

Chapter 5. Ancient Africans and Their Ancestors

“Africa is nothing like The Lion King!”

Trey Parker and Matt Stone (2011) The Book of Mormon (the musical).

         This chapter examines African evidence for human origins, behavior, and population movements between 50-600 Ka.  It compares evidence associated with Homo sapiens and Homo heidelbergensis.  H. sapiens and H. heidelbergensis solved survival challenges in broadly similar ways, with humans occasionally devoted more time and energy to technology (“technological intensification”).  The African evidence is entirely consistent with dispersal, showing not even a hint of migration.  This and other evidence suggest humans replaced earlier H. heidelbergensis not by an abrupt evolutionary event originating in one place and radiating outwards, but instead by a gradual, continent-wide process whose mode and tempo varied widely.

Chapter 6. Going East: First Asians

"For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars."

Thomas Edward Lawrence (1926) The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

         This chapter surveys the evidence for Homo sapiens behavior between 30-500 Ka in Southwest and South Asia (the East Mediterranean Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian Subcontinent).  These regions have much in common with those parts of Africa on roughly the same latitude, and their paleoanthropological record differs little from one another or with that of Northern Africa.  Moving into these regions seems to have required few major changes to Ancient Africans’ survival strategies.  Alternatively, South and Southwestern Asia could have been part of a larger Afro-Asiatic region in which H. sapiens evolved out of H. heidelbergensis.

Chapter 7. Early Southeast Asians and Sahulians

The more you know, the less you need.

Aranda (Aboriginal Australian) aphorism.

         This chapter reviews the evidence for the peopling of Southeast Asia and Australasia before 30 Ka.  These regions’ sparse fossil record lacks firm geochronology, but it appears humans established themselves in Southeastern Asia sometime between 45-75 Ka.  Archaeological evidence from these regions contrasts with that from Southern and Southwestern Asia; nevertheless, Southeast Asian and Australasian sites preserve some of the world’s oldest-dated representative artworks and the oldest evidence for oceangoing watercraft.  Humans’ arrival in Southeast Asia coincides with last appearances of several other hominin species.  Their arrival in Australia precedes mass-extinctions of that continent’s marsupial megafauna (large animals).

Chapter 8. Neanderthal Country

“All in all, Neanderthals did pretty well for themselves considering there were no clothing or shoe stores, hot showers or heating systems.”

Ralph Solecki, excavator of Shanidar Cave, Iraq.  (Interview in The Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2013).

This chapter reviews evidence associated with the Neanderthals, extinct hominins who lived in Europe and western Asia before humans settled these regions after 40-50 Ka.  It compares evidence for Neanderthals’ survival strategies to those Ancient Africans practiced.  Many of the differences between Neanderthals and Ancient Africans seem to have arisen from Neanderthals’ living persistently small, highly-mobile groups and from their investing less time and energy in technology.

Chapter 9. Going North: Early Eurasians

“They invented inventing.”

The History Channel’s, “Caveman Museum Docent” commercial.[2]

         This chapter reviews how humans settled northern Eurasia between 12-45 Ka, comparing their survival strategies to those Neanderthals deployed under similar circumstances.  Both hominins shared the same suite of ancestral survival skills, but they used them differently and in distinctive ways.  Humans devised calorie-conserving superior insulation from cold (clothing, artificial shelters) and innovative strategies for extracting calories from plant-food-impoverished landscapes.  They used artifacts as “social media” to create and maintain extensive alliance networks, a strategy that resonates with contemporary audiences but also one with deep roots among Ancestral Survival Skills.

Chapter 10.  A Brave New World: The Americas

MIRANDA: O brave new world, that has such people in’t!

PROSPERO: 'Tis new to thee.

William Shakespeare (1611) The Tempest (Act 5, Scene 1).

         This chapter examines the peopling of the “New World” (Beringia and the Americas) between 12-32 Ka.  Like the peopling of Sahul, population movements brought Homo sapiens from Asia to American continents and offshore islands with no prior hominin presence.  Historically, archaeologists envisioned these movements as land-based, passing through an “ice-free corridor” between major continental glaciers  around 13 Ka, but evidence increasingly shows that humans were already present south of the ice sheets significantly earlier than this corridor existed.  Unlike in Sahul, Ancestral Native Americans systematically hunted many of the megafauna that became extinct during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.  Extensive alliance networks whose most durable archaeological traces include distinctive stoneworking traditions, such as the Clovis Complex may have played a role in these mass extinctions.

Chapter 11.  Movable Feasts: Food Production and Migration

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.”

Ernest Hemingway (1950) A Movable Feast.[3]

         This chapter considers the relationship between food production and migration.  Before Holocene times (>12 Ka) archaeological evidence consistently shows that human population movements were dispersals and not migrations.  People moved into new habitats either as individuals or in small groups, reconfiguring their economies and social identities in their destinations.  From mid-Holocene times onwards (after 4-8 Ka); however, the archaeological record begins showing increasing evidence for migrations.  Migrating humans took their food and their culture, their “movable feasts,” with them.  This chapter argues that recent human migrations result from food production using domesticated plants and animals.  It describes how food production altered some of humanity’s responses to the basic six survival problems in ways that not only encourage migrations but also make them easier for archaeologists to detect, albeit within a limited chronological “window of visibility.”  A case study from sub-Saharan Africa shows that archeologists can detect prehistoric migrations, but we have to ask different questions about them than traditional “who questions.”

Chapter 12.  We know the way: Migrations to oceanic islands

We read the wind and the sky when the sun is high

We sail the length of the seas on the ocean breeze

At night, we name every star

We know where we are

We know who we are, who we are…

We know the way!

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foa'i (2016) We know the way.  (Album: Moana: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Walt Disney Records).

         This chapter examines prehistoric migrations to oceanic islands.  First, it considers the special difficulties of reaching such islands, and reviews claims about Pleistocene pre-agricultural movement to oceanic islands.  Next, it focuses on the peopling of the Pacific Ocean, the fastest and most geographically-extensive human population movement of all time.  Though some archaeologists have speculated that these islands were colonized accidentally, the evidence shows that these were purposeful voyages by people who knew exactly who they were, where they were going, and how to get there.  Lowered sea levels during the LGM/MIS 2 shortened distances between some islands and possibly aided humans living in Sunda, Wallacea, and Sahul in settling Near Oceania.  Movements into Remote Oceania commenced around 4 Ka, and movements into Polynesia after 1 Ka.  Finally, the chapter considers future human migrations on Earth and beyond.  The latter, it argues, will not be “just like Star Trek.”

Chapter 13. Unstoppable?  Extinction threats

Rear Admiral:  The end is inevitable, Maverick.  Your kind is headed for extinction.

Maverick: Maybe so, Sir.  But not today.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022, Paramount Pictures, Screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher MacQuarrie).[4]

         This chapter considers whether Homo sapiens is as “unstoppable” as the Titanic was “unsinkable.”  Reviewing scientifically credible threats to our species long-term survival, this chapter shows some threats looming large in the popular imagination are actually extremely unlikely to cause human extinction.  Actual threats to long-term humans survival, such as meteor impacts and large-scale volcanism, garner far less attention than they deserve and they share a similar solution.

Chapter 14. Conclusion

All things are ready, if our minds be so.

William Shakespeare (1598) Henry V, Act, Scene 3.

         This chapter reviews what we think we know about how earlier humans established our global diaspora. This evidence consistently refutes the hypothesis that humans migrated before they had storable and transportable food sources, such as those arising from food production.  Pleistocene humans did not migrate, they dispersed.  To explain these dispersals, this chapter first compares what we can observe about differences between living humans and other animals to what we think we know about the earliest Homo sapiens populations.  Next, it argues that humans relied on a suite of Ancestral Survival Skills to overcome the obstacles they faced while dispersing.  Finally, the chapter considers near, longer, and longest-term challenges to our survival and what we must do to overcome them.

 Footnotes

[1] This is a tautology.  Facts are, by their very nature, true.  If they are not true, then they are not facts.  Lazy screenwriting.

[2] A television advertisement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8e2z75V8iI) for the History Channel in which modern-day “Caveman” (a character formerly appearing in commercials for the GEICO Insurance Agency) educates ignorant museum visitors about their Pleistocene ancestors’ accomplishments.

[3] Epigraph on title page of Hemingway’s (1964) A Moveable Feast.

[4] Up to 2022, the alternative was “Bluto’s Speech” from Animal House (1978, Universal Pictures, Screenwriters: Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller)

What? Over? Did you say 'over'? Nothing is over until we decide it is!

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!...

It ain't over now, 'cause when the goin' gets tough, the tough get goin'.

Who's with me? Let's go! Come on!...

My wife vetoed it before my editors had the chance to do so.