Survival!

The researchers found that modern humans appear to have been constrained within Africa until around 100,000 years ago when changes in the climate allowed them to spread rapidly into the Middle East and Asia

"Something doesn't quite fit here. We know humans are here, we have their stone tools. What is less clear is how widely distributed or sustained such survival was."
"It doesn't seem to be an enormous leap of faith to envisage them [early human ancestors] exploiting other natural materials to provide a little bit of extra shelter."
Rob Hosfield, paleolithic archaeologist, University of Reading, U.K.

Early man: A third of people in modern Europe show genetic traces of populations from sub-Saharan Africa, leading researchers to conclude that people migrated between the continents as early as 11,000 years ago

So, the puzzle that appears to confound anthropologists is why would creatures whose presence arose in the warmth of Africa where there were plentiful plants to forage and abundant game to hunt to sustain life, make a decision to venture further abroad, eventually ending up in life-contesting environments such as Europe and North America where the climate is inclusive of harsh winters requiring such creatures to learn to wear animal skins for warmth, and manipulate their environment to provide shelter from the onset of cold and snow?

Granted, there is that broadly inheritable questing curiosity that has propelled the human animal over countless millennia to search and discover new frontiers to conquer. But to wrench oneself away from a land of warmth and plenty when the competing population might not have been of such abundance that the other existential imperative of instinct-overwhelming survival of claiming resources to sustain life leading to conflict, seems to those studying pre-homo sapiens behaviour to represent a stunning mystery.

Sebastian Willnow/ AFP, Getty Image

A new research paper on archaeological life among paleolithic humanity on the evolutionary lip leaping between small-brained scavengers and large-brained hunter gatherers purports to have discovered a possible answer. And that answer might be a succession of extinctions where emerging humanity fizzled out repeatedly. Although no evidence has been unearthed of "clever behaviours", such as kindling and the control of fire, producing body coverings and the preservation of food, the researchers feel they have approached a plausible explanation.

Early humans, posits paleolithic archaeologist Rob Hosfield, on the evidence available along with scientific intuition, leads him to believe, they simply blundered into the reality of European winter at the end of their overland migration. Once there, they remained, though heaven only knows why; perhaps the thought of turning about and retracing the long, arduous, death-defying journey convinced them that this was the option of choice. It was, in any event, a journey of incremental advancement, taking countless generations for whom memory of what lay behind them might have been impaired.

Conclusion: No "large scale dispersals into the unknown" occurred. The migrants hadn't been driven from their original habitat. No natural disaster occurred to pressure them to embark on such an epic journey, not even the ice age calamity. Once arrived, they simply set down stakes, learning how best to survive in such inclement situations as winter weather. And goodness gracious, we're still coping -- from pre-history to the modern era.

The researchers modelled human migration 80,000 years ago. The model simulates the arrival in Eastern China and Southern Europe and migration out of Africa along vegetated corridors in Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula