This chapter looks at the profound advances made over the past two decades or so in our understanding of modern human origins, of how humans lived in southern Africa during Marine Isotope Stages 6−4, and of their cognitive capacities. While genetics and palaeontology cannot establish a central role for southern Africa in H. sapiens’ emergence, the region provides the most detailed early evidence anywhere for a wide range of complex behaviours that speak to the cognitive abilities of those responsible for them: art, jewellery, bone tools, archery, pigment manufacture, pyrotechnology, snaring and trapping of small game, etc. Much of this material is associated with the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort industries and the significance of this is discussed along with how southern Africa’s record relates to the wider Palaeolithic context in Africa and Eurasia. While underlining the importance of sites like Blombos, Border Cave, Klasies River, Pinnacle Point, and Sibhudu, the chapter emphasises the limitations of (near-)coastal/Fynbos Biome-oriented research and the increasing importance of fieldwork in other regions, such as Namaqualand, the southern Kalahari, and highland Lesotho.

Chapter 12 considers why Homo sapiens needs a new name.

Our genus is characterized by a unique dependence on technology, which is first seen in the mid-Pleistocene and becomes more sophisticated through time. The trend towards increasing encephalization appears to accelerate once tools have been acquired, coincident with a focus on meat-eating. This chapter reviews later Pleistocene species, including the Neanderthals, with whom we share many behavioral adaptations. However, there appear to be several critical differences, especially in the potential for language and possibly figurative expression, that may have made the difference over millennia, so that by 25,000 years ago we were the only human species left on Earth.

Just over 50,000 years ago – a blink in evolutionary time – there were at least six, possibly seven, human species alive: sapiens, neanderthal, denisova, floresiensis, luzonensis, remnants of erectus and, perhaps, the last of Homo naledi. This is similar to contemporary primates, with chimpanzees, gorillas, baboons and so forth all living side by side. It underlines the important fact that sapiens is one hominin species among many and that it is firmly part of nature and does not stand apart from it. However, we are used to occupying a unique solo position as the only humans, though such a situation accounts for less than 1% of the time since we separated from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees. This has led to the conceit and falsehood that evolution is a linear trail, marked through ever greater brain growth, leading to us. It also adds to the challenge when looking at the fossil record to determine whether some ancient species were indeed our ancestors or just side chains in a rich hominin tree. A further difficulty is that taxonomic descriptions imply clean leaps from species to species, such as between Homo habilis and Homo erectus. However, each child is a close genetic variant of its parents, and there are no hard borders as changes accrue across millennia. Late Australopithecus looks closer to the genus Homo than to early Australopithecines. Determining ‘when is a species a species’ is difficult (Barraclough, ). Adding to the uncertainty, interbreeding between different human species appears to be the rule rather than the exception, with there being complex flows of genetic material. It is a jigsaw for which we do not know how many pieces there are, nor how they might interlink. Further, the pieces are often found in fragments of single bones, and they can be so rare that many finds remain known by their ‘site name’. The last 10 years have seen enormous leaps in palaeoanthropology, from the discovery of previously unknown (and entirely unexpected) human species, to advances in molecular biology that have allowed us to sequence the Neanderthal genome and better estimate temporal links between fossils. Genetic data tell us that there are several other hominin species as yet undiscovered, whose ghostly footprints are currently seen only through a unique genetic imprint across some human populations.

At the heart of humankind is the paradox that we share the molecules of life with a hundred billion species, but we are also unique. The question of what makes us special, or even whether we are exceptional, has preoccupied our species for thousands of years. Although the idea of a single location for humanity’s origin is antithetical to the evidence, the complex picture of human evolution is often publicly conveyed through simple linear narratives. This chapter instead communicates the beautiful complexities and intricacies of the story of our evolutionary trajectory. It considers archaeological evidence for the development of the human mind before focusing on two aspects of human uniqueness (or otherwise). Tool use and the use of fire are of especial significance to the evolution of the 'full package' of human behavioural modernity, but are we as extraordinary in employing these actions as we may think? Examples from animals such as sponging dolphins, savannah chimpanzees, and 'firehawks' provide a way of unpicking enigmatic elements of our exceptionality.

The Introduction provides an overview of the book’s thirteen chapters, outlining its main goal: to explain the basic notions of prehistoric archeology and its important role in helping us to gain a better understanding of the modern-day human condition. The structure of the book is exposed in five main parts. The first part (Chapters 1 and 2) defines prehistoric archeology and the different fields of knowledge integrated into its multidisciplinary scope. The second part (Chapters 3 through 5) explores the evolutionary indicators of what it means to be human, providing a concise geographical and chronological framework using examples from the archeology. The third part (Chapters 6 and 7) focuses on the technosocial evolutionary processes leading up to Homo sapiens, the last surviving hominin on the planet. The fourth part (Chapters 8 through 12) applies the concepts explained in the previous chapters to consider how the most challenging issues facing modern humanity today are elucidated by viewing them through the lens of prehistoric archeology. The fifth and final part (Chapter 13) concludes the book with a lucid interpretation of the significant role played by prehistoric archeology and evolutionary theory in the modern world.

Chapter 6 presents data about the first members of our own species, Homo sapiens, and how they lived and shared the planet with at least five other species of Homo. It presents the cultural succession of the Upper Paleolithic and the repercussions that our species had on the planet and other life forms as members spread out into virgin territories of the world.

Our young and originally tropical species Homo sapiens has spread, in an amazingly short period of time, to occupy more areas of our planet than any other animal species has ever contrived to do. Human beings reside on all five continents, and in virtually every environment that those continents have to offer.

Like every one of the many millions of other organisms with which we share our planet, the species Homo sapiens is the product of a long evolutionary history. The first very simple cellular organisms spontaneously arose on Earth close to four billion years ago, and their descendants have since diversified to give us forms as different as streptococci, roses, sponges, anteaters, and ourselves.

A description of some of the methods used in racial genetics and genomics is essential if we are to understand why claims have been made that modern genomics establishes the existence of race.

As scientific knowledge increased, the outward physical variation of humans on this planet posed a mystery to natural historians, and begged explanation. Why were there so many different “kinds” of people on the planet? If scientists could understand how this variation worked in nature, then perhaps, the reasoning went, we could understand why people appear different.

Why do some researchers care so much about race in their experimental designs? It is easy to understand why a racist forced by inherent bias would take this approach. But why would a nonracist biologist insist on doing racial science? As far as we can tell, there are two major reasons for this: medical expediency and the discovery of the genetic basis of complex traits. We would suggest that the first of these is a red herring, and the second a brick wall.

Research prior to human genomics opened several doors to race-focused research, but the availability of genomes was a game-changer. As we pointed out in Chapter 4, there is nothing inherently wrong in using racial or ethnic boundaries as research tools for trying to discover biological patterns within the human species – if they are justified.

A big part of the story of our species, and of how variation is apportioned within it, involves how our ancestors spread over the globe. After all, if we had simply stayed in our place of origin in Africa and not ventured out, there would be no question that we are a single entity. That is because if our species had been restricted to a single location (as many others are), two things would have ensured that differentiation into separate entities would not have occurred.

Humans have been roaming around the planet since the very beginning, encountering other humans in the process and doubtless forming opinions about them. And since human beings seem to have an innate urge to classify everything – doing which, after all, lies at the core of our way of mentally organizing and understanding the world around us – there is little doubt that, from the earliest days, our symbolic forebears categorized each other in some way.

As the nineteenth century dawned, the idea that species might not forever remain as the Creator had made them was no longer unthinkable. At one end of the range of possibilities was Buffon’s limited notion of within-species change; at the other was Lamarck’s vision of lineages transforming themselves through inner impulse.