(8) The world’s ‘first oyster bar’ was discovered at Abdur in Eritrea, a 125,000-year-old reef with oyster meal remains and obsidian tools clearly visible together.
(9) The magnificent cave paintings of Chauvet, like these rhinoceros, are perhaps mistakenly thought to mark a human epiphany or coming of age in Europe.
(10) New Guinean leader Yali at a cargo cult ceremony on the north coast (1956).
(11) From the ‘Apollo II’ rock shelter in Namibia, this cat (or possibly bovid) may be the earliest evidence of representational painting in the world, dated to 40-60,000 years ago.
(12) One of the Sunghir burials, an old man, found near Moscow (dated to 24,000 years ago) with perforated fox canines in his cap, 20 ivory armlets and bracelets, and draped in thousands of ivory beads, a dramatic early example of personal ornamentation.
(13) Early Gravettian figurines made from (from left to right) fired clay from Moravia, mammoth ivory from France, the Willendorf Venus in limestone from Austria, and ivory from the Ukraine.
(14) Late Upper Palaeolithic reindeer carvings – on the tip of a mammoth tusk from Montastruc, France (above) and on a bone spear-thrower from Laugerie Basse, France (below).
(15) Just visible in a faded mulberry colour, to the left of the lens cap, is the oldest dated rock painting of a human figure, 17,000 years old from the Kimberley region of Australia.
(16) The author conducts a genetic survey among the Semang, who are most likely to be relicts of the first beachcombing trek out of Africa.
(17) Faces of our time: (from top, left to right) a Chinese grandmother and grandchild, a boy from the Highlands of New Guinea, an English man, and an Australian aboriginal from Arnhemland.
(18) The image of Out-of-Africa Eve, used in the documentary ‘Out of Eden’/‘The Real Eve’. Reconstructed from one of the best-preserved Skhul remains from the Levant exodus, her features reflect a robust build typical for that period, a relatively narrow skull and a broad upper face.
(19) China’s Liujiang skull, with its clearly robust but modern features, recently re-dated to at least 68,000 years ago, suggests very early spread of Anatomically Modern Humans out of Africa, before the Toba explosion.
(20) The Minatogawa 1 skull from Okinawa, dating to the Last Glacial Maximum, may ultimately be an early ancestor of Japan’s modern aboriginal Ainu population.
(21) This female figurine from Mal’ta near Lake Baikal, carved from mammoth ivory and, dated to around 23,000 years ago, evidences the far spread of mammoth-based hunting culture.
(22) Paleontologists try out for size a reconstruction of a mammoth-bone hut, first unearthed during excavations at Mezin in the Ukraine.
(23) Now virtually extinct, the Tehuelche of Tierra del Fuego (photographed here in 1905) are the only modern group with features as robust as Australians and highland New Guineans.
(24) Archaeologist James Adovasio surveys the numerous layers showing occupation of Meadowcroft Rockshelter, one of the most important potential pre-Clovis challenge sites in America.
(25) A Native American from the Cree tribe takes his own DNA sample during the research associated with The Real Eve project.
(26) James Chatters with the reconstruction and skull model of Kennewick Man, showing the mysterious jutting chin and possibly Caucasoid features.
(27) The forensic reconstruction of Luzia, the twenty-two-year-old woman from over 11,500 years ago, whose skull was found in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
(28) Carved Olmec head from Mexico – do Luzia’s facial features hint at a forgotten link?
Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World Page 47