Changing Ideas and Current Evidence on Prehistoric Human Migration

Secondary world history surveys typically skim over the Paleolithic in a day or two, or jump directly to Neolithic developments that led to agriculture. The beginning of “history” is often portrayed as the start of settled agricultural communities, or even the development of river valley civilizations. By glossing over this very long period of human prehistory, students begin the course with a distorted view of historical chronology and its global context, and teachers miss an opportunity to lay the foundation for asking historiographical questions. The question of how and when the continents came to be populated is a fascinating topic in itself, and a good way to begin the course with an examination of how we know what we know, and how historiography on this topic has changed dramatically both through accumulation of evidence from earlier work in paleontology, and the discovery of entirely new types of evidence, such as data on climate change, new and improved methods of dating artifacts, and DNA studies of living populations such as The Genographic Project. The presentation will review selected nineteenth century sources such as The Antiquity of Man, the discovery of Neanderthal man, and the Piltdown hoax and discuss controversies of the time to provide historical context for current theories and methods. The presenter will introduce interactive online resources that display current evidence and methods to illustrate for students the impact of scientific research on theories about the remote past. Finally, the presentation will explore the implications of this new evidence for formulating historiographical questions in the classroom, in addition to raising contemporary social and political questions related to current theories on early human migration.