Human nature’s dark side helped us spread across the world

Human nature’s dark side helped us spread across the world

Posted on 24 November 2015

New research by an archaeologist at the University of York suggests that betrayals of trust were the missing link in understanding the rapid spread of our own species around the world.



Dr Penny Spikins, of the University’s Department of Archaeology, says that the speed and character of human dispersals changed significantly around 100,000 years ago.

Before then, movement of archaic humans were slow and largely governed by environmental events due to population increases or ecological changes. Afterwards populations spread with remarkable speed and across major environmental barriers.

But Dr Spikins, a senior lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins, relates this change to changes in human emotional relationships. In research published in the open access journal Open Quaternary, she says that neither population increase nor ecological changes provide an adequate explanation for patterns of human movement into new regions which began around 100,000 years ago.

More:
http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2015/research/human-dispersal-moral-disputes/