ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses four issues: our status as an invasive species; how often and when we dispersed across Asia; the modernity debate and origins of “modern” behaviour; and most contentiously, why we were so successful as a colonising species. The colonisation of Asia was emphatically not a single event. Instead, its basic geography dictated that dispersal had to take place north or south of the deserts and mountains of central Asia, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. The southern dispersal from Arabia to India, Southeast Asia and Wallacea was easier for a species that originated in Africa in that winter temperatures were generally above freezing and plant foods were available year-round. Humans differ from extant apes in having a period of early childhood that occurs between infancy and middle, or juvenile, childhood.
