This chapter starts from the beginning, explaining the evolution of the first human ancestors, seven

million years ago. Our closest living relatives are the gorilla, chimpanzee, and the bonobo. We all
originated in Africa, the first to leave being the Homo erectus. Neanderthals have always been
depicted as brainless, wild, careless creatures, but evidence shows they actually cared for their sick
and buried their dead. "The Great Leap Forward" is what Diamond calls the earliest signs of
standardized tools, jewelry, bone tools, and more. This great leap was 50,000 years ago. Also at this
time is the spread of hominids to New Guinea and Australia. Large animal species that were not
evolved to defend themselves against such predators were wiped out. Eurasia came next. In the
Americas the Clovis people start the 1st colony. Some archaeologists claim there were pre-Clovis
people but Diamond believes if this were true we would have found significant evidence by now.
Obvious explanations fail to explain why Eurasia became the most advanced and Africa didn't even
though it had a head-start.

According to Diamond, the ancestors of human beings broke off as a separate lineage
from other animals about 7 million years ago in Africa. Human ancestors began walking
upright around 4 million years ago, and they moved to Eurasia around 1 or 2 million
years ago. Sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, not long after human
fossils began to resemble modern homo sapiens, our race created an explosion of new
technological and artistic innovations that far surpassed anything previously created.
Archaeologists call this period the Great Leap Forward.
Shortly after the Great Leap Forward, between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago, the
human race expanded its territory. Although human ancestors had remained in Africa
and Eurasia for millions of years, people now moved outward to Australia, the South
Pacific, and the coldest northern regions of Eurasia. The precise dates of human arrival
in the Americas are harder to determine, but the colonization happened at least 12,000
or 13,000 years ago. Diamond thinks it is remarkable that human beings moved into all
habitable areas of the globe in a few tens of thousands of years without the benefit of
modern technology.
Diamond begins his consideration of the fates of human societies around 11,000 B.C.,
or 13,000 years ago, because during this period all the habitable continents were
populated with hunter-gatherers, and no society had advanced technologically to
become farmers or city dwellers. Diamond asks whether a modern archaeologist,
transported back 13,000 years, could determine which continents people would have
the best chances for developing advanced technologies. Considering each continent in
turn, he lists the qualities one might consider to be advantages.

The first chapter is a brief history of the human race from our appearance on the planet
Earth as an offshoot of a species of apes in Africa to the cusp of our most glorious era,
starting about 13,000 years ago after the end of the last ice age.'

The apes of ancient Africa split into 3 different groups 7 million years ago. These groups
were the ancestors of modern gorillas, modern chimpanzees and modern humans.
About 4.5 million years ago, our ancestors began standing in an upright posture, and 2
million years ago, human brain size relative to body increased close to the proportions
of humans today. Human beings first moved out of Africa (probably) about a million
years ago. We spread to all corners of the earth except the Australian and American
continents. The reason for this is that Australia was separated from the Eurasian
landmass by sea and primitive humans had no boats. The reason for not reaching the
American continent was that it was separated from the Eurasian continent by the Bering
strait, which was inaccessible because primitive humans had yet to discover warm
clothing to help them cope with the cold climate.

Around 500,000 years ago, our close ancestor homo erectus appeared. He would learn
to make tools of stone and also discover fire.
Around 50,000 years ago, our human ancestors really got started. This was the time of
the Cro-Magnon Man. Cro-Magnon man was physically and behavorially similar to
modern humans. Cro-Magnon Man made relatively complex stone tools with multiple
pieces and specialised functions. Human beings around this time learned to make
clothes, art, culture, boats, developed language. Our ancestors began to colonize the
previously unreachable Australian continent as well as the American continent. In our
ancestors' expansion efforts, their near human cousins were displaced and eventually
were eliminated. These near human cousins were Neanderthals and also some
indigenous Chinese and Indonesian species. It is interesting to read that some
anthropologists have found physical similarities between modern Chinese and these
ancient Chinese humans. This disputes the account that Cro-Magnon Man evolved and
displaced all other near human species, as it did to the Neanderthals from Europe.
Instead the evidence suggests that at least some of the cousins of Cro-Magnon Man coevolved or interbred with him to bring about modern humans. The issue is disputed and
evidence not wholly conclusive.

An interesting observation the writer made is that at around this period of 50,000 years
ago, that he calls the Great Leap Forward, large mammals or megafauna began to
become extinct at an astonishingly fast rate. Modern Australia doesn't have native large
mammals with sizes on the scale of elephants, giraffes or even bears. However, fossil
evidence indicates that pre-historic Australia did have giant kangaroos, rhino-like
marsupials, a marsupial leopard and some huge reptiles.

The author ends the chapter by considering the states of human development in each
continent at slightly after the beginning of the Great Leap Forward. Each continent
seemed to have certain favourable conditions for why it would become the site of rapid
human development. Even though we know in the end Eurasia won this race, we still
need to explore why and now we have the groundwork.

The second thought that came to mind as I read chapter 1 is also related to Megafauna.
The Great Leap Forward marked the first time humans really were responsible for mass
extinctions. This is truly amazing! Our ancestors were eliminating entire species before
they even had guns. I didn't know any species went extinct because of us before the
Mauritian Dodo. This, of course, is nothing to be proud of. I think too many of us still
believe the world so large, our needs so small that we can't really have a significant
effect on the Earth. The best example of this would be our relative inaction towards
global warming. If with clubs and axes we could wipe out the Megafauna from Earth,
how much more damagae could be done by altering the global temperature? Yet we
continue to live our lives as if nothing was happening. I shudder at the thought.