early migration timeframe

The migration of our ancestors by various routes out of Equatorial Africa towards Europe and other parts of the world took millions of years to accomplish.

Unlike later migrants imbued with religious fears about falling off the earth or being ambushed by dragons or heathens, the first migrants had neither concept of geographic limits nor enemies other than animals who would eat them.

Like later migrants, though, some would have lacked the stamina or the physique necessary to travel too far. Children, pregnant women and the elderly hold up all traveling tribes, and it is likely that as soon as a migrant group had found a relatively hospitable land - be it only a few day's trek from their original homeland - they would have stayed in that land until population pressures forced another migration.

Although a monumental trek overall, it was by incremental migration and settlement that our early ancestors managed to spread throughout the river and coastal regions of Africa and beyond, and when an impenetrable barrier was met reverse migration took place, inevitably involving warfare.

To give a rough idea of the time frame, the earliest Hominoid (man-like) fossil was found in Namibia on the west coast of Africa, 20 degrees south of the Equator. Bearing in mind that our primate ancestors probably developed as long ago as 225,000,000 BC in the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic Era along with the other mammals, the dating of this earliest known fossil called Otavi Pithecus Namibiensis - 12,500,000 BC - tells us not only something about the passage of time needed for development but also something about the earliest route the migrants took - south rather than north.

Dated 3,000,000 BC, "Lucy" an early Hominid (more like a modern human being than a Hominoid) was found in Ethiopia, along with flint knapping tools and axes dated 2,500,000 BC indicating the earliest industry.

In Tanzania, also on the East African coast, fossils of Homo Habilis were found and dated 2,400,000 BC, along with the earliest single structural home, a windbreak, dated 1,750,000 BC, indicating the earliest habitation.

Homo Erectus (upright man) was discovered in Kenya, between Tanzania and Ethiopia, and dated 1,600,000 BC.

In the southern area of Africa, the earliest fossil remains of man are Australopithecus Africanus, and Transvaal Man - Pleisianthropus transvaalensis - both dated 1,000,000 BC.

In the northern area of Africa, the earliest fossil remains of man were found in Algeria. Dated 500,000 BC, the Ternifine-Tangier Man, Atlanthropus, indicated a 500,000 year difference in the fossil record between him and the Transvaal Man of the south dated 1,000,000 BC.

By 500,000 BC, then - if not thousands of years before - our ancestors had reached the western Mediterranean and were in reach of Spain.