It was during such times that the first true humans began to appear on the plains of Africa and Eurasia.  Human development was by that time actually several million years old already; some early versions had in fact appeared on the African savanna some five million years ago.  Initially, these proto-humans must have been ill equipped to survive in this environment, and probably succeeded there only by scavenging, by eating the left-overs of some four-footed carnivore’s earlier meal.  If they tried to make a kill of their own, they could have had little more than sticks and stones to do so, and probably were never very successful at it.  Still, they not only survived, but made remarkable progress.  They learned that their hunts would produce far better results if they cooperated with one another, and since such cooperation requires some form of communication, they might even have learned to express themselves verbally – though it could hardly have resembled anything that might be considered a language.

By about a million years ago, these proto-humans had evolved into what is now called ‘homo erectus’ – the upright man – and were beginning to spread out from their African homeland.  But the freezing conditions of the Pleistocene probably kept them mostly to the southern latitudes – at least for another 200,000 years or so, until they learned to control and make use of fire.  That milestone in human development brought vast changes to their existence and allowed them to occupy regions and places in which they could not previously have existed.  And by about 300,000 years ago, humans had evolved into ‘homo sapiens’ – the thinking man.

Then, perhaps 100,000 years ago, there appeared a new variety of ‘homo sapiens’, the much maligned Neanderthals.  Their name derives from the Neander Valley in Germany, where the first fossil remains were discovered in a cave in 1865.  Little is known of their origin, but by about 70,000 year ago, during the last of the Ice Age’s glacial periods, these Neanderthals appeared in Europe as a well-adapted race of human beings.  20th-century literature long depicted the Neanderthals as crouching, squat, and brutal creatures, with huge jaws and brows, with little or no chin or forehead, and only the most savage intelligence – they were pictured, in short, as little more than hairy apes, the proto-type cavemen of popular imagination.  Problem was, this picture was mostly wrong, as was much of the traditional knowledge about the Neanderthals.

These classic ice-age people probably averaged a height of about five feet or so – about the same as most 17th and 18th-century Europeans.  If they were indeed robust and muscular, their compact build conserved body heat far more efficiently than a taller, lankier frame might have done.  Their faces did have heavy browridges, small cheekbones and large teeth; they had relatively large hands and feet, and appear to have walked in a more irregular, more lumbering fashion than do modern humans, but it is highly unlikely that they were the hairy, shuffling brutes of popular lore.  In all likelihood, Neanderthals were much like modern humans, of varying skin and hair color, depending on the regions in which they lived and evolved.  Their brains were in fact slightly larger than those of modern humans, though greater volume does not necessarily mean greater intelligence.  But Neanderthals were certainly far more intelligent than any humans that had gone before.  They were cave dwellers, but occasionally they built camps in the open.  They wore clothing of sorts, used fire, cooperated in hunting small and medium-sized animals – perhaps even such big game as elk and caribou – and they made use of a variety of stone tools and wooden spears..

Most remarkable of all, the Neanderthals appear to have developed a surprising compassion – more so, in fact, than many native people have shown in recent history.  They were the first humans to intentionally bury their dead, and they are known to have cared for their sick and injured.  Archaeologists have uncovered fossil remains of older Neanderthal folks with physical infirmities that would have left them all but incapable of surviving on their own.  Earlier humans would inevitably have abandoned such aged or handicapped individuals, who doubtlessly presented the family groups with serious problems – in fact, many of the nomadic North American Indians did so even in historic times.  But Neanderthals apparently made a place for them in their bands and provided for them.

But not all was love and compassion in Neanderthal life.  Evidence shows that they sometimes practiced cannibalism and even infanticide, though it is not clear whether such incidents were a part of primitive religious rituals or the actual need for food.  Such rituals, at any rate, are a common thread among many native peoples of the world, and may have been even more so in the distant past.  Certainly many of the ancients believed that such qualities as strength or courage could be acquired by eating symbolic portions of a person who had possessed them in life.  Religious rituals sometimes included cannibalism, as the horrified Spaniards were to witness among the Aztecs of Mexico, for example.  But among most societies throughout history, the cultural taboo against cannibalism was far too strong to permit such practice to become a habitual form of nourishment, and that was probably true even among the Neanderthals.

The Neanderthals, at any rate, were resourceful enough to endure for some 60,000 years, and even managed to coexist for several thousand years with a new race of modern humans who suddenly appeared on the scene.  But the story of the Neanderthal’s demise is no clearer than that of their origin.

The beginning of the end for the Neanderthals’ way of life came about 35,000 years ago, when a new, and once again far more advanced breed of humans emerged in the same areas – the ‘sapiens sapiens’, – known generally as the Cro-Magnons.  Named after a shallow rock shelter in southern France, where several prehistoric skeletons were found in 1868, these new men were thoroughly modern in appearance, and evidently in intelligence as well.  Where and how these advanced humans first appeared is not known.  Fossil evidence from the Middle East would suggest that Cro-Magnons may have evolved from that region’s population – who may, in fact, have been Neanderthals – as long ago as 90,000 years.  But the earliest finds of Cro-Magnon sites in Europe and Asia date back only about 35,000 years; apparently the Cro-Magnons migrated there about that time.  It may be, of course, that more ancient sites have simply not yet been discovered, but all existing sites are from the same period.  They seem to indicate a wave of immigration into Europe and Asia during a time that may have produced a particularly favorable climate.  Certainly, prehistoric migrations were dictated primarily by the whims of Mother Nature: humans followed the game animals; the animals sought out vegetation; and vegetation appeared and disappeared in response to the ever-changing climate.

For the Neanderthals of Europe, the appearance of the Cro-Magnons could not have been a welcome sight.  Though they managed to endure for several thousand years more, their line was coming to an end.  For a time it was believed that the more advanced Cro-Magnons wiped out their hapless predecessors, but there is no evidence of any such hostility.  It has also been speculated that the two populations mingled and interbred, but nothing has ever been found that might indicate that any such friendly relations ever took place.  It may simply be that the relatively backward Neanderthals fled in the face of the Cro-Magnons’ advance, and that they finally died out in some remote region where they had sought refuge.  By about 30,000 year ago, at any rate, Neanderthals seem to have vanished.

There is little doubt about the Cro-Magnon superiority in every respect.  Tall and powerfully built, these people lived in large organized groups, and seem to have been a settled people, moving only when necessary, either to find better hunting grounds or whenever the climate forced them to move.  Their remains are found most often in caves or under rock overhangs, although signs of primitive huts and even stone dwellings have been discovered.  They produced a variety of advanced bone, flint, and wooden tools that greatly surpassed anything the Neanderthals had achieved.  And they carved small engravings and sculpted statuettes of humans and animals, and even decorated tools and weapons.  There are many examples of Cro-Magnon cave paintings throughout Spain and France, many of them remarkably artistic and beautiful.  Cro-Magnons apparently cooperated in hunting such big game as mammoth and bison, though Cro-Magnon sites in Europe show a heavy reliance on caribou.  Besides being their main source of food, these animals no doubt supplied them with hides for clothing, antlers for tools, and bones that could be carved into weapons – much as the Eskimo later used the caribou, or the Plains Indians of North America used the buffalo.

Whatever their skills and intelligence, the lives of the people of the Pleistocene must have been brutal and usually brief as well.  Infant mortality no doubt was horrendous, and even if a male managed to survive to adulthood, that probably only rarely extended past the age of forty.  Women, as in most primitive native societies, most likely expired long before they reached that advanced age.  Still, Cro-Magnons not only survived, but actually thrived, their lives spent in the pursuit of an abundance of mammals which roamed across the wide plains of Pleistocene Africa and Eurasia – mammoths, bison, the aurochs, wild horses.  Hippos and wooly rhinos still traipsed across the lands as far north as the British Isles, and huge lions lurked in the brush where today stands the city of London.  There was the Irish elk, with antlers that spread out some nine feet.  But above all, it is the wooly mammoth that has come to be regarded as the quintessential Ice Age beast.  Its shaggy coat of black hair and three-inch layer of blubber provided insulation against nearly anything the Ice Age had to offer.  In the summer, the mammoth fed on grasses and other vegetation; in winter, it swept away snow with its enormous curved tusks to forage on the grasses underneath.  Their range was quite as impressive as their size; as long ago as 600,000 years, herds of mammoth seem to have plodded across the exposed lands at the Bering sea into North America, where they mixed with native mammoth species to create one of the most awesome creatures of all, the imperial mammoth, a 14-foot tall beast with 12-foot tusks that roamed the Great Plains of North America all through the Pleistocene.

But there was a whole assortment of ancient creatures that inhabited the Americas during that time, any of which would produce serious trepidation among the Cro-Magnons’ progeny.  There were several species of elephants besides the wooly mammoth, impressive specimen like the giant mastodon.  There was the curious giant ground sloth, a large, hairy, awkward creature that stood nearly twenty feet tall and weighed several tons.  It had crossed over from South America once the Isthmus of Panama had risen from the receding waters, and now it ambled through the forests, balancing itself on an enormous tail, knocking down saplings in order to eat the leaves.

The bison, too, had arrived from Asia, along with the mammoth.  This was not the puny buffalo of historic times; this was ‘bison antiquus’, a fearsome creature with immense horns.  There still were several species of exotic, saber-toothed plains cats and great bears in North America; there was a beaver species as large as today’s black bear, and there was that living tank called glyptodont, a seven-foot long relative of the armadillo, with a tortoise-like shell, that plodded through the river valleys of Florida and Texas.  And above them all soared ever-watchful vultures  with wingspans of 12 feet or more.

But there also were herds of smaller, much swifter animals, true American natives – the horse and the camel.  Although there were no horses at all in the New World when Europeans arrived at the end of the 15th century, and by that time the camel was reduced to the smaller varieties, the llama, the alpaca and the vicuna of South America, it is believed that both horse and camel actually originated in the Americas.  Evolving from little, five-toed animals no bigger than a dog, by the end of the Pleistocene the horse had developed into several varieties, some as large as today’s horses, and had already spread to Europe and Asia, where it quickly multiplied.

For unknown thousands of years, these animals had already inhabited the fertile lands of the Americas, their only enemies a relatively few carnivores.  But then, toward the end of the Ice Age, this idyllic way of life came to an abrupt end.  From the regions in the north there came what was to prove a most dangerous predator – humans of the Cro-Magnon variety, armed with stone-tipped spears and with the ability to make fire.  They were apparently the first human beings in America; at any rate, nothing has ever been discovered that might be considered evidence that any humans existed anywhere on the American continents before the last of the Ice Age glacial periods.