First People - Book Idea and Sample

I am working on a non-fiction book called First People.

This is a history book that I have always wanted to read but have never found.

In the book I will ask a series of questions, like this:

"Who were the first people to … ?"

I will ask "first people" instead of "first person" because I want to emphasize cultures and civilizations, not individuals. Also, for many of the achievements I want to write about, we don't know individual names, but only when and where that happened.

For each question I will give what I consider to be the most likely, scientifically accepted answer, possible alternatives, and myths and legends.

I could see a successful book with one question and the answers in a few pages each. There could be perhaps 100 questions in the book.

Ready? Here is my first draft of the first question.

Let me know what you think. What questions (in form of "who were the first people to ..."?) have you always wondered about?

Sample 1 

Q. Who were the first people?

A: Homo Erectus, 2 million years ago

Scientific evidence

Scientists have found evidence that several species of hominins, or early humans, lived in Africa, walked on two legs 4 million years ago, and made stone tools, 3.3 million years ago.

Humans are not the only species to walk upright. All birds are bipeds, a trait they inherited from dinosaurs. Among mammals true bipeds are more rare, the other major example being kangaroos.

Modern studies of animal behavior have shown that humans are not the only species to make tools either. Examples include macaques using stones to eat crabs, bonobos using sticks to harvest termites, crows using twigs as toys, elephants using branches to swat flies, sea otters carrying rocks to open shellfish, and dolphins and orcas using bubble nets to trap fish.

Another crucial step for early humans was control of fire, first achieved about 1.5 million years ago by the species we call Homo Erectus (Upright Man), who arose in Africa about 2 million year ago. Homo Erectus also seem to have been the first to use fire for cooking (about 500,000 years ago).

Once again, humans are not completely alone, even in controlling fire. In Australia, kites have been observed picking up burning grass in their beaks to spread fires and flush out prey. The aboriginal humans called them “firehawks”.

Another step on the journey to becoming human is the emergence of spoken language. Speech leaves no physical evidence, but probably happened at least 100,000 years ago, by the time when modern humans were already on the march from Africa.

Recent studies have shown that humans using spoken language uses the same parts of the brain as primates using hand gestures to communicate. This suggests that vocal language evolved out of communication with hand gestures, facial expressions, and posture (“body language”), which many animals also use. Language is more than the spoken word, as every good storyteller knows.

We may never know which human ancestors were the first to speak, but there can be little doubt that one of them did, and that if somehow we could meet them today, we would recognize them as people.

Myth and legend

The practice of people telling creation stories probably goes back to the use of fire, and the emergence of spoken language, and perhaps earlier. Once these were both in place, humans could gather around a fire and share ideas. Then myths and legends be created and shared in a community of people living together. These included the creation stories that explained how the world came to be, and how their community came to be living there, or how the people learned what they knew.

As humans spread slowly around the world, many different creation stories emerged and evolved as they were told and retold. Most were lost before they were ever written down, but they were meaningful to the people who told them and listened to them and retold them to keep them alive. The creation stories that were later written down hint at the rich diversity and beauty of human creation stories that were told before writing.

Stories about how humans learned to use fire are just one example. The Greeks told the story of how the Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. In aboriginal Australian tradition, one story tells how it was the firehawks who taught humans how to use fire. Telling stories like these is part of what makes us human.