According to recent paleoanthropological studies, Homo heidelbergensis gave rise to Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) in Europe and modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Africa. Modern humans (Cro-Magnon) who were expanding across western Eurasia from their original African homeland encountered European indigenous Neanderthal populations. For more than thousands of years of possible Neanderthal coexistence with Cro-Magnons in Europe, the Neanderthals persisted until 30,000 years ago, and possibly somewhat later; however, they eventually disappeared. The question arises: what happened to the Neanderthals? Were they overwhelmed and killed off by the Cro-Magnons, or were they absorbed into modern human populations? There is much debate about whether Cro-Magnons accelerated the demise of the Neanderthals, and many hypotheses as to what extent are currently available. In that regard, the Cambridge Stage 3 Project has been one of the most significant research investigations of recent years (T.H. van Andel & W. Davies eds. 2003 Neanderthals and modern humans in the European landscape during the last glaciation). Stage 3 (Oxygen Isotope Stage 3) covers the central period of the last glaciation between ca 60,000 and 20,000 years ago, and was also the time when Cro-Magnon colonized Europe, and when Neanderthals became extinct. The project has succeeded in providing differences in adaptive strategies between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons during the fluctuating climates of the last glaciation in Europe, based upon detailed and well-documented environmental and chrono-archaeological data.

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This paper aims to elucidate human evolution and northern adaptation from the viewpoint of the anthropology of nature and culture, while focusing on the process of the development of Homo sapiens. To that end, it first extracts the mental characteristics of modem-day northern hunter-gatherers, particularly their sociality of mind, clarifying their cultural-ecological basis. Secondly, it verifies the possibility of that sociality of mind, dating back to Upper Paleolithic man 40,000 years ago. It shows that the graphics in cave paintings, once considered sorcerer-based or enigmatic, represent hybrid figures (i.e., animal-humans), and that the workings of the mind were behind them-the recognition of original oneness and reciprocity. Thirdly, with regard to the meanings of mental evolution in light of modem human adaptation to northern regions, it points out that the process of humans' becoming Homo sapiens can be regarded as a process of pre-adaptation that took place before actual adaptation to the northern circumpolar environment. It further points out that such factors as a world view based on the cognition of the relationships between man and game served as a behavioral strategy in periglacial ecology. Lastly, based on those findings, the paper elucidates the outlook for the mind and human evolution, including the origins of humanity, the importance of behavioral adaptability in the mechanism of human evolution, the future of humans, and the role played by anthropology.

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Tropical rainforests are often assumed to be "green deserts" where humans cannot live by entirely depending on wild food resources. Recent studies in central African rainforests, however, suggest that hunter-gatherers could survive there even in the dry season, when food resources are relatively scarce. Increasing archaeological evidence also suggests the existence of early, pre-agricultural human habitation in the forests of central Africa. A recent study in Cameroon showed that the key food sustaining the forest life is comprised of annual wild yams, which accounts for more than 60% of energetic intake during the forest life. These yam species are gregarious, and are found only in limited "gaps" formed under supposedly human influences in the past. Other forest food species are also found more in secondary forests than in mature forests. Moreover, recent studies have shown the distribution of a variety of human-induced vegetation throughout the equatorial forests of Africa. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the implications of such human-induced vegetation for understanding the history in the region. The Bantu-speaking farmers, who form the majority of African people south of the Equator, migrated to the Congo Basin forest since the first millennium BC from present-day western Cameroon. After they had acquired iron tools for clearing the forests, and plantain bananas, a new crop adapted to the humid forest environment, in the first millennium AD, they entered the interior forests of the Congo Basin. Since then, they repeated migration and dispersal over an extensive area, and led a life in small social units of villages, several of which sometimes formed loose associations. While such small-scale, dispersed social units induced a moderate impact on the forest ecosystems through shifting cultivation, they could still coexist with the forests, reproducing mosaic environments composed of mature forests and secondary vegetations of varying stages of succession. In the present-day rainforests of central Africa, large-scale logging operations have been accelerating, whereas movements toward forest conservation in the interests of the environment have also picked up steam. Under that situation, the forest-living people and their customary rights to the forests are often neglected. It is necessary to examine the present forest ecosystem and landscape from the perspective of historical ecology, which may provide them with a basis for customary rights to the forests.

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This is an attempt, rather than a study of a particular culture, to reconsider the history of human civilization from the basis of my long-term studies concentrating on the dry-land civilizations of the African Sub-Sahara. The vast dry inner land ranging from Sahara to Mongolia through the Middle East and Central Asia, that we call "Afro-Eurasian inner dry land," is the historical heartland of the human great civilizations. We call them the "Afro-Eurasian inner dry-land civilizations." Certainly the power of irrigation exploiting dry-land rivers cannot be denied. But we focus here rather on the importance of pastoral power, because animal power was the most important disposable energy for humankind before the exploitation of fossil fuels such as petroleum, gas, and coal. Transporting men and goods, animals became the basis of commercial and urban civilization, and as a military means, they became the basis of political domination and expansion. I discovered animal power through my studies of Sub-Sahara dry-land civilizations, based on long-distance trans-Sahara trade and pastoralist political initiatives. I also found that that power has not been studied thoroughly. However, the ecological conditions of the Afro-Eurasian inner dry land, and the mode of the pastoralists, are not homogenous. The religious civilizations are also similarly disparate. One is Islamic, one is Buddhist, and the other Christian. As a way of analyzing the internal heterogeneous structure of the civilizations, we attempt to elaborate four typologies as its sub-systems. The ecological conditions of the Afro-Eurasian inner dry-land civilizations can be first divided into four types: (1) cool temperate meadow areas (Central Asia and Mongolia), (2) tropical desert area (Sahara), (3) tropical savanna areas (sub-Sahara), and (4) mountainous oasis areas (Middle East). There is a dominant domestic animal particular to each type: horses, dromedaries, cattle, sheep and goats. That is, although the basic five animals are raised almost everywhere, each serves as the main pastoralist animal in its respective region. The cultures or civilizations elaborated from this basis each has its particularities, though they can be to some extent explainable from more advanced studies prepared with epistemological training. The idea of Afro-Eurasian inner dry-land civilizations is only one step to get a more integrated vision of Afro-Eurasian civilizations studied separately. That idea will contribute, I hope, to a new reconsideration of human history.

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