68,000–20,000 BCE: (The First Age — The Emergence of Fully Modern Human Communities in East Africa, the Creation of Fully Syntactical Language as the Definin…

68,000–20,000 BCE: (The First Age — The Emergence of Fully Modern Human Communities in East Africa, the Creation of Fully Syntactical Language as the Defining Innovation That Distinguishes Modern Humans from All Other Hominins, the Spread of Humanity Across the Globe and Across Africa Itself, the Invention of Composite Projectile Weaponry Including the Bow and Arrow, and the Birth of Shamanic Religion Expressed in Rock Art): In Ancient Africa, Ehret’s first historical period stretches from approximately 68,000 to 20,000 BCE — an immense span encompassing nothing less than the emergence in East Africa of the first fully modern human communities and the varied stories of how their descendants spread across the world. The key innovation that inaugurated this age — the development that distinguishes our fully modern ancestors from every other hominin group — was the creation and adoption of fully syntactical language, the cognitive revolution that made everything else possible. Armed with this capacity, human communities developed technologies and food-gathering practices adapted to the widely differing environments into which they moved. They invented the first composite projectile weaponry — the bow and arrow, the spear-thrower or atlatl — achievements that the Western imagination would later attribute to peoples everywhere except Africa. They created the imagery and symbols of the common early human religion of shamanism, expressed eventually around the world in rock art. And crucially — in a history that standard accounts generally neglect — fully modern humans spread not only out of Africa but westward and southward within it, eventually replacing their not-quite-fully-modern hominin predecessors across the entire continent, just as their cousins did in Eurasia. Africa was not merely the point of departure; it was itself a theater of expansion, adaptation, and transformation on a continental scale.