Extensification is one of the important events that occurred in the Paleolithic Era. What is extensification?

Question

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Answer 1

Extensification is a term that describes the spread of humans around the world, as a result of new technologies they developed to cope with a range of different environments.

There is indisputable archaeological and genetic evidence that small groups of modern humans began to migrate out of Africa from about 90,000 years ago. These migrations were slow and piecemeal affairs, as groups moved into new lands adjacent to those they had been occupying. Small populations of H. sapiens moved out of Africa, then settled in a new home until their population increased, at which point a subgroup broke off and moved away. Through this process humans colonized the entire planet (with the exception of Antarctica), although the size of the human global population remained small.

David Christian has used the term extensification to describe the process of global colonization. Christian defines extensification as a form of innovation that allows “an increase in the range of humans without any parallel increase in the average size or density of human communities.” This term suggests that during these Paleolithic migrations, there was little increase in the size or social complexity of human societies. However, human communities during the Paleolithicwere far from primitive because collective learning is clearly evident in the creation of new tools, technologies, and sophisticated art; in migrations into inhospitable glacial regions; and in the application of new technologies that allowed humans to settle in this diversity of environmental niches. The chronology for these global migrations suggests that humans had left Africa and migrated into West Asia and the Mediterranean regions by about 100,000 to 90,000 BP; had made it to East Asia and Australia by 60,000 BP; were occupying cold regions of the Ukraine and Russia by about 35,000 BP; Siberia by about 20,000 BP; and the Americas by at least 13,000 BP (possibly considerably earlier).