The evidence for an abrupt rise is clearest in France and Spain, in the Late Ice Age around 40,000 years ago. Where there had previously been Neanderthals, anatomically fully modern people (often known as Cro-Magnons, from the French site where their bones were first identified) now appear. Had one of those gentlemen or ladies strolled down the Champs Elysees in modern attire, he or she would not have stood out from the Parisian crowds in any way. As dramatic to archaeologists as the Cro-Magnons' skeletons are their tools, which are far more diverse in form and obvious in function than any in the earlier archaeological record. The tools suggest that modern anatomy had at last been joined by modern innovative behaviour. Many of the tools continued to be of stone, but they were now made from thin blades struck off a larger stone, thereby yielding ten times more cutting edge from a given quantity of raw stone than previously obtainable. Standardized bone and antler tools appeared for the first time. So did unequivocal compound tools of several parts tied or glued together, such as spear points set in shafts or axe-heads fitted on to wooden handles. Tools fall into many distinct categories whose function is often obvious, such as needles, awls, mortars and pestles, fishhooks, net-sinkers, and rope. The rope (used in nets or snares) accounts for the frequent bones of foxes, weasels, and rabbits at Cro-Magnon sites, while the rope, fishhooks, and net-sinkers explain the bones offish and flying birds at contemporary South African sites.

Sophisticated weapons for safely killing dangerous large animals at a distance now appear—weapons such as barbed harpoons, darts, spear-throwers, and bows and arrows. South African caves occupied by people now yield bones of such vicious prey as adult Cape buffalo and pigs, while European caves were full of bones of bison, elk, reindeer, horse, and ibex. Even today, hunters armed with high-powered telescopic rifles find it hard to bag some of these species, which must have required highly skilled communal hunting methods based on detailed knowledge of each species' behaviour.

Several types of evidence testify to the effectiveness of Late Ice Age people as big-game hunters. Their sites are much more numerous than those of earlier Neanderthals or Middle Stone Age Africans, implying more success at obtaining food. Numerous species of big animals that had survived many previous ice ages became extinct towards the end of the last Ice Age, suggesting that they were exterminated by human hunters' new skills. These likely victims include the mammoths of North America (Chapter Eighteen), Europe's woolly rhino and giant deer, southern Africa's giant buffalo and giant Cape horse, and Australia's giant kangaroos (Chapter Nineteen). Thus, the most brilliant moment of our rise already contained the seeds of what may yet prove a cause of our fall.

Improved technology now allowed humans to occupy new environments, as well as to multiply in previously occupied areas of Eurasia and Africa. Australia was first reached by humans around 50,000 years ago, implying watercraft capable of crossing stretches of water as much as sixty miles wide between eastern Indonesia and Australia. The occupation of northern Russia and Siberia by at least 20,000 years ago depended on many advances: tailored clothing, whose existence is reflected in eyed needles, cave paintings of parkas, and grave ornaments marking outlines of shirts and trousers; warm furs, indicated by fox and wolf skeletons minus the paws (removed in skinning and found in a separate pile); elaborate houses (marked by pestholes, pavements, and walls of mammoth bones), with elaborate fireplaces; and stone lamps to hold animal fat and light the long Arctic nights. The occupation of Siberia and Alaska in turn led to the occupation of North America and South America around 11,000 years ago (Chapter Eighteen). Whereas Neanderthals obtained their raw materials within a few miles of home, Cro-Magnons and their contemporaries throughout Europe practised long-distance trade, not only for raw materials for tools but also for 'useless' ornaments. Tools of high-quality stone such as obsidian, jasper, and flint are found hundreds of miles from where those stones were quarried. Baltic amber reached southeastern Europe, while Mediterranean shells were carried to inland parts of France, Spain, and the Ukraine. I saw very similar patterns in modern stone-age New Guinea, where cowry shells prized as decorations were traded up to the highlands from the coast, bird-of-paradise plumes were traded back down to the coast, and obsidian for stone axes was traded out from a few highly valued quarries.

The evident aesthetic sense reflected in the Late Ice Age trade in ornaments relates to the achievements for which we most admire the Cro-Magnons—their art. Best known, of course, are the rock paintings from caves like Lascaux, with stunning polychrome depictions of now-extinct animals, but equally impressive are the bas-reliefs, necklaces and pendants, fired-clay ceramic sculptures, Venus figurines of women with enormous breasts and buttocks, and musical instruments ranging from flutes to rattles.

Unlike Neanderthals, few of whom lived past the age of forty, some Cro-Magno" n skeletons indicate survival to sixty years of age. Many Cro-Magnons, but few Neanderthals, lived to enjoy their grandchildren. Those of us accustomed to getting our information from the printed page or television will find it hard to appreciate how important even just one or two elderly people are in a pre-literate society. In New Guinea villages it often happens that younger men lead me to the oldest person in the village when I stump them with a question about some uncommon bird or fruit. For example, when I visited Rennell Island in the Solomons in 1976, many islanders told me what wild fruits were good to eat, but only one old man could tell me.what other wild fruits could be eaten in an emergency to avoid starvation. He remembered that information from a cyclone that had hit Rennell in his childhood (around 1905), destroying gardens and reducing his people to a state of desperation. One such person in a pre-literate society can thus spell the difference between death and survival for the whole society. Hence the fact that some Cro-Magnons survived twenty years longer than any Neanderthal probably played a big role in Cro-Magnon success. As we shall see in Chapter Seven, living to an older age required not only improved survival skills but also some biological changes, possibly including the evolution of human female menopause.

I have described the Great Leap Forward as if all those advances in tools and art appeared simultaneously 40,000 years ago. In fact, different innovations appeared at different times. Spear-throwers appeared before harpoons or bows and arrows, while beads and pendants appeared before cave paintings. I have also described the changes as if they were the same everywhere, but they were not. 'Among Late Ice Age Africans, Ukrainians, and French, only the Africans made beads out of ostrich eggs, only the Ukrainians built houses out of mammoth bones, and only the French painted woolly rhinos on cave walls. These variations of culture in time and space are totally unlike the unchanging monolithic Neanderthal culture. They constitute the most important innovation that came with our rise to humanity: namely, the capacity for innovation itself. To us today, who cannot picture a world in which Nigerians and Latvians in 1991 have virtually the same possessions as each other and as the Romans in 50 BC, innovation is utterly natural. To Neanderthals, it was evidently unthinkable.