Then some articles about Sumerian, with Michael Witzel stating about long-range comparison, "As some of its detractors have maintained for long, one can always find some 50 look-alikes in any two languages."
John Bengtson:
First, let me say how difficult it has been to get Sumerologists to discuss the topic of possible genetic relationships of Sumerian. Several of my letters to experts on Sumerian went unanswered. Are they totally uninterested in the topic, or do they wish to keep their cherished language forever unique and mysterious? (I have detected a similar attitude among some Vasconists.)
In fairness to such people, they may have seen numerous amateur comparisons.
Then Randy Foote on climate effects over the last 100+ thousand years. Changes were sometimes surprisingly fast, within a few decades or even one decade.
131,000 - 114,000 BP (before present: BCE + 1950) - the Eemian interglacial period, much like the Holocene. But our ancestors back then didn't colonize our planet's land surface as they would do later.
Behavioral modernity - the oldest clear evidence of that is from 80,000 years ago in places like Blombos Cave in South Africa.
The most recent Ice Age (glacial period) started around 115,000 BP, and relatively quickly, around 400 years. Sea level dropped around 120 meters, and the climate became drier. Forests turned into grassland, and grassland into desert.
Then mentioning
Toba catastrophe theory about that Indonesian volcano's big eruption around 74,000 BP. Was it devastating enough to make our ancestors have a population crash?
In any case, this is around when the first members of our species successfully departed from Africa, likely by crossing the Bab el Mandeb strait by boat. They spread in southern and southeastern Asia, crossing the Sunda Strait by boat to New Guinea and Australia, then one landmass, the Sahul. A population went northward and spread eastward and westward in Eurasia.
Then the Last Glacial Maximum, around 30,000 - 16,000 BP, and then a warming period around 14,000 BP - 12,800 BP. Could that warm period explain dispersals like of Nostratic, Afrasian, and Dene-Caucasian? Then the Younger Dryas cold snap, a return to Ice-Age conditions, aridity and all. It ended quickly around 11,400 BP, as fast as 20 years, an event now used to mark the beginning of the Holocene Epoch.
The climate continued to improve to 8,200 BP, then a 400-year cold snap that started and ended in less than a generation: coldness and dryness that caused many Neolithic settlements to be abandoned. From 9,000 BP to 4,500 BP was the Holocene Climate Optimum, with the Sahara and Arabian Deserts being grassland.
