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A Brief History of Human Evolution andEconomic Progress: The Greatest Bubble - HumanPopulation - Is Beginning toPeak

HH..SS.. DDeenntt PPuubblliisshhiinngg,, LLLLCCPublisher of the H.S. Dent Forecast

Harry S. Dent, Jr.

Table of Contents

2 A Brief History of HumanEvolution and EconomicProgress: The Greatest Bubble --Human Population -- Is Beginningto Peak

3 An Important Time toTake a Longer Look at Trends

6 Smart Apes to ArchaicHumans - 6 Million to 2Million Years Ago

9 How Apes Evolved intoHumans

10 How Ice Ages Have Driventhe Emergence of New Speciesand Models of Man

11 The Last Four Major IceAges

13 The Early Stone Age - 2Million Years Ago to 250,000Years Ago

14 The Emergence ofModern Man and The MiddleStone Age

14 The First SuccessfulModern Migration Out ofAfrica 80,000 Years Ago

16 To SoutheastAsia/Malaysia/Australia by68,000 - 74,000 Years Ago

19 The Second GreatMigration: 50,000 to 40,000Years Ago

20 The Third and GreatestMigration: 35,000 to 22,000Years Ago

23 The First Counter-Migration and Clash of EthnicCultures in the Last Ice Age

24 The Really Great Leap -The Agricultural Age andWriting

25 Why Apes and HumansFirst Emerged in Areas likeAfrica then Developed to theGreatest Degree In SoutheastAsia

26 The Mid-East as theBirthplace for Agriculture andUrbanization

27 The Emergence of Towns,Cities, Specialization of Laborand Writing

28 Urbanization: Towns toCities to Regional Empires toGlobalization

29 The Exponential Trend inPopulation Growth Since 1000B.C.

34 The 3000-Year WesternCivilization Cycle

35 How Western CivilizationEmerged in Greece andExpanded Through Rome

36 The Long Shakeout of theDark Ages

37 The Long Maturity Boomin Western Civilization - 1000-Year Cycle

37 The Industrial RevolutionLead by Britain

38 The DemocracyRevolutions and the Declineof Monarchies

39 A Summary of Inflationand Standard of LivingProgress in Modern Times

40 Progress in Standard ofLiving in the Last 1000 Years

40 500-Year Macro-Technology Cycles - FromCentralization toDecentralization

42 The 300-Year CyclesBefore and After the IndustrialRevolution

43 The 80-Year NewEconomy Cycle

43 The Baby Boom SpendingWave

(C) Copyright, 2004, H.S. Dent Publishing

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“A longer view of history only reinforcesthe greater reality and principle of exponential growth and progress

over time vs. the straight-line view that our minds prefer”

- Harry S. Dent, Jr.

A Brief History of HumanEvolution and EconomicProgress: The GreatestBubble — HumanPopulation — Is Beginningto Peak

The world is approaching a criti-cal turning point. Population isbeginning to slow for the firsttime since the last ice agearound 20,000 years ago. Atthat time all ethnic culturesaround the world were in thehunting and gathering stage ofhuman evolution – a stage thathad lasted millions of years withlittle warfare and conflict amongwandering tribes that were moreegalitarian in nature. Since theend of that ice age around13,000 years ago, agriculturehas emerged creating the firsttowns, cities, empires, central-ized governments, institutional-ized religions, armies andincreasing advances in technolo-gies. A great bubble in humanpopulation has emerged expo-nentially – and now thathuman bubble is almost certainto peak in this century – alreadyin Europe and to follow inJapan, China, the U.S., SouthAmerica, India and Africa overthe rest of this century.

What does this mean for ourfuture? Is most of world growthgoing to shift to Asia in the com-ing decades while Western cul-tures slow and decline? Willthere be growing cultural clash-es and conflicts between the lag-ging third world countries andthe prosperous developed coun-tries as we have already seenwith recent terrorist threats?Will productivity from new tech-nologies and globalization allowour standard of living to groweven in an era of slowing demo-graphic trends ahead?

In this special report we aregoing to give you a simple, butvery powerful education andoverview of the entire expanse ofhuman history and evolution –and even how we evolved intohumans. And much of it is alsocounter to common wisdommuch like our new economiclogic. But it is also similarly verycommon sense, logical and clari-fying. You might at first think:why should I be concerned withlonger-term trends in historywhen I’m just trying to surviveand live the best life I can in thecoming decades? From this sim-ple overview you will see that weare in a very auspicious, but yetincreasingly ominous time inhistory that will affect your lifefor decades to come, and yourkids’ lives for even moredecades. We are likely at amuch more major turning pointin history and economics thanwe were in the 1920s to 1930stransition from bubble boom togreat bust, 80 years ago on ourNew Economy cycle.

In the Western economies weare approaching a period morelike the 70-year correction afterthe South Seas Bubble in 1720,and even more so, like the lat-ter, less stable peak and plateauperiod of the Roman Empirefrom 100 to 450 A.D that wasfollowed by a 500-year period ofregression in growth andprogress. We’ve seen the peak ofexponential growth trends inpopulation and it is clearly slow-ing down for the first time sincethe Dark Ages began to set inwith the only strong growthahead in Southeast Asia andIndia and only until around2065 (not even China past 2020or 2030). The explosion indemographic growth and urban-ization that started with theAgricultural Revolution 10,000years ago is coming to a head

and it will have major conse-quences for decades and cen-turies to come.

Our research has been seminalin proving that demographicgrowth drives our economy long-term, including the more radicalinnovations that come from newgenerations of younger people –and especially every other gener-ation or every 80 years in mod-ern times. When populationgrowth slows, history has shownthat major adjustments and set-backs follow – from slowinginnovation (from lower numbersof young people) to slowinggrowth in spending and produc-tivity (from slowing numbers ofthe most productive workersand highest spending con-sumers) to rising social burdensfrom aging populations.

But the good news is that thisinformation revolution, the firstmajor one since the printingpress, is likely to continue tobring rises in our standard ofliving for decades to come, andlikely longer, as we covered inChapter 8 of The Next GreatBubble Boom. Yet the great chal-lenges of integrating many dif-ferent cultures and economiesinto a global economy are muchgreater than most would pre-sume as the clashing of globalcultures, ranging from the ten-sions between Europe and theU.S., to the rising terroristthreats from more backwardIslamic and third world coun-tries who feel that their ancientcultures are being threatened bythe expanse and dominance oflarger Western nations. Hence,the coming decades and evencenturies are likely to be moredifficult than most economistsand technologists are presumingfrom the very strong trends inpast decades and centuries.


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The real question comes back towhat actually drives economicgrowth and human evolution.And our answer from studyinglong expanses of history is grow-ing population (demographics,and especially the rise of newgenerations into their peakspending and productivity ages)and radical innovations in tech-nologies that create new infra-structures in communication,transportation, energy, busi-ness/political models andlifestyles/living areas.

If we look at human historythere have been several “bigbang” events that have launchedus into greater phases of popu-lation growth and expansion intechnologies and standard of liv-ing. The first was our largebrains and stone tools 2.5 mil-lion to 1.5 million years ago. Thenext was arrow-head-like toolsand the emergence of modernhumans or Homo sapiens. Thenext was finer blade tools, art,ornamentation and greater cul-tural development around50,000 years ago from which wefirst began to populate theentire world. But perhaps thegreatest “big bang” was TheAgricultural Revolution around10,000 years ago that launchedurban living, specialization oflabor, centralized governments,armies/weapons and exponen-tial population growth and den-sity. The countries and regionsthat have dominated world GDPand military power since havetypically been the ones thatemerged first in thatAgricultural Revolution. Andthat revolution occurred first inareas like the Mid-East where,by luck and geography, therewas the greatest availability ofplants and animals that couldbe domesticated and the great-est potential to spread agricul-tural to lateral lands with simi-lar climates. In fact, the dis-

eases that were brought by thenew powers from domesticatedanimals (who had developedimmunity) wiped out moreindigenous peoples than theyultimately conquered withweapons in most emergingcountries.

You will be able to see where weare on all of the major cyclesdriving economic growth from a4 million year ape to humanevolution cycle to a 2 millionyear Stone Age cycle to a10,000-year Agricultural cycle toa 3,000-year WesternCivilization cycle to a 500-yearlarger information technologycycle, to the most current 230-year bull market cycle since theIndustrial Revolution, as well asthe 80-year, 40-year boom/bustcycles we covered in The NextGreat Bubble Boom. And moreimportant, you will have a betterperspective on life and changewithout having to spend manyyears getting an advanceddegree in history or economicsor archaeology or whatever. Itwill take just an hour or so insimple reading to get anoverview of what really mattersin long-term trends and how alllong- and short-term trends playout the same way as well asaffect each other.

You will be able to see that all ofthese cycles follow the sameexponential growth, “bubble”and four-stage S-Curve/lifecycle patterns, and are still bull-ish at least for the rest of thisdecade, and in the larger view,for possibly much longer – butat a slower pace and in differentregions of the world. The humanrace appears close to peaking innumbers for a long time in thesecond half of this century, andthat is significant. But we aretoo young as a species to likelybecome extinct for a very longtime despite many prophecies

otherwise. Yet many of thelonger-term cycles we studybeyond the baby boom genera-tion spending cycle and themost recent technology cyclecould be peaking around theend of this decade in much ofthe Western world as well andthat makes this coming season-al shift more ominous.

The clearest trend is that thebroader demographic cycles thathave been driving our economyfor a very long time are moder-ating with the first marked slow-ing of births and demographicsin Europe, Japan, and the U.S.to a lesser degree. We are alsoseeing clear slowing in birthsacross the board even in majoremerging countries and regionsfrom China to India to Africa.Hence, we are nearing the endof the greatest human popula-tion expansion in history. Ourpopulation may or may not bepeaking forever, but it will atleast be peaking in this centuryfor a long time to come. Theimplications are bound to beenormous! We haven’t seensuch a phenomenon since thelast ice age set in over 20,000years ago. However, we did seepopulation flatten during theDark Ages with enormous impli-cations for slowing economiesand a severe regression ofurbanization and civilizationthroughout most of Europe.

An Important Time to Take aLonger Look at Trends

The Agricultural Revolutiongreatly expanded births per fam-ily and population density. TheIndustrial Revolution started toslow births in its latter stageswith the widespread prosperitythat followed, and theInformation Revolution couldultimately have a decentralizingimpact on population density asmore people move to exurban


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areas. This means that once thedeveloping world of almost 5 bil-lion people (out of over 6 billiontotal) today adopts the industri-al and information revolutionmodels of the developed coun-tries — which they are doingrapidly from China to India —we could be in for much slowereconomic growth around theworld. This is likely to occurfrom around 2065 onward andby 2020 to 2030 in China.

We are very likely to see atumultuous period of transitionto an era of more stable ordeclining population that couldat the least last many decades,and more likely centuries. Thatis why we think that a long-termoverview of history and cycles isso critical at this juncture inhistory. The greatest boom inhistory could indeed turn intoone of the greatest downturnsand an extended time of eco-nomic, political and culturalclashes within countries andamong countries – alreadyoccurring clearly in the Mid-East, and now spilling over intoAmerica/Europe with the terror-ist threats, and likely later intoAsia.

We have been predicting foryears that the peak in theNikkei index in Japan couldbe a peak that will not beexceeded in most of our life-times. That will almost cer-tainly be true for most ofEurope, and likely for the Dowand broader markets in theU.S. after 2010.

Developing countries are follow-ing rapidly as they industrialize,having fewer kids, and facingthe same environmental con-straints we are facing – but evenmore so. As demographic growthcontinues to a lesser extent inmuch larger populations in

China, Southeast Asia andIndia, the expansion of theworld economy will continue incycles, but competitive advan-tage and profits will shift moreto companies and governmentsin those countries. Only themost multinational companiesthat retain their leadership willbenefit from the continuedexplosion of Asia following thedemographic slowing in Europe,North America and Japan. By2020 China’s economy willexceed the U.S. in purchasingpower parity, and by 2050India’s will likely as well. Hence,the economic dominance of theU.S. today will plateau by theend of this decade and recede ina matter of decades to follow.Military and political power willinevitably follow on a lag.

There will be continued bullmarkets from the echo boomspending cycle in the U.S. fromaround 2023 to the late 2030sto early 2040s or so, and evenstronger bull markets in devel-oping countries that explodeinto industrialization and infor-mation-based economies overthe coming decades fromSoutheast Asia to India. From2010 to 2020 China, SouthKorea, Japan and SoutheastAsia will be the best place to beinvested, but from 2020 to 2050India, Pakistan, Indonesia andperhaps Africa, should see thestrongest growth.

It certainly is possible that suchworld growth in an increasinglyglobal economy could translateinto higher stock markets andgrowth in the U.S. But thepotential slow plateau and/orfall of “Modern Day Rome”, theU.S. and West Europe, will tosome degree slow the growth ofthe rest of the developing worldinitially and cause a time ofretrenchment in globalization,

urbanization and technologicalprogress for a while. This will bedue to the very difficult chal-lenge of integrating so manyvery different nations and cul-tures into a more global econo-my where they see priorities inlife and the world very differently.

That could then lead to alonger-term period like the DarkAges after the fall in Rome fromthe mid-400s to the 900s A.D –a five hundred-year bear marketin economic progress! For peoplewho argue that global growthwill make up for the demograph-ic downturn we are projectingafter 2010, remember, that evenin today’s increasingly globaleconomy, Japan just experi-enced a 13-year bear marketwith persistent economic slow-ing and an 80% decline in theNikkei, while the rest of theworld was booming. And theyhave a more export-orientedeconomy than we do.

We have already seen the barebeginnings of a major backlashagainst globalization and newtechnologies from the more fun-damentalist third world culturesthat feel threatened by our newtechnologies and more liberallifestyles, with only the tip of theiceberg being the terroristattacks that erupted on9/11/01. There is more to comeand this trend is very likely toworsen dramatically in thedownturn we are predicting from2010 to 2022 or so. The U.S.and the developed world couldbe like “Rome” waiting to bebrought down quickly or slowlyby “the Huns”, and then ulti-mately advance again in newand better directions down theroad.

The biggest question from ourresearch is simply whether this


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will happen sooner or later, andhow long this “global clash ofcultures, economics and poli-tics” will take to play out. Buthistory is clear in demonstratingthat flattening demographicgrowth tends to result in longer-term periods of corrections andadjustments, like the Dark Ages.The Great Plague in the mid-1300s was an example of ashort-term environmental disas-ter (from rapidly expandingtowns and cities that couldn’thandle their sewage) thatcaused infectious disease tospread rapidly through rats andinsects creating a short-termdecline in population and aneconomic decline. The fastestgrowing developing countries areseeing more rapid urbanizationturn into environmental andcongestion nightmares that aregreater than what we have expe-rienced over a longer time frameto accomplish such growth.

The Western technology growthcurve has stimulated this glob-alization, industrialization andurbanization trend around theworld into larger populations inthe East. New technologies arealready contributing to lesseningenvironmental impacts in devel-oped countries and newwin/win environmentalapproaches are emerging eventoday that will help even more.But such impacts may come toolate at first in developing coun-tries. It may just be that thebacklash of such irrational, andat the extreme violent, thirdworld cultures are warningappropriately, “we are growingto fast” and that “the Lexus isthreatening our olive tree”.

Such a clash does seeminevitable in the coming decadesand even centuries from the3000-year, 1000-year, 500-year,300-year, 80-year and 40-year

cycles we will look at moreclosely in this special report –and even from much longer-term cycles. In fact, to get thegreatest overview of history andcycles – and where we are at –we will briefly review the entirehistory of human developmentin a very simple and summaryform with cycles that are as longas 2 million years way back inthe evolution from apes tohumans when change camemuch, much slower than today.Human progress has been veryexponential, to say the least.

A longer view of history onlyreinforces the greater realityand principle of exponentialgrowth and progress over timevs. the straight-line view thatour minds prefer. And expo-nential growth always ulti-mately turns into a bubblethat ultimately crashes.

We have learned from studyingcycles in the past, that thegreatest surprises or threats cancome from larger cycles that weare not aware of, like a ten-footset of waves that suddenly hitsthe beach after a long series ofthree-foot waves, not to mentiona “tidal wave” very infrequently.Most experienced surfers knowwhen such “sets” of larger wavesare likely to roll in daily andseasonally, and our economiccycles similarly become morepredictable as we study themfrom a longer-term perspective.

The key insight is that theshorter-term and longer-termcycles of the past are progress-ing in an exponential fashionsuch that they don’t appear ableto sustain themselves too muchlonger for now at this criticaljuncture in human history –despite our unprecedentedprogress in recent decades andcenturies. It doesn’t mean “the

end of human civilization” asmany are forecasting, or eco-nomic progress. But it does sug-gest a major slowing in demo-graphic growth and a “quality oflife” revolution, that may para-doxically first bring some signifi-cant threats to our quality andsecurity of life at first. This isalready becoming evident in thelate stages of the greatest boomin history with the growingthreat of terrorism.

The fundamental demographicand innovation/technologicalprinciples we study can bringmuch simpler insights into whatappears to be a long, complexevolution of human beings andeconomic progress that fewscholars can even seem tograsp. This is the type of simpleoverview that should be taughtin high school and college, butisn’t as of yet. You can see thecritical demographic trends andtechnological innovations thathave shaped human historywithout being a scholar orstudying volumes of historybooks – just this summaryreport and some credible booksthat we reference. In fact, youcan end up a lot clearer thanmany scholars with the advan-tage of such a “Big Picture” viewas many experts are often lost inthe incredible detail that theirresearch necessarily entails (andwe are very thankful for theirvery detailed research that hashelped build this informationrevolution in knowledge and ourresearch as well).

To get the overview of humanevolution we have to start withthe very, very slow emergence ofearly humans (hominids) andmodern-day Homo sapiens,which actually started to emergebetween 2 to 6 million yearsdepending on how you define it.We won’t spend much time on


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that, just enough to put it intoperspective. We will focus moreon the first significant event inmodern human history thatpaved the way first for the popu-lation of the world by modernhumans and then for moderncivilization: The emergence ofmodern humans out of Africaaround 80,000 years ago andthe critical migrations andadvances that followed to popu-late the world with different eth-nic cultures, out of which thefirst vestiges of urban civiliza-tion emerged only in the last5,000 to 10,000 years.

The most summary insight isthat we are nearing the peakof a very long-term boommuch like the boom in Greeceand Rome that started around550 to 600 B.C. and peaked inthe mid-400s A.D. – a 1000-year boom!

The present boom began longbefore even the IndustrialRevolution that we showed inChapter 2 of The Next GreatBubble Boom. It began comingout of the Dark Ages between900 and 1000 A.D. (after anapproximate 500-year bear mar-ket) and it appears to be peak-ing in this century (around 2065according to population projec-tions), and likely in the comingdecade for Europe and possiblyeven for the U.S. That would putus in an era much like the latterera of Rome only now it is theU.S. that is the world leader of aglobal, free trade capitalisticempire.

This explains why our standardof living is the highest in theworld, but also why we are thetarget of discontent amongmany fundamentalist countriesand cultures that are still livingin a much earlier era of evolu-tion, culture and economics.

A clash between the third worldand the first world, especiallywith the U.S., has already begunand will inevitably grow as eco-nomic conditions deteriorateafter 2010. So, expect thegrowth of terrorist, political andmilitary threats, especiallybetween 2010 and 2022 or so aswe warned in Chapter 5 of TheNext Great Bubble Boom. Thisreport focuses in much greaterdepth on the issues of thehuman population bubble peak-ing and the clash of world cul-tures that was introduced in theEpilogue of The Next GreatBubble Boom. Let’s start bylooking briefly at the true dawnof human history.

Smart Apes to ArchaicHumans – 6 Million to 2Million Years Ago

Changing cycles in climate andweather have clearly been thegreatest driver of human evolu-tion and economic progresswhen we look at longer timeexpanses in history. We are liv-ing in a time that is relativelywarm compared to the last 6 to8 million years that has general-ly seen cooling trends, markedby re-occurring ice ages thathave shaped natural and

human evolution far more thanany other factor up until therecent millennia of massivetechnological advances, popula-tion explosion and environmen-tal challenges — which such awarm period has progressivelyallowed. Human population hasbeen growing exponentially forabout 50,000 years.

There has been a growing bub-ble in human population espe-cially since the AgriculturalRevolution that has grownextreme since the IndustrialRevolution as we showed inFigure E.1 in the Epilogue ofThe Next Great Bubble Boom andwe repeat in Chart 1.Worldwide population is forecastto peak around 9 billion by2065. This population bubblerepresents an even longer-termtrend that now seems moreclearly to be coming to a peak incoming decades and representsa much, much bigger phenome-non than the technology bub-bles we discussed in Chapter 2of The Next Great Bubble Boom.

This peaking is being created byfalling birth rates around theworld as we urbanize and growmore prosperous. And birthrates are falling everywhere,


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from Africa to India to China toEurope to North and SouthAmerica on a predictable curve.Birth rates are the slowest inEurope and Japan, but arecatching up everywhere in theworld as we get more urbanprosperous and prefer fewerkids that we can raise betterwith exploding costs of educa-tion. What happens if humanpopulation actually peaks anddeclines? Our economy will haveto switch towards productivityand technological innovationeven more to continue to pros-per, but slower growth in inno-vative young people will workagainst that trend.

Scientific research since Darwin(especially evolutionary, archae-ology, anthropology, biology andgenetic research) over the last150 years has brought incredi-ble insights into how weemerged from apes into modernhuman beings as well as evolu-tion in all of nature. Astronomyand physics has given us evengreater insights into the earth,solar system and universe fur-ther back than most of us wouldever want to consider – all theway back to the “Big Bang” (theultimate bubble in the making).These insights were conceptsthat most religious and scientificscholars didn’t want to admit fora long time – from the earthbeing round, to the earth revolv-ing around the sun, to humansevolving from apes, and on andon. But the greatest insight forhuman evolution is that thetransition from apes to humansproceeded extremely slowly (likeany S-Curve at first) and it wasextremely difficult, just like anew venture or childhood.It literally took forever – 6 mil-lion years — for truly modernhumans to emerge from themost intelligent apes which we

branched off of along with ourclosest cousins, chimpanzees,with many, many lines of archa-ic humans, including mostrecently the Neanderthals (ourclosest modern cousins), dyingout in the process. And it’s been65 million years since mammalsin general started to emerge intodominance out of the suddendecline and mass extinction ofthe dinosaurs! This represents aclassic exponential or “bubble”progression – 60 million yearsfrom the peak of dinosaurs tothe peak of apes – and then 6million years to a peak ofhumans in population growth.

We tend to make great leaps inpopulations and economicprogress in 1/10th of the timeas progress grows exponentially,or conversely we make ten timesthe progress in the same periodof time. That is the true natureof growth that is always bubble-like if you look back far enough– and we will! But if we lookback at the S-Curve, such expo-nential growth only occurs inthe first stages (from .1% to 1%and from 1% to 10% adoption).As new trends truly enter main-stream penetration, they start tohit limits to growth, namelysmaller remaining markets topenetrate and environmentalconstraints. As the S-Curve pro-gresses from 10% to 50% thereis 5 times the growth in thesame period of time vs. the 10times growth before. In the 50%to 90% Maturity Boom there isonly 1.8 times growth, and soon to lesser and lesser degrees.

Growth always occurs in moreexponential progressions untillimits of growth start to setin. Exponential growth (bub-ble-like) is the only reality innature and it takes long peri-ods of time to see that

straight-line trends only“seem” to exist in shorter-term time frames and aren’tat all the nature of growth andevolution.

Between about 23 million yearsago (the first ape fossil found)and 6 to 8 million years ago,apes (primates) and many mam-mals flourished in the forests ofAfrica during the latter stages ofa long, very warm age datingback to about 270 million yearsago (after the last very long-termice age season ended). Apeshave always been vegetariansand survived largely on gather-ing leaves and fruits from rainforests. Hence, this representedthe true and very, very long“gathering” phase of highermammals. About 200 millionyears ago, the continents oftoday broke off from a largermass centered from the SouthPole extending somewhat north-ward more into the IndianOcean (to Southern America,Southern Africa, Southern Indiaand Southern Australia today).

The continents started to movenorthward to eventually formour seemingly more stable conti-nents of today. These tectonicplate movements caused Africato float around in the SouthernIndian Ocean until 15 millionyears ago when it bumped intothe Mid-East and stuck to thelarger Eurasian continent.Africa with its more nurturingtropical climate as well as thestrong challenge of its wet anddry seasons caused it to becomethe optimum environment forthe emergence of all types ofhigher life, and the likely birth-place for primates which ulti-mately migrated around theworld.


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Then the first critical eventoccurred that spawned the merebeginnings of ape to human evo-lution. The world started coolingfor the first time in 260 millionyears between about 8 millionand 7 million years ago. Whenthe world starts cooling, polarice caps grow and lock up morewater, which in turn causeslower rainfall and expandingshorelines from lower water lev-els. The earth has gone throughmany shorter-term ice age orcooling periods since then,many of which we will cover.But this was the beginning of avery long cooling period that weare still in despite short-termwarming trends.

We may or may not be slowlycoming out of it, but the longer-term trend is clearly likely to becooling, not warming. Coolingand drying conditions lead tothe contraction of forest areas,and the expansion of plains (orgrass areas), and also to theexpansion of deserts from for-mer plain areas. This contractsthe water and food supplyincreasing competition amongliving plants and animals to sur-vive. Around 7 million years agowe saw the beginning of thebiggest Darwinian challenge inthe history of apes, mammalsand ultimately humans.

Climatic shifts, sudden eventslike meteorite strikes, and moreimportantly, the sudden emer-gence of new dominant, more“fit-to-survive” species to followhave caused five documentedmass extinctions throughoutearth’s history. And as much asmany environmentalists may notlike it, this emergence of new,better species is how we makeprogress through history. Thistime around most species arethreatened and even apes havenearly gone extinct due to the

population explosion of humanssince the last ice age.

The previous major extinctionoccurred around 65 millionyears ago when a large meteoritehit the earth and caused majorshort-term climactic changes (a2-year nuclear winter) wherevegetation shrank killing off thedinosaurs and many otherspecies. In such a brief, colderperiod the smaller, more noctur-nal warm-blooded mammalsthat had been emerging sudden-ly had the advantage. In thiscase it wasn’t that the dinosaursover expanded, destroyed theirenvironment or wiped out eachother in massive wars. It wasthat a major external shockwiped them out and suddenlymade way for mammals to growand expand where they couldn’tbefore due to the dominance ofthe dinosaurs. Obviouslywarmer-blooded animals wouldbe better able to survive in ashort-term colder climate.Before that there was thePermian Period around 250 mil-lion years ago when the suddenemergence of reptiles in a warmera following the last mega iceage caused mass extinctions ofamphibians and other species.

Climatic shifts towards coolingfavor new species both in short-er and longer-term cycles.Longer-term cycles of coolingand warming seem to be causedby massive continental and tec-tonic plate shifts that in turncause major volcanic activity.Shorter-term cycles are causedby changes in the earth’s tiltand orbit around the sun. Inperiods of cooling, the strongestgene pools and cultures/tech-nologies of adaptation tend tosurvive in the warmest, mostaccommodating areas, likeSoutheast Asia during the lastice age. But the bare beginningsof human evolution occurred asapes, the most intelligentspecies at that time, started toadapt to the first long-term cool-ing period in almost 300 millionyears.

How Apes Evolved intoHumans

Chart 2 summarizes the keylandmarks in the evolution ofapes to humans to modern civi-lization that serves as the bestoutline and overview for thisreport. It shows how we devel-oped larger brains and key new


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chart 2

tools and technologies to get toour very high standard of livingtoday. As this chapter progress-es we will look at each of thesekey milestones and how our his-tory was shaped by them.

The apes, which were the mosthighly evolved of mammals inbrain size (mammals began toemerge 200 million years agoand primitive monkeys 50 mil-lion years ago), had to startmoving out of the rain forestsinto the plains of Africa to sur-vive around 6 - 8 million yearsago. Hunting for grasses, seedsand eventually animals in theplains required higher mobilityand skills than “gathering”leaves, fruits or insects from theforest. At first the apes wouldhave ventured briefly out intothe plains and then back hometo the forests. This created thebeginnings of a broader andmore challenging “gathering” erafor vegetation that followed formillions of years with a likelyminor emergence of scavengingfor meat from dead carcasses.

That challenge and new behav-ior saw a reduction in many apespecies between 6 and 8 millionyears ago and two branches ofmore intelligent apes to emergearound 6 million years ago:chimpanzees and earlyhominids. (Chimpanzees are ourclosest long-term cousin – wedid not emerge from them – weand they emerged from intelli-gent apes/gorillas). Hominidsand chimpanzees both hadbrain sizes closer to the size ofchimpanzees today and greaterrelative to size than any otheranimals. So, 6 million years orso ago the first step in ape evo-lution towards humans, largerbrains, occurred due to coolingtemperatures and the challengeof the receding of forests inAfrica.

The next major step occurredtwo million years later whenhominids clearly started walkingon two legs, around 4 millionyears ago. These were morehuman-like apes like thefamous “Lucy” (Australopithicusafarensis) excavated in Africarecently and dating back to 3million to 4 million years,although the first clear walkinghominid was Australopithicusanamensis dated just over 4million years ago (there is recentarchaeological finds that suggestpotential bi-pedal chimpanzeesand other hominids as far backas 6 million years ago).

A new behavior was encouragingthis radical shift and it likelycame for two reasons. The firstwas to use hands and arms tocarry grains or scavenged meatfrom the plains back to thetroop and mates in the forest.The second was the necessity towave sticks and throw stonesboth to scare off predators com-ing into the forests off of theshrinking plains and to scare offscavengers from their kills whenventuring out into the plains formeat and food. Most scientiststend to credit such radical shiftssimply to random mutationsthat catch on when conditionsare favorable, but a broaderview of genetics and psychologystrongly suggests that the newbehaviors emerge first and thenare supported by mutations andbetter genetic combinations.(Obviously today we can teachmany four-legged animals towalk on two legs for short peri-ods of time with no new muta-tions or genetic changes).

Walking on two legs ultimatelyallowed greater long-distancevision from a higher stance forgoing out into the plains, butmost importantly, freed up thehands for eventually creating

and using primitive stone andstick tools, as did opposingthumbs for grasping and shap-ing such tools. We are moreused to rapid changes in tech-nology and learning today, but ittook almost 2 million years forclear archaeological signs thatlarger-brained hominids wereusing basic stone tools forbutchering and perhaps killinganimals, as well as cutting andgrinding seeds and grains.

Hence, the first big bang, theearly Stone Age began around2 to 2.5 million years ago.That was a monumental stepand the major developmentthere was that the size of thebrain in two narrow species ofeven more intelligenthominids, Homo andParanthropus, suddenlyexpanded rapidly to near pres-ent-day size, especiallybetween 2.5 million and 1.5million years ago. This mostclearly occurred due toincreased strategic thinkingfor scavenging and hunting,but it also likely occurred dueto the very early stages of thedevelopment of very crudeuttering and signaling thatwould create a level of socialcooperation for hunting andto survive in increasinglycolder climates and scarcevegetation. This is whenhominids first became morehuman than ape- or chim-panzee-like.

In fact, the size of today’shuman brain is slightly smallerthan it ultimately became500,000 years ago with laterincremental expansions, as thecalories and amino acids to sus-tain such larger brains in an eraof scarce food supplies mayhave proved unfavorable to larg-er brain evolution after a point.In fact, humans are on the very


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extreme of brain size to bodymass ratios. Hence, most of theexpansion of what is today thehuman brain occurred in a brieftime in history around 2 millionyears ago (between 2.5 millionand 1.5 million years ago). Thenew behaviors that would havemost likely encouraged suchrapid brain development wouldhave been scavenging, huntingand very crude speech and sig-naling (earlier than most scien-tists have presumed in thepast). And that brain expansion,among random mutations thatmust have occurred, would havebeen supported by an evolutionfrom a diet of fruit and leaves toan increasing protein diet ofseeds and meat to survive onthe plains. A larger brainrequires greater calories andamino acids, and hence, wouldthrive on more protein.

To summarize the rough 2 mil-lion-year cycles: Surviving onthe plains first meant moving inand out of the forests to collectmore vegetation (by 6 millionyears ago) and encouraged larg-er brains to survive. Bringingback food and scaring off preda-tors and scavenging by scaringaway carnivores from their killsby walking on two legs andwielding sticks and stoneswould have naturally followednext (by 4 million years ago),but with only minor increases inbrain size. Increasinglyhominids evolved into scaveng-ing and hunting for animals andthe development of primitivestone tools for butchering andkilling them (by 2 million yearsago) with a more than doublingin brain size (that would thenmore gradually grow to morethan triple) and the beginningsof very crude language andhuman-like social behavior andcooperation.

The human to ape evolutionfirst occurred in approximate2 million year cycles: Thematuration of apes 8 millionyears ago; higher brainedchimpanzees and hominids 6million years ago; walkinghominids 4 million years ago;and very high-brain hominidsor archaic humans with stonetools 2 million years ago.

Development of stones tools andcooperative scavenging andhunting clearly required a muchgreater level of social coopera-tion, and hence, very likely thefirst vestiges of spoken languagebeyond babbling into signalingand perhaps two to three wordutterances. But it certainly tookthinking in more steps aheadstrategically which wouldrequire more brain capacity andshort-term memory (RAM).Chimpanzees even today don’thave enough brain capacity andshort-term memory to rememberpast two steps of logic, words,symbols, or thoughts at a time.Hence they never developedhuman capacities, although theyare clearly our closest cousinsand the most intelligent mam-mals today after humans.

That was the beginning of “TheStone Age” – the first majoradvance in intelligence, strategicthinking, human-like tools andlikely primitive language. It rep-resented the first “great leap” inhuman history following from aseries of two million-year cyclesand it started just over 2 millionyears ago only with Homo andParanthropus. And only Homo(largely Homo erectus) survivedby 1 million years ago after “fire”had emerged, and mastery offire could have been the keyinnovation for surviving. Out ofeight major lines of Homo thatfollowed, only one survived past28,000 - 30,000 years ago –Homo sapiens.

The first line was Homorudolfensis about 2.5 millionyears ago with the longest sur-viving being Homo erectus fromabout 1.9 million years ago toits Asian migration and offshootgoing extinct about 50,000 yearsago. Homo neanderthalensis(Neanderthals) and Homo sapi-ens were offshoots of Homohelmei (about 250,000 yearsago) and the Neanderthals werethe last line to go fully extinct30,000 years ago – leavingHomo sapiens, the only sur-vivors of the last ice age. RecentDNA evidence now clearly showsthat all Homo sapiens emergedonly in Africa and migrated outof there to populate the entireworld today over the last 80,000years, and especially since50,000 years ago when LateStone Age tools allowed migra-tions to move and survive inlandin much larger numbers ratherthan just along the limitedcoasts.

How Ice Ages Have Driven theEmergence of New Species andModels of Man

The good news about evolutionis that life grows more complex,more intelligent and more pros-perous at the highest levels. Thehorrible truth is that it has beenvery brutal and a constantDarwinian challenge. Mosthumans (modern and archaic)have not died of old age. They have died of diseases andepidemics, wars and conflicts,starving or freezing to death – inthat approximate order of mag-nitude. Before the agriculturalrevolution that brought largeepidemics and diseases fromdomesticated animals and largescale warfare, cooling periodsand ice ages created the greatestchallenges to survival. Theseperiods periodically squeeze usto the bone and whittle us down


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(as well as all other plants andanimals) to the very most “fit tosurvive”, typically killing off thelast most dominant largespecies. Hence, the old adage“what doesn’t kill you makesyou stronger”. Then in thewarmer periods that follow, thesmall remaining species with thenew behaviors and best randommutations grow and flourishexponentially, until the nextcooling period whittles themdown again.

Recall that it was the first majorcooling cycle 7 to 8 million yearsago that caused the first moreintelligent apes (hominids andchimpanzees) to emerge withbrains closer to the size of chim-panzees today by 6 million yearsago with many ape species goingextinct. The next cooling cyclearound 4 million years agoforced the behavior of walkingon two legs and theAustralopithicus speciesemerged. In the next coolingperiod beginning a little over 2million years ago the Homo linesemerged with pebble stone toolsstarting with Homo rudolphen-sis, then Homo habilis andHomo ergaster and finally Homoerectus who invented the handaxe (another major innovation)around 1.4 million years ago.Homo ergaster was the first tomigrate out of Africa intoEurope and Asia, but Homoerectus became the “Model T’that dominated the world for along period.

Around 1.2 million years ago,the next minor cooling set in(encouraging the discovery andincreasing use of fire by 1 mil-lion years ago) and Homo erec-tus started to decline andincreasingly lost its dominanceto Homo rhodensius and thenHomo heidelbergensis inEurope, while Asian Homo erec-

tus survived in smaller numbersin the more benign climates ofSoutheast Asia. These rising off-shoots may have better mas-tered fire to survive this colderperiod in Europe. Then the mostsevere ice age hit around600,000 years ago that put anend to Homo rhodensius, leav-ing Homo heidelbergensis tobest master and refine fire by500,000 years ago.

Chart 3 shows climate datathat have been collected from icecores in Greenland. Before weget to the impacts on evolution,there is an interesting insighthere from the temperature vs.methane and CO2 statistics. Itis argued today that humanbeings with modern industrialtechnologies and fuels areuniquely causing global warm-ing. The first insight here is thatwe have had very similar cyclesof warming (and cooling) in thepast when we had only veryprimitive tools and our popula-tion was insignificant. The sec-ond insight is that methane andCO2 grow in the same approxi-mate proportion to rising tem-peratures, again even withoutmodern technologies and withtiny human populations. Thethird insight is that we actuallysaw a warmer and wetter period

about 6,000 to 9,000 years agoand that temperatures andhumidity have alreadyretrenched a bit from there,despite the fact that they arerising again over the last centu-ry. How much of this warming isjust natural cycles vs. humantechnology?

The real point is that we arelikely entering a long-term trendtowards cooling, not warmingand that we may have alreadyseen a peak in temperaturesthousands of years ago.However, glaciers continue tomelt due to continued higherthan average temperatures. Veryshort-term warming trends inthe last 100 years are at leastpartly due to rising greenhousegases and fuel emissions fromthe rapid rise in human livingstandards. This short-termwarming could paradoxicallyhelp cause a more rapid, short-term shift towards cooling inparts of the world by slowingprocesses like the Gulf Streamin the Atlantic that recycleswarmer tropical waters north-ward and cooler glacial waterssouthward. Warming tempera-tures over the last century tendto cause greater glacial meltingwhich tends to slow the GulfStream currents. This could


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chart 3

cause Europe and NorthernAmerica to get substantiallycolder in a relatively short peri-od of time and this has occurredin the past.

But what this graph really saysis that warming comes in cycleswithout human instigation andthat it is warming and thegrowth of life that stems from itthat cause rising methane, CO2and greenhouse gases. Pollutionand environmental limitationson growth are a major reasonthat exponential growth of lifealways reaches limits and thendeclines. Whether it is massnumbers of humans or mam-mals or reptiles or ants, whenthe world gets warmer “life”expands and life throws offwaste products. If it weren’thuman waste or fuels, it wouldbe ant farts or something! Whenthe world cools, life contractsand waste declines. This is notan argument for allowing ram-pant pollution. Pollution is toxicand failing to recycle wastesproperly is shortsighted and hasalways eventually led to minoror major disasters for humancivilizations. And environmentalchallenges will be a huge threatand issue with the peak stagesof the human population bubblestill ahead and with such rapidgrowth in countries like Chinaand India for decades to come.

It is also a clear trend in historythat we don’t worry enoughabout environmental degrada-tion until it sets in and is diffi-cult to reverse. Hence, we arelikely to recognize and pay theprice of our lack of environmen-tal responsibility in the decadesand centuries to follow the com-ing peak in growth and expan-sion just as we have throughouthistory. But despite that, thepoint here is that humans arenot a unique or sole driver of

global warming or rising emis-sions, although our growth andwastes are part of the cycle justas for other large and dominantspecies in the past. Past speciesprior to humans would not havehad the brain capacity to evenanticipate environmental limits.

Slowing population (which isclearly emerging) and cooling(which is more likely as we movefarther out in time) will have thebiggest impact on reducing pol-lution levels in the future. Andevery new set of technologieshas been cleaner than the past.Automobiles and oil were farless polluting than horsemanure and wood/coal burning.Information technologies andnew potential fuels likeHydrogen and new technologiesranging from solar to fuel cellsto nanotechnologies (amongmany others) will allow us tomake products far more effi-ciently with less waste and toreduce pollution levels relativeto production levels.

As we briefly covered in Chapter8 of The Next Great BubbleBoom, the “produce-to-order,lean-production systems” and“bottoms-up” organizational net-works will also greatly reducewaste in business and produc-tion, and hence, pollution levelsrelative to consumption. This isalready happening and will togreater degrees in the comingdecades. But the population andindustrial explosion in Asia willmore than offset the environ-mental progress we will make inthe more developed countries, atleast in the coming decades.And history also shows that asour standard of living rises witheach new technology revolution,that we consume vast increasesin new products and services –and hence, still end up withmore pollution over time.

The Last Four Major Ice Ages

Now back to the measurablehistory of our climate and itsimpacts. There have been fourmajor ice ages in the last500,000 years that have nar-rowed evolution towards modernhumans. The first was an iceage that peaked around 440,000years ago. Then the next hit350,000 years ago. Those twoice ages progressively killed offHomo heidelbergensis, despitethe mastery of fire. Out of thatlast one emerged Homo helmei,the innovator of the first signifi-cant arrowhead-like MiddleStone Age tools that representedthe next “great leap” in technol-ogy. Homo neanderthalensisfirst split off into Europe andthen Homo sapiens emerged inAfrica 150,000 to 200,000 yearsago.

The third ice age came between170,000 and 140,000 years agoand wiped out Homo helmei andmost of the population of thefew surviving Homo lines, leav-ing largely the Neanderthals inEurope and Homo sapiens inSoutheast Africa. The AfricanHomo sapiens discovered a new“beachcombing” diet addingshellfish which ended up beingcritical to their survival ahead.The last ice age hit between22,000 and 14,000 years ago,peaking around 18,000 yearsago — and the rapid warmingperiod that followed would setthe stage for the AgriculturalRevolution, “the greatest leap” inhuman history. The last of theNeanderthals went extinctbetween 28,000 and 30,000years ago just before that lastice age as Homo sapiensincreasingly moved into Europestarting around 50,000 yearsago and seemed to crowd outtheir hunting grounds.


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But before the last ice age,Homo sapiens or modernhumans, began to flourish inthe next warming period follow-ing the 150,000 year-ago ice ageon this new shellfish diet, even-tually bringing another majoradvance in stone “blade” tech-nology in the Late Stone Agestarting around 50,000 yearsago. A small tribe of Homo sapi-ens first migrated out of Africaaround 80,000 years ago alongthe coasts of the Indian Ocean,and then later with their evolv-ing new blade technology madean exponential migration andpopulation advance off thebeaches inland starting around50,000 years ago to all of thecontinents. We became “theassembly” line of human trendscreating the greatest bubble inpopulation since. We were theonly Homo or human line tomake it to the fourth ice agewhich peaked around 18,000years ago and entered a rapidwarming era by 13,000 yearsago. In the next warming period,especially from 10,000 to 5,000years ago, the first agriculturaland urban civilizations emerged.

In fact, by time the next twomillion year cycle (from Chart 2)is very roughly due we find our-selves today in the recent periodof modern technologies that hasemerged into a great humanpopulation bubble with veryhigh civilization and the begin-nings of a global economy forthe first time in history. Onlythe last 50,000 years has seensigns of exponential growth inhuman population (due togreater advancements in lateStone Age tools, art and socialcooperation). Only the last 5,000to 10,000 years has seen thereal rise of modern urban cul-ture (with the AgriculturalRevolution), after millions ofyears of very slow developmentthrough the Stone Age and the

very long “hunting and gather-ing” era of the last two millionyears that some remote and iso-lated cultures today still exhibit.

The Early Stone Age – 2Million Years Ago to 250,000Years Ago

Now we let’s go back and take acloser look into the Stone Agestarting just over 2 million yearsago, when many Homo linesemerged clearly as scavengersfirst using sticks and stones toscare away other carnivoresfrom their kills, just as theylikely initially used sticks andstones to scare off predatorsencroaching into the forests.Then Homo erectus (and off-shoot lines) increasingly becamehunters. The first to migratealmost 2 million years ago intoEurope and Asia – Out of Africa— was again Homo ergaster (thecousin of Homo erectus) whoeventually branched or com-bined into the Asian Homo erec-tus, but didn’t survive as long inthe harsher climates of Europeand Central Asia. Homo ergasterwas soon followed by largerwaves of Homo erectus whomost dominated Europe andCentral Asia into a major ice agea little over a million years ago.

They could migrate successfullyas they had developed primitiveshaped and flaked pebble toolsfor scavenging and hunting.Homo erectus and other lineswere hence, able to follow herdsof animals and migrate to newgrounds as competition grewlocally and as climate allowed orforced. And these stone toolsadvanced only to minor degreeswith sharper points, hand axes(first around 1.4 million yearsago), and bones used as ham-mers and anvils for a long peri-od of time until the MiddleStone Age beginning between300,000 to 250,000 years ago

when Homo helmei broughtarrowhead-like flaked tools(shaped and pointed on bothsides). Soon after, Homo nean-derthalensis (Neanderthals) firstemerged, and then modernhumans or Homo sapiens, bothbranching off of Homo helmei.Homo sapiens first emerged as aspecies as early as 200,000years ago. The Neanderthalswere hence our closest cousin,but not an ancestor or descen-dant.

So two million years ago stonetools started to emerge, andaround that time the first docu-mented migration out of Africabegan followed by larger ones.That lead to minor evolutions inprimitive tools that had alreadybeen developed in Africa asthese migrating tribes movedinto different and more challeng-ing and colder environments.But those migrations eventuallyfailed and Homo erectus startedto yield to Homo rhodensius,and eventually both came to adead end like most archaichuman species. The last cleartraces of Asian Homo erectus inwarmer Java were found datingback to 40,000 to 50,000 yearsago, but recent excavations haveuncovered a pygmy-like offshootperhaps of Asian Homo erectus,but more likely an earlier linedue to much smaller brains,that could have survived upuntil 13,000 years ago (the endof the last ice age). The last evi-dence of Neanderthal, wasaround 28,000 to 30,000 yearsago in Southern France andSpain.

The Emergence of ModernMan and The Middle StoneAge

During the build-up to the iceage previous to the last one,between around 200,000 to150,000 years ago, modern man


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(Homo sapiens) first clearlyemerged in Southeast Africawith likely roots extending intoSouthwestern Africa. We willshow later that DNA frommaternal lines traces modernman back to Africa about190,000 years ago (with a150,000 to 200,000 range), andpossibly earlier. And just aheadwe will show that the most com-plex and earliest languages inthe world date back to around150,000 years ago in SouthAfrica. So, this clearly appearsto be the most likely period thatHomo sapiens or modernhumans emerged.

That next to last ice age peakedaround 150,000 years back, butlasted from around 170,000 to140,000 years ago. It whittledthe human population in Africadown to estimates of 2,000 to20,000, more likely around10,000 people, and down tototally or near totally Homosapiens in Africa, with smallvestiges of Neanderthals inEurope, and more substantialpopulations of Asian Homo erec-tus in Southeast Asia. Then fol-lowing from 130,000 years into120,000 years ago the worldentered a brief very warm andwet period (more so than today)when the few early modernhumans that survived that iceage would have flourished andexpanded mostly up the coastsof East Africa eating shellfishand in the fertile Great RiftValley in inland East Africa. Butthen again from 120,000 yearsto 70,000 years ago the worldstarted to gradually cool, andthen more progressively from45,000 years into 18,000 yearsago into the next ice age withanother brief warm/wet periodaround 51,000 to 45,000 yearsago.

This long period of mostly

increasing cooling and its chal-lenges lead to the emergence ofthe dominance of Homo sapiensor modern humans in the world.Beyond the recent DNA researchthat we will cover, longer-termresearch in languages has devel-oped the capacity to approxi-mately date regional cultures bythe complexity of their language.The greater the variety of wordsand regional “dialects” within alanguage, the older that cultureand language tend to be giventhat they would have longer todevelop such complexity. Thegreatest trace in linguisticresearch for modern man hascome from the San bush tribes(now in Southwestern Africa)who have the most complex lan-guage and “clicking” sounds ofany modern human dialect.Chart 4 shows that their lan-guage dates back to about150,000 years ago right at thepeak of that severe ice age, andmuch older than SoutheastAsian and other languages.Africans are clearly the oldestmodern cultures andPolynesians the newest (we willrefer back to this graph and theemergence of other cultures aswe go on). These most ancientmodern Africans likely firstemerged well before the previous

ice age 150,000 years ago, andbecame the prime survivors nearthe equator in East Africa. Infact, their early command of lan-guage at that point was likely tohave been the decisive factor totheir being the very few to sur-vive that ice age through greatersocial cooperation in huntingand migrating.

The First Successful ModernMigration Out of Africa 80,000Years Ago

So the real seed or spark ofmodern human evolution (inven-tion) likely started around200,000 to 150,000 years ago.But then the next significantevent occurred (innovation), thefirst modern-day successfulmigration out of Africa —between 95,000 and 70,000years ago (most likely about80,000 according to genetic dat-ing) as a small tribe of humans,naively but courageously out ofsurvival needs, crossed the RedSea from Eritrea north ofEthiopia at the small isthmusthere into the Southern Arabiancoasts and hills into Yemen astheir food supply started to van-ish with cooling temperatures,and the seas were falling enough


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chart 4

to cross from receding water lev-els. These first modern migrantsstill only had Middle Stone Agetools (although more refined),but more important, rudimenta-ry modern language and a criti-cal new twist on the MiddleStone Age diet: shellfish.

At the peak of the major ice age150,000 years ago, it appearsthat for the first time many ofthe surviving humans wereforced out of the shrinkingplains onto the East coastlinesof Africa where modern humansmade the great discovery thatyou could collect shellfish off ofreefs when the tides receded (alot easier than hunting animals).The beaches were also easier tomigrate and travel up and down,encouraging greater communi-cation and trade in tools andinnovations. A new “beachcomb-ing” culture emerged wherehumans could use the sameMiddle Stone Age tools to scav-enge and hunt animals whilealso gathering shellfish. Thenprogressively over time theylearned how to spear fish withstone barbs, and fish with netsand hooks.

In fact, signs of Middle StoneAge tools, butchered animal andshellfish remains were found inreef fossils near Eritrea datingback to at least 125,000 yearsago right near the peak of thatbrief, warm and expansive peri-od. So this beachcombing diet of“surf and turf” likely extendedfarther back and became a newgrowth trend, around 150,000years ago as the world was cool-ing extremely. Then in thewarming period that followed,population growth would havenaturally expanded and moregroups would have migratednorthward along the coasts (andinland) towards the Red Sea inNortheast Africa where there

was one very fertile area ofgrassland inland between theplateau of South Ethiopia andthe Great Rift Valley north ofMt. Kenya. But above there wasonly desert. Hence, the greatestpopulation expansion and thegreatest food sources werebetween Kenya and Ethiopia(inland and along the coasts)after that extreme ice age wheremodern humans likely concen-trated.

Then the coldest period (mini-iceage) between that extreme iceage and the last one 18,000years ago, occurred between80,000 and 60,000 years backpeaking around 70,000 yearsago. This was very likely the rea-son that the first small tribethat populated the rest of theworld finally migrated out ofAfrica across the Red Sea.Stephen Oppenheimer in hisremarkable book, The Real Eve(Carol and Graf, 2003) bringsthe greatest and most thoroughevidence for this first greatmigration that within 5 - 10,000years took modern man all theway to Australia and SoutheastAsia beachcombing along thecoasts of the Indian Ocean.Oppenheimer, among others wewill note, brings very recent andrevealing DNA research that canmore accurately date and timemigrations of humans, especial-ly where archaeological evidencehas been erased by rising sealevels and glaciers, or hasn’t yetemerged.

Let us give due credit herebefore we move on. This bookhas been our greatest singlesource for the millions of yearsof ape to human developmentwe have covered thus far and forthe human migration trends wewill cover ahead. There aremany skilled scientists andresearchers that have tracked

ape and human history, butOppenheimer seems to bring thegreatest confluence of climatic,geological, geographical, archae-ological, anthropological and lin-guistic research we have seen.We regard The Real Eve as trulya breakthrough book and onethat anyone should be sure toread if you are more interestedin the topics of genetics, humanevolution and migration. Therewas also a Discovery Channeldocumentary called The RealEve that featured his work,among others. We also studiedin depth two other great booksthat provided many insights:The Journey of Man, by SpencerWells (Princeton UniversityPress, 2002), and MappingHuman History, by Steve Olson(Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

Why did the first NortheastAfricans wait 40,000 years afterthe warm period 120,000 yearsago to migrate out of Africa?Oppenheimer shows evidencethat the Red Sea had been los-ing salinization (salt levels) andplankton. The combination ofthese two factors due to increas-ing cooling would have causedthe “beachcombing” there to getscarcer just as the beaches tothe south had gotten crowdedall the way up the coasts of EastAfrica. And moving north wasnot an option due to theSaharan Desert. Around 80,000years ago, that one tribe finally“made the jump” walking, andperhaps using crude rafts,across an isthmus that wouldhave only been about 10 mileswide at that time due to fallingsea levels.

They were also likely hesitantbefore as there would have likelybeen previous Homo erectus orNeanderthal lines living on theother side. But “scouts” likelyfinally confirmed that these


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people had left or died out dueto the cooling and dry period(and not having beachcombingskills). This first tribe wouldhave most likely settled first onthe coasts and the grassy hillsof Yemen on the east side of theSouth Arabian Peninsula. Andthey would have had to settlethere for a substantial period oftime to drift down to just oneoriginal female and male line ofgenes that ultimately survivedoutside of Africa. They wouldhave had no motivation to moveuntil they saturated that areaand other potential migranttribes from East Africa would behesitant to move there with anexisting and expanding tribealready inhabiting. But as thistribe grew and expanded overtime, they would eventually haveto move further east along thecoasts, first crossing theArabian Sea in rafts towardsSouthern Pakistan and India.

Many other migration theorieshave proposed that modern mancame through Northeast Africainto the Middle East. ButOppenheimer shows that wouldhave been nearly impossible asthere was nothing but desertNorth of Ethiopia and allthroughout the Middle Eastincreasingly after that warmperiod 120,000 years untilabout 50,000 years ago. Thereare only two migration gates(without modern sailing) out ofAfrica, the North Gate into Sinaifrom Northeast Egypt, and theSouth Gate from Ethiopia acrossthe isthmus of the Red Sea. TheNorth gate did open in the verywarm period 120,000 years agoand the first modern migrationdid occur – but archaeologicalsigns show clearly that it gottrapped and died out by 90,000years ago as the deserts re-emerged. Only the South gatewas open 51,000 to 80,000

years ago. Not only that, theonly habitable places to migrateat that time would have beenalong the coasts of the IndianOcean, not inland into the Mid-East or into Pakistan or Indiagiven the great extent of thedeserts at that time.

To SoutheastAsia/Malaysia/Australia by68,000 – 74,000 Years Ago

To corroborate this Southernexodus and first migration alongthe coasts of the Indian Ocean,the DNA evidence today showsthe oldest and closest correla-tion to African genetic lines arefound in the native Aboriginalcultures of Australia and inNegrito tribes in areas likeIndonesia, the Andaman Islandsand Papua New Guinea. Theoldest archaeological evidence ofmodern humans has been foundin a Southeast China site datingaround 67,000 to 68,000 yearsago and in Australia tracingback 62,000 years or possiblylonger by different estimates.More telling, about 65,000 yearsago a number of largeAustralian animals started tobecome extinct, which wouldonly suggest the arrival of mod-ern man before that time (AsianHomo erectus never made it toAustralia by any archaeologicalevidence, only as far asIndonesia). In addition, the sealevels would have been lowenough to feasibly make a sail-ing trip across to NorthAustralia from East Timor (tip ofIndonesia) only around 70,000years ago, making this the mostlikely time for entry of modernman into Australia.

This means that the first majormigration of modern humanshad to be from East Africa intoSouthern Arabia along thecoasts towards India, Southeast

Asia and Australia. And suchmigrations would have had tooccur at least 75,000 years to80,000 years ago to get there bythen given the great distance.Oppenheimer also points to themassive Toba volcanic explosionthat occurred approximately74,000 years ago and is easierto date accurately. This was thelargest volcanic eruption in thelast 2 million years. Moreadvanced pebble tools that werenot unlike the Asian Homo erec-tus tools, but more similar tothe Middle Stone Age that camefrom Homo sapiens before50,000 years ago, were found inthe ash near Sumatra whereToba occurred. This would alsosuggest that modern humanshad made it into at leastMalaysia before Toba, and thatin turn would argue for an exo-dus out of Africa closer to80,000 years ago.

But here’s the big insight fromToba. It created a huge gapbetween the first modernhumans east and west of India,isolating the first smaller groupsto make it to Indonesia, NewGuinea and Australia for at leastthousands of years, and possi-bly tens of thousands of years.The blast was massive andcaused a regional “nuclear winter”, resulting in colder tem-peratures short-term. That blastmoved northwestward and cov-ered almost all of India in 3 to10 feet of ash causing a totalextinction of people along thecoasts of India on both sides(and animal and plant lifethroughout India) and wouldhave made life very difficult and“horrifying” for even broaderareas in all directions. “Don’tyou think that would have beenenough to make modernhumans think that the Godswere angry and that the worldwas coming to an end?” That


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volcanic eruption made MountSt. Helens look like a mole hill!

For thousands of years humanswere very likely scared to moveanywhere into this “haunteddead zone” and the story of thistragic and prophetic event wasprobably told for thousands ofyears to follow, like biblical sto-ries today. Hence, the survivingpeople to the west around theArabian Sea between Yemen andPakistan – still beachcombers –likely stayed put or were moti-vated to venture somewhatinland up river valleys and theArabian coasts where possibleas the population grew backslowly at first after the blast.DNA evidence we will cover laterclearly shows a major gapbetween genetic lines in Eastand West India that would alsosuggest a migration intoSoutheast Asia before Toba andisolation between populationsfor a long time.

In fact, there is no archaeologi-cal evidence of late Stone Agetools (that first emerged at least50,000 years ago) or of Homosapiens in areas like India untilabout 30,000 years ago, butthat would also be due to thefact that such tools and skeletalremains would largely or totallynow be submerged underwateralong coastal areas on whichthese migrations developed byrising seas since the last ice age.Hence, there is no fully conclu-sive way as of yet to determinewhether the first migrantsreached Australia before or afterToba as archaeological researchonly confirms “out of Africa”modern humans and tools backto about 62,000 to 65,000 yearsago. But the weight of evidenceclearly favors Oppenheimer’stheory of a singular migrationmore like 80,000 years ago. Buteven if it occurred just afterToba, more like 70,000 years

ago at the latest, the conse-quences would not be thatmuch different for human histo-ry and evolution.

There weren’t signs of exponen-tial growth in the modernhuman population until around50,000 years ago when later,more critical migrations beganoutside of Africa that lead to thefull population of the world onall continents. The oldest Homosapien archaeological and LateStone Age remains in the Eastafter Australia have been foundin Papa New Guinea (40,000years plus) and then in areaslike Thailand (37,000 yearsplus), and as far west as SriLanka (31,000 years ago). Butagain remember that the settle-ments along the coastlines earli-er would have been flooded overby rising seas since so most evi-dence would not be accessible.

This split in time periodsbetween East and West wouldstrongly suggest that there werelater, larger migrations east-ward, well after the Toba disas-ter and Toba did create a splitbetween East and West for aprolonged time period. But thegenetic evidence clearly showsthat this and later migrationsstemmed from the same originaltribe that first moved out ofAfrica, and not from furthermigrations out of Africa (untilmuch more recent times).

DNA evidence from the femaleand male lines clearly sug-gests one and only one migra-tion of modern day humans“Out of Africa” that then pro-gressively populated the restof the globe with modernhumans. Hence, all non-Africans descend from thisone African tribe and all Homosapiens descend originallyfrom Africans.

Why DNA Research Representsa Breakthrough in TrackingHuman Evolution andMigrations

Where do all of these very newinsights about human migrationand evolution come from? Therehas been a recent discovery ingenetic research that has devel-oped enough over recent yearsto tell us more than archaeologi-cal findings about where andhow modern humans emergedand migrated over the last200,000 years. In the femalegenetic lines there is one smallpart called mitochondrial DNAor mtDNA that is not reshuffled(called non-recombining) in thereproductive process, and henceis passed down unchanged frommother to daughter and so on.There are mutations that occurrandomly, but at a predictablestatistical rate over time ofabout one per thousand, evenon this non-recombining part.These two facts allow geneticiststo trace individuals today backto common ancestors with rea-sonably predictable time framesthrough the various mutationmarkers that are present whichemerged at different time peri-ods.Through mtDNA analysis ofmany women around the world,Oppenheimer has been able tofirmly establish that all peopletoday descended from one greatgrandmother “Eve” between150,000 and 200,000 years ago– more likely around 190,000years ago — that only tracesback to Africa. Many later muta-tions or “daughter lines” showup in Africa, but then the firstshowed up in people outside ofAfrica between 70,000 and95,000 years ago – hence, show-ing that there had to be the firstexodus out of Africa in that timeframe.


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History and genetics clearlyshows that despite all of thegreat migrations that haveoccurred, most people clearlyprefer to stay put once theyreach their destination (espe-cially women) and have onlymoved (typically in smallernumbers) when they wereforced to for new food sourcesor from wars. That’s whygenetic tracing works so wellover time.

But there are two other princi-ples in DNA that Oppenheimerused to argue that there wasonly one small successful migra-tion out of Africa when manyarchaeologists and geneticistshaving argued that there wereseveral over time. The first is the“founder effect”. When a smallgroup splits off from a largergroup, only a smaller portion ofthe more varied gene pool of thelarger group will go with them,reducing the size and variety oftheir new gene pool. The secondis “genetic drift”. In a smaller,isolated population over timedifferent female (and male) lineswill die out or fail to reproduce,narrowing down to a morehomogenous gene pool (asoccurs today in small towns,isolated regions and islands).

Oppenheimer concluded thatsince there was only one initialmaternal line that has survivedtoday outside of Africa, that asmall tribe (founder effect) musthave migrated across the RedSea into Yemen and stayedthere for at least hundreds ofyears until the gene pool nar-rowed down to that one line(genetic drift). Only after thendid new daughter mutations(two at first between Yemen andWest India found only outside ofAfrica) increasingly emerge asthat one tribe migrated, expand-ed and populated the world over

the last 80,000 years. And that’show he tracks and times themigration patterns, through themany emerging daughter muta-tion markers over time. Theodds of different tribes migratingout at different times ending upwith only one maternal line istoo extreme to make multiplemigrations out of Africa a credi-ble theory.

But there is another story fromgenetic research that is clearlyparallel, but quite a bit differentover time – and that comesthrough the male lineages. TheY chromosome has a part thatdoes not recombine called NRYthat can be tracked similarly.There are two differences in themale tracking and genetic histo-ry. Male lines tend to go extinctfaster than female becausethroughout history a smallerpercentage of the men havefathered more of the children aswomen can only bear so manychildren and the strongestmales get favored sexually (bychoice/attraction or force/rape).Men also have tended tomigrate, hunt, and come and go,while women have remained inplace with their children. Thismeans that there are more malemutation markers and moredetailed tracking of regionalmigration patterns. The onlyproblem is that the Y chromo-some research is more recentand the timing techniques arenot nearly as reliable as on themtDNA for females. Hence, thereis a tendency for many YRAresearchers to underestimatethe timeframes especially for theearlier migrations.

The Y Chromosome or “Adam”story is similar. All modernmales descend from one greatgrandfather traced back toAfrica, not anywhere else (likelybetween 150,000 and 100,000

years ago). Adam came later asmale gene and mutation lines goextinct faster and have moremarkers. Later male son muta-tion lines from Adam later thatemerged outside of Africa areonly found outside of Africa.Hence, Oppenheimer relies moreon the female migration lines fordating and more persistentmigration routes, and the malemore for confirmation andinsights into more specificmigration routes of ethnic clans.

To demonstrate both thefierceness and efficiency ofgenetics and natural selection:Out of many Homo lines overmore than 2 million years,only Homo sapiens surviveddown to numbers of around10,000 at first to becomemodern man. Out of manyfemale and male lines inAfrica over the last 150,000to 200,000 years, only oneline on each side survived tomigrate out of Africa and pop-ulate the entire world.

We were clearly specially selected over a long period oftime through endless challengesand deaths to become the domi-nant species today. How manynew ventures does it take to cre-ate a Microsoft? And like allother dominant species, nationsor companies, we will not lastforever – but fortunately, thereare no candidates yet in view toreplace us. And computers arenot “organisms” or “species”,just very advanced tools createdby our dominant species likestone tools or agriculture or fac-tories. Computers don’t have asoul, or desire or will. They sim-ply do what we program them todo and only in narrow left-brainlogic at this point. So we don’tsee a “rise of the machines” asthe next stage of evolution.


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(Note here, that we are not DNAor archaeological or anthropo-logical experts. We respect anddepend upon the research ofthese and many other scientists,and suggest that you considerreading these books and manyothers to form your own opinionif you have such interests. Weconstantly look for the biggerpicture from many fields ofresearch and strive to draw themost conclusive and summaryinsights from them to give you agreater overview of history andevolution from all possibleangles. The minor differencesthat such experts may have overcertain changes in certain timeperiods are often not that rele-vant to our bigger picture, butcan be relevant to issues inthose fields. Even where wedraw our own conclusions, werespect their very detailedresearch and expertise and don’twant to represent our researchas superior or as detailed inthese fields. But our greateroverview of history and modelsfor change often give us somedifferent insights than experts inthese fields).

The Second Great Migration:50,000 to 40,000 Years Ago

Chart 5 summarizes the seriesof migrations that occurred inpopulating the world all stem-ming out of that first tribe thatmigrated from East Africa intoYemen. Each successive migra-tion got bigger and brought newinnovations and skills. Althoughthe first migration (labeled “1”)out of Africa around to Australiawas a major breakthrough eventin human history, it was smallat first and a natural continua-tion of the trend back to thesevere ice age 150,000 years agoof adding shellfish to the dietand moving up the coasts ofEast Africa to survive. This cre-

ated a new coastal highway vs.the previous routes of expansionthrough the grass plains. Thiscoastal route became the newpath of least resistance and like-ly continued all the way aroundto the tip of South America (byas early as 30,000 years ago),until the climate suddenlychanged about 50,000 yearsago. Inland areas in South Asiawere mostly desert up until thattime and going north or inlandwas too difficult. Yet only somany people could thrive inthese narrow coastal areas andthat first great migration lastedfrom about 80,000 years ago toaround 30,000 years ago.

Again, the first part of thebeachcomber migration likelyreached Indonesia and Malaysiabefore Toba 74,000 years ago,and then Australia andSoutheast China around 68,000to 70,000 years ago, and wasisolated for thousands of yearsor longer at first. But it wouldhave continued to expand upthe coasts of China into Koreaand Japan and so on. AfterToba, new beachcombing migra-tions began to occur (from newdaughter and son lines) along

the beaches re-populating Indiamoving east from Pakistan, andmoving back west fromIndonesia. And then the migra-tion continued along the beach-es northward into China, Korea,Japan, Siberia and ultimatelyinto North America long beforemost archaeologists have previ-ously suspected. The near-extinct Tehuelche people ofTierra del Fuego near the south-ernmost tip of South Americahave robust features most simi-lar to the early beachcombers ofAustralia (Aborigines) and theNew Guinean highlanders.These people could have arriveddown the Pacific coasts as earlyas 30,000 years ago. The oldestlanguages in South Americadate back to approximately30,000 years.

But around 50,000 years ago, amore critical second migration(labeled “2”) began inland alongthe Eastern coast of the EastArabian Sea into the MiddleEast, ultimately bringing mod-ern humans into SouthernEurope. This migration occurredbecause of a brief very warmand wet period that hit betweenabout 51,000 and 45,000 years


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chart 5

ago, opening up grasslands andriver valleys into the Middle Eastfor the first time since the verywarm and wet period 120,000 to130,000 years ago. But thismigration from clear geneticmarkers did not come from theNorth Gate of Africa. It camefrom around West Pakistan orSouthern Iran, likely from smallgroups that first moved inland abit to flee the Toba disaster.This first inland migrationspawned a later third wave thatultimately populated all conti-nents.

The successive waves ofinland migration between50,000 and 30,000 years agowere the ones that wouldmost populate the world.

They first moved up the EastArabian Sea coast into Iran andIraq, and then into Turkey. Theythen moved in two directions:south into Syria, Israel andNortheast Africa; and east intothe Balkans, and then into theNorth Mediterranean towardsSouthern France and Spain.Hence, this migration first set-tled the Middle East andSouthern Europe between45,000 and 50,000 years ago.This first modern Europeanmigration is generally called the“Auregnacians” after an archae-ological site discovered inSouthern France showing thefirst modern humans datingback to 46,000 to 47,000 yearsago. This migration formed thefirst ethnic bases for Mid-east-ern and Southern Europeangroups who generally lived clos-er to the Mediterranean Sea andstill maintained a partiallybeachcomber lifestyle.

The important developmentshere were the following:

1) The next major advance or

big bang in Late Stone Age toolsfor hunting clearly emerged herewith a great variety of smallerand sharper blades to adapt to amore challenging inland envi-ronment with more varied ter-rain and game.

2) Compared to the limited landarea along coastlines, thisopened up vast new terrains forthe expansion of hunting andgathering, and hence, spawnedthe beginnings of exponentialpopulation growth in modernhumans.

3) The emergence of increasing-ly specialized hunting, sewingfor clothing and greater socialcooperation added to the previ-ous hunting and shellfish gath-ering skills for dealing withharsher climates and more var-ied terrain.

4) A new generation of humansthat was more comfortableinland, than on the beachesemerged – and they would gen-erally continue such inlandmigration on a much largerscale, while the “beachcombers”would largely continue coastalmigration until forced inlandinto warmer river valleys later.

The Third and GreatestMigration: 35,000 to 22,000Years Ago

Even though the weather gotcooler again and more challeng-ing about 45,000 years ago, thisnew generation of modernhumans now had enough toolsand skills to adapt and continueto expand throughout SouthernEurope and Eastern Europe tosome degree at first. Then the“big bang” of migrations hit.There was another major waveof migrations that went in multi-ple directions inland, morenorthward (around the west end

of the Black Sea) and more east-ward and northward intoCentral Asia between 35,000and 22,000 years ago. Thesemigrations originated out ofareas today between Pakistan,Afghanistan and Southern Iran.

These Central Asian migratorsbecame the most fierce and spe-cialized big game hunters andbranched both westward intoNorthern Europe (called theGravettians after an archaeologi-cal site in France) and eastwardinto Siberia by 30,000 years ago— and very likely across theBering Straights of Alaska intoAmerica well before the last iceage set in (22,000 to 24,000years ago). Hence, this is themigration wave that most settledthe larger world inland ratherthan just along the warmercoasts of Asia and theMediterranean. These groupshad to deal with much greaterchallenges, especially in colderclimates with greatly alternatingforests, grasslands and tundra.Hence, their tools and survivalskills had to develop to greaterdegrees and that made them themost “fit to survive” long-term.

Increasing archaeological, lin-guistic and DNA evidence is nowstrongly suggesting that Americawas first populated before thelast ice age began rather thanafter, as was previously thought.If you refer back to Chart 4, itshows that North Eurasian lan-guages date back to about45,000 years ago (in line withthe second great migration) andthat South American languagesdate back to around 30,000years ago. Newer finds now datearchaeological sites to 16,000 to19,000 years ago inPennsylvania (and perhaps earli-er) instead of 13,000 with thefirst major site in Clovis, NewMexico.


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The complexity of dialects inSouth American languages sug-gests that those cultures dateback to approximately 30,000years ago and likely came fromearlier beachcombers who keptmoving up the East Asian coastsand then down North and SouthAmerican coasts. Similarities inbone structures to AustralianAborigines found in the mostSouthern parts of SouthAmerica add credibility to thattheory. It is possible that thesepeoples came from earlier migra-tions from Siberia, but it is lesslikely they would have migratedall the way down to SouthAmerica through inland routesby then and there should havebeen earlier traces in NorthAmerica if they did. But thebeachcombers migrating aroundthe West coasts of NorthAmerica and South Americawould have left little or notraces due to rising sea levelssince those times. Either way,the ice caps would have closedoff the migration route fromSiberia into Alaska betweenabout 22,000 and 14,000 yearsago and cultures with languagesdating back to as far as 30,000years ago would have had toenter before then.Previous theories were that thefirst Northeast Asians migratedinto America just after the gla-cial routes opened back up13,000 to 14,000 years or soago. But it is increasingly clearthat this occurred before – atleast 22,000 years ago andprobably closer to 30,000 yearsago. Russian scientists just dis-covered a 30,000 year-old site inArctic Siberia that proves thatmodern humans did survive inthe coldest climates by then andcould have easily made it acrossto America (through a landbridge between Siberia andAlaska during lower sea levels)

well before the last ice age setin. Genetic tracing shows atleast five founding female linesand multiple migrations intoAmerica over time. And again,the linguistic estimates back toChart 3 show Central Americancultures dating back to around20,000 years ago and NorthAmerican to around 13,000.

The best theory would be thatthe beachcombers made it toSouth America around 30,000years ago down the Pacific coastdriven by colder climates, andthat the first inland huntersfrom East Siberia crossed intoNorth America just before thelast ice age around 22,000 to24,000 years ago and werequickly pushed down intoCentral America during the lastice age by around 20,000 yearsago (who clearly evolved into theAztecs and Mayans and likelyinto the Incas). The archaeologi-cal sites in Pennsylvania couldhave represented their path onthe way. Then later and largermigrations from Siberia wouldhave occurred after the last iceage when the polar caps startedto recede around 13,000 to14,000 years ago into NorthAmerica (who evolved into NativeAmericans). That migrationcould be classified as a fourthmigration from 14,000 years agoonward. And these three cul-tures (Aztecs, Incas and NativeAmerican Indians) stayed largelyseparate and isolated from eachother in a vast new territory fora long time.

The significance of this thirdand largest migration was thatby 20,000 to 30,000 yearsago, modern humans hadreached Northern Europe,Northeast Asia, North andSouth America populating allmajor continents with now

very adaptive modern humansarmed with Late Stone Agetools.

Hence, the Late Stone Age peri-od occurred from about 50,000years ago into the last ice ageand saw the first exponentialpopulation growth and expan-sion of modern humans aroundthe world. That populationexpansion would have peakedby around 20,000 to 22,000years ago with the next ice agebuilding, and then would havedeclined into 13,000 to 14,000years ago when that ice agestarted to recede. The next pop-ulation explosion after the iceage seems to be peaking in thiscentury – from slowing birthsdue to widespread affluence,and environmental constraints— which are now the new limitsto growth replacing climate asthe great constraint (at least fornow).

There have been three clear,extended and progressivelylarger bubbles in modernhuman population growth andmigrations, with declines inbetween (shaped by major cli-matic events):

The beachcombers in Africafrom around 150,000 yearsago, extending around theIndian Ocean into Australiauntil the last mini-ice age setin between 70,000 and 80,000years ago.

The inland hunters from50,000 (initial warm period) to20,000 years ago when thelast ice age fully began.The agricultural/urban explo-sion from after the last iceage around 13,000 years agoprojected to peak in this cen-tury.


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Chart 6 shows a very roughestimate of human populationgrowth on a logarithmic scaleback to when Homo sapiens ormodern man emerged in smallnumbers out of the ice agearound 150,000 years ago. Ithas been estimated that therewere around 10,000 that sur-vived that ice age. It has alsobeen estimated that the humanpopulation was around 4 millionin 10,000 B.C. (12,000 yearsago). Chart 8 ahead gives moreaccurate estimates from 1,000B.C. forward to 6.2 billion todaywith estimates of around 9 bil-lion in the next century beforepopulation is projected to peakwith slowing birth rates. Before10,000 B.C. we are making veryrough estimates. What we dogenerally know is when humanswere expanding and migratingand when ice ages caused sub-stantial declines in population.Hence, we can draw a reason-able picture of the waves ofgrowth that have occurred.

Three surges of growth on anElliott Wave pattern wouldstrongly suggest that we arepeaking as Homo sapiens in thedecades or century ahead, or at

least for a very long time beforewe grow again in numbers – andthat either we grow from pro-ductivity and environmentalmanagement from here out orour economic progress will actu-ally decline. Again, it does notmean that we will blow our-selves up or become extinct –although that is a possibility.Given the very long emergenceof the Homo and the survivingHomo sapiens species, we couldhave a much longer time periodto evolve. Ever since the atombomb was invented in the 1940sthere have been dire theories ofour extinction, and since the1970s the theories have beenfrom environmental destruction.But the truth has thus far beenthe longest peacetime expansionin modern history and, morerecently, we are making greaterenvironmental progress in thedeveloped countries due to newtechnologies emerging as hasbeen the case throughout history.

In fact, Elliott Wave theory (seechapter 2, figure 2.7 and pages52 - 53 of The Next GreatBubble Boom) would suggestthat we would see a decline in

population for the first timesince the last ice age in thecoming centuries, and then seea resurgence, back towards ourpeak levels or higher (a “B”Wave later) before declining ifthat is our fate. But on theother hand, this first expansionsince 140,000 to 150,000 yearsago (where our oldest modernlanguages and genetic linesdate) could see further and larg-er waves up after many decades,or more likely, centuries of con-solidation. The best evidence tous is that there is no obviousspecies to replace us, and ifthere were (at least in retro-spect) it would take a muchlonger time for such a newspecies to emerge. Mammalshad already been around aslong as 200 million years agowell before the dinosaurs wentextinct. Large-brained Homosemerged over 2 million yearsbefore smaller brain apes areapproaching extinction today(saved thus far only throughhuman efforts from people likeDiane Fossey and Jane Goodall).

We think human evolution hasa long way to go. We seem tooyoung as a species to die outyet. But demographic trendsand long-term cycles stronglysuggest that we have a veryclear slowing, and likely adecline in population and eco-nomic growth coming in thedecades and centuries aheadstarting with Europe andspreading around the worldover this century.

Again, this demographic declineis clearly occurring today inEurope and Japan, and is fol-lowing in the U.S. and then evenChina by about 2030. SoutheastAsia and India are the nextareas for potential strong growthand could eventually slow afteraround 2065. And then the


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chart 6

trends could be flat to decliningfor a long period of time andhistory clearly shows that slow-ing, flattening and decliningdemographic trends bring verydifficult times of transition anddeflation.

The First Counter-Migrationand Clash of Ethnic Culturesin the Last Ice Age

But let’s get back to the majormigration trends that continuedafter the great inland expansionfrom 35,000 to around 20,000years ago. The next migrationwas not expansive, but contrac-tive. It was precipitated by thelast great ice age from around22,000 to 14,000 years ago(peaking around 18,000).Rapidly cooling temperaturesforced the North Europeanhunters down into SouthernEurope, the Central andNortheast Asian hunters downinto India, China and SoutheastAsia, and the South Americanbeachcombers towards NorthernSouth America and NorthAmerican hunters newly arrivedrapidly into Central America.Everyone had to migrate moretowards the warmer regions tosurvive, as most northerly areasbecame ice caps or deserts. Andthe most benign large regionwas Southeast Asia to SouthernIndia.

The significance of this periodwas that it brought:

1) A clash between northerlytribes migrating downward andestablished southerly tribes inthose areas.

2) The increasing dominance ofthe northern “more fit” culturesout of this clash due to theirstronger tools and survivalskills.

3) The first slowing or decline inpopulation since exponentialgrowth set in around 50,000years ago.

4) A narrowing into southerlyareas leading to greater popula-tion density there and shrinkinghunting and gathering groundsleading to more intensive man-agement of those areas (the prel-ude to the AgriculturalRevolution).

5) Sharing and learningamongst clashing cultures andtools leading to greater innova-tion to deal with shrinking terri-tories.

6) The population dominancetoday of Southeast Asia andIndia as they expanded expo-nentially after the last ice agefrom a larger base of populationthat survived in that mostbenign, larger area.

The male genetic lines show thatthe third migration or third sonof Adam outside of Africa, Seth,accounts for 90% of malestoday. These males descendedfrom the inland hunters thatspearheaded the larger migra-tions between 35,000 and22,000 years ago. Not only didthey have larger areas to expandinto and grow, but also again,when these inland huntersstarted moving south during thelast ice age they tended to havestronger fighting skills (from biggame hunting) and survivalskills (from harsher climates).So an inevitable clash of north-ern and southern culturesoccurred in Europe/Mid-East,the Americas, South Asia(India/Pakistan) and SoutheastAsia. Where there were “turf”battles the northerners tendedto win out and either rape ortake some southerly wives.

Hence, there was more a domi-nance that emerged out of thenortherly male cultures fromEurope to India to SoutheastAsia and Central America, and agreater mixing of female, morestationary lines. Of the two ini-tial daughter lines from Eve(outside of Africa), the inlandand more westward line nowrepresents 60% of females vs.the more eastern and southerly(beachcomber) line at 40%.

Hence, this was the first signifi-cant clash and convergence ofethnic cultures in human histo-ry (we are facing the secondgreat clash with globalization inmodern times). Up until thatpoint, hunter/gatherer tribeslargely avoided contact and con-flict and existed in much small-er numbers in an area. It waseasier to move to new beachesor new hunting grounds andfight animals, rather than otherintelligent humans with stonetools. There are no genetic signsthat earlier human lines likeNeanderthal or Asian Homoerectus mixed at all with Homosapiens (or to minor degreesthat died out if at all) eventhough they occupied similarareas at times. They simplycompeted for hunting grounds,and the strongest survived.

This convergence not onlybrought higher population den-sity in narrower southerly areas,but it would bring new learningof tools and skills from otherethnic clans, and hence, innova-tion. This is similar to whatoccurred after Columbus whenships first sailed around theworld, and what is happeningtoday with jet travel, TV, theInternet and globalization. Thiswas also the first mixing thatbegan to make us more alikerather than more different, espe-cially on the female side.


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The Really Great Leap – TheAgricultural Age and Writing

Progress and population growthnaturally began to accelerateexponentially after the warmingperiod that began significantlyaround 13,000 years ago whichlead to further migrations backmostly into areas already previ-ously inhabited. Northerly areasand hunting grounds openedback up and migrations wentback north again until popula-tion started to saturate huntinggrounds in more areas. Thesoutherly areas from the Mid-East/Southern Europe toIndia/Southeast Asia to CentralAmerica were already saturatedfrom the great move downwardin the ice age. Hence, localtribes had to first learn to huntand gather more intensively inlocal areas, as they could nolonger just migrate from area toarea, following animals and veg-etation in an open landscape.

So, it was just a matter of timebefore the next great innovationcame along – learning to plantand grow seeds instead of gath-ering, and to breed and domesti-cate rather than hunt animals.Hence, the Agricultural Eraemerged slowly at first some-where after 13,000 years agoand clearly dawned by archaeo-logical evidence by 10,000 yearsago. In addition, the weather gotvery wet and warm (more thantoday) between 9,000 and 6,000years ago creating a very favor-able environment for the earlyincubation stage of stationaryfarming. Even the extremeSaharan deserts in North Africabecame grasslands briefly asstone drawings of roaming ani-mals there 8,000 years agoshow. But the AgriculturalRevolution did not occur thereat first, it occurred in the FertileCrescent area of the Middle-East

where there was greater popula-tion density and more variedvegetation and game that weresuitable for domestication.

We finally started to settledown in small numbers atfirst, and become farmers andthen herders. This began firstin The Fertile Crescent inareas like modern day Iraq,Southern Turkey, Syria andIsrael by 10,000 years ago,and emerged about 7,500years ago in the inland rivervalleys of southern China, andthen 3,500 years ago in pock-ets of Central America (Aztecsand Mayans) and NorthwestSouth America (Incas).

Why did this occur first in theMid-East when the weather wasactually more favorable inSoutheast Asia? The first reasonsimply seems to be the naturalvariety of grasses, seeds andanimals that were prone todomestication in the Mid-East,vs. “mainly rice” in China. Butalso more varied seasons andterrain that promoted moreinnovation and forward thinkingto survive from year to year andmore hearty vegetation to sur-vive, like the more northerly cli-mates did for hunting whereagriculture could not have firstemerged due to adverse climate.The great majority of naturalgrains today already grew in theMid-East. Cattle, sheep, goatsand pigs all existed there, andnot largely in Southeast Asia orthe Americas.

In another exceptional book,Guns, Germs and Steel, JaredDiamond shows that it wasn’tthe superior innovation orgenetic skills of Mid-Easternand European cultures thatgenerated the AgriculturalRevolution there (and rememberthat DNA research shows that

all modern humans outside ofAfrica emerged from one veryhomogenous gene pool). It wasthe fact that The FertileCrescent had the greatest num-ber of plant and animal species,and more important, it had byfar the highest percentage ofspecies that proved over time tobe domesticated. No large ani-mals in Sub Saharan Africahave ever been successfullydomesticated and very few inNorth and South America. Onlyrice largely emerged inSoutheast Asia and corn inSouth and Central America,compared with wheat, bulghar,oats, rye and others in theMiddle East.

In addition Diamond shows thatEurasia is not only the largestcontinent for the broad spreadof agriculture, but that itsexpanse runs on an East-Westaxis that allows successfulgenetic species of domesticatedplants and animals to spreadeasily to similar latitudes andclimates where they would pros-per easily. Both Africa and theAmericas run on a North-Southaxis making it very hard tospread different species easily.The same peas are unlikely togrow 500 to 1,000 miles southor north in a very different cli-mate. Since it was agriculturethat allowed rapid populationgrowth and density, and centralized governments, spe-cialized technologies and armies– the areas that first developedagriculture (out of luck of geog-raphy and climate) ended upbecoming the major powers inthe world, developing guns andsteel and industry to follow,then conquering the less agri-cultural and industrial regionsover recent centuries.


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Why Apes and Humans FirstEmerged in Areas like Africathen Developed to theGreatest Degree In SoutheastAsia

This reasoning is similar to whymammals, apes and humansfirst emerged in Africa ratherthan Southeast Asia. Thisoccurred, not only because of asomewhat rare, benign equatori-al climate available for them toemerge (like Southeast Asia),but also the varied terrain andmore dramatic change of sea-sons from wet to dry, andforests to plains. More challeng-ing environments create moreadaptable and dominantspecies.

Asia has long been too benignfor new or higher developmentat first due to the lack of chal-lenge in the environment – it’stoo good most of the time. Infact, when the apes first migrat-ed out of Africa 15 million yearsago (when Africa first collidedand connected with Asia), theydeveloped largely into orangutanand ribbon species in SoutheastAsia. They expanded incredibly,but never got as intelligent aschimpanzees, hominids andhumans in Africa. They stayedmore ape-like, as the vasterforests in Southeast Asia weretoo accommodative to stimulatemajor new behaviors and braingrowth. They never or rarely hadto move out into the plains andlearn new skills and behaviors.But Southeast Asia has con-versely been the most benignenvironment for the expansionand maturation of new speciesonce they develop on a largerscale. Southeast Asia was thegreatest area that humansmigrated to during the severeconditions of the last ice age. Itclearly holds the highest popula-tions of humans today and themost potential for human

growth in the future because ofits benign environment and itslarger populations that are justnow adopting modern technolo-gies and western lifestyles. Mostrecently that growth is acceler-ating at the highest levels everseen due to the advent of airconditioning first and thenindustrial/information technolo-gies since the 1950s as we cansee in Chart 7 that shows GDPper capita in Western Europe vs.China since 400 A.D.

China did not see the fall instandard of living that WestEurope did during the DarkAges but also saw no realprogress. But after theCrusades, Western Europeaccelerated while China laggedbehind in growth and thendeclined from the mid-1800s tothe mid-1900s as they shunnednew technologies and outsideinfluences. Since then we haveseen perhaps the fastest catch-up in productivity and standardof living in history. China’s stan-dard of living is very likely toequal Western Europe’s and atleast rival the U.S. in the nextfew decades. And such growth israpidly spreading to SoutheastAsia and India. This region will

see even larger relative gains vs.the West during the demograph-ic spending downturn from 2010to 2022. Southeast Asia andIndia are clearly the growthareas of this century. But again,the demographic trends eventhere are beginning to slow andshould peak by 2065, and earli-er by 2030 in China.

Millions of years of evolutionhave shown that higherspecies first develop in some-what benign, but more chal-lenging and varied areas ofgeography and climate likeAfrica, and then ultimatelyexpand into the largest, mostbenign climatic areas likeIndia and Southeast Asia.Apes, archaic humans andmodern humans all firstemerged in the “motherground” of Africa and thenmigrated foremost into theMid-East, Europe and CentralAsia, but always ultimatelyinto India and Southeast Asiawhere there are the largestland masses with the best cli-mates. Southern NorthAmerica and Northern SouthAmerica have the next largestareas with favorable climates.


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chart 7

The last major line of Homoerectus peaked in Europe andCentral Asia and then survivedthe longest in Southeast Asia.Homo sapiens peaked and sur-vived most in Southeast Asiaafter the last ice age. Hence, it isonly natural that the maturity ofthe modern human bubble inpopulation today would ulti-mately peak in Southeast Asiaand India, as we will projectmore clearly ahead. But thehuman lines that most populat-ed those regions today, firstmigrated and evolved throughthe challenges of NorthernEurasia before migrating andexpanding there bringing greaterinnovations. And these oldercultures in Southeast Asia areless likely to bring as radical alevel of innovations as the U.S.and Western Europe broughtbefore them. More incrementalchange and slower demographicgrowth (and eventually flatten-ing or declining) in these regionsis likely to create the future ofeconomic and human evolutionfor decades and perhaps cen-turies to come.

Human, and all growth, emergesfrom the dualistic combinationof nurturing (female) and chal-lenge (male). Nurturing comesfirst through the mother, andthen challenge through thefather, then hopefully if all goesright a balance between the twoin alternating cycles of child-hood, adolescence, adulthoodand retirement. But especially inthe early processes of develop-ment, too much nurturing leadsto a lack of challenge for innova-tion and growth (like many richkids), and too much challengeends up in self-destructivebehavior from stress and over-striving (like Michael Jackson).It is the greatest balance ofthese two qualities in the right

order that creates the greatestqualities for long-term survivaland success. Africa seems tohave had that best balance forearly incubation between warm,equatorial environments towardsthe center, with challenging sea-sons and dramatic shiftsbetween forests and plains anddeserts.

The greatest reason for the sur-vival and dominance of apes,hominids and then humans wasthat we were more intelligent,but also more flexible andadaptable. We developed themost varied and expandingdiets, we were the first tobecome bi-pedal and then devel-oped the most flexible hands,thumbs and feet for shapingand using tools. Other great veg-etarians and carnivores fromdinosaurs to mammoths to lionsand tigers were more physical insize, strength and focus, andmore specialized in diet andskills. We were the most “open-architecture” new organicspecies, like personal computersand software today in technolo-gy. When the environmentchanged these specialists diedout, as they only knew how todo one thing very well. We arealso more wired in the brain (asa result of such varied adapta-tion) for mischief, creativity,innovation and change, likechimpanzees — but much moreso. We also have a high intelli-gence to mass/body ratio muchlike rodents, ants and flies thathave also survived so well andso broadly everywhere.

The Mid-East as theBirthplace for Agriculture andUrbanization

It seems that the more “cultural”invention and evolutionarynecessity of agriculture first

emerged in the Mid-East, likeAfrica for stone tools, huntingand human incubation, due tothe combination of nurturingand challenge. The Middle Easthas a somewhat benign, butvery shifting climate betweenseasons and between grasslandsand deserts. It therefore devel-oped a great variety of survivinggrains and animals over timethat evolved to adapt. Evidenceof the first farming communitieshave been excavated in Jerichodating back to almost 10,000years ago with similar findingsin nearby areas. Rice farming inChina only emerged around2,500 to 3,000 years later,between 7,500 and 7,000 yearsago.

Africa, like any mature culture,had so developed in huntingand gathering for so long thatagriculture was not as great anecessity at first. And it did notsee much or any of the greatmigration southward during thelast ice age that created greaterpopulation density, competition,learning and innovation due toits isolation. All of the migrationaround the world, with its newchallenges and new technologiesoccurred mostly outside ofAfrica. But the greatest reasonfor lack of an agricultural explo-sion was that there were nospecies of large animals inAfrica that were suitable fordomestication. Zebras may looklike horses, and hippos a bit likepigs, and water buffalo like cat-tle, but zebras nor hippos norwater buffalo have ever beendomesticated successfully evenin modern times. If they had, wewouldn’t have to worry aboutthem becoming extinct.Sorghum was the only substan-tial grain to develop in Africa.


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Agriculture and urban culturehas its roots, not in Africa,but in the Fertile Crescent ofthe Middle East. In fact,Africa has been the least agri-cultural and urbanized area ofthe world precisely due to itslack of domesticated plantsand animal species; its long,established culture in huntingand gathering; and its isola-tion externally and internallyfrom the rest of the world’ssubsequent technologicaldevelopments.

Africa is not only the most iso-lated major continent along withSouth America and Australia,but it has a lack of major har-bors for shipping and trade(since Columbus and long-rangesailing) and many faults/water-falls, jungles, deserts and geo-graphical blocks to inland traveland trade. Outside of the Nile,there are no rivers that crosslargely from north to south oreast to west, like the Mississippiin the U.S. And where that wasthe case somewhat for the Nile,agriculture and urbanizationfirst developed there. Africa wasthe great incubator for newhuman species due to thesechallenges, but it is not thegreatest growth environmentand settling place for urbaniza-tion.

Today it is the poorest continentin the world, and the slowest toadopt modern technologies andliving standards. The lack ofindustrialization has causedcontinued high populationgrowth. But poverty and diseasehas caused high death rates andthe lowest rates of economicprogress – keeping it mostly in aperpetual third world countrystatus. Hence, the future ofAfrica remains bleak at this timein history, despite being the

mother ground of our humancivilization. It is unfortunately amaturing and dying cultureunless something radicallychanges there to favor it again –or as may just be emerging – amovement of developed coun-tries to invest and create theinfrastructures and technologiesfor growth there.

It also seems clear in historythat the greatest urban andmost advanced technologicalcultures have emerged in theNorthern hemisphere in themore temperate, most challeng-ing climates, with the greatestland masses for expansion (andlater to a degree in theSoutherly or more temperateareas of the SouthernHemisphere). This disfavoredAfrica, South America andAustralia until after the sailingrevolution in the late 1400s. Butremember that Africa holds theoldest cultures in the world,Australia in East Asia, andSouth America in the Americas.

That creates the paradox thatthe more southerly continentsbelow the equator have been thegreatest incubators, while themore northerly landmasses havebeen the greatest expanders ofpopulation and urbanization.That seems destined to continueas Latin America is slowing inpopulation growth despite itslargely benign climate and broadlandmass, as is Australia (evenwith recent massive western set-tlement). These areas arealready more urbanized andhave less expansion comparedwith areas like China andSoutheast Asia from that per-spective. And Africa for nowseems on a path of warfare, cor-ruption and disease towardspotential destruction.

History and Evolution unfor-tunately dictates that the old-est and most generative cul-tures are the least prosperousover time and the first todecline as a general rule.Hence, we see a long period ofpeaking and decline startingwith Africa, moving to theMid-East and Central Asia toEurope to America and thento Southeast Asia and India.

The Emergence of Towns,Cities, Specialization of Laborand Writing

The Agricultural Revolution thatdid clearly incubate in the Mid-East led to the first small townsand urbanization trends and thefirst excess in production offoods. This freed up more peoplefor increasing specialization innew tasks and professions likemerchants, pottery, constructiontrades, record-keeping – andhence — the first major socialstratifications beyond coopera-tive, more egalitarian huntingtribes. Jericho, around 8,000B.C. (10,000 years ago), was thefirst recognizable small town. By3,500 B.C. the first large templeand city was found in Uruk inIraq. It was a religious and fooddistribution center. Writing firstappeared as simple tabula-tions/symbols for sales andemerged in Sumeria with tem-ples, marketplaces, god-likerulers, and etc. by 3,000 B.C.(5,000 years ago).

Hieroglyphics, the first morecomplex written languageemerged first in Egypt around3,000 B.C. just after the firstPharaoh emerged around 3,150B.C. in Southern Egypt with irri-gation practices along the Nile.The first even more sophisticat-ed wedge-shaped symbols of“cuneiform” writing emerged by


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2,000 B.C. leading to poetry,hymns to the gods and histori-cal depictions of wars. From3,500 B.C. thereon with stonetablets and writing we trulyentered documented history, aswe can since record more accu-rately the developments thathave occurred from a humaninterpretation — not just fromarchaeological, anthropologicaland DNA evidence – and withmore accurate dating andrecords. But more important, wenow had a new form of commu-nication for learning and shar-ing in an increasingly urbanizedworld that launched the nextgreat revolution in urbanization,technology and knowledge.

The greatest long-term trendsfrom the AgriculturalRevolution were: populationdensity and explosion; urban-ization into towns, cities andregional empires; specializa-tion of labor and rising pro-ductivity; writing and morepermanent communication;governments and organizedreligion; increasing warfare,and ultimately, science andadvanced technology.

Urbanization: Towns to Citiesto Regional Empires toGlobalization

The emergence of agricultureand urban civilization was ahuge step in history. With itcame more exponential popula-tion growth and density; special-ization in skills, crafts andtrade; record keeping andbureaucracy; land ownershipand aristocracy; social hierar-chies and classes; technologicaldevelopment and science; organ-ized government anddictators/god-like rulers; war-fare and armies; organized reli-gion; ethnic factionalism andtensions; and finally, greater

local environmental constraintsto growth. This was the firstmassive leap in “specialization”that freed up more people fromhunting and survival tasks. Butit also led to an increasing spiralof the clash and convergence ofethnic, tribal and family/clansthat first began in the consolida-tion in equatorial areas duringthe ice age.

Cities from Sumeria to Romehad to bring many clans andtribes into cooperation for com-mon goals under one city/stateand leader. That was not easyand created the increasinglycomplex “political” art and sci-ence of motivating people to acommon cause beyond theirindividual, local and ethnicinclinations. And this createdthe need for armies and militaryenforcement of laws anddecrees, which along with newtechnologies and demographicgrowth, has very much shapedmodern history since. Religionemerged to unify different clansand ethnic groups under the“divinity” of leaders which weresanctioned by priests. Morallaws were necessary to keeppeople from fighting each otherand to learn to live more peace-ably together.

The first small towns emergedaround the time of Jericho. Afterthe emergence of the first citieslike Sumeria, we saw the natu-ral progression to larger citiesand regional empires with tradeand commerce built aroundthose centers. This causedgreater exploration outward intoother cultures and caused manymore ethnic groups to be incor-porated into larger common sys-tems of trade and rule. Firstcame the Persian empires andlarger centers like Babylon. Butas the Persians — after the peakof their first great empires final-

ly set out to move eastward andconquer Greece — they cameacross new technologies in shipsand warfare they hadn’t encoun-tered before. They were decimat-ed by small forces a mere frac-tion of their size at Thermopylaein 480 B.C. which began therise of Greece, and to follow,Western Culture.

The rise of Greece lead to thenext great modern innova-tions in philosophy andrational thought that wouldcreate the next major revolu-tion after writing — abstractthinking, mathematics, sci-ence and philosophy.

The true beginning of scienceand the mere beginnings of theconcept of democracy occurredin Greece between around 600B.C. and 200 B.C. (fromSocrates to Aristotle toArchimedes). In fact, the great-est thinkers of this time alsocommunicated some of the mostadvanced esoteric spiritual doc-trines that have stood untiltoday’s times. The Greeks firstspread this new knowledgethrough a short-lived empireback through Persia withAlexander the Great into the300’s B.C. This represented thenext major step in human evolu-tion and laid the foundations forgrowth and productivity trendsinto modern times. Western orscientific and technology-drivencivilization emerged out ofGreece (and to a lesser degreeout of China). In fact, there wereno major revolutions in scienceand philosophy after Greeceuntil the 1500s into the 1700sin Western Europe (TheEnlightenment Period). From200 B.C. on the Romans tookover with their prowess in mili-tary power and building infra-structures for expansion. If theGreeks were the “innovators”,


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the Romans were the initial“marketers and expanders” ofWestern culture and scienceinto the mainstream throughoutEurope and the Middle East.

The Romans sacked Greece astheir empire was declining from200 B.C. to 146 B.C. TheGreeks hit their peak in scientif-ic evolution by 200 B.C. and theRomans then absorbed andspread Greek technology (addingmore basic innovations likeaqueducts and improved roads)through military might aroundits growing Mediterranean andEuropean empire for hundredsof years. They built the greatestregional empire of trade andcommerce up until that time,and the first broad and sus-tained “commercial” vs. “feudal”economy in history. The RomanEmpire peaked by 100 A.D. withan unstable plateau into around450 A.D. that lead into the DarkAges for around 500 years intoaround the late 900s A.D.

The Dark Ages saw a regressionback first into subsistence agri-culture in more rural areas andthen into new local feudalempires controlled by knightsand landlords with superiorhorse and stirrup-based fightingtechnologies. The Crusades from1,000 forward brought us backinto the growth of small townsand cities across the Mid-Eastand Europe. Then theRenaissance into the 1300s and1400s brought European cul-ture back to the achievements ofthe Roman Empire. From thenon we achieved new heights ofculture again. It was the print-ing press, gunpowder and the“Great Exploration” starting withColumbus and tall sailing shipsin the late 1400s that discoveredand started to re-ignite commu-nication and trade throughoutthe world and colonized much of

the world in North and SouthAmerica and the Pacific that hadbeen isolated.

That great exploration incubatedthe modern and increasinglyglobal era of capitalism, followedby the increasing spread ofdemocracy and Industrializationto follow. In the next long-termboom that ensued we have seenmega-cities and a global econo-my emerge today with the U.S.increasingly looking like themodern day Rome of this globalera with expansion continuinginto the highly populated andbenign regions of Southeast Asiaand India as such maturationtrends have occurred in pasthistory.

The Exponential Trend inPopulation Growth Since 1000B.C.

We can’t as accurately measurethe population growth back to50,000 years ago, although ithas been very roughly estimatedback to 10,000 B.C. Chart 8(repeated from Chart 1 earlier)shows increasingly accurateestimates of world populationsince about 1,000 B.C. or 3,000years of history. In the last

3,000 years the world popula-tion has grown from 50 millionto 6.2 billion, or 124 times!Rough estimates for 10,000B.C., 12,000 years ago, werearound 4 million. Hence, thepopulation grew 12.5 times in9,000 years from 10,000 B.C. to1,000 B.C. This is clearly anexponential trend over time thatis growing into a clear bubble inrecent history.

There are two lines on thisgraph. The lower one shows anormal plot of linear growth andhere we see an incredible bubbleforming for thousands of yearsand especially in the last 200 –500 years. That line looks justlike a chart on compoundinginterest where you take $1 todayand show what it would grow toin 40 years if you reinvest theinterest every year — but over amuch greater expanse of time.You get phenomenal results thefarther you go out, but thegrowth starts very slowly at firstand then compounds exponen-tially in mass only in the laterstages as we see here with pop-ulation growth. Again, the truthabout growth is that it occursexponentially until it begins tohit limits. And birth rates are


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chart 8

slowing around the world andprojections are for a peak inpopulation around 9 billion bythe end of this century.

The second line is a logarithmicplot, which takes an exponentialtrend and smoothes it more intostraight-line like trends (so thathumans can adapt their narrowstraight-line thinking to thereality of exponential growthover of time). But even here wesee waves of increasing expo-nential trends building as timehas progressed. From Greektimes into the peaking of theRoman Empire we saw a fasteracceleration at first. Then wesaw a slowing around 100 B.C.and then a flattening between300 and 600 A.D. and a slowexpansion at first into 900. Inthis time period we saw Romefirst peak, then fall followed bythe Dark Ages – not a pretty pic-ture. Then we saw the nextacceleration from around 900into the Great Plague of theearly to mid-1300s, and thenthe most dynamic surge afterthe Printing Press around 1,500,accelerating even more so afterthe Industrial Revolution around1,800. This is clearly a bubblebuilding even when adjusted forlogarithmic or exponentialtrends.

One of the classic signs of theend of a bubble is that it dou-bles in the last short period.Like the Nasdaq from late1998 into early 2000, the pop-ulation of the world is project-ed to double between the mid-1800s and mid this century –a very short 200-year periodof time given the more expo-nential increase over the last1,000 years or so, buildingupon the general exponentialincrease since the last ice agearound 13,000 years ago. Thissimply can’t continue for long

and the beginning signs ofslowing are already clearlyevident.

Most interesting is how popula-tion growth has differed betweenthe East and West. Chart 9shows population growth inJapan, China and WesternEurope back 2,000 years. Chinastarted at a higher base thanWestern Europe in 0 A.D. (andback to 13,000 years ago) due tohigher numbers surviving in themore benign climate inSoutheast Asia during the lastice age. Population growth hasbeen particularly higher there

since 1700. Japan has seen theleast progressive populationgrowth although it has acceler-ated since the late 1800s upuntil the 1950s.

But this rapid populationgrowth is slowing even in placeslike China. By looking at thepopulation forecasts for theWorld in Chart 10, the U.N.projects that there will be aslowdown in population growthbetween 2000 and 2050 andthat World population couldpeak around 9 billion by 2100.In The Next Great Bubble Boom,figure E.3, page 293, We show a


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chart 10

chart 9

five year forecast through 2100that shows the actual peak to bein 2065. We think their esti-mates for Africa are likely toooptimistic due to rising diseaseand unrest, and North Americalikewise given the downturn wesee coming that will adverselyaffect immigration rates. So, ifanything, the peak is very likelyto come by 2065 when Asia andLatin America are projected topeak. As China and other coun-tries in Asia develop intostronger economies we think theimmigration to North Americawill also slow longer-term,beyond the downturn from 2010to 2022.

Europe is clearly leading thetrends towards slowing birthsand declining population thatother countries are likely to fol-low down the road. BroaderEurope (including East Europeand Russia) in Chart 11 alreadypeaked around 2000 at just over700 million and is projected tolose almost 200 million peopleby 2100. North America inChart 12 is slowing less fastdue to slightly higher birth ratesthan Europe and higher immi-gration, and the higher birthrates are largely due to immi-grants. It is projected to grow to450 million by 2050 and per-haps 480 million by 2100. But

again we think that is overlyoptimistic given that we are projecting that immigration willdecline very substantially after2010 when North Americaenters a prolonged downturnand comes under more seriousterrorist and world threats. Wewould be surprised not to see apeak at significantly lower levelsin North America between 2040and 2065.

Asia holds the largest popula-tion at 3.8 billion today and hasby far the greatest potential forgrowth as is shown in Chart 13.It is projected to peak around5.2 billion in 2065, and China isalready slowing dramaticallytoday as it urbanizes and indus-trializes with low birth policiesfrom the government for decadespast. China’s population is pro-jected to peak by 2030 ataround 1.45 billion rising fromjust over 1.3 billion today.China is already slowing rapidly,but it is the one large countrythat is still urbanizing rapidlyand that should provide strongeconomic growth into 2020(when its baby boom SpendingWave will peak) to 2030 whenits total population is projectedto peak. As we showed back inChart 7, China is likely to seethe most rapid and dramaticeconomic growth and progressof any major country in history,but then quickly shift to slowingor decline due to its peakingpopulation by 2030. Eightyyears or two generations fromThird World to First World sta-tus!

India should rise to almost 1.6billion from just over 1.3 billiontoday by 2050 and is projectedto continue to rise more slowlyinto 2065. Yet India is alreadymore urbanized and its broaderculture has not historically beenas growth or materially-orientedas China. Hence the economic


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chart 12

chart 11

gains there are not likely to beas strong as China. China’sGDP (in purchasing power pari-ty) is projected to surpass thatof the U.S. by 2020, and withour projections for the downturnin the U.S., it may surpass useven earlier. India’s GDP is pro-jected to surpass the U.S. by2050. Hence, economic andpolitical power will progressivelypass to Asia over the next 20 to50 years. Then there isSoutheast Asia with Indonesiaas the largest country in popula-tion and still growing more rap-idly. But there is a lot of politi-cal unrest and potential insta-

bility along with growing terror-ist camps.

Latin America/Caribbean inChart 14 at just over 500 mil-lion today is due to peak around2065 at 770 million. This regionis also largely urbanized and isnot showing the same growth inproductivity trends recently asChina and Asia. Hence, there isgrowth potential here economi-cally, but again not as great asAsia. Africa has clearly been thelaggard in economic growth,urbanization and productivitygains. But it still has the high-est birth rates, though they are

declining. Chart 15 shows thatpopulation is projected to growto almost 2.3 billion by 2100from 800 million today. Again,we think this is overly optimisticgiven rising disease rates andpolitical unrest. But Africa istruly the wild card in the worldeconomy. If there are greatertrends towards urbanization andrising productivity in the future,this area could be the last greatgrowth region in the world fol-lowing India – and could causedemographic growth to extendas late as 2100. But for now wewould assume that growth ratesin population would be lowerthan forecasted and peak earli-er. We would also assume thateconomic progress would con-tinue to be minor until we seesigns to the contrary.

We would expect that worldpopulation could peakbetween 2050 and 2065, butby 2100 at the latest. So thismajor bubble in human popu-lation is very likely coming toan end in this century. Andremember, the last time popu-lation growth slowed andmerely flattened we saw theDark Ages to follow and a peri-od from 0 A.D. to 1,000 wherehuman progress in standard ofliving was minimal as we willshow in GDP per capita statis-tics ahead. This scenariocould be different now that wehave such incredible advancesin knowledge and technologythat are more transferable andshould be more sustainablethan those coming into theDark Ages where most of thegains of thousands of years inknowledge and culture werelargely lost for 500 years.

There was something importantthat happened since the printingpress in the late 1400s. We canrecord information and


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chart 13

chart 14

knowledge and pass it down tomany people and to future gen-erations. Writing had this effectbut was limited to so few peoplewho had access to written textsbefore that point. How manypeople had access to thelibraries of Alexandria back atthe time of Christ? Hence, it waseasy to lose gains in knowledgeand science before the 1500s.The computer and Internet haveexpanded the access to andstorage of knowledge and infor-mation exponentially beyondprinted material.

When Rome fell in the 400s,centralized knowledge andaccess to it almost disappearedinto the Dark Ages and ourstandard of living regressedlargely back to the feudal, locallevel of organization and struc-ture of Sumeria in 3,000 B.C.Most of the gains in civilizationand standard of living built intothe Roman Empire were lost forhundreds of years until theywere slowly rediscovered fromthe Crusades to theRenaissance. Hence, we don’tthink it is likely that such aregression in civilization andknowledge will occur in this

slowing era ahead. Productivitymay continue to increase,despite slowing demographics –unless there is such a rate ofterrorism, warfare and isolationof regions that we lose some ofthese benefits. Yet even if we seegreater unrest and fragmenta-tion in the world, it is unlikelywe would lose most of our gainsin technology and organization.

Why is this long-term exponen-tial population finally peaking?The Industrial Revolution hasand is continuing to raise middle class incomes aroundthe world to the point that morepeople are having fewer kids dueto the expanding social opportu-nities in life and the non-neces-sity of needing kids to work onfarms. The AgriculturalRevolution was a great boon tobirths and larger families as lifestabilized into homes vs. con-stant migration. Agriculturegreatly stimulated urbanizationand population growth.

The bubble in population growthis the reason we have seen suchdramatic technological, stockmarket and GDP per capitagrowth (on a lag), as demo-

graphics drive innovation andgrowth across the board. TheIndustrial Revolution continuedthe trend towards centralizationand urbanization, but raisedincomes and education costs tothe point that most people havedesired less and less to havemore kids. And the recentInformation Revolution onlyadds to that slowing in birthsand will allow our population todecentralize into more ruralareas again for the first time in10,000 years. We will grow bymoving to more ex-urban areasin the future, first in the devel-oped countries and then inemerging countries. But we arenot likely to start having morekids per household any time inthe near future, even in emerg-ing countries.

Chart 16 shows very clearly thatbirth rates are declining every-where in the world, not just inEurope and Japan which havethe lowest rates. Especiallysince 1950 when the IndustrialRevolution started spreadingworldwide, birth rates have seena sharp decline everywhere.They have declined the least inAfrica, but death rates are high-er there to offset somewhat andthat could increase with presenttrends in HIV and rising povertylevels and droughts. Birth rateseven in India are declining dra-matically and more so than inAfrica. Brazil (and SouthAmerica), China and Japan haveseen the most dramatic declinessince 1950. The United States isdeclining at a slower rate onlydue to high immigration ratesthat are likely to slow in thecoming decades, and then birthrates could slow here faster aswell.


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chart 15

Since the IndustrialRevolution in the early 1800s,birth rates have been slowing.But they have been slowingmore dramatically since 1950with the dawn of theInformation Revolution. Thistrend shows no sign of abatingat this point. Hence, we arecertain to have slower demo-graphic growth for manydecades and likely centuriesto come.

The 3000-Year WesternCivilization Cycle

If we look at the most refinedeconomic data we have in mod-ern times, we saw a long-termand increasingly bubble boomfrom at least early Greek timesinto the peak of the RomanEmpire, and we are seeing asecond long-term boom from theend of The Dark Ages that isevolving into a bubble since theIndustrial Revolution into thecurrent period. Since we didn’thave stock markets or regularGDP data back then, Chart 17just ahead shows this long-termtrend in the best way we canaccurately display it today,through long-term rises in infla-tion levels. Contrary to popular

economic opinion which consid-ers inflation a negative factor,inflation – or the rise in generalprice levels over time — actuallyreflects rising productivity andspecialization in labor andskills.

As new technological innova-tions over time allow us to spe-cialize more in what we do best,we sub-contract more functionsto more “middlemen” and spe-cialists. Although we pay morefor these outside services, weearn even more by focusing onhigher-value-added tasks andcreate a net gain in income andprosperity. This specialization oflabor and inflation theory wascovered in detailed research inan article in Forbes “The GreatHamburger Paradox” (September15, 1977).

We also noted in The Roaring2000s Investor (Simon &Schuster, 1999) and previousbooks, that inflation is our econ-omy’s means of initially financ-ing the growth of new technolo-gies and the entry of new younggenerations into the workforce,as well as major wars whichspur major economic transitionsto new economies and broader

empires of commerce. Hence,these inflationary periods arefollowed by great booms on a20- to 30-year lag, in rough pro-portion to their magnitude. Thisgreatest boom in history waspreceded by the largest sus-tained period of inflation for along time in the 1970s.

Hence, inflation generally comeswith the expense of raising newgenerations and financing theirinnovations, but pays off in thedecades to follow as theybecome productive citizens andadopt those new innovationsand bring them into the main-stream. But the long-term evi-dence is clear, just like DNAresearch. Higher levels of infla-tion, although painful at first inthe short-term, correlate veryclosely with population growth,and subsequent economicexpansions and long-termadvances in our standard of liv-ing. The Great Wave by DavidHackett Fischer (OxfordUniversity Press, 1996) docu-ments the correlation betweenpopulation growth and long-term inflation trends in greatacademic detail as well as look-ing at other correlations.

I started off my research intolong-term economic trends bycomprehensively studying over10,000 pages of a set of historybooks over the expanse of Greekto modern times. I noted in asmuch detail as was documentedwhen there were major advancesin technology or commerce,when there were major powershifts politically and militarily,when the economy was boomingor busting, and most measura-bly when there were significantchanges in prices levels or infla-tion. Fortunately, most histori-ans regularly note when thereare periods of inflation anddeflation.


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chart 16

Chart 17 was the most interest-ing chart and insight that cameout of that research. I wasn’tlooking for any particular pat-tern when I charted such roughchanges in inflation levels overthe last 3000 years. In fact, Iwould have presumed at thetime that rising inflation was anegative factor for economics,not a positive one. Whatemerged was an alternatinglong-term boom and bust cyclesimilar to what we have shownfor the four-stage economic andtechnology cycles covered in TheNext Great Bubble Boom rangingfrom shorter-term S-Curveaccelerations to the 80-year neweconomy cycle.

There was a long-term rise ininflation and prosperity fromearly Greek times into theplateau peak of the RomanEmpire from around 100 to 450A.D., then a huge bust orshake-out period from the late400s into the late 900s, andthen another very long-termboom in prices and economicprosperity from the Crusadesinto current times. In the veryfundamental four-stage model ofeconomic progress we have pre-sented throughout this book,

the Greeks represented theInnovation Stage (with the earlystages of science and democra-cy), the Roman Empire theGrowth Boom (through militarypower andinfrastructure/empire building),the Dark Ages the ShakeoutStage, and WesternEurope/North America theMaturity Boom over about 3,000years or a bit longer.

Here we see an approximate3000-year Democracy orWestern Civilization Cyclethat follows the same fourstages or seasons of our 80-year new economy model orfor any S-Curve cycle for theemergence of new products,technologies or social trends,and for human life cycles aswell.

The same growth process andlife cycle occurs from the short-est-term to the longest-termcycles! This validates the veryfundamental nature of this four-stage economic growth modeland how it is the basic buildingblock of human and naturalprocesses of growth and evolu-tion. And demographic and pop-ulation trends are the engine

that drive these four-stagecycles. That was the insight Ifirst got from a longer expanseand overview of human history.

We can see this specialization oflabor and inflation trend clearlyaccelerating in just the last cen-tury with the advent of electrici-ty, phones and automobiles. Wewere mostly “jack-of-all-trades”farmers, craftsmen, trappersand merchants. Now we havethousands of specialized jobclassifications in factories andincreasingly in offices and pro-fessional avocations. This spe-cialization again paradoxicallyincreases the prices we pay forgoods and services, as we haveto pay more specialists and mid-dlemen for goods and serviceswe used to produce more our-selves. But the paradox is thatour higher earning capacities asspecialists more than make upfor those increasing prices –increasing our standard of liv-ing. Labor productivity has goneup 10 times since the inventionof the phone in the 1870s, andso has inflation.

How Western CivilizationEmerged in Greece andExpanded Through Rome

Now that we’ve explained therelationship of long-term infla-tion and prosperity cycles let’slook back at Chart 17. The veryconcept of Democracy started (inonly the most elite circles oflandholders at first) in Greece.Greek philosophy and science(Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras,Plotinus, Archimedes and manymore scholars) emerged between600 B.C. and 200 B.C. duringthe declining stages of thePersian Empire (1,0000 – 500B.C.) with the IonianRenaissance that peaked in 546B.C in Greece. Revolutionaryphilosophical, mathematical and


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chart 17

scientific thought flowered into200 B.C. peaking withArchimedes. Major advances orbreakthroughs in science andphilosophy were not made afterthat period until around the1500s into the 1700s (“TheEnlightenment”) in WesternEurope.

The Golden Age and commercialrevolution in Greece startedfrom the defeat of Xerxes by theSpartans at Thermopylae in 480B.C. (where the Greeks exhibit-ed major advances in sailingand warfare) and continued to399 B.C. That would have repre-sented the Growth Boom inGreek civilization back then.Then after a pause (or Shakeoutperiod), there was the rise ofAlexander the Great and hisempire conquering Persia from336 B.C. forward which lead toan influx of science and com-merce into the 200’s B.C. inGreece. But that was the relativepeak of Greece in European his-tory. From 200 to 146 B.C.Rome conquered Greece. That400-year period in Greece fromabout 600 B.C. to 200 B.C.would represent the Innovationstage of Western Civilizationfrom a broader point-of-view.

The Romans then acquiredGreek philosophy and scienceand built the Roman Empirestarting with the conquest ofHannibal in Carthage from 264to 202 B.C. Their greatest con-tributions were basic infrastruc-tures ranging from aqueducts topaved roads and couriers – butmostly military might and ambi-tion. The greatest surge ofgrowth came from just beforeChrist into just after the time ofChrist between 60 B.C. and 100A.D. wherein the WesternEmpire was built and includedthe rule of Caesar (58 – 44

B.C.), Marc Antony (44 – 30B.C.) and Augustus (30 B.C. –18 A.D.). This period was calledthe Golden Age of Rome. Thenthe Silver Age followed into 96A.D. that was considered thepeak of Roman commerce andindustry. Prosperity continuedto grow marginally into around193 A.D.

Then there was a difficult periodof collapse in the Roman Empireand then consolidation from 193into 305 A.D. when Diocletianfinally restored order by break-ing the empire into East andWest for greater manageability.Then Constantine ushered in anew era of prosperity using theChristian religion to unify theEmpire that marked the firstgreat expansion or GrowthBoom for Christianity. In 330A.D. Constantinople was madethe capital of the Empire asgrowth and prosperity shiftedmore towards the EasternEmpire. The Western Empirestarted to deteriorate to thepoint that barbarians and mer-cenaries had to be hired tomaintain the army as moremigrants moved in and tookover more functions broadly.

Ultimately, these internal andexternal “huns” revolted andsacked Rome in the 450s andthe Roman Empire fell with onlya brief resurgence in Italy, Spainand North Africa in the 500s,but with the Arabs/Persiansand Islam resurging in powerfrom 640 on and growth occur-ring more eastward towardsIstanbul. The period from atleast 246 B.C. (Carthage con-quered and then Greece) or bet-ter from Alexander the Great’sfirst empire starting around 336B.C. to around 450 A.D., wouldhave represented the GrowthBoom stage of Western

Civilization, or about 650 to 800years. It ended in a minor bub-ble in prices and wealth around450 A.D. that followed thestronger previous bubble intoaround 100 A.D. (like the twinbubbles in 1919 and 1929 inthe last modern technologicalrevolution).

The Long Shakeout of theDark Ages

As we all know, that was amajor turning point in modernWestern history. From the late400s until the Crusades we sawa five hundred year bear marketand a regression to subsistencefarming and local feudalisticempires! The longer the cyclethe longer the Shakeout stagethat occurs. That’s why it is soimportant to get a longer view ofhistory even in looking at cur-rent cycles. Another major eventoccurred from a religious andpolitical perspective, the rise ofIslam during the Dark Ages(from 569 to 1258) that is nowthe greatest potential reactionand threat to the long expanseof Western and largelyChristian-based culture – againon a lag.

That 500-year period from thelate 400s to the late 900s repre-sented the Shakeout stage ofWestern Civilization. Theextended depression and defla-tionary period that evolved sawthe extreme wealth and relativeurbanization of the RomanEmpire deteriorate into a longperiod of feudal subsistenceback into rural areas through-out Europe with the near disap-pearance of trade and coinedmoney. But then finally, aftercenturies of boredom and eco-nomic regression, the knightsand warring feudal classesdecided to re-conquer Europe


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for the glory of Christianity inthe late 900s and those travelsand pursuits regenerated trade,communication, Christianityand the rise of WesternCivilization again.

Hence, the Crusades ushered inthe beginning of the longer-termMaturity Boom of WesternCivilization – starting withanother great expansion of pop-ulation and a movement backinto towns and cities starting inthe early 1,100’s particularly inNorthern Italy and theNetherlands. A cluster of agri-cultural innovations dating backto the 900s, including the heavyplough, horseshoes, harnesses,three-field rotation and openfield planting, drove innovationand lead to greater specializa-tion in food production through-out Europe. The greater long-term trend is that we’ve been ina boom for a little over 1,000years since the Crusades orslightly earlier – about the sametime period that the boom fromearly Greek times into theRoman Empire lasted (fromaround 600 B.C. to 450 A.D.).

The Long Maturity Boom inWestern Civilization – 1000-Year Cycle

From 1,000 to 1,500 WesternEurope grew the fastest in popu-lation especially in the North,but the center of wealth andinnovation came with theMerchant Revolution inNorthern Italy especially whenits navy conquered Istanbul andgave it dominance of theMediterranean shipping routes.Venice was the center for ship-building, trade, wealth and GDPper capita growth in that era.But it peaked between the late1400s and 1500s, as did itspopulation when the Turksstarted closing off major trading

routes to the East again, greatlydiminishing Northern Italy’sdominance of trade.The migration back to townsand cities flourished throughthe 1200s until growth startedto slow. Eventually the environ-mental problems with sewagefrom this great expanse lead toThe Great Plague (1347 - 1348)and a long crisis period (The100 Years War 1337 – 1453)into the mid-1400s for Europeduring which the Renaissanceperiod (in Northern Italy)brought renewed interest in theurban culture of the RomanEmpire and Greek philosophyand culture. Major innovationsstarted to emerge in NorthernItaly in banking, accounting andinsurance that sowed the seedsfor the Capitalist Revolution tofollow in the next era of growth.From 1,000 to 1,500 GDP percapita approximately doubled inWestern Europe while onlyincreasing 33% in China (whichbecame increasingly moreadverse to trade and global com-merce), and GDP per capitaregressed in Africa.

Growth re-emerged strongly bythe early 1500s, with majorinnovations like the printingpress, improvements in tall sail-ing ships and navigation, andgunpowder in the mid- to late1400s. Population growthresurged again and rapidly ris-ing inflation and economicprogress naturally followed.Portugal and Spain lead the dis-covery of America (Columbus,1492) and the Portuguese firsttook leadership of trade in Africaand the Far East for a centurywhile the Spanish first moved todominance in the Americas. In1588 the English defeated theSpanish Armada that markedthe peak of Spanish andPortuguese leadership in worldtrade and colonization.

Then it was the rise of theDutch in wool production, bank-ing and shipping who dominatedpopulation growth and GDP percapita advances from around1600 – 1820 while the Britishalso started to build an empireof trade and colonization. 1603saw the East India Company (inthe Netherlands) that represent-ed the first more noted stockshares for investors in a compa-ny for financing long-term sail-ing expeditions for trade withAsia in spices and silk (althoughthat first began back in Veniceon a smaller scale in the 1300s).From 1500 to 1820 the greatestpopulation growth was in largercities in Western Europe likeParis, London, Vienna andAmsterdam. But by 1700, popu-lation growth peaked in theNetherlands and the tide ofinnovation and growth shiftedmore decidedly to Britain andFrance, with Britain emerginginto leadership in innovation,trade and commerce.

The Industrial RevolutionLead by Britain

The foundations for theIndustrial Revolution were laidin the slowing period of popula-tion and economic growthbetween the mid-1600s and thelate 1700s. The scientific revolu-tion or “The EnlightenmentPeriod” brought the first majoradvances in science since Greektimes. This represented the firstgreat phase of complex abstractthinking! We saw breakthroughsin science from Galileo,Descartes, Bacon, Kepler,Darwin, Newton, Kant, Locke,and Adam Smith, and manyothers. Then a commercial revo-lution followed. Between 1738and 1793 the next macro set oftechnology innovations hit


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largely in Britain. Spinning millssaw a series of innovations,especially the Spinning Jenny in1765, that increased their pro-ductivity 16 times and that wasfollowed by Eli Whitney’s cottongin (U.S.) in 1793 thatprocessed raw cotton morecheaply to feed those mills. Wesaw the zenith of France withLouis XIV from 1643 – 1715 andthe peak of the Dutch tradingempire with the bursting of theSouth Seas Bubble in 1720.This left the lead clearly toBritain who dominated increas-ingly into the late 1800s.

There was a major shift fromwool to cotton and from agricul-ture to industry that greatlyfavored Britain from the late1700s on. But the greatest inno-vation in Britain was of coursethe steam engine by Watt in1765, the first stage in poweredmachinery that brought a newera to economic progress andlaid the practical foundations forthe factory system and broughtthe greatest single turning pointin the acceleration of our stan-dard of living in history: TheIndustrial Revolution. GDP percapita has been soaring atunprecedented rates ever sinceas the stock market has reflect-ed since the late 1700s.

The Democracy Revolutionsand the Decline of Monarchies

Simultaneously, in the politicalrealm came the American andFrench Revolutions that strucka blow to the rampant rise inmonarchies and the narrowland-based control of wealthand power since the late 1400s(and since the AgriculturalRevolution 10,000 years ago).Democratic governments andthe broader accumulation ofeconomic gains began toemerge. This has continued to

be a powerful trend drivingmodern economies today. 1820–1913 represented the fastestrise in productivity with growthin GDP per capita tripling inthat period for Western Europeuntil 1950 when productivityaccelerated even faster from themass production phase of theIndustrial Revolution that fol-lowed. GDP per capita advancedanother 32% in Western Europefrom 1913 to 1950 and thenquadrupled from 1950 to 1998.The British Empire was greatlyexpanded from 1820 into 1913before it began to collapse.

1812 saw the first steamshipand by 1869 the Suez Canalopened much quicker routes toIndia and the Far East. But per-haps the biggest impact ofsteamships was the strongsurge in immigration fromEurope into North America,Latin America andAustralia/New Zealand. It wasthese nations that lead growthin the next era and the U.S.became the world leader in theage of automobiles and massproduction. Railroads were alsoinitially innovated in GreatBritain in 1825 just aftersteamships, but ultimately hada much greater impact in theU.S. by uniting such a vast con-tinent of resources and growthpotential.

Electrification decentralizedpower access and made locationless important in manufacturingwhich gave an advantage to theU.S. who then led in the innova-tions of scientific work designand management (FrederickTaylor), the assembly line(Henry Ford), the modern decen-tralized corporation (AlfredSloan) and large-scale R&D labs(Thomas Edison) in the early1900s. The U.S. has clearly leadinnovation and productivity

growth since the late 1800s.After World War I the BritishEmpire began to fall apart andwas largely dismantled by 1948as the U.S. rose into world lead-ership not just economically,but politically and militarily fol-lowing World War II.

The Information Revolutionemerged with the first comput-ers in 1946 along with Jetengines and the A-bomb. Thencame the first microchip in1971, PCs in 1976, and the firstintegrated PC software operatingsystems in 1983. The U.S. isclearly leading this revolutionthat began to accelerate into themainstream around 1994 withthe Internet, home computers,cellular phones – and nowbroadband. And we have seenmajor advances in genetics inthe last two decades afterWatson discovered DNA in 1953.Technological innovation isclearly not slowing and is stillcentered in the U.S. for now.Radical new innovations haveyet to emerge in Asia at thistime to suggest new leadership,although there are minor hintsof such potential leadership. Thetrends in recent decades havebeen for Asian countries – fromJapan to South Korea to Chinato India – to incrementallyimprove new technologies and toduplicate new products at lowerprices from lower wage rates.

To review briefly, the long-termMaturity boom of WesternCivilization that emerged out ofthe Dark Ages around the late900s A.D. is still expandingtoday. That boom starting withthe Merchant revolution from1000 – 1500 lead by Venice andNorthern Italy, then expanded tothe Capitalist revolution from1500 – 1800 lead increasinglyby the Netherlands, and thenmoved into The Industrial


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Revolution lead by Great Britainfrom the late 1700s into WorldWar I. Since then, the U.S. haslead the mass manufacturingphase of the IndustrialRevolution from 1914 on (withthe assembly line) and leads theInformation Revolution current-ly. And this revolution is farfrom over but is about to hit itsfirst zenith around 2009/2010and see the slow passing ofincreasingly more incrementalinnovation and economic powerto China, Southeast Asia andIndia in the coming decades andcenturies.

A Summary of Inflation andStandard of Living Progress inModern Times

Now briefly to get a tangible lookat the economic evidence of theunprecedented boom since theCrusades since the late 900sA.D., Chart 18 shows a muchmore accurate plotting of infla-tion and economic progress inGreat Britain over the past 1000years (by E. H. Phelps Brownand Sheila V. Hopkins). Butnote here that this analysis ofinflation trends is only in GreatBritain. Great Britain was a lag-

gard at first in the Merchantand Commercial Revolutionsthat re-ignited in Northern Italyfirst and then spread toNorthern Europe. Hence, thischart may be underestimatingthe trends in progress into the1400s. Also note that the U.S.has dominated increasinglysince the 1900s, and hence,trends may be a bit under-esti-mated as well there. But this isthe best solid economic evidenceof the basic inflationary trendsand general rise in standard ofliving back 1,000 years inWestern Europe.

On this chart we add likelyElliott Wave patterns of growthand progress. The 1st recoverywave out of the Dark Ages wasthe Commercial or MerchantRevolution and saw a dramaticexpansion back into cities fromaround 1000 to the early 1200sand then that wave saw aplateau peak and then a declineinto The Great Plague in themid-1300s. Then we saw theRenaissance in the late 1300sand 1400s that lead into theCapitalist Revolution followingthe printing press and tall sail-ing ships innovated in the late

1400s. That 3rd wave advanceoccurred from the mid-1300sslowly at first into the early1700s when the South Seasbubble from peaked in 1720 andlead into a decline into the late1700s, and then peaked withthe early stages of the IndustrialRevolution into the early 1800s.From this point-of-view, theIndustrial Revolution was morethe crescendo of the CapitalistRevolution that emerged afterthe Printing Press.

The 5th and final wave upbegan in the late 1800s with thebeginning of electricity and themass production revolution inthe U.S. into the early 1900sand the Information Revolution(which actually began with thetelegraph and telephone in themid- to late 1800s and wasgreatly extended by computersand the Internet). This wave hasclearly become the most dramat-ic and exponential following theextreme demographic bubblethat is likely beginning to peakwith the demographic trendsaround the world in this centu-ry. The first wave of this broaderwave occurred into the 1920sand the 3rd wave advance isstill in progress after the GreatDepression, but should be peak-ing around 2010 with the defla-tion trends we are projecting for2010 - 2022. This chart wouldsuggest that we are likely to seeone final wave upward later inthis century driven more by theextended boom into Asia that islikely to peak by 2065. But thenwe could see very flat to evendeclining prices for centurieswith the slowing demographicgrowth that has alreadyoccurred in developed countriesand is starting to occur rapidlyeven in emerging countries asthey industrialize.


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chart 18

This is what we mean whenwe say that we seem to benearing the top of a very longboom – a top that is likely tooccur as early as 2010 in themost developed countries, andas late as 2065 to 2100 indeveloping countries fromSoutheast Asia to India andperhaps Africa.Progress in Standard of Livingin the Last 1000 Years

In this long boom since theCrusades, there has been greatprogress in our standard of liv-ing, but it has obviously beenstronger in regions like Western

Europe and North America.Chart 19 shows the rise in GDPper capita for the regions thathave been stronger than theworld average back to two thou-sand years to 0 A.D. There waslittle progress anywhere in theworld from 0 A.D. (near thepeak of the Roman Empire) to1,000 A.D. (through the DarkAges). But since 1,000 A.D. thegreatest progress centered inWestern Europe and then evengreater after the IndustrialRevolution from 1820 on in the“Western Offshoots” (U.S.,Canada, Australia, NewZealand). Since 1820 Japan has

had the most dramatic rise, justsurpassing Western Europesince the 1980s.

In Chart 20 we look at the larg-er regions that have under-per-formed the world average. Africahas lagged the most since 1,000and then Asia (excludingJapan). Latin America has madethe most progress, along withEastern Europe, especially since1820. In this century ahead, wewould expect the greatest rise tocome in Asia and for Africa tocontinue to lag unless there issome dramatic revolution inproductivity and political struc-ture there. Despite the slowingin demographics ahead especial-ly for the more developed coun-tries, we would expect GPD percapita to continue to increasefrom the Information Revolutionand a more powerful 500-Yeartechnology cycle.

500-Year Macro-TechnologyCycles – From Centralizationto Decentralization

In addition to the 10,000-YearAgricultural Cycle, the 3,000-Year Western Civilization Cycleand the 1,000-Year bull marketcycle since the Crusades wehave covered. There appears tobe a very powerful 500-Yearcycle in macro technology inno-vations. In the mid-to late 1400swe saw very powerful innova-tions that have driven unprece-dented progress since: Theprinting press, long-range sail-ing ships and gunpowder. Theprinting press expanded com-munication and knowledgebeyond tiny elite circles for thefirst time in history. TheProtestant Revolution in religionfollowed in the 1500s, then rev-olutionary insights fromCopernicus and Galileo and theCapitalist Revolution in busi-ness. There was a never-ending


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chart 19

chart 20

expansion of science and busi-ness from the 1500s onwarddue to this massive informationrevolution.

Tall sailing ships and advancesin navigation led quickly to thediscovery of America byColumbus and later the rest ofthe world by entrepreneurialsailors like Cook. World tradeexpanded enormously ever sincethis innovation. Gunpowderchanged power and led to thebuilding of larger nation-statesand regional empires for thefirst time since Rome. As wementioned earlier, the IndustrialRevolution with poweredmachinery and factory systemswas more the pinnacle of theCapitalist Revolution that fol-lowed the printing press, sailingships and gunpowder. The next500-Year cycle would come withThe Information Revolution.

The computer was first inventedin 1946, along with the jetengine in 1943 and the A-bombin 1945. The computer came492 years after the printingpress and represented the nextmajor revolution in communica-tion, information and knowl-edge. The jet engine was thenext radical transportation inno-vation to transform world traveland trade. The A-bomb andnuclear weapons have obviouslytransformed power relationshipsin politics around the worldbetween the haves and have-nots. But there is a difference inthese new technologies.

Over time they are clearly prov-ing to be more decentralizingrather than centralizing.Information is increasingly avail-able to anyone anywhere, smallcompanies and large companies,small nations and large nations.Micro-jets are allowing smallerareas and towns in ex-urbanareas to grow and all countriesto be accessed more easily.

Nuclear weapons are becomingsmaller and smaller in scale andare increasingly giving power tosmaller political and terroristgroups. Many emerging nations,from Iran to North Korea, areclose to having nuclear weaponsnow.

If we look back at past 500-yearcycles we see innovations likethe heavy plough back in the900s and the stirrup in the400s. The stirrup was an exam-ple of a decentralizing technolo-gy in warfare and politicalpower. It doesn’t sound like abig deal but it was. It allowedsmall groups of highly trainedknights to have great superiorityin battle over foot soldiers. Thismeant that local feudal lordscould have great power over theserfs and peasants in any smallregion. The stirrup added to thetrends from urbanization backto rural subsistence living afterthe fall of Rome.

The decentralizing qualities ofthis Information Revolutioncreate a paradox. There ismuch continued potential forrising productivity despiteslowing demographics as weare still in the early stages ofthis powerful 500-year cycle.The biotech revolution is juststarting to emerge with nan-otechnology to follow. Yetthere is also the potential forincreasing fragmentation ofpower in the world with small-er groups and nations havingthe capability to disrupttrade, leading to a less stablepolitical and trading environ-ment. That would actuallywork against the trendstowards a more integratedglobal economy. This couldcause living standards to fallrather than rise, or for thereto be flat to minimal increasesin standard of living for mostcountries much as occurred inthe Dark Ages.

This is likely to be the greatestissue ahead for our future:whether these decentralizingtechnologies create more posi-tive effects in personal and cor-porate productivity vs. morenegative effects in destabilizingbroader political and economicsystems. That is something wecannot fully predict. But the factthat so many long-term cyclesare nearing a peak makes ussuspect that we will see longer-term declining trends set insomewhere between 2010 and2065. As we mentioned in thebeginning of this chapter, theincreasing clash between cul-tures seems to be the key factorin today’s increasingly complexglobal economy. It may takedecades and centuries to sortout the unavoidable differencesin culture that have evolvedfrom such uneven economicprogress in the past centuriesand the clear trends now towarda more global economy.

For the first time in history,we have a world economy withmajor regions existing inthree very different levels ofeconomic, cultural and politi-cal development: thirdworld/agricultural, secondworld/industrial, and firstworld/informational. Thereare even more very discretedifferences at the human levelof psychology and develop-ment. These differences causenations and peoples to viewthe world differently. Hence,aligning these differences intoa new global economy will bevery challenging – and justmay not be possible until therest of the world catches upto the Industrial andInformation Revolutions overthe rest of this century bring-ing a more unified world view.


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Hence, it is likely that it willtake many decades or even centuries for the world tomake the real transition intoa global economy. That likelymeans an increasingly lessstable environment ahead,despite the unprecedentedprogress from new technolo-gies.

The 300-Year Cycles Beforeand After the IndustrialRevolution

We are clearly still in the earlystages of this 500-year macrotechnology cycle, much like theearly 1500s. But we get a differ-

ent picture if we look at the pro-gression of cycles since theIndustrial Revolution that weshowed in Chapter 2 of The NextGreat Bubble Boom. There hasbeen an approximate 230-yearbull market and bubble boomsince the late 1700s and theIndustrial Revolution that is dueto very likely peak in the U.S.and Europe by around2009/2010 with three majorbubbles evolving and all of thekey canal to railroad to automotive to information tech-nologies bubbles that haveoccurred during this cycle. Thatchart is repeated in Chart 21.

Again, there was a 69-year bearmarket in stocks from the burstof the South Seas Bubble in1720. Since the late 1780s therehas been a bull market that willhave lasted about 231 years by2009/2010 if there is a majorpeak there as we are projecting.That makes a 300-yearboom/bust cycle. If there hadbeen a stock market beforethen, we estimate roughly thatthere was another approximate230-year bull market from thelate 1400s into the South SeasBubble peak in 1720. And thenthere would have been a boomand bubble from the late 900sor early 1,000s into the late1200s or mid-1300s before theGreat Plague.

That would mean that this 230-year bubble boom cycle project-ed to peak between 2009 and2010 would represent the 5thand final major wave up datingback to the Crusades and thebeginning of this 1,000-yearboom cycle. That would evenmore strongly suggest that stockprices and economic advancescould peak in the more devel-oped countries in NorthAmerica, Western Europe andJapan for many decades tocome. The peaking of the mostdeveloped countries in the worldis likely to have some impact onthe continued progress of thedeveloping countries and wouldonly add to economic and politi-cal instability in the world. Butthe greatest progress is likely tobe in Asia from 2010 onward. Ifthis 300-year cycle is peaking inmost developed countriesaround 2010, the “B” wave ofthis coming 70-year plus bearmarket is likely to take the U.S.market back towards the likelyhighs of 2009/2010 between2038 and the early 2040s beforebottoming around the 2080s orperhaps later.


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chart 21

chart 22

Where are we on this 300-yearboom/bust cycle? We are likely heading into a 5th wavepeak for most developed countries with an extended70-year plus bear market after2010.

The 80-Year New EconomyCycle

In Chart 22 we show the 80-yearnew economy cycle fromChapter 7 of The Next GreatBubble Boom since the late1970s/early 1980s and how weare transitioning from anassembly-line-driven standard-ized economy to a network-driv-en customized economy. Thiscycle has seen its InnovationStage from 1968 to 1982, itsGrowth Boom from 1983 to2009/2010 to peak ahead, itsShakeout Stage will come from2010 into 2022, and itsMaturity Boom from 2023 intothe late 2030s or early 2040s,and possibly later with strongerworld trends – in the U.S. whichis still the leading economic,technology and political/militaryleader in the world – for now.

Where are we on this 80-yearcycle? Nearing the end of theGrowth Boom Stage and aboutto enter the Shakeout Stagebetween 2010 and 2022/2023with a Maturity Boom to fol-low in the U.S. between 2023and the late 2030s to early2040s. In view of the 300-yearcycle, that is likely to only bea major bear market rallybefore another extendeddecline into the 2060s to2080s.

The Baby Boom SpendingWave

Chart 23 shows the SpendingWave of the baby boom genera-tion in the U.S. (and a good

average of that trend in themost developed countries fromEurope to Japan) that repre-sents the 40-year generationcycle since the early 1980s. Theboom in spending and the stockmarket started in late 1982 andshould continue into late2009/mid-2010, representingthe Growth Boom of the 80-yearCycle in Chart 20. This 40-yearcycle will see a downturn fromaround 2010 into 2020/22 orso, representing the ShakeoutStage of the 80-year cycle.

Where are we on this 40-yeargeneration boom and bustcycle? In the last bull marketjust before a 12- to 14-yeardecline ahead from around2010 on.

And how is this last bull marketfrom late 2002 into 2009/2010likely to unfold? In three wavesof expansion as we can see inChart 24. The first recoverywave started in late 2002 andpeaked in early-to mid-2004.The third wave is likely to peakby mid-to late 2006, and possi-bly extend into late 2008. Thefifth wave should occur fromlate 2006 at the earliest andpossibly as late as late 2008

when we likely see the mostextreme short-term bubble inhistory before peaking betweenlate 2009 and early 2010.

If we look at all of our long-term cycles only one is clearlystill pointing up – the 500-year cycle. The 1,000-yearboom cycle and the 3,000-year Western Civilizationcycle are all nearing a peak –but the time frames therecould obviously extend furtherout. More ominous, the 230-year bull market (300-yearcycle), the 80-year GrowthBoom cycle and the 40-yearSpending Wave cycles all lookto clearly peak by 2010 in theU.S. with the crescendo oftechnological innovations ofthe massive baby boom gener-ation also by 2009. Thatwould suggest, along withother indicators we have, thatwe may see a peak in ourstock markets that will be thelast for the rest of our life-times and even most of ourkids’ lifetimes in the U.S.,Europe and Japan.


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chart 23

Hence, this clearly could rep-resent the last great bull mar-ket for a long time in the U.S.and the developed world, andJapan’s bull market very like-ly peaked for many decades inlate 1989.

The greatest variable as wementioned earlier, is how wellthis new world of very differentnations and human stages ofevolutionary growth can inte-grate into a workable globaleconomy – or not! In truth we allsee our lives and the world fromour present stage of evolution -not realizing that every stageprogresses and leads to a newstage. Hence, we don’t live inreality!

We don’t understand the stagesthat other groups and nations

are in and we are in denialabout the natural cyclical andexponential nature of growththroughout human history andthe universe altogether.

The best thing we can do tomake a smoother transitioninto a more prosperouswin/win global economy is tobetter understand the realitiesof the natural life cycles ofhuman development, econom-ic development — and organi-zational, cultural, social, andpolitical development. If wepersist only in our individualpoints-of-view as ethnicgroups and nations thisinevitable transition to a moreglobal economy will be verydifficult and painful – and thatis the greater likelihood atthis point.

We as humanity are growing upin a larger sense just as ahuman being does from birth todeath with all of the stages oflife in between.

How different was your perspec-tive on life when you were ateen-ager vs. a maturing adultwith kids? Each stage of lifecauses us to see the world dif-ferently. This is equally true ofdifferent cultures as they devel-op over a broader time horizonthroughout history.

We are in an auspicious andpotentially ominous time in his-tory and the challenges andopportunities to come – both ata personal level and at a broad-er level of human evolution.Knowing how to react to thisnew environment will be criticalto every aspect of your life fromfamily to investments to busi-ness to where you live. Butunderstanding more fully theexponential and cyclical natureof life may just motivate you toconsider an entirely differentapproach to your own life andwhat is most important to youin the future.


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