This event is sponsored by the ANU School of Archaeology & Anthropology and the Canberra Archaeological Society

About the Author
Peter Bellwood is professor emeritus of archaeology at the Australian National University. His many books include First Migrants: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective and First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. He is the winner of the 2021 International Cosmos Prize.

The Five-Million-Year Odyssey: The Human Journey from Ape to Agriculture, by Peter Bellwood (2022) Winner of the PROSE Award in Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, and Ancient History, Association of American Publishers

The epic story of human evolution, from our primate beginnings more than five million years ago to the agricultural era

Over the course of five million years, our primate ancestors evolved from a modest population of sub-Saharan apes into the globally dominant species Homo sapiens. Along the way, humans became incredibly diverse in appearance, language, and culture. How did all of this happen? In The Five-Million-Year Odyssey, Peter Bellwood synthesizes research from archaeology, biology, anthropology, and linguistics to immerse us in the saga of human evolution, from the earliest traces of our hominin forebears in Africa, through waves of human expansion across the continents, and to the rise of agriculture and explosive demographic growth around the world.

Bellwood presents our modern diversity as a product of both evolution, which led to the emergence of the genus Homo approximately 2.5 million years ago, and migration, which carried humans into new environments. He introduces us to the ancient hominins—including the australopithecines, Homo erectus, the Neanderthals, and others—before turning to the appearance of Homo sapiens circa 300,000 years ago and subsequent human movement into Eurasia, Australia, and the Americas. Bellwood then explores the invention of agriculture, which enabled farmers to disperse to new territories over the last 10,000 years, facilitating the spread of language families and cultural practices. The outcome is now apparent in our vast array of contemporary ethnicities, linguistic systems, and customs.

The fascinating origin story of our varied human existence, The Five-Million-Year Odyssey underscores the importance of recognizing our shared genetic heritage to appreciate what makes us so diverse.

First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, 2nd Edition, by Peter Bellwood (2023)

A wide-ranging and accessible introduction to the origins and histories of the first agricultural populations in many different parts of the world

This fully revised and updated second edition of First Farmers examines the origins of food production across the world and documents the expansions of agricultural populations from source regions during the past 12,000 years. It commences with the archaeological records from the multiple homelands of agriculture, and extends into discussions that draw on linguistic and genomic information about the human past, featuring new findings from the last ten years of research.

Through twelve chapters, the text examines the latest evidence and leading theories surrounding the early development of agricultural practices through data drawn from across the anthropological discipline—primarily archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology—to present a cohesive history of early farmer migration. Founded on the author's insights from his research into the agricultural prehistory of East and Southeast Asia—one of the best focus areas for the teaching of prehistoric archaeology—this book offers an engaging account of how prehistoric humans settled new landscapes.