The large panel inside the display case summarizes the evolutionary history of climate, Man, and the environment during the Quaternary, the last of the geological eras. The alternation in this era of the stages, characterized by harsh climate periods, and interglacial stages, with more temperate climate periods, and interglacial stages, with more temperate climate, influenced the evolution and distribution of flora and fauna.
The top of the panel shows the temperature variation: current average temperatures are indicated by the black line, in red are the stages with higher temperatures, corresponding to times of warm or temperate climate, while the blue line indicates the cold spells.
The images at the base of the panel indicate some of the evolutionary stages of Man with special attention to face and skull. Samples of stone artifacts are shown for each of the evolutionary stages represented.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, Homo habilis, who first produced stone tools, seem to have evolved from Australopitecus. From Homo habilis arises Homo ergaster spreading in Europe (Homo heidelbergensis) and Asia (Homo erectus). In the evolutionary path, two well separated species follow, Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Homo sapiens in Africa.
The latter appeared in Africa around 150-120 thousand years ago and spread outside the continent populating Europe beginning 40,000 years ago. Neanderthal man coexisted in Europe with H. sapiens for about ten thousand years, even with cultural hybrids, and became extinct approx. 30,000 years ago.
Equipped with language capability from the beginning, the genus Homo fully achieves the ability to articulate language about 40,000 years ago with the more evolved Homo sapiens. The early European H. sapiens introduces innovative and greatly important cultural aspects, especially related to the symbolic world, which will never be lost: a complex funeral rite, art and music.
After the extinction of the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, the species to which we belong, having survived about two million years of evolution, is the only one in the genus Homo to populate our planet.