Late Acheulian assemblages showed remarkable uniformity. This also is true of the middle Paleolithic Mousterian lithic technologies of Europe. The archaeological record in the range of 35,000 to 40,000 years ago shows an apparently dramatic change with replacement by clearly more advanced tool industries and greater diversity of tool types. Geographic and temporal variability was far greater than earlier. This suggests that culture rather than biology drove the burst of growth of our ancestral populations.

The spread of humans reached a new high around 40,000 years ago. It is still unclear when people finally reached the Americans, but it was still later. Peopling of the world is a part of the Great Leap. It is a sign of the capacities people had to adapt to any circumstance.