With a few exceptions -notably related to isolation and cultural adaptation- the hominin lineage is, among the great apes, the one whose survival does not depend on a permanent and specific climatic and environmental context. However, its successive expansions, biological and cultural adaptations are far from being unrelated to climate and natural environments. Environmental evolution was constant during the Quaternary period, dictated as much by global changes as by local reactions to them or by major events (e.g., geological) that affected areas populated by humans. Climate and environments represented pressures and constraints in the face of human movement, but often represented as well actual opportunities (e.g., access to resources).

The “Out of Africa” dispersals were numerous and, particularly for the oldest, remain little known or insufficiently documented. They punctuate a long history that includes several forms of humanity who sometimes crossed their paths or interacted (cohabitation or coexistence). The movements of human groups, although they affected vast regions from the beginning, cannot for most of them be compared to truly ‘organized’ migrations before the Holocene. During these phases of dispersal, sometimes wrongly described as geographically unidirectional conquests, humans had to deploy all of their adaptive faculties, from a biological, cultural, and social perspective, whether in response to the discovery and exploitation of new ecosystems (e.g., the early arrival of Homo erectus in the Far East some two million years ago) or to the imperative of resilience following sudden events affecting territories. Cultural and social factors have gradually become more important throughout this history, as evidenced by the success of Homo sapiens’ expansions which, directly or indirectly, may have led to the disappearance of other forms of humankind.

Educational legislation in many countries, and certainly in most European countries, recognizes the need to introduce young students in primary and secondary education to knowledge of heritage. But what kind of heritage is it? Usually, it is mainly archaeological, artistic and historical heritage that is considered as such. And a great deal of emphasis is placed on the heritage of the students’ geographical environment.
However, this approach presents both a epistemic problem and methodological problems. Firstly, restricting heritage to physical elements obscures the fact that, for example, literature, language and customs, which are generally studied as separate subjects in the curriculum, also constitute part of the heritage of individuals and societies. The same is true for the history of science and technology and even philosophy. In other words, there is a restriction in the conception of heritage and, at the same time, a highly artificial division of what can and should be considered the cultural legacy received by a society.
And this atomization also leads to an artificial division of the description and educational transmission of information and training on heritage, by separating into different subjects what are, in reality, nothing more than different facets of the same reality.
In my speech I will therefore propose a broad conception of the concept of heritage, and I will defend the need to create integrated educational spaces in which, based on a broad concept of heritage, several of the disciplines that have traditionally been organised in a separate and atomized way in school curricula can be integrated into joint projects.