In the suggest period between 200,000 and 12,000 years ago, humans were living a nomadic lifestyle. The humans of this period were hunter-gatherers, and they were constantly moving from one place to another in accordance to the food supply and climate conditions. Because of this constant movement and constant search for better hunting grounds and places where there's much bigger and more constant supply of fruits, vegetables, root plants, they managed to disperse in very big space and little by little to colonize the planet. In this period the cultivation of plants was still not taking place, and also the humans still hadn't managed to domesticate any wild animals, apart from the wolf which gave rise to the dog, but it was used for hunting, not as a food source.
The Chinese failed to foresee that the European expansion would rival their rise because the Chinese did not see the importance of voyages across oceans. The Europeans were out to discover new lands, resources and colonies. The Chinese were thinking about how to bring together their nomads.
In a way, this is a double edged sword. On one hand, the animals are needed to best test the effects, but on the other hand it can be seen as very unethical. Honestly, I don't really see a way around using the animals. Unless you get human volunteers, but there is no way to fully make them understand what they are getting themselves into which can turn unethical very, very fast. If all of a sudden one of your human volunteers decides that they do not want to be a part of the test anymore, there is noting you can do to reverse what has already been done.
False, quantitative data uses numbers
writing a poem about someone who has died