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Published on: March 12, 2013
Increased ecological resource variability during a critical transition in hominin evolution.
Richard Potts1,2, René Dommain3,4, Jessica W Moerman3
1Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA. pottsr@si.edu.
Climate change impacted human evolution in Africa. New research links shifts in ecological resources to Middle Stone Age (MSA) adaptations, offering insights into early human flexibility.
Area of Science:
- Paleoanthropology
- Archaeology
- Environmental Science
Background:
- Climate change is a known driver of human evolution in Africa.
- Landscape-scale ecological shifts influencing hominin adaptations are understudied.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate ecological dynamics driving a key adaptive transition in human evolution.
- Understand the resource-oriented factors behind Middle Stone Age (MSA) innovations.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of high-resolution, well-dated drill-core datasets.
- Correlation of ecological data with archeological evidence of technological change.
Main Results:
- Ecological changes began around 400,000 years ago, disrupting a stable resource base.
- Fluctuations in freshwater, grasslands, and woody plants increased in magnitude.
- These changes coincided with the transition from Acheulean to Middle Stone Age (MSA) technologies.
Conclusions:
- Ecological shifts and resource instability provide a hypothesis for MSA adaptation success.
- MSA adaptations likely enhanced the ecological flexibility of early Homo sapiens foragers.
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