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Climate and Human Evolution: Insights from Marine Records
Language
EN
Article de revue
This item was published in
Annual Review of Marine Science. 2024-07-09
English Abstract
The relationship between climate and human evolution is complex, and the causal mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we review and synthesize what is currently known about climate forcings on African landscapes, focusing mainly ...Read more >
The relationship between climate and human evolution is complex, and the causal mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we review and synthesize what is currently known about climate forcings on African landscapes, focusing mainly on the last 4 million years. We use information derived from marine sediment archives and data-numerical climate model comparisons and integration. There exists a heterogeneity in pan-African hydroclimate changes, forced by a combination of orbitally paced, low-latitude fluctuations in insolation; polar ice volume changes; tropical sea surface temperature gradients; the Walker circulation; and possibly greenhouse gases. Pan-African vegetation changes do not follow the same pattern, which is suggestive of additional influences, such as CO$_2$ and temperature. We caution against reliance on temporal correlations between global or regional climate, environmental changes, and human evolution and briefly proffer some ideas on how pan-African climate trends could help create novel conceptual frameworks to determine the causal mechanisms of associations between climate/habitat change and hominin evolution.Read less <
English Keywords
paleoclimate
human evolution
marine records
Africa
numerical modeling
causal mechanisms
European Project
PLIODIS
ANR Project
évaluer le cycle HYDrologique aux basses latitudes dans les modèles numéRiques de climAt en conTraignant les changements passés de salinitE de l'océan. - ANR-21-CE01-0001