Ancient climate shifts may have sparked human ingenuity and networking

Dramatic shifts in the East African climate may have driven toolmaking advances and the development of trading networks among Homo sapiens or their close relatives by the Middle Stone Age, roughly 320,000 years ago. That’s the implication of discoveries reported in three papers published online March 15 in Science.

Newly excavated Middle Stone Age tools and red pigment chunks from southern Kenya’s Olorgesailie Basin appear to have been part of a long trend of climate-driven behavior changes in members of the Homo genus that amped up in H. sapiens. Locations of food sources can vary unpredictably on changing landscapes. H. sapiens and their precursors responded by foraging over larger areas with increasingly smaller tools, the researchers propose. Obsidian used for the Middle Stone Age tools came from far away, raising the likelihood of long-distance contacts and trading among hominid populations near humankind’s root.

Source: Ancient climate shifts may have sparked human ingenuity and networking

So, historically, climate change led to advanced behavior and spurred innovation in our ancestral species. Interesting. I guess climate change, when viewed in this perspective, could be a good thing for the human species (in the long run). It might result in our species being forced to innovate and spur advancements in technology to escape these changes, or to adapt to the new climate.

But, people could die you might exclaim?

Still, factors other than climate fluctuations, such as hominid population declines or surges, may also have spurred ancient tool innovations to acquire more or different types of food, cautions archaeologist Yonatan Sahle of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

The reduction in local populations or movements into new areas could result in that being a tragedy for the individuals. However, long term, for the species, it has a historic precedent to have a positive affect.

This is an interesting perspective given these research findings. It might suck for us, but for the future of the human species, could it be a boon they will look back upon and curse us for attempting to delay this climate change?

We can adapt or we can try to stagnate it.

Of course, right now, we have no real way of knowing for sure what's natural and what's not because the science isn't set up to tell us that.

a reply to: Krakatoa

I watched a video that made the same case..


It said humanity is pretty much ONLY a product of the fact Africa has no mountain ranges.

See our brains, hands and thumps come from climbing/swinging through the trees .. but we needed those trees to vanish and become grasslands to evolve the legs and tools we needed to advance..

Cool stuff.

originally posted by: ketsuko
We can adapt or we can try to stagnate it.

Indeed. One of my anthro professors put it succinctly, 'If it's cold, you need to invent a jacket.'

You will find many civilizations owe their rise (and demise) to sudden, unexpected climate changes.

originally posted by: JoshuaCox
a reply to: Krakatoa

I watched a video that made the same case..


It said humanity is pretty much ONLY a product of the fact Africa has no mountain ranges.

See our brains, hands and thumps come from climbing/swinging through the trees .. but we needed those trees to vanish and become grasslands to evolve the legs and tools we needed to advance..

Cool stuff.

But the global warming started recently with coal and petrol use. There will be no more trees to swing from for the swinger set

This has to be fake news, people only people cause climate change and raising sees.

this theory has been around forever. i mean, who leaves a comfy spot unless they are made

a reply to: JoshuaCox

It said humanity is pretty much ONLY a product of the fact Africa has no mountain ranges.

Say what?
Africa

Yes this is a sensible theory and if chaos is the mother of birth/destruction cycle, well climate catastrophes are certainly one of the larger forces capable of change, slowly or swiftly. I still like the stoned ape theory idea too.

Perhaps the most intriguing of Terence McKenna's fascinating theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and human culture.
To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way. Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds. About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin. McKenna's theory has great appeal and intuitive strength, but it is necessarily based on a great deal of supposition interpolating between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human history.

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Climate change will be a necessity in "mother of invention" notion, so yes it,imo, will be a catalyst for innovation and evolutionary changes.

a reply to: Phage

Apparently none are high or long enough to keep the weather patterns consistent.

Usually a mountain range makes a rainforest on one side and a desert o the other.


Apparently, the African plains have changed from Forest to plaines repeatedly.. allowing us to evolve as needed.

a reply to: visitedbythem

Yes there will. There is even some speculation that the worlds bread baskets would increase.


Kansas might become a desert, but Siberia and Canada become prime farm land..


It would totally screw the present power structure, and obviously cause crazy chaos..

However, even if we nuke the place the trees will come back.. we just might not.