Regional impacts of climate change and its relevance to human evolution

24Citations
Citations of this article
81Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

The traditional concept of long and gradual, glacial-interglacial climate changes during the Quaternary has been challenged since the 1980s. High temporal resolution analysis of marine, terrestrial and ice geological archives has identified rapid, millennial- to centennial-scale, and large-amplitude climatic cycles throughout the last few million years. These changes were global but have had contrasting regional impacts on the terrestrial and marine ecosystems, with in some cases strong changes in the high latitudes of both hemispheres but muted changes elsewhere. Such a regionalization has produced environmental barriers and corridors that have probably triggered niche contractions/expansions of hominin populations living in Eurasia and Africa. This article reviews the long- and short-timescale ecosystem changes that have punctuated the last few million years, paying particular attention to the environments of the last 650,000 years, which have witnessed key events in the evolution of our lineage in Africa and Eurasia. This review highlights, for the first time, a contemporaneity between the split between Denisovan and Neanderthals, at ~650-400 ka, and the strong Eurasian ice-sheet expansion down to the Black Sea. This ice expansion could form an ice barrier between Europe and Asia that may have triggered the genetic drift between these two populations.

References Powered by Scopus

A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ <sup>18</sup>O records

6695Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Insolation values for the climate of the last 10 million years

3552Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

The ICS international chronostratigraphic chart

2550Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Cited by Powered by Scopus

Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin's Descent of Man

42Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Howiesons Poort backed artifacts provide evidence for social connectivity across southern Africa during the Final Pleistocene

18Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

The climatic and environmental context of the Late Pleistocene

15Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Goñi, M. F. S. (2020). Regional impacts of climate change and its relevance to human evolution. Evolutionary Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.56

Readers' Seniority

Tooltip

Researcher 19

51%

PhD / Post grad / Masters / Doc 13

35%

Professor / Associate Prof. 3

8%

Lecturer / Post doc 2

5%

Readers' Discipline

Tooltip

Arts and Humanities 8

35%

Social Sciences 5

22%

Earth and Planetary Sciences 5

22%

Agricultural and Biological Sciences 5

22%

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free