what was the impact of Climate Change on the life of the early humans?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
Starting about 575 thousand years ago, the area started become much drier, a process called aridification. Grasslands expanded, and ponds and lakes dwindled. It wasn’t a straight-line effect, though, as wet-dry cycles kept the environment from ever drying out too much. Still, the overall trend was clear, and during two periods — between 525 and 400 thousand years ago, and from 350 thousand years ago till now — the aridification happened particularly quickly.
At the same time, the archaeological evidence shows our hominin ancestors were going through some changes too — what the authors call “a major transition in stone technologies.” The end of the earlier Acheulean style of primitive stone tools happened around 500 thousand years ago, right in that driest period, and the first artifacts of the later Middle Stone Age start appearing around 320 thousand years ago, after the second drier period began.
“The [earliest] dry phase and environmental variability would likely have had a significant impact on contemporary hominin populations regionally,” the authors write. Such a changing climate “can lead to an uneven distribution of resources that could drive hominins to travel more widely and to interact increasingly with other groups for both raw materials and information. In turn, this would help to drive technological change and its dissemination, resulting in increased foraging success rates and ability to survive.” The growing aridity may have also put evolutionary pressure on hominins who could perform greater cognitive tasks, such as traveling with a greater variety of tools over greater distances.
That first extra dry period also overlaps with a number of animal extinctions, in particular “large-bodied specialized grazing mammals.”