Early humans survived in a range of extreme environments before global migration, study says

Humans are the only animal that lives in almost all possible environments, from tropical forests to deserts via tundra.

This adaptability is a skill which is prior to the modern era. According to a new study published Wednesday in NatureThe former Homo Sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before dispersing Africa about 50,000 years ago.

“Our superpower is that we are ecosystem general practitioners,” said Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist evolving at the Max Planck Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany.

Our species evolved for the first time in Africa about 300,000 years ago. While previous fossil discoveries show that certain groups have made early incursions outside the continent, sustainable human establishments in other parts of the world only occurred by a series of migrations about 50,000 years ago.

“What was different in the circumstances of the migration that succeeded-why were humans ready this time?” The co-author of the study Emily Hallett, archaeologist at Loyola University in Chicago.

Previous theories have judged that human age humans could have made a single important technological advance or develop a new way of sharing information, but researchers did not find evidence to support this.

This study adopted a different approach by examining the feature of flexibility itself.

Scientists have assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence through Africa 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, the researchers modeled what the local climate would have looked like during the periods that ancient humans lived there.

“There was a really lively change in the range of habitats that humans used around 70,000 years ago,” said Hallett. “We have seen a really clear signal that humans lived in more difficult and more extreme environments.”

While humans have long survived in savannah and forests, they have moved to everything, from dense tropical forests to arid deserts in the period leading 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallett called an “ecological flexibility that allowed them to succeed”.

Although this leap into the capacities is impressive, it is important not to assume that only Homo Sapiens has done so, said the archaeologist of the University of Bordeaux, William Banks, who was not involved in research.

Other groups from the first human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term colonies elsewhere, including those that have evolved into European Neanderthals, he said.

The new research helps to explain why humans were ready to develop around the world back when, he said, but he does not answer the lasting question of the reason why only our species remains today.

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