La Jornada – Tropical Climate Cycles Influenced Human Evolution, According to Study

A new analysis of the data indicates that evolutionary changes in the human species have been influenced by cycles of tropical climate.

Although in the past many scientists turned their attention to ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere as triggers, it is now believed that phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, around the Ecuadorian region, were also central to human evolution in the past 3.5 million years.

To establish the relationship between human evolution and climatic changes in the tropics, scientists published independent, An unprecedented climate analysis. Researchers from Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, and Ethiopia examined sediment samples from lakes in Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia and Ghana, as well as offshore ones off the coasts of Tanzania, Namibia, Congo, Mauritania, Libya, and Egypt.

The study of these samples made it possible to verify the existence of an interrelationship of 600,000 years ago. The scientists, led by paleoclimatologist Stephanie Caputh-Bahr, of the University of Potsdam, now plan to extract more cores with the goal of understanding the African climate up to 3 million years ago.

Since the changes in that period in the Earth’s orbit and rotation are already known, experts know, in theory, what the samples can reveal.

The study published in Measures , The US National Academy of Sciences, reveals the relationship between major climate change in the tropics and the crisis of our ancestor, wise man. About 300 thousand years ago.

For scientists, these pressures from climate change have caused large migration flows, greater genetic exchange, faster environmental adaptation, accelerated evolution and the emergence of new human species.

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