erectus’ adaptations could have gone beyond physical abilities. She argues, “There was something special-either biologically, they were smarter, [or] they had agreable structure-that allowed humans preciso be successful durante these novel environments.”
erectus from the 1.77 million-year-old Dmanisi site sopra Georgia for support. Analysis suggests the bones came from per man who lived for some time without teeth before his death. Though more than one sfondo is possible, Belmaker argues this hominin likely survived because others cared for him, assisting with the hard work of gathering, hunting, and preparing raw meat and root vegetables-which would have preciso be mashed down for a man who could not chew.
These ideas radically reimagine the capacities of ancient hominins. “Homo erectus was not a passive creature sopra its environment,” Belmaker concludes. “It didn’t just go with the flow-‘Oh, more grassland, I’ll move here’-but was an vive factor con its own destiny. If they chose preciso live durante woodlands, it means that they had some form of agency durante their destiny, and that’s per very evolved animal.”
Several major hominin milestones, including the dispersals of H
Other scholars agree that H. erectus was not simply following spreading savanna as the climate changed but rather had the capacity preciso adjust onesto a variety of environments.
“The course of human evolutionary history has been verso ratcheting up of different abilities puro occupy verso variety of environments,” says paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, the head of the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program, “of eating a greater variety of foods, of being able sicuro respond cognitively and socially sicuro a wider variety of situations.”
He notes that by around 1.4 onesto 1.6 million years ago, H. erectus was occupying tropical Southeast Levante and Indonesia. “That also by itself is an indicator that it’s not just one type of nicchia ecologica that is being followed.”
Since the 1980s, Potts has been pondering the intenzione that climate variability relates preciso major evolutionary changes. Mediante periods of rapid and sustained climatic change, he postulates, only individuals with insecable traits will survive, thrive, and raise children, who per turn can carry those beneficial traits, shaping human evolution.
For example, cognitive abilities that enable individuals puro make sophisticated stone tools could have allowed their users onesto consume varied foods across environments. And verso trait like curiosity might have pushed hominins puro move esatto more humid climes when the landscape dried.
In prime, Belmaker believes H
Among H. erectus’ notable advances was the development of what scientists call Acheulean hand axes, featuring multifaceted spearpoints. The Portable Antiquities Scheme/Julian Watters colombiancupid strada Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0
“Homo erectus didn’t have verso map,” Potts stresses. “They didn’t know they were out of Africa. They were just going over into the next valley to see what was there.” Over generations, their traversal of multiple hills and valleys would have led onesto dispersal.
Con 2015, Potts co-published verso paper sopra the Journal of Human Evolution durante which he looked across several hominin species for signs that variability con the climate favored the evolution of beneficial traits. Together with anthropologist Tyler Faith, now at the University of Utah, the pair mapped periods of high and low climate variability for tropical Eastern Africa over the past 5 million years, specifically looking at once-every-100,000-year shifts durante the Earth’s orbit that prompt more frequent switches between periods of drought and high rainfall. Potts and Faith found that periods of high climate variability coincided with key milestones: the emergence of bipedal australopithecines, for example, and the development of advanced stone tool technology, migration, and brain growth.
erectus and H. sapiens, coincided with periods of prolonged, high climate variability. The pattern was so clear, Potts says, “It looks rigged.”