A new research strategy for integrating studies of paleoclimate, paleoenvironment, and paleoanthropology
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Paleoanthropologists (scientists studying human origins) universally recognize the evolutionary significance of ancient climates and environments for understanding human origins. Even those scientists working in recent phases of human evolution, when modern humans evolved, agree that hunter-gatherer adaptations are tied to the way that climate and environment shape the food and technological resource base. The result is a long tradition of paleoanthropologists engaging with climate and environmental scientists in an effort to understand if and how hominin bio-behavioral evolution responded to climate and environmental change. Despite this unusual consonance, the anticipated rewards of this synergy are unrealized and, in our opinion, will not reach potential until there are some fundamental changes in the way the research model is constructed. Discovering the relation between climate and environmental change to human origins must be grounded in a theoretical framework and a causal understanding of the connection between climate, environment, resource patterning, behavior, and morphology, then move beyond the strict correlative research that continues to dominate the field.
DOI: 10.1002/evan.21443
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: G1528867334, IPG - Developing and Testing an Integrated Paleoscape Model for the early Middle and Late Pleistocene of the South Coast of South Africa, Excavations at Cave 13B, Pinnacle Point at Mossel Bay, South Africa: Faunal Exploitation, Raw Material Procurement, and Organization of Domestic Space During the Middle Stone Age, Multi-level assessment of ocean-climate dynamics: a gateway to interdisciplinary training and analysis, G4834860824, Paleoclimatic and Paleoenvironmental Context of the Origins of Modern Humans in South Africa: Constructing a Detailed Record from 400,000 - 30,000 Years Ago, High Risk Exploratory: Test Excavations at Four Middle Stone Age Sites Near Mossel Bay, Western Cape Province, South Africa, G8787458759
OpenAlex ID: W1986298567