Reconstructing the Environmental Context of Human Origins in Eastern Africa Through Scientific Drilling
Year: 2022
Type: review
Abstract: Paleoanthropologists have long speculated about the role of environmental change in shaping human evolution in Africa. In recent years, drill cores of late Neogene lacustrine sedimentary rocks have yielded valuable high-resolution records of climatic and ecosystem change. Eastern African Rift sediments (primarily lake beds) provide an extraordinary range of data in close proximity to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites, allowing critical study of hypotheses that connect environmental history and hominin evolution. We review recent drill-core studies spanning the Plio–Pleistocene boundary (an interval of hominin diversification, including the earliest members of our genus Homo and the oldest stone tools), and the Mid–Upper Pleistocene (spanning the origin of Homo sapiens in Africa and our early technological and dispersal history). Proposed drilling of Africa's oldest lakes promises to extend such records back to the late Miocene. ▪ High-resolution paleoenvironmental records are critical for understanding external drivers of human evolution. ▪ African lake basin drill cores play a critical role in enhancing hominin paleoenvironmental records given their continuity and proximity to key paleoanthropological sites. ▪ The oldest African lakes have the potential to reveal a comprehensive paleoenvironmental context for the entire late Neogene history of hominin evolution.
Authors: Andrew S. Cohen, Christopher J. Campisano, J. Ramón Arrowsmith, Asfawossen Asrat, Catherine C. Beck, Anna K. Behrensmeyer, Alan L. Deino, Craig S. Feibel, Verena Foerster, John D. Kingston, Henry F. Lamb, Tim K. Lowenstein, Rachel L. Lupien, Veronica Muiruri, Daniel O. Olago, R. Bernhart Owen, Richard Potts, James M. Russell, Frank Schaebitz, Jeffery R. Stone, Martin H. Trauth, Chad L. Yost
Institutions: University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Addis Ababa University, Hamilton College, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Berkeley Geochronology Center, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, University of Cologne, University of Michigan, Aberystwyth University, Trinity College Dublin, Binghamton University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, National Museums of Kenya, University of Nairobi, Hong Kong Baptist University, Brown University, Indiana State University, University of Potsdam
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: Collaborative Research: The Lake Malawi Drilling Project - A long, high-resolution record of abrupt climate change in the southern tropics of East Africa, FESD Type I: Earth System Dynamics and its Role in Human Evolution in Africa, IPG: Collaborative Research: A high-resolution analysis of unique paleoenvironmental data from key hominin sites in East Africa, G3458156887, G3972930532, G4302793040, G4327528843, A 500,000-year environmental record from Chew Bahir, south Ethiopia: testing hypotheses of climate-driven human evolution, innovation, and dispersal, Continued development and application of 40Ar/39Ar dating for archaeometric research, G5457463800, G5769804170, G5899291923, Collaborative Research: The Hominid Sites And Paleolakes Drilling Project: Acquiring a High Resolution Paleoenvironmental Context of Human Evolution, G6308631012, G681854651, G7580492155, IPG: Collaborative Research: A high-resolution analysis of unique paleoenvironmental data from key hominin sites in East Africa, SFB 806: Unser Weg nach Europa: KulturUmwelt Interaktion und menschliche Mobilität im Späten Quartär
OpenAlex ID: W4214548931