Latest news with #EmilyHallett
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Early humans adapted to extreme habitats. Researchers say it set the stage for global migration
WASHINGTON (AP) — Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra. This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published Wednesday in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. 'Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,' said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. While prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn't happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago. 'What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded — why were humans ready this time?' said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago. Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven't found evidence to back that up. This study took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself. The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there. 'There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,' Hallet said. 'We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.' While humans had long survived in savanna and forests, they shifted into everything from from dense rainforests to arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallet called an "ecological flexibility that let them succeed.' While this leap in abilities is impressive, it's important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research. Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe's Neanderthals, he said. The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn't answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CTV News
10 hours ago
- Science
- CTV News
Early humans adapted to extreme habitats. Researchers say it set the stage for global migration
This combination of 2007, 2018 and 2012 photos shows, from left, the Cederberg mountain range in South Africa, the Tenere desert in Niger and savanna in South Africa. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, Jerome Delay, Matthew Craft) WASHINGTON— Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra. This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published Wednesday in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. 'Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,' said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. While prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn't happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago. 'What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded — why were humans ready this time?' said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago. Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven't found evidence to back that up. This study took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself. The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there. 'There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,' Hallet said. 'We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.' While humans had long survived in savanna and forests, they shifted into everything from from dense rainforests to arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallet called an 'ecological flexibility that let them succeed.' While this leap in abilities is impressive, it's important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research. Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe's Neanderthals, he said. The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn't answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today. ___ Christina Larson, The Associated Press The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Humans adapted to diverse habitats before trekking out of Africa
By Will Dunham (Reuters) -Small bands of Homo sapiens made a few failed forays leaving our home continent before the species finally managed to launch a major dispersal out of Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, going first into Europe and Asia and eventually the rest of the world. So why was this migration successful after the prior ones were not? New research is offering insight. It documents how human hunter-gatherers in Africa began about 70,000 years ago to embrace a greater diversity of habitats such as thick forests and arid deserts, acquiring an adaptability useful for tackling the wide range of conditions awaiting beyond the continent. "Why the dispersal 50,000 years ago was successful is a big question in human origins research. Our results suggest that one part of the reason is that humans had developed the ecological flexibility to survive in challenging habitats," said Loyola University Chicago archeologist Emily Hallett, co-leader of the study published in the journal Nature. Looking at an array of archeological sites in Africa, the study detailed how human populations expanded their range into the forests of Central and West Africa and the deserts of North Africa in the roughly 20,000 years preceding this dispersal. Some examples of archeological sites dating to this time that illustrate the expansion of human niches to harsh deserts include locales in Libya and Namibia, and examples of expansion to forested habitats include locales in Malawi and South Africa. Homo sapiens arose roughly 300,000 years ago, inhabiting grasslands, savannahs and various other African ecosystems. "Starting from about 70,000 years ago, we see that they suddenly start to intensify this exploitation of diverse habitats and also expand into new types of habitat in a way we don't see before. They exploit more types of woodland, more types of closed canopy forests, more types of deserts, highlands and grasslands," said archeologist and study co-leader Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. "An Ice Age was coming, which means drier conditions in parts of Africa. It seems possible that humans responded to this squeeze by learning how to adapt to new niches," Scerri added. The increased ecological flexibility of the species appears to have reflected cultural and social advances such as passing knowledge from one generation to the next and engaging in cooperative behavior, the researchers said. "This must have entailed profound changes in their interaction with the natural environment, as it allowed them to occupy not only new environments in Africa, but entirely new conditions in Eurasia as well," said evolutionary biologist and study co-leader Michela Leonardi of the Natural History Museum in London. "Another way to phrase this is that the ability to live in a variety of environments in Africa is not directly the adaptation that allowed a successful out of Africa, but rather a sign that humans by that point were the ultimate generalist, able to tackle environments that went from deep forest to dry deserts," said University of Cambridge evolutionary ecologist and study co-leader Andrea Manica. "This flexibility is the key trait that allowed them, later on, to conquer novel challenges, all the way to the coldest tundras in Siberia." Trekking out of Africa, Homo sapiens encountered not only new environments and unfamiliar animals and plants, but also other human species, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. The ecological flexibility learned in Africa may have provided an edge when Homo sapiens encountered these other humans, both of whom disappeared relatively soon thereafter, the researchers said. Genetic evidence indicates that today's people outside of Africa can trace their ancestry to the population of humans, numbering perhaps only in the thousands, who engaged in that pioneering migration out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago. "I think that adaptability and innovation are hallmarks of our species, and that they allowed us to succeed in every environment we encountered," Hallett said. "At the same time, we are almost too good at adapting to different places, to the detriment of most other species on Earth."
Al Arabiya
12 hours ago
- Science
- Al Arabiya
Early humans adapted to extreme habitats. Researchers say it set the stage for global migration
Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment–from rainforests to deserts to tundra. This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published Wednesday in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. 'Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,' said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. 'Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago.' While prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn't happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago. 'What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded–why were humans ready this time?' said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago. Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven't found evidence to back that up. This study took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself. The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there. 'There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,' Hallett said. 'We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.' While humans had long survived in savanna and forests, they shifted into everything from dense rainforests to arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallett called an 'ecological flexibility' that let them succeed. While this leap in abilities is impressive, it's important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research. Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe's Neanderthals, he said. The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn't answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today.
Reuters
12 hours ago
- Science
- Reuters
Humans adapted to diverse habitats before trekking out of Africa
June 18 (Reuters) - Small bands of Homo sapiens made a few failed forays leaving our home continent before the species finally managed to launch a major dispersal out of Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, going first into Europe and Asia and eventually the rest of the world. So why was this migration successful after the prior ones were not? New research is offering insight. It documents how human hunter-gatherers in Africa began about 70,000 years ago to embrace a greater diversity of habitats such as thick forests and arid deserts, acquiring an adaptability useful for tackling the wide range of conditions awaiting beyond the continent. "Why the dispersal 50,000 years ago was successful is a big question in human origins research. Our results suggest that one part of the reason is that humans had developed the ecological flexibility to survive in challenging habitats," said Loyola University Chicago archeologist Emily Hallett, co-leader of the study published in the journal Nature, opens new tab. Looking at an array of archeological sites in Africa, the study detailed how human populations expanded their range into the forests of Central and West Africa and the deserts of North Africa in the roughly 20,000 years preceding this dispersal. Some examples of archeological sites dating to this time that illustrate the expansion of human niches to harsh deserts include locales in Libya and Namibia, and examples of expansion to forested habitats include locales in Malawi and South Africa. Homo sapiens arose roughly 300,000 years ago, inhabiting grasslands, savannahs and various other African ecosystems. "Starting from about 70,000 years ago, we see that they suddenly start to intensify this exploitation of diverse habitats and also expand into new types of habitat in a way we don't see before. They exploit more types of woodland, more types of closed canopy forests, more types of deserts, highlands and grasslands," said archeologist and study co-leader Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. "An Ice Age was coming, which means drier conditions in parts of Africa. It seems possible that humans responded to this squeeze by learning how to adapt to new niches," Scerri added. The increased ecological flexibility of the species appears to have reflected cultural and social advances such as passing knowledge from one generation to the next and engaging in cooperative behavior, the researchers said. "This must have entailed profound changes in their interaction with the natural environment, as it allowed them to occupy not only new environments in Africa, but entirely new conditions in Eurasia as well," said evolutionary biologist and study co-leader Michela Leonardi of the Natural History Museum in London. "Another way to phrase this is that the ability to live in a variety of environments in Africa is not directly the adaptation that allowed a successful out of Africa, but rather a sign that humans by that point were the ultimate generalist, able to tackle environments that went from deep forest to dry deserts," said University of Cambridge evolutionary ecologist and study co-leader Andrea Manica. "This flexibility is the key trait that allowed them, later on, to conquer novel challenges, all the way to the coldest tundras in Siberia." Trekking out of Africa, Homo sapiens encountered not only new environments and unfamiliar animals and plants, but also other human species, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. The ecological flexibility learned in Africa may have provided an edge when Homo sapiens encountered these other humans, both of whom disappeared relatively soon thereafter, the researchers said. Genetic evidence indicates that today's people outside of Africa can trace their ancestry to the population of humans, numbering perhaps only in the thousands, who engaged in that pioneering migration out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago. "I think that adaptability and innovation are hallmarks of our species, and that they allowed us to succeed in every environment we encountered," Hallett said. "At the same time, we are almost too good at adapting to different places, to the detriment of most other species on Earth."
