Skip to main content

Early human species inhabited highlands for availability and diversity of food

Early human species inhabited highlands for availability and diversity of food

NEWS - Researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea suggest that the patchwork of ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in human evolution.

Using a vast dataset of fossils, artifacts, high-resolution landscapes and 3 million-year-long simulations of Earth’s climate, a team of scientists is painting a clearer picture of how and why early humans adapted to rugged landscapes.

Hominins are often found in and near mountainous regions. Now Elke Zeller and Axel Timmermann have helped explain why so many of our evolutionary relatives preferred to be “highlanders” rather than “lowlanders.”

Mountainous regions are rich in biodiversity, providing a range of environmental conditions in which different species of plants and animals thrive. Steep areas typically exhibit a greater diversity, density of ecosystems and vegetation types, known as biomes.

This diversity of biomes was attractive to early humans because it provided more food resources and resilience to climate change, an idea known as the Diversity Selection Hypothesis.

“When we analyzed the environmental factors that controlled the habitation of the human species, we were surprised to see that the steepness of the terrain stood out as the dominant factor, even more so than local climatic factors, such as temperature and precipitation,” says Elke Zeller.

On the other hand, steep terrain is more difficult to navigate and requires more energy to traverse. Hominins needed to gradually adapt to steeper challenges in order to take advantage of increasing resources. Over time, human adaptation changed the cost-benefit balance of living in steep environments.

Adaptation to steeper environments was seen in the earliest human species Homo habilis, Homo ergaster and Homo erectus until about 1 million years ago, after which the topographic signal disappeared for about 300,000 years.

Around 700,000 years ago, better adapted and more culturally advanced species such as Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis emerged. These groups were able to control fire and showed a much higher tolerance for colder and wetter climates.

“The decline in topographic adaptation around 1 million years ago roughly coincides with a large-scale reorganization in the climate system known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. It also coincides with evolutionary events such as the ancestral genetic bottleneck that drastically reduced human diversity, and the timing of the hominin chromosome 2 merger,” says Axel Timmermann.

“Whether this was all just a coincidence or whether increasingly intense glacial climate shifts contributed to the genetic transition in archaic humans is still an open question,” says Timmermann.

How humans evolved over the past 3 million years and adapted to emerging environmental challenges is a hotly debated topic. A South Korean research team provides a new piece in the human evolutionary puzzle. Data spanning hundreds of thousands of years across multiple species and continents clearly show that our ancestors were highlanders.

“Hominins adapted to steep terrain and this trend was likely driven by increasing biodiversity in the region. We show that it was advantageous for archaic human groups to inhabit mountainous areas, despite the increased energy consumption involved,” says Zeller.

Original research

Elke Zeller, Axel Timmermann, The evolving three-dimensional landscape of human adaptation. Science Advances, 10, eadq3613 (2024), DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adq3613

Dlium theDlium

Popular Posts

Bush sorrel (Hibiscus surattensis)

Bush sorrel ( Hibiscus surattensis ) is a plant species in Malvaceae, annual shrub, crawling on the surface or climbing, up to 3 meters long, thorny stems, green leaves, yellow trumpet flowers, grows wild in forests and canal edges, widely used for vegetables and treatment. H. surattensis has stems with spines and hairs, branching and reddish green. Petiole emerges from the stem with a straight edge to the side, up to 11 cm long, sturdy, thorny, hairy and reddish green. The leaves have a length of 10 cm, width of 10 cm, 3-5 lobed, each has a bone in the middle with several pinnate veins, sharp tip, sharp and jagged edges, wavy, stiff, green surface. Flowers up to 10 cm long, trumpet-shaped, yellow with a purple or brown or red center, solitary, axillary. Epicalyx has forked bracts, linear inner branches, spathulate outer branches. Stalks up to 6-7 cm. The seeds have a length of 3-3.5 mm and a width of 2.5 mm. Bush sorrels grow in pastures, marshes, abandoned fields and plantations, ...

Six new species forming the Sumbana species group in genus Nemophora Hoffmannsegg 1798 from Indonesia

NEWS - Sumbawa longhorn ( Nemophora sumbana Kozlov, sp. nov.), Timor longhorn ( Nemophora timorella Kozlov, sp. nov.), shining shade longhorn ( Nemophora umbronitidella Kozlov, sp. nov.), Wegner longhorn ( Nemophora wegneri Kozlov, sp. nov.), long brush longhorn ( Nemophora longipeniculella Kozlov, sp. nov.), and short brush longhorn ( Nemophora brevipeniculella Kozlov, sp. nov.) from the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia. The Lesser Sunda Islands consist of two parallel, linear oceanic island chains, including Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Sawu, Timor, Alor, and Tanimbar. The oldest of these islands have been continuously occurring for 10–12 million years. This long period of isolation has allowed significant in situ diversification, making the Lesser Sundas home to many endemic species. This island chain may act as a two-way filter for organisms migrating between the world's two great biogeographic regions, Asia and Australia-Papua. The recognition of a striking cli...

Perlis fairy lantern (Thismia perlisensis) resembling Thismia arachnites Ridley and Thismia javanica J.J.Sm.

NEWS - Perlis fairy lantern ( Thismia perlisensis Besi & Rusea sp. nov.) was discovered during a scientific expedition in a wetland forest at the foot of a limestone hill, Perlis State Park, resembling Thismia arachnites Ridley (1905) and Thismia javanica J.J.Sm. (1910), but has a prominent reddish dome-shaped annulus. Thismia perlisensis can be easily distinguished from T. arachnites and T. javanica by its blood-red dome-shaped annulus (vs. ring-like with a rim, orange annulus), prominent trilobed stigma with bifid and subulate lobes 1.8 mm long (vs. oblong, truncated stigma), and claviform apex of inner tepal appendage (vs. subulate apex of inner tepal appendage). Stenoendemic to northern Peninsular Malaysia, Perlis State and possibly Langkawi Island. Although there have been sightings of the plant on Langkawi Island, this location is based solely on photos posted on social media. There are currently no specimens or additional information to confirm. The new species grows in...