East African climate pulses and early human evolution
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Current evidence suggests that all of the major events in hominin evolution have occurred in East Africa. Over the last two decades, there has been intensive work undertaken to understand African palaeoclimate and tectonics in order to put together a coherent picture of how the environment of East Africa has varied in the past. The landscape of East Africa has altered dramatically over the last 10 million years. It has changed from a relatively flat, homogenous region covered with mixed tropical forest, to a varied and heterogeneous environment, with mountains over 4 km high and vegetation ranging from desert to cloud forest. The progressive rifting of East Africa has also generated numerous lake basins, which are highly sensitive to changes in the local precipitation-evaporation regime. There is now evidence that the presence of precession-driven, ephemeral deep-water lakes in East Africa were concurrent with major events in hominin evolution. It seems the unusual geology and climate of East Africa created periods of highly variable local climate, which, it has been suggested could have driven hominin speciation, encephalisation and dispersal out of Africa. One example is the significant hominin speciation and brain expansion event at ∼1.8 Ma that seems to have been coeval with the occurrence of highly variable, extensive, deep-water lakes. This complex, climatically very variable setting inspired first the variability selection hypothesis, which was then the basis for the pulsed climate variability hypothesis. The newer of the two suggests that the long-term drying trend in East Africa was punctuated by episodes of short, alternating periods of extreme humidity and aridity. Both hypotheses, together with other key theories of climate-evolution linkages, are discussed in this paper. Though useful the actual evolution mechanisms, which led to early hominins are still unclear and continue to be debated. However, it is clear that an understanding of East African lakes and their palaeoclimate history is required to understand the context within which humans evolved and eventually left East Africa.
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The birth of our own lineage in East Africa occurred amidst large climatic instability that fragmented the landscape into patches of land differing in resource availability and separated by large lakes.
“For example, the birth of our own lineage in East Africa occurred amidst large climatic instability that fragmented the landscape into patches of land differing in resource availability and separated by large lakes (Maslin et al., 2014).”
From Dynamics of niche construction in adaptable populations evolving in diverse environments (2023) · cites this paper as Maslin et al., 2014
The Abstract describes East Africa as a heterogeneous landscape with highly variable local climate and extensive deep-water lakes concurrent with major events in hominin evolution. Section 7 links changing lakes to differences in resources and possible hominin movement. But the Conclusion says the evolutionary mechanisms remain uncertain; the paper does not establish that climatic instability fragmented the landscape into resource patches separated by lakes at the birth of our lineage. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Dynamics of niche construction in adaptable populations evolving in diverse environments
Nisioti, E., & Moulin-Frier, C. (2023) · The 2023 Conference on Artificial Life · doi:10.1162/isal_a_00668 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Maslin, M. A., Brierley, C. M., Milner, A. M., Shultz, S., Trauth, M. H., & Wilson, K. E.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- University of Manchester (GB)
- University of Potsdam (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Maslin, Mark A.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Quaternary Science Reviews
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-10
- Volume
- 101
- Pages
- 1-17
- ISSN
- 0277-3791 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2002631603
- Cited by
- 278
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 26 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 24 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 106.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Quaternary Science Reviews (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- publish.UP (University of Potsdam) (submittedVersion)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Evolution and Paleontology Studies
- Keywords
- hominin evolution, paleoclimate, East African Rift, climate variability, brain expansion, dispersal out of Africa, lake basins, tectonics
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