Climate Fire And Human Evolution

Author : National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2010-04-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780309148382

Get Book

Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution by National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution Pdf

The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution explores the opportunities of using scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped shape our species. Improved climate records for specific regions will be required before it is possible to evaluate how critical resources for hominins, especially water and vegetation, would have been distributed on the landscape during key intervals of hominin history. Existing records contain substantial temporal gaps. The book's initiatives are presented in two major research themes: first, determining the impacts of climate change and climate variability on human evolution and dispersal; and second, integrating climate modeling, environmental records, and biotic responses. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies that involve an exploration initiative to locate new fossil sites and to broaden the geographic and temporal sampling of the fossil and archeological record; a comprehensive and integrative scientific drilling program in lakes, lake bed outcrops, and ocean basins surrounding the regions where hominins evolved and a major investment in climate modeling experiments for key time intervals and regions that are critical to understanding human evolution.

Author : William H. Calvin
Publisher : William H. Calvin
Page : 379 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2010-08-02
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780982916711

Get Book

A Brain for All Seasons by William H. Calvin Pdf

Author : Andrew Y. Glikson,Colin Groves
Publisher : Springer
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2015-11-04
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319225128

Get Book

Climate, Fire and Human Evolution by Andrew Y. Glikson,Colin Groves Pdf

The book outlines principal milestones in the evolution of the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere during the last 4 million years in relation with the evolution from primates to the genus Homo – which uniquely mastered the ignition and transfer of fire. The advent of land plants since about 420 million years ago ensued in flammable carbon-rich biosphere interfaced with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Born on a flammable Earth surface, under increasingly unstable climates descending from the warmer Pliocene into the deepest ice ages of the Pleistocene, human survival depended on both—biological adaptations and cultural evolution, mastering fire as a necessity. This allowed the genus to increase entropy in nature by orders of magnitude. Gathered around camp fires during long nights for hundreds of thousandth of years, captivated by the flickering life-like dance of the flames, humans developed imagination, insights, cravings, fears, premonitions of death and thereby aspiration for immortality, omniscience, omnipotence and the concept of god. Inherent in pantheism was the reverence of the Earth, its rocks and its living creatures, contrasted by the subsequent rise of monotheistic sky-god creeds which regard Earth as but a corridor to heaven. Once the climate stabilized in the early Holocene, since about ~7000 years-ago production of excess food by Neolithic civilization along the Great River Valleys has allowed human imagination and dreams to express themselves through the construction of monuments to immortality. Further to burning large part of the forests, the discovery of combustion and exhumation of carbon from the Earth’s hundreds of millions of years-old fossil biospheres set the stage for an anthropogenic oxidation event, affecting an abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system. The consequent ongoing extinction equals the past five great mass extinctions of species—constituting a geological event horizon in the history of planet Earth.

Author : National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2010-03-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780309152396

Get Book

Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution by National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution Pdf

The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution explores the opportunities of using scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped shape our species. Improved climate records for specific regions will be required before it is possible to evaluate how critical resources for hominins, especially water and vegetation, would have been distributed on the landscape during key intervals of hominin history. Existing records contain substantial temporal gaps. The book's initiatives are presented in two major research themes: first, determining the impacts of climate change and climate variability on human evolution and dispersal; and second, integrating climate modeling, environmental records, and biotic responses. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies that involve an exploration initiative to locate new fossil sites and to broaden the geographic and temporal sampling of the fossil and archeological record; a comprehensive and integrative scientific drilling program in lakes, lake bed outcrops, and ocean basins surrounding the regions where hominins evolved and a major investment in climate modeling experiments for key time intervals and regions that are critical to understanding human evolution.

Author : Frances D. Burton
Publisher : UNM Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2011-09-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780826346483

Get Book

Fire by Frances D. Burton Pdf

The association between our ancestors and fire, somewhere around six to four million years ago, had a tremendous impact on human evolution, transforming our earliest human ancestor, a being communicating without speech but with insight, reason, manual dexterity, highly developed social organization, and the capability of experimenting with this new technology. As it first associated with and then began to tame fire, this extraordinary being began to distance itself from its primate relatives, taking a path that would alter its environment, physiology, and self-image. Based on her extensive research with nonhuman primates, anthropologist Frances Burton details the stages of the conquest of fire and the systems it affected. Her study examines the natural occurrence of fire and describes the effects light has on human physiology. She constructs possible variations of our earliest human ancestor and its way of life, utilizing archaeological and anthropological evidence of the earliest human-controlled fires to explore the profound physical and biological impacts fire had on human evolution.

Author : Renée Hetherington
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2012-04-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781107017252

Get Book

Living in a Dangerous Climate by Renée Hetherington Pdf

A unique, thought-provoking journey from early humans' evolutionary response to climate change to today's global crisis, for students and the general reader.

Author : Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2013-10-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789400773325

Get Book

Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon by Andrew Y. Glikson Pdf

Unique among all creatures, further to the increase in its cranial volume from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens, the use of tools and cultural and scientific creativity, the genus Homo is distinguished by the mastery of fire, which since about two million years ago has become its blueprint. Through the Holocene and culminating in the Anthropocene, the burning of much of the terrestrial vegetation, excavation and combustion of fossil carbon from up to 420 million years-old biospheres, are leading to a global oxidation event on a geological scale, a rise in entropy in nature and the sixth mass extinction of species.

Author : Louise Westling
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 138 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2022-09-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781009257374

Get Book

Deep History, Climate Change, and the Evolution of Human Culture by Louise Westling Pdf

This Element follows the development of humans in constantly changing climates and environments from Homo erectus 1.9 million years ago, to fully modern humans who moved out of Africa to Europe and Asia 70,000 years ago. Biosemiotics reveals meaningful communication among coevolving members of the intricately connected life forms on this dynamic planet. Within this web hominins developed culture from bipedalism and meat-eating to the use of fire, stone tools, and clothing, allowing wide migrations and adaptations. Archaeology and ancient DNA analysis show how fully modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals and Denisovans before emerging as the sole survivors of the genus Homo 35,000 years ago. Their visions of the world appear in magnificent cave paintings and bone sculptures of animals, then more recently in written narratives like the Gilgamesh epic and Euripides' Bacchae whose images still haunt us with anxieties about human efforts to control the natural world.

Author : Renée Hetherington
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2014-05-14
Category : SCIENCE
ISBN : 1139423983

Get Book

Living in a Dangerous Climate by Renée Hetherington Pdf

Unique, thought-provoking journey from early humans' evolutionary response to climate change to today's global crisis, for general reader and students.

Author : Richard Wrangham
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2010-08-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781847652102

Get Book

Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham Pdf

In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome

Author : Richard Potts,Christopher Sloan
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Human beings
ISBN : 9781426206061

Get Book

What Does it Mean to be Human? by Richard Potts,Christopher Sloan Pdf

This generously illustrated book tells the story of the human family, showing how our species' physical traits and behaviors evolved over millions of years as our ancestors adapted to dramatic environmental changes. In What Does It Means to Be Human? Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program, and Chris Sloan, National Geographic's paleoanthropolgy expert, delve into our distant past to explain when, why, and how we acquired the unique biological and cultural qualities that govern our most fundamental connections and interactions with other people and with the natural world. Drawing on the latest research, they conclude that we are the last survivors of a once-diverse family tree, and that our evolution was shaped by one of the most unstable eras in Earth's environmental history. The book presents a wealth of attractive new material especially developed for the Hall's displays, from life-like reconstructions of our ancestors sculpted by the acclaimed John Gurche to photographs from National Geographic and Smithsonian archives, along with informative graphics and illustrations. In coordination with the exhibit opening, the PBS program NOVA will present a related three-part television series, and the museum will launch a website expected to draw 40 million visitors.

Author : Renée Hetherington
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Climatic changes
ISBN : 1107205336

Get Book

The Climate Connection by Renée Hetherington Pdf

Author : Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 142 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2020-10-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783030547349

Get Book

The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe by Andrew Y. Glikson Pdf

With the advent of global warming and the nuclear arms race, humans are rapidly approaching a moment of truth. Technologically supreme, they manifest their dreams and nightmares in the real world through science, art, adventures and brutal wars, a paradox symbolized by a candle lighting the dark yet burning away to extinction, as discussed in this book. As these lines are being written, fires are burning on several continents, the Earth’s ice sheets are melting and the oceans are rising, threatening to flood the planet’s coastal zones and river valleys, where civilization arose and humans live and grow food. With the exception of birds like hawks, black kites and fire raptors, humans are the only life form utilizing fire, creating developments they can hardly control. For more than a million years, gathered around campfires during the long nights, mesmerized by the flickering life-like dance of the flames, prehistoric humans acquired imagination, a yearning for omnipotence, premonitions of death, cravings for immortality and conceiving the supernatural. Humans live in realms of perceptions, dreams, myths and legends, in denial of critical facts, waking up for a brief moment to witness a world that is as beautiful as it is cruel. Existentialist philosophy offers a way of coping with the unthinkable. Looking into the future produces fear, an instinctive response that can obsess the human mind and create a conflict between the intuitive reptilian brain and the growing neocortex, with dire consequences. As contrasted with Stapledon’s Last and first Man, where an advanced human species mourns the fate of the Earth, Homo sapiens continues to transfer every extractable molecule of carbon from the Earth to the atmosphere, the lungs of the biosphere, ensuring the demise of the planetary life support system.”

Author : Renée Hetherington
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Climatic changes
ISBN : 0511748892

Get Book

The Climate Connection by Renée Hetherington Pdf

Author : Jon E. Keeley
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 523 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780521824910

Get Book

Fire in Mediterranean Ecosystems by Jon E. Keeley Pdf

Explores the role of fire in Mediterranean-type climate ecosystems, providing unique insights into the assembly and evolutionary convergence of ecosystems.