CELL PRESS
Of the six or more different species of early humans, all belonging to the genus Homo, only we Homo sapiens have managed to survive. Now, a study reported in the journal One Earth on October 15 combining climate modeling and the fossil record in search of clues to what led to all those earlier extinctions of our ancient ancestors suggests that climate change–the inability to adapt to either warming or cooling temperatures–likely played a major role in sealing their fate.
“Our findings show that despite technological innovations including the use of fire and refined stone tools, the formation of complex social networks, and–in the case of Neanderthals–even the production of glued spear points, fitted clothes, and a good amount of cultural and genetic exchange with Homo sapiens, past Homo species could not survive intense climate change,” says Pasquale Raia of Università di Napoli Federico II in Napoli, Italy. “They tried hard; they made for the warmest places in reach as the climate got cold, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t enough.”
To shed light on past extinctions of Homo species including H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens, the researchers relied on a high-resolution past climate emulator, which provides temperature, rainfall, and other data over the last 5 million years. They also looked to an extensive fossil database spanning more than 2,750 archaeological records to model the evolution of Homo species’ climatic niche over time. The goal was to understand the climate preferences of those early humans and how they reacted to changes in climate.
Their studies offer robust evidence that three Homo species–H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neanderthalensis–lost a significant portion of their climatic niche just before going extinct. They report that this reduction coincided with sharp, unfavorable changes in the global climate. In the case of Neanderthals, things were likely made even worse by competition with H. sapiens.
“We were surprised by the regularity of the effect of climate change,” Raia says. “It was crystal clear, for the extinct species and for them only, that climatic conditions were just too extreme just before extinction and only in that particular moment.”
Raia notes that there is uncertainty in paleoclimatic reconstruction, the identification of fossil remains at the level of species, and the aging of fossil sites. But, he says, the main insights “hold true under all assumptions.” The findings may serve as a kind of warning to humans today as we face unprecedented changes in the climate, Raia says.
“It is worrisome to discover that our ancestors, which were no less impressive in terms of mental power as compared to any other species on Earth, could not resist climate change,” he said. “And we found that just when our own species is sawing the branch we’re sitting on by causing climate change. I personally take this as a thunderous warning message. Climate change made Homo vulnerable and hapless in the past, and this may just be happening again.”
###
This work was supported by MCTIC/CNPq/FAPEG.
One Earth, Raia et al.: “Past extinctions of Homo species coincided with increased vulnerability to climatic change” https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(20)30476-0
One Earth (@OneEarth_CP), published by Cell Press, is a monthly journal that features papers from the fields of natural, social, and applied sciences. One Earth is the home for high-quality research that seeks to understand and address today’s environmental grand challenges, publishing across the spectrum of environmental change and sustainability science. Visit http://www.cell.com/one-earth. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
And yet… Here we still are.
Perhaps because our competitor species tried to stop Climate Change rather than adapt to it.
Their problem wasn’t one of adapting to the ever changing climate but rather of being able to compete with better versions of humanity. It is hard to survive if your more modern neighbor has or can create better technology than you have and you can’t develop better competing technology yourself
“Their problem wasn’t one of adapting to the ever changing climate but rather of being able to compete with better versions of humanity. It is hard to survive if your more modern neighbor has or can create better technology than you have and you can’t develop better competing technology yourself.”
It isn’t just the ability to create better technology, but the will to do the damn work required to survive.
Our survival will thus depend on regular people just living their lives, while woke, progressive, leftist, extinction rebellion, social justice warrior snowflakes expire in their parents’ basements or rioting in the streets…
None of the other Homos could stop climate change and neither can Homo Sapiens.
The only choice is to adapt.
With 10 billion people, there may not be enough caves and wild life to succeed.
Massive extinction will take place.
Will we become cannibals again?
when needed, yes.
Donèt exagerate, there are only 7.5b illion and the peak projeection has been falling since pêople stared making such projections. It is now projected to be 9 billion.
Imagine if the planet became 2 centigrade warmer oveall., very unlikely in my opinion, then the vast expansion of viable arable land in Canada and Russia, the two great Northern landmasses, will be able to produce more food for more billions. Why the pessimism?
Stopping anthropogenic climate change is easy.
Get the Greens to withdraw their anti-dam, anti-nuke and anti-fracking policies.
Cheap energy brings wealth which brings population decline.
There was a bumper sticker around in the 1980s, satirizing in one phrase perhaps all of the “activist” movements of the time. It read: “STOP PLATE TECTONICS!”
That says it all, does it not?
Bravo. Best comment.
We adapted to the savannah by walking upright; we llived as scavangers. We developed basic tools (rocks) to ward off hyenas and cut up the caryon and break the bones. We then developed control of combustion, which lead to a rapid increase in brain size because we could get more nutrition from our food. From there, it is all inevitable. Our command of nature and its forces will continue to grow. We will spread throughout the universe.
But, please, spare me the models, this is just BS and magical quackery to convince the natives.
Naw, you’re just a figment of your own imagination.
Modeled humans have experienced extinction level events since models were created.
Fortunately life doesn’t imitate models and humans still exist.
Take a deep breath and let it out slowly, everylittlething is gonna be alright
Had they mastered the use of fossil fuels, to drive their heating and air conditioning, they wouldn’t have gone extinct
People who believe this walk among us. Scary.
Climate preferences – yay got another BS phrase for my climate bullsh!t bingo list.
Jimmy
As per this article, 5 of 6 homo species were wiped out………by cold.
Cold is bad, it’s just bad.
Why do the clinically insane want us to get cold and die?
Yes, this nonsense is very common. This article confirms that cold is very bad for humanity, now and in the distant past. Possibly without exceptions, when human civilisations died it was at a time of cooling, not warming. And the extinctions cited in the article were at a time of cooling, not warming.
With that in mind, these words are breath-taking:
““It is worrisome to discover that our ancestors, which were no less impressive in terms of mental power as compared to any other species on Earth, could not resist climate change,” he said. “And we found that just when our own species is sawing the branch we’re sitting on by causing climate change. I personally take this as a thunderous warning message. Climate change made Homo vulnerable and hapless in the past, and this may just be happening again.”
This political scientist seems to be incapable of perceiving the difference between warm and cold. As well as despicable, it is mind-numbingly stupid.
Of course, in reality this article proves what sceptics have been saying for decades: warm is good, cold is bad. It’s no surprise that mankind prospers during the warm periods and suffers during the cold periods.
Chris
I side with your despicable comment more and with the stupid comment less. I think these people know what they are doing. It looks like stupidity to us because we have trouble imagining that people could be so malicious – but they are.
Because they are insane?
Only because our direct ancestors developed technology to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere to trigger the Ice Age.
The text of the post reads:
“To shed light on past extinctions of Homo species including H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens, the researchers relied on a high-resolution past climate emulator, which provides temperature, rainfall, and other data over the last 5 million years. They also looked to an extensive fossil database spanning more than 2,750 archaeological records to model the evolution of Homo species’ climatic niche over time. The goal was to understand the climate preferences of those early humans and how they reacted to changes in climate.”
Oy vey! And someone paid for this nonsense?
Regards,
Bob
PS: Stay safe and healthy, all.
““To shed light on past extinctions of Homo species including H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens”
When exactly did H. sapiens go extinct?
In Seattle and Portland, this year.
And in the UK, 10 years ago
The reigning species now is Homo Dejectus
…or the reigning species is Homo Stolidus!
“When exactly did H. sapiens go extinct?”
While this hasn’t happened yet, our species now faces the mortal danger of being replaced with Homo Stupidious if the Socialists are able to usurp control.
As for the rest of the H’s, they NATURALLY lost to evolution long before the Industrial Revolution, so this article is the typical eurk alert BS (Eurk, ça l’est).
Possibly Homo Politically-correctous
Homo adjustus is the real problem. Without them, there would be no threat of extinction for Homo sap [sic].
Or they were simply incorporated into the Homo. Sap. gene pool.
There are definitely a few errant strands of Neanderthal in my neighbors brow ridge
Paul, you can’t bring facts into this. Neanderthal genes show up in populations everywhere but sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe Homo Sapiens would be absent from most of the Earth if not for those genes and the implications on mixing of species. But that would not fit the meme.
Don’t worry, the Greens are on it.
MarkW,
H. sapiens didn’t go extinct . . . but it has nearly been replaced by H. ignoramus.
At least, that’s my takeaway from reading that above fluff article.
I am thinking we should be able to hunt down and club people stupid enough to write or believe that junk.
Would raise the overall IQ of the species.
We’re H. sapiens sapiens, a subspecies of H. sapiens, and also the wisest of the wise.
Allegedly.
There’s also H. s. idaltu, and sometimes H. s. neanderthalensis, depending on what month it is.
Staying healthy is a clear and valid goal. But, getting up in the morning is clearly unsafe, as gravity immediately tries to bring you down and does so for the rest of the day. Other factors then add into your unsafety for your day—stairs and leaving the house simply increase your risk. Being “safe” is to do nothing—you could always choke at breakfast and die. For that matter, you could also throw a clot at night and wake up dead. Safe does not apply to life.
“To shed light on past extinctions of Homo species including H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens, the researchers relied on a high-resolution past climate emulator, which provides temperature, rainfall, and other data over the last 5 million years…”
May as well have read:
“To shed light on past extinctions of Homo species including H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens, the researchers relied on a time machine, to provide direct measurement of temperature, rainfall, and other data over the last 5 million years…”
The latter statement would be just as credible.
Max P
What is a Climate Emulator? Why didn’t they use trusted proxies or maybe came up with new ones. An emulator is likely to be just as (or more so) wildly inaccurate as current climate models.
Is it just a new $100 word for “model”
A language tactical change?
It’s worse than we thought.
The goal was to understand the climate preferences of those early humans and how they reacted to changes in climate.”
They preferred a warmer climate and moved south. There, that’s your free scientific revelation of the day.
Strange that the authors didn’t share whether HS went extinct because it got too cold or too warm? Surely their high fidelity climate emulator would tell them that?
The authors argue that climate change must have done in H. erectus, because his youngest fossils are from c. 112 Ka in Java (actually 117-108 Ka).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1863-2
This was during or just after the Eemian Interglacial, but I doubt that temperature on tropical Java was much affected. The main effect of interglacials on Sundaland is submerging its low-lying regions to form the islands with which we’re familiar. Paleoclimatologists disagree as to the vegetation of the areas now submerged, ie whether savanna, tropical forest or a mix.
If H. erectus did disappear before 100 Ka, then Moderns probably weren’t the cause of his demise. But lack of fossils doesn’t guarantee lack of humans to make them. For all we know, Java Man might have still existed when Moderns first entered Sundaland. The fact that so much of his range during glacial intervals is now submerged suggests that this well might be the case.
H. erectus had of course survived numerous glacial-interglacial cycles before.
GENESIS 7 & 8
I think the Book of Revelations is the biblical reference for most of the climate alarmists.
Climate alarmists read the Bible? Aren’t most of them atheists, or agnostics at best?
Less Agnostic
More Prognostic
Or simply Antagonistic
No religion requires more faith in God than atheism.
Noah’s Flood is a myth. But at the time it is supposed to have occurred, ours had long been the only surviving Homo species.
The flood was likely a localized event, if it ever happened.
Isn’t the flood myth really the collective memory of the melting of the continental glaciation leading to a 400 foot sea level rise? While barely detectable in a human life time even at the max SLR, the oral traditions would have been alive with stories of flooded hunting grounds everywhere around the planet over longer time frames and oral communication was their only long term memory which obviously evolved as to why this happened with stories of gods and other such made up reasons they couldn’t explain. And undoubtedly major local flood events like the Black Sea and numerous flood events from events like the Scablands in Wa state and the draining of Lake Agassiz via multiple outlets at different time periods would have been witnessed locally by ancient peoples. And numerous other such events over long time scales.
Because the flood myth is universal, it has to be a synthesis of all these stories of submerged lands due to these flood events and the global ocean rising 400 feet over 7000 years as the ice retreated. Gilgamesh was perhaps the first to write this down, and may have been more local to the Fertile Crescent, and then the Hebrews ‘borrowed’ that story and further embellished it to their narrative, but the core myth has to be based upon the rising global ocean when the Holocene started with the melting of the ice sheets.
It probably stems from a particularly large Tigris-Euphrates River flood.
The Black Sea inundation would have been too far away in time and distance from Sumer, where the myth originates. Sumer was however close to the Persian Gulf, which is shallow and dry during glaciations. Although its upper reaches flooded long before Sumer, I guess it’s possible that their scribes recorded ancient memories of their ancestors’ moving away from the rising waters. However the inundation occurred before most livestock were domesticated.
It’s also suspected that near the start of the current inter-glacial, a large lake of ice melt covering much of Canada was contained by a massive ice dam that eventually let loose creating a massive global tidal wave. For a story to be so ubiquitous across nearly all cultures means is likely originates from an ancient oral tradition describing an unprecented and otherwise unexplainable event that occurred at least 10K years ago, which would be about the right time frame.
A lot of people believe it could have been the flooding of the Black Sea when the dam at the Bosporus was breached by rising seas.
No, it is not a myth. It is part of the story of Gilgamesh. A description of it says: there was a black cloud to the southwest, with lightning. The sea retreated seven times and covered the land six times, and the people were turned to clay. Noah lived at the city of Ur, even though the biblical story does not refer to it as that.
If you watched the horrifying flooding going on from the start of the earthquake that hit northern Japan a few years ago, that is EXACTLY what happened. There are plenty of videos online showing the retreat of the sea from coastal fishing villages, followed by by tidal waves that seem tame at first and then prove to be so strong and dangerous that they could pick up entire buildings.
And yes, people were found dead and covered in soil when their arms or legs were left sticking up out of the dirt that had been piled on top of them. And that was just a 9.4 quake that rattled the entire area and even some of the southern islands off the coast of Japan.
In addition, indigenous tribes in North America have a story that says the sky turned black; there was a terrible wind; the Sun and Moon were hidden and they had to go into caves for safety. Paleontological evidence has confirmed this with the finding of mastodons killed by a fierce wind 10,000++ years ago. Their bones that show severe damage and NOT from being hunted.
So when you dismiss something that is recorded, even if it’s a so-called mythic tale, but it turns up in two places, then it did happen and it is NOT a myth. Since there is no DATE specific for Noah’s flood or for the destruction of Ur by tidal waves, and there is archaeological evidence at Tel Qaramel in southwestern Syria of the construction 15,000 years ago of five round towers, and possible older sites in the same area, saying that a disaster recorded as a story on clay tablets or in a Biblical text is a myth is ignoring the simple fact that “myths” have a basis in something that happened before WRITING was invented.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Goebekli Tepe, just south of the Black Sea dates to about 7600 BCE.
And the Black Sea was suddenly flooded around that time (Russian deep sea research). Fishermen there today know not to go too deep – its poison, the freshwater compost from the salt water flood.
The Neolithic starts about then. Universal means the Neolithic peoples took the epic with them wherever thy settled, and did they spread out!
Of course they perfectly preserved pillars there have only scratches, not writing, no!
The joke about archaeologists is they find a ceramic or stone, do isotope mass spectrometry, thermoluminescence, C14, context, and don’t read “made in Athens” on the edge.
Sara, right on! Why do people today think ancient people were more creative in their thinking than we are? Big things happened. They didn’t go around inventing them to support some religion or other. They did, if course, interpret real happenings in a religious frame. 10,000 years ago if a person or group of saw someone struck by lightning and burnt to a crisp, this definitely would look like an angry God had selected this person and onlookers would come up with a reason why.
I actually think this seemingly universal religiosity had great utility in our preservation as a species and our development of thought that led to science. It probably gave us self discipline and motivation to be empathetic and cooperative leading to the benefits and relative safety of belonging to a society. We obviously were imbued with a need (instinct) to understand phenomena.
Humans seem to have a built in need to believe in something greater than themselves.
For many, this is god. For others it is government.
Drivel.
Oh what a shocking surprise:
“From EurekAlert!
A computer model… well, it’s gospel, then.
A computer model is “robust evidence?” What a perversion of the word “evidence.”
Well said; fabricate a computer model (remember how sweet it is to sit in front of a computer keyboard-and-screen in air conditioned comfort instead of sweating out in the mosquitoes and hot sun), have the model then spurt out what you programmed it to spurt….and then call that ‘evidence’??
Perversion indeed.
I also loved the ‘Made in Athens’ missed on the edge of the artifact; reminds me of the number of times in my early field work where in northern Canada I actually thought I just had to be the first person ever to set foot in this out-of-the-way spectacular wilderness….just before I tripped over a well-rusted tin can.
Yes, adaptability is they key to survival, as evidenced by the number of H. snowbirdis that develops in Canada upon retirement.
That last paragraph sealed it for me, just another alarmunista looking to spread hysteria. Ho hum.
“Climate change made Homo vulnerable and hapless in the past, and this may just be happening again.”
Clearly 2hotel9 is referring to manmade global warming, which BTW is not happening and cannot happen from our activities.
One teeny little fact. Cool/cold kills all ages and more people than warm/heat, which is more likely to take the ill and infirm.
After a cold snap, during which the death rate rises, the death rate goes back to normal, meaning cold killed people. During a heat wave, the death rate goes up, but after it is over, the death rate drops below normal for a time, which indicates that the heat killed people who were likely to die in the next weeks or months anyhow.
Cold kills all ages, while heat is selective of the old, weak, and critically conditioned.
They kept talking about Climate Change, trying to link the extinctions to our current scenario. But the only change that killed the various homo species was cold. 1°C of warming is not what killed them.
“It is worrisome to discover that our ancestors, which were no less impressive in terms of mental power as compared to any other species on Earth, could not resist climate change,” he said. “And we found that just when our own species is sawing the branch we’re sitting on by causing climate change. I personally take this as a thunderous warning message. Climate change made Homo vulnerable and hapless in the past, and this may just be happening again.”
The only one of those that had brains even half as big as Homo sapiens is neanderthalensis, and their technology stayed static for at least 6000 years. It is now thought by some that neaderthals interbred with humans at a time when their population was already in decline – see Swante Paabo on youtube about a year ago. Since most of their genes live on in sapiens, Paabo points out that they are not extinct. The parts of the genome from neaderthals that is most comprehensivley missing is that thought to be necessary for complex language.
As for making a fuss about extinctions, there are far more extinct species in all orders than currently live.
You can think of Neanderthals being absorbed into Sapiens rather than going extinct.
They had to get their tax payer’s $.
Yep, just another pack of grifters working a scam.
So the takeaway from all this is that homo sapiens can successfully survive climate change. Yippee! Does this mean that we can start spending all that money on something useful?
Homo Erectus appeared on Earth about 1.8 Myrs BP, and probably the last subspecies got extinct about 50 kyrs BP. Would someone be so kind as to enumerate how many glacial and interglacial phases he survived?
Any extinction whatsoever can always be correlated with SOME climatic change, as climate is constantly changing.
I completely agree.
Ditto.
Giorgio
You are correct to point out that H. sap and ancestors as well as cousins like Neanderthals and Denisovans experienced and coped with many very dramatic changes in climate, and the neanderthals survived until 27kya in Gibralter . H. floresiensis , descended from H erectus migrants , (some actually proposing H habilis ) not only survived for 1.8 -2My but must have crossed hills, deserts , jungles, swamps etc in passage from Africa
On the American continent the humans who settled in Monte Verde Chile started out , many generations back in the Arctic region of the Bering St, then trekked , generation by generation down the pacific coast , crossed tropical jungle and back to relatively cold arid conditions in S America . All without the aid of Range Rovers and polar clothing and air conditioning .
Contrary to what Raia et al say the history of human evolution indicates an ability to survive climate changes far greater than those seen in the last century and expected in the near future.
Furthermore in the book “Why did the Neanderthals go extinct?” the author points out that it was the change in the prey they depended upon and their method of killing it that led to their demise as the last ice age gripped Europe, although they lived for many thousands of years in relative ease and comfort on the mud flats around Gibralter.
A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA
My conclusion is that humans are not causing climate change and are undoubtedly significantly able to adapt to it in any case.
I’m not sure, if Homom erectus didn’t drive around with the one or the other Flint SUV
Homo Sapiens (which is Latin for wise guys) have adapted to just about every ecosystem on Earth. It’s risible to say we can’t adapt to a couple of degrees of warming. What we might have trouble with is the next glaciation.
Giant fusion-powered blow driers to melt the snow before it turns to ice.
Snowplows from Hell.
Perhaps we could convince alarmists to lay down on the ice in order to decrease the albedo.
After all, according to them, the ice wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Well, Antifa goons in the pay of the CPC do dress in black.
This link has a bunch of videos. Find the one called Soros’ Paid Chaos. The video makes many allegations about George Soros but they should be easy to fact check.
p.s. The Conservative Party of Canada denies all involvement with Antifa.
OK. CCP then. Better as reminiscent of the USSR in the Russian alphabet.
Not just the regime of Red China funds Antifa. Sotos is in the mix, too.
Both the CCP and Russia also arm Mexican cartels and launder their blood money from drugs, extortion and human trafficking.
“We were surprised by the regularity of the effect of climate change,” ….and the cause of this climate change was the use of fossil fuels? Use of wood fires? Extreme cold? Bison farts? Exhaust from SUVs? CO2? Natural causes not attributed to any animal behavior?
So if climate change is regular, why is this time, or rather the event coming in 2100, attributed to humans?
Mr. Harding (10/16/20 @ur momisugly 6:38a): GREAT!
Mr. Harding: Excellent point. I find it hilarious that these bright, well-educated folks cannot see the obvious- their attempt to scare us with tales of extinction actually disproves their beloved dogma. They assume the reader will not catch that this scary climate change was not human-caused, and serves to debunk the idea that current climate change is from a known cause (never mind human).
Did increasing heat drive these other variations of homo to extinction or did increasing cold?
Perhaps this is the answer. “They tried hard; they made for the warmest places in reach as the climate got cold, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t enough.”
Perhaps the conclusion should be, hotter is better!
That is exactly my take on it
Unfortunately some early Homo Erectus did survive to write such nonsense.
We, the species of humankind, are the only species ever on this planet to use fire. We are defined by fire, dated by fire, C14, and actually sought out freezing Siberian hunting grounds. Fire gives extra time at the camp to improve that throwing hunting javelin, more time for social activity such as epic stories to tell at night. In other words more freedom, more innovation.
Now along comes some little Greta, pushed by extreme wealth, to take our fire away and telling us to vote for Biden!
It sure seems the very earliest fire users faced immediate opposition, when an unknown kid came to mamma with fire in his hand! The chieftain immediately knew that meant the kid will be much more free! The kid’s mother probably scolded, knowing what would happen.
Still, here we are !
Homo erectus controlled fire.
Sure, like we do, but note the chieftain’s reaction – exactly like today’s Davos oligarchy.
Fire brings freedom!
No genes or adaption involved, but things like “freedom”, Innovation”, “cooked food and nourishment”, relative independence from climate vagaries, social bonding. And the opposite – tyranny, darkness, power, slavery.
The Greek Prometheus and Plato’s cave allegory, express it precisely.
And people ask why Fusion is delayed.
What?… They didn’t do it to themselves? Nasty climate, brutal climate!
“…publishing across the spectrum of environmental change and sustainability science. ” They are at least a century (ies?) behind in these long understood as axioms. Like making communication a science? Claiming something a science that isn’t should be questioned.
Might one use the scientific process to study communication?
If one finds principles that are consistent across various means of communication, might it not be reasonable to call these facts of communication?
Since they were learned and verified through the scientific method, might it be reasonable to call those principles facts or laws of the science of communication?
Does that still not leave communication itself something separate from the science of it, perhaps somewhat like cell division is not the same thing as the scientific study of cell division?
Weird…the things leftists FIXATE about.
Neanderthals survived prior glacial maxima, so it wasn’t climate. They died out before the last one because of “competition” with Moderns, ie being killed, eaten and enslaved by our ancestors. For people outside Sun-Saharan Africa, Neanderthals are ancestors as well. So are Denisovans.
There are also two unknown ancestors, one in Asia and another in Africa.
This study ignores H. naledi and H. floresiensis.
It also accepts H. ergaster and H. erectus as separate species, while ignoring H. antecesor. Many consider that those archaic humans were just, respectively, Asian, African and European variants of the same species.
H. habilis went extinct by evolving into H. erectus-grade humans, which then evolved into H. heidelbergensis, which evolved into Neanderthals in western Eurasia, Denisovans in eastern Eurasia and Moderns in Africa. Climatic changes might have affected these evolutionary processes, but they required both specific mutations and subsequent gradual changes, as in brain size and structure. Chins and shrunken brow ridges are Modern traits.
Besides which H. habilis should probably be assigned to genus Australopithecus, or Pan (chimps), Australopithecus and other hominin species subsumed under Homo. IMO keeping Pan separate from upright walking species is justified, but it’s a close call. Linnaeus would have placed humans and chimps in the same genus, but for religious objections. Genetically, we’re more closely related than horses and donkeys, both in Equus.
We have one less chromosome than chimps and other great apes, because two smaller standard great ape chromosomes fused to form our second-largest #2. This event is associated with upright walking.
There are two very large pink polka-dotted elephants in the room ignored in this comical “study”:
1. H. habilis and H. erectus range is near the equator, far from any glaciers that developed in the northern latitudes), and the range of H. neanderthalensis was southern Europe near the Mediterranean Sea, also affected minimally, if at all, by glaciers hundred of miles further north.
2. The authors inadvertently affirmed that cooler global temperatures and glaciation are hard on humans while warmer temperatures allow them to thrive, as they are doing now.
But you know where to find the Neanderthal ?
It’s in the North West of Germany near Belgium and Netherlands not far from Düsseldorf, not that what I call Mediterranean Sea.
Neanderthals did live nearer the ice sheets than did H. erectus, unless you count the Tibetan ice sheet. H. erectus (Peking Man) did however live in northern China, presumably during interglacials.
Neanderthals weren’t limited to the Med. During interglacials, they made it to Britain. They ranged into Central Asia, to include Denisova Cave, north of latitude 51 in the Altai Mountains, and higher.
Reasonable assumptions but no mention that the climate change was probably glaciation.
A reasonably good opinion until the last paragraph with the obligatory plea for funding support implied.
They did say “They tried hard; they made for the warmest places in reach as the climate got cold, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t enough.” So cold was clearly worse than warm.
“You have a question you want a specific answer to”?
“Not a problem”
“I have a computer model for that. What answer do you want?”
Dingdingding!!!!! You win the intratubesthingy for the day.
The Neanderthals lived mostly in glacial ages and for briefer times warm climates such as we enjoy. They survived both. As for being mentally equivalent to Sapiens, that is utter bunk. The Neanderthals existed for about 200,000 years and never got past stone age technology and never developed societies beyond a couple dozen people. Or perhaps these researchers can develop an “emulator” to show us the “data” about their cities.
Their base are the locations they found fossils, without knowledge where else homo x,y,z lived and why.
To often the homo history had to been rewritten because of new findings on “unprecedented” places and older than previously thought.
In 2017 they found out, Homo sapiens may be 150,000 years older than we thought
Further, Fossil suggests Homo erectus is 200,000 years older than thought
So the “study”, better the computergame is moving on more than very thin ice and can’t be seen as not more than pure speculation, they don’t know, about what they are writing.
German source
The Moroccan fossil skull is transitional between H. heidelbergensis and Anatomically Modern Humans, just what you’d expect for its date. The transition was gradual. It is fairly arbitrary at what point remains are assigned to us Moderns. A chin might be the most obvious characteristic trait.
I suspect that most species went extinct, not because they all died out, but because they evolved into something else.
It’s possible however that we Moderns also wiped out Flores Man and maybe H. erectus in Asia, as we did the Neanderthals and probably Denisovans. But even in those cases, except Flores Man, genetic sequences survive from these earlier human types.
All that settled science is regularly shown to be a pile of hooey. Start with invalid presumptions and you are constantly surprised and need to rewrite your fiction.
If H. Sapiens survived, and thrived, by exploiting resources like fossil fuels to adapt to the hostile environment, then anthropogenic climate change is evolution in action. The green new deal is the misanthropic apocolypse.
“…increased vulnerability to climatic change.” As evolution increased the intellectual capacity of the Homo species there was an accompanying ability to resist/adapt to climate change. Today Homo Sapiens climbs Mt. Everest or crosses Death Valley, a certain mark of this resistive/adaptive ability. This report then is obviously a load of nonsense in search of funding. Next.
I’ve just created a model, and it shows that some early humans may have been driven extinct when a space craft possibly from a star system near the horse head nebula crashed into Africa, perhaps spreading lithium and rare-earth metal deposits across that continent. This may have contributed to the extinction of other species as well.
“horse head nebula”
I think your model is using the other end of the horse.
“It is worrisome to discover that our ancestors, which were no less impressive in terms of mental power …”
Some ancestors of Austin Power I presume.
https://youtu.be/5vsANcS4Ml8?t=7
Peer review isn’t anymore what it was.
The ref. to “climate change” grants to pass it without deeper verifications.