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.”
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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.
It did. God’s wrath rained down on the earth and destroyed all but those on the Ark. Rsr .org /hpt
It’s a nice bedtimes story, y’know, mass murder and all. But has no supporting evidence.
A couple of take-aways for me: 1) It was cold not heat that caused the extinction. 2) Regarding the last statement, the authors found what they were looking for which makes me question their objectivity. 3) The climate change was a natural occurrence.
Don’t go extinct…warm up those Molten Salts Reactors….now.
Snorting molten salts is bad, Mmmmkay? Much better to just put it on food.
No no no, that’s bath salts!
You dare to mock MSR now, but when the Big Freeze comes, you will be trying to huddle around an MSR – not wind/solar.
But when it gets colder the earth gets stormier, in other words, more wind. Wind is the obvious way to go!
No, I will be living comfortably with my gas furnace, wood burner and plenty of food, thank you very much. The only wind power I ascribe to is the sails on the Prindle 18 I borrow from time to time, and solar does an excellent job on my garden.
Why do they need climate models to figure out what past climate was? We already have a pretty good idea from from studying things like ancient spores.
Oh come now, Mark. That’s observational data. Very messy. Often contradicts our assumptions. Models on the other hand, never surprise us with bad data that we need to adjust away.
Understandably, Nazca lines and other similar ancient civilization landing strips are evidence that aviation is to blame for that climate change…
And a little challenge for all those passionate by climate temperature models.
Earlier this morning my engines were both at ambient temperature. When was the last time they were used and consequently very hot ? Yesterday ? Last week ? Two weeks ago ?
Maybe time to turn the ‘planes into restaurants as Singapore is doing. Tickets sold out!
Meanwhile feverish dreams of “green” hydrogen engines are in the air. Would not hold my breath though.
Occasionally, guys in black sweaters and grey vests with no tie will give us topics. On the necessity to smile politely and say “yes, indeed” when customers and general public address the crew with revolutionary green ideas. Then safely forget it all and concentrate on the job.
So anything goes, be it taxes, carbon offsets, snake oil, unicorn urine, hydrogen, water, soybeans oil, sails, wind turbines, PV cells, new undiscovered yet batteries, just say “yes, indeed”. And smile.
My guess is that the same guys are also hired to give similar topics to aircraft making companies.
Generalized politically correct virtue signaling ensues…
Until someone grabs an emergency flashlight or fire extinguisher to tell them what time it is.
*palmface*
So, you begin with a conclusion and a computer- and what do you get? CONFIRMATION (of your bias).
I have an alternate theory which I will publish in the open access journal “Oblivious”. According to my infallible model, Homo sapiens was the only Homo species not infiltrated by a administrative subspecies of early humanoids Homo progressivis. Those Homo species which cross-bred with Homo progressivis became increasingly incapable of perceiving and reacting to real threats but highly sensitized to imaginary threats till convinced that hunting, mating and defending themselves against predators were dangerous pursuits. Shortly after executing any individual who remembered how to make fire and having abandoned all measures of self sustenance long before the “perfection” of socialist government, they rapidly died out.
Homo Progressivis? Aka the Krell…
No. What’s crystal clear is that when you setup your climate models to create a fake world, stuff will happen in that fake world, just as it was modeled. Says zero about reality.
Our ancestors hunted them and ate them, exactly as we are doing now with chimps and gorillas. We are just going down the evolutionary tree pruning the branches. They can run but they can’t hide.
Some like to think our species is gentle. It is not. Climate change is just the latest excuse for not accepting our species responsibility.
Sorry to disappoint but neither Chimp nor Gorilla is on the menu here.
Chimps are indeed hunted as “bush meat” in West and Central Africa. Dunno about East.
Gorillas are k!lled for body parts.
And here we are at 7.5 billion. What are we doing wrong? Our soon to be extinction is obviously imminent.
“The findings may serve as a kind of warning to humans today as we face unprecedented changes in the climate, Raia says.”
Disingenuous beyond any definition of scientific fraud. They let the cat out of the bag by mentioning the search for a warmer place but refused to say the obvious which has nothing to do with the type of “climate change” they think is going to happen in coming decades. These critters died because of extreme cold for goodness sake and you Climate Wroughters know this.
There is absolutely nothing intrinsic about “Climate Change” undefined that is hazardous . It’s not like drowning or getting shot which do not need a modifier to make clear what happened. If we could stop the obsessive-compulsive blaming of humans (and humanoids!) for everything bad, we might also muster the logical thought that the bitter cold had something to do with the extinction of the animals they depended on for food, too. After all, following on the ‘researchers’ reasoning, the hogs, aurochs, mammoths… did not invent fire to keep warm, or even think there was a warmer place to go to. They were much more at risk than their clever antagonists. Most likely the hominids did finish off the last of dwindling prey.
This is one of the primary reasons why Global Warming became Climate Change. This way you can conflate every bad thing that ever happens/happened with climate change.
You can establish from all these bad things caused by climate change, that climate change is inherently dangerous. Now the climate is changing therefore we’re in grave danger. And 997% of climate scientist agree that CO2 is the culprit. Thus CO2 is a dangerous existential threat. It’s unprecedented.
QED
More mathematical onanism from the the academic fools. This “study” possesses just as much reality as one achieved by ingesting enormous quantities of THC and hallucinating the past. At least the latter method is in color.
Well, obviously, these people never heard of archaeological evidence. Heidelbergensis died out around 125,000 years ago, most likely from breeding with H. Sapiens and H. Neandertalis. We all have about 2% H. Heidelbergensis in our DNA. You can get that tested, and also you can get a test for Neandertal genes.
Climate had nothing to do with it.
Heidelberg man was a robust hominid that could take down large game animals like horses and elk and European bison, but the poor fellow simply could not compete with H. Sapiens who was probably more attractive to Heidelberg WOMEN than was Heidelberg man. And you guys all know how fickle we girls can be. Seriously, who do you think we’re gonna take a walk with? The big hairy football tackle guy, or the less hairy but equally muscled quarterback????
Competition for females and hunting territory is more accurate. It is part of Hooman nature to engage in reproduction and turf for hunting. If these so-called researchers are so desperate for cash that they think this theory is even vaguely valid, they are greedier and dumber than I had realized.
Considering that Heidelberg man started up around 800,000 years ago, and finally lost turf to the more gracile H. Sapiens – yeah, you mopes, we’re still here – these people make it clear that not only are they money-grubbing idjits, they also know less about species stability than the soles of my shoes. H. Sapiens beat out the other guys for everything, because for some odd reason, we followed the herds instead of waiting for them to come to us.
Think I”m kidding? Then go get your DNA tested for Neandertal and Heidelberg DNA. Up to 8% DNA comes from Neandertals, maybe more, and 1.5% to 2% comes from Heidelberg man.
Yes there is neanderthal DNA in all non-African humans, and another sister species, Denisovans left DNA in East Asia and the Pacific, but the limitation in getting Heidelberg DNA is that he went extinct more than 300,000 years ago and DNA retrieval stops at present at about 40,000. Whether the latter was an ancestor or another branch of the tree is not clear.
Proteomics allows scientists to reconstruct more ancient DNA sequences from proteins, as with this 800 Ka H. antecessor from Spain:
https://www.livescience.com/oldest-human-ancestor-dna-homo-antecessor.html#:~:text=To%20date%2C%20the%20oldest%20human,fossils%20for%20millions%20of%20years.
Oldest human DNA recovered is from 430 Ka.
Fran, yes, this is why the estimate of the demise of Heidelberg is 125,000 years ago, or thereabouts. But that’s based on various samplings, including the finds at a campsite at Schoningen in Germany and more finds in a cave in Spain. All we really get is scattered pieces here and there, but somewhere in there, the more gracile H. Neandertal and H. Sapiens moved on when robust Heidelberg man could not.
That makes me wonder if every species has a genetic end date of some kind. I should ask my sister; genetics is one thing she teaches. She might have some good feedback on it of some suggestions on material to read.
Sara and Fran
Thanks for the insight.
It is my understanding that the ability to obtain DNA samples is massively reduced in the tropics as opposed to the colder places.
The lack of DNA samples in the tropics limits our knowledge of where early human species lived and traveled.
“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.”
As ridiculous as that paper is, at least they acknowledge that, contrary’s to Greta’s and Mann’s retarded ramblings and as far as SURVIVAL is concerned, no one runs toward “colder” places.
The kind of climate change that would have wiped out species of early man was global cooling, not global warming. Ice ages are hard to survive. Even a single cold winter is enough to stress a population that doesn’t have the ability to store enough food until it warms up again. For a species that originated on the plains of Africa, warmth is the preferred environment, so it’s unlikely that it was the warming coming out of an ice age that wiped them out.
Okay, Lee, then can you please explain why the Inuit and Aleut way up north toward the Arctic Circle where it gets cold are so well adapted to living in an extreme environment and have done so since their distant ancestors crossed that land bridge way back when?
And also, can you please explain why people in Siberia and Mongolia who have, for millenia, been following their herds and have managed to survive and thrive, without the use of modern conveniences, in extremely cold climates, and have done so for centuries?
Siberia is one of those no-holds-barred environments: you either live with it or you don’t. Ditto Mongolia. And how come all those people living high in the uplands of Tibet, where it’s desperately cold
and dry most of the year, seem to just thrive???
Siberia, Alaska, and Northern Canada are all like Malibu Beach compared to the ice age climate. Mankind will spread to the whole planet, but you can tell by the population densities where they prefer to live.
Anyways the study “proved” in an alarmist-approved, safe-place kind-of-way, that colder climate is bad and a warming climate is good.
Sorry to disagree, but they tried to conflate the impact of our mild warming with the assumed but dubious impact on ancient nomadic populations when the climate got much colder. They directly invite us to imagine that it is the delta rather than the sign that is dangerous. As if it would be the identical stress to migrate from Montreal to Miami in summer as the opposite direction in winter.
In the first place, I don’t buy the premise that any kind of climate change caused hominid extinctions. I’m not sure that cold is much of a problem for small groups of big game hunters who know how to use fire. It’s the farmers who depend on crops to feed a large population who are most impacted by cold-induced and/or drought-induced crop failures. But as far as I’m aware, only H. sapiens ever became farmers.
Drought impacts the hunter/gatherer, too, but they tend to be nomads who move to the places “flowing with milk and honey”.
I suspect that those H. sub-species that died out, more likely succumbed to disease and competition/warfare with our ancestors than with any form of climate change. Of course cold and drought lead to famine and death for millions, and make populations more susceptible to disease, but I’m just saying that it would take more than climate change to result in extinction.
Our potential extinction probably would hinge on the same factors.
Both of you are right. Lack of food animals to hunt (provides protein and necessary fats for survival in the cold) will send nomadic groups from one spot to another, looking for game. They will follow the herds and note where ducks, geese and other gamebirds go so that they can hunt and take the prey.
Temperatures during the Wisconsin ice-up are guesswork, but if it’s cold enough to snow and not melt the snow, then you have to have enough humidity in the air to produce snow. Meltback doesn’t really figure into it all that much. Since my own observations of migrating geese show that they’ll snow up in February, even if the rivers and ponds are iced up and it’s cold, and they’ll wait until December to leave if there is enough open water and food (and I have photos with dated files to back up all of this), then those alarmist viewpoint is incorrect, as it has no reference to the real world of critters and hunters.
Seriously, if they can’t even acknowledge that people go ice fishing (and you should see some of those shacks!) because it’s as primal as you can get, it means they are too embedded in their “belief system” (don’t know what else to call it) to acknowledge anything in the real world.
Basically, what they’ve said is baloney. And we know it.
Homo Sapiens may be better adapted to deal with cold than other human species were. They died out and we didn’t. And I wouldn’t necessarily describe those living in Mongolia, Siberia, or north of the Arctic Circle as ‘thriving’. That is a tough existence, and ‘surviving’ is probably a better word. Evolution has provided a measure of adaptation to cold to the Aleuts and Inuits, and maybe those other human species simply didn’t share those traits.
Gee Javier, we get enough of this kind of stuff from our тотaliтarуаи eco loons. If anything is a surprise at all, in addition to fire we introduced conservation and caring about other creatures. We saved the Nile crocodile! We rescue beached whales, Gulf of Mexico hypothermic turtles, build highway overpasses for frogs, agonize over the plight of the Edith Spot butterfly, hug bugs and slugs, build ladders fo fish…
In Connecticut we have tunnels for turtles. You can add that to your list.
“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….Global Warming could have saved our extinct genetic cousins…..but Global Cooling was deadly. Just like today, when more Homo Sapiens die each year due to cold weather than due to warm weather. Makes me wonder what kind of misanthropic monsters are against Global Warming.
The Cambridge, UK. university anthropology concoction of “multiple human species” is used as the scientific basis for racism, the result one sees today in the BLM color revolution in full swing.
This kind or racism, as Cecil Rhodes of the Round Table expressed it :
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings; what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence. Added to this the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars; at this moment had we not lost America I believe we could have stopped the Russian-Turkish war by merely refusing money and supplies. Having these ideas what scheme could we think of to forward this object?
“Why should we not form a secret society with but one object: the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, and for the making of the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire?
“Africa is still lying ready for us, it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes: that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race, more of the best, the most human, most honourable race the world possesses”
Or in the well known movie Executive Action (1973) :
Farrington is told by Foster:
“The real problem is this James. In two decades there will be seven billion human beings on this planet. Most of them brown, yellow or black. All of them hungry. All of them determined to love. They’ll swarm out of their breeding grounds into Europe and North America… Hence, Vietnam. An all-out effort there will give us control of south Asia for decades to come. And with proper planning, we can reduce the population to 550 million by the end of the century. I know… I’ve seen the data.”
James: “We sound rather like Gods reading the Doomsday book don’t we?”
Foster: “Well, someone has to do it. Not only will the nations affected be better off. But the techniques developed there can be used to reduce our own excess population: blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, poverty prone whites, and so forth”.
That is why they assassinated JFK.
More at
https://canadianpatriot.org/2020/02/09/leftist-neo-mccarthyite-witchhunters-hypocritically-mourn-the-death-of-kirk-douglas/
Would you mind giving the dimensional coordinates of whatever reality you live in? Sounds like it would be a fun place to visit.
He’s on Planet LaRouche.
The three Marks are at it again.
They were on foot without satellite images of the ground to guide their travels. What pray tell do we have to fear when we have the level of technology we have. If people can live at the equator today, there is no temperature increase in our future that will cause an extinction, because the equator is pretty much temperature limited already with automatic thermostats in the water cycle.
Homo Antiquorum are alive and well in Florida.
“Climate change likely drove early human species to extinction, modeling study suggests”
Wrong, and they know it. Deep cooling certainly could be responsible, but not “climate change”. Climate Liars like to put the emphasis on “change” itself as the culprit. It fits with the Climate Ideology.
The paper didn’t mention the most likely cause of earlier homo extinctions –
competition for a Darwin Award.
I am not saying it was the “Heat Storm” that got them … but the model says there was a “Heat Storm”
A ‘high-resolution past climate emulator’. I don’t know what it is, but I want one for Xmas.
‘high-resolution past climate emulator’ = ‘Time Machine’.
I’m ordering mine now to avoid the Xmas rush.
Max P
Little know fact, early man commited mass sucide because of climate change induced mass proliferation of Greta Thunberg precursors.
The early human species that may or may not have existed. Nay, the early human species with civilizations that reached to the clouds and beyond, powered by clean, green, renewable nuclear fusion. The patterns are there. The rest is inferred. It’s plausible. Eureka! I believe.