7/7 If you enjoyed this thread and are interested in the human past from the lens of niches, look out for my forthcoming book "The Earthmakers" (U.S. Basic Books/Hachette, U.K. Transworld/Penguin Random House). Coming in 2027!
We're excited to welcome @elliescerri.bsky.social for the next MENDLS lecture - 06.05.26 at the Uni of Liverpool. If you're around, please join us - see poster for details and sign up.
@lucytimbrell96.bsky.social @jblinkhorn.bsky.social @phoebebakerrr.bsky.social @paddytkaczynski.bsky.social
2/7 This starting point implicates different regions of Africa in human evolution, taking me to West Africa, a long neglected region for human evolution. Here, we showed that the record was so different, we simply cannot extrapolate from one African region to another.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This is the paper, in case you are interested. It was led by @margheritac17.bsky.social and @elliescerri.bsky.social just like the malaria one
www.pivotscipub.com/hpgg/5/1/0001
5/7 What about the feedbacks? Human niche expansions likely impacted evolution. It coincides with the emergence of the constellation of features defining humans today. There were also feedbacks: as people exploited new areas and ecosystems, they encountered diseases.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
6/7 What was the final niche frontier? The answer is: the sea. Seafaring is the least well understood of the great human transitions. We documented the oldest long distance sea journeys in the Med by hunter-gatherers, showing they reached and shaped, small islands:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/7 Our papers may seem to address different themes, but they coalesce around the deep human past as a process of niche expansion and feedbacks, into the transition to human dominated landscapes. A starting point was the pan-African structured theory of human origins: www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
4/7 This work inspired questions about when humans really began to intensively exploit different niches. The answer showed that ecological diversity is at the heart of our species, but that there was a shift in gears shortly before successful dispersal out of Africa.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3/7 The new model also implicates different ecosystems. Did humans really only inhabit open environments, with rainforests as barriers until recent history? Our showed humans inhabted rainforests 150,000 years in West Africa - more than double the previous known age.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com
The legacy of Luca Cavalli-Sforza on human evolution
Malaria has shaped human habitat choice, exchange, and dispersal since the late Pleistocene in sub-Saharan Africa.
www.science.org
Archaeological discoveries from Malta suggest that humans were present on the Maltese islands from around 8,500 years ago, providing evidence that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers made sea crossings as lon...
We challenge the view that our species, Homo sapiens, evolved within a single population
and/or region of Africa. The chronology and physical diversity of Pleistocene human
fossils suggest that morpho...
www.cell.com
Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...
The identification of tools dated to the time of Homo sapiens associated with microfloral evidence of wet tropical forests indicates that West African forests were occupied by humans much earlier...
We're excited to welcome @elliescerri.bsky.social for the next MENDLS lecture - 06.05.26 at the Uni of Liverpool. If you're around, please join us - see poster for details and sign up.
@lucytimbrell96.bsky.social @jblinkhorn.bsky.social @phoebebakerrr.bsky.social @paddytkaczynski.bsky.social
