Humans have survived other species by adapting to the "extreme" climate

BERLIN: The unique ability of homo sapiens to adapt to the "extreme" environments of the world – where other species such as Neanderthals have perished – may have helped us to become the last hominids survivors of the planet, according to a study.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of the History of Humanity in Germany and the University of Michigan in the United States examined data sets relating to at the middle and upper Pleistocene (300-12 thousand years).

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, shows unique environmental contexts and adaptations for Homo sapiens compared to previous and coexisting hominins such as Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus.

"The ability of our species to occupy diverse and" extreme "environments around the world stands in sharp contrast to the ecological adaptations of other hominine taxa, and could explain how our species became the last hominin survivor of the planet ".

The researchers suggest that research on what it means to be human should go through attempts to discover the first material traces of "art", "language" or technological "complexity" to understand what makes our ecologically unique species.

Unlike our ancestors and contemporary parents, our species has not only colonized a diversity of challenging environments, including deserts, rainforests, high elevations, and the Paleoarctic, but has also suited to some of these extremes.

Although all the hominids that make up the genus Homo are often referred to as "humans" in academic and public circles, this evolutionary group, appeared in Africa about three million years ago, is very diverse.

Some members of the genus Homo (ie Homo erectus) arrived in Spain, Georgia, China, and Indonesia a million years ago.

Yet existing information on fossil animals, ancient plants and chemical methods suggests that these groups have followed and exploited environmental mosaics of forests and grbadlands.

It has been argued that Homo erectus and the 'Hobbit', or Homo floresiensis, used resource-poor rainforest habitats in Southeast Asia a million or so years ago. years to 100,000 and 50,000 years respectively.

However, researchers have found no reliable evidence for this.

It has also been argued that our closest hominids, Homo Neanderthalensis – or Neanderthals – were specialized in the occupation of high latitude Eurasia between 250,000 and 40,000 years ago.

The basis of this includes a face shape potentially suited to cold temperatures and a hunting focus on large animals such as woolly mammoths.

Nevertheless, a review of the evidence led the researchers to conclude that Neanderthals primarily exploited a diversity of habitats of forests and grbadlands, and that they hunted a diversity of animas, from the temperature from northern Eurasia to the Mediterranean.
Unlike these other members of the genus Homo, our species – Homo sapiens – has spread to higher niches than its hominid predecessors and contemporaries 80-50,000 years ago, and rapidly colonized at least 45,000 years ago before. a range of paleo-arctic environments and tropical rainforest conditions across Asia, Melanesia and the Americas.