How a changing landscape and climate shaped early humans

This article in the on-line magazine The Conversation explains how, beginning with the collision of India with Asia 20 mya, followed by the opening of the Great Rift Valley, the climate and landscape of East Africa changed from flat wet forest to desert, mountainous forest and lakes which appeared and disappeared following a 20,000 Milankovitch-like periodic cycle in climate. According to the authors, the disappearance of these lakes forced the newly emerged Homo Erectus to move out of Africa to find habitable land 1.8 mya.

Read the article here.


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