CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: Humans are shaping the climate, but the climate shaped human development.
Image: LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LIBRARY
Research on climate change today focuses mostly on the future, taking stock of how humans have influenced the planet and using computer models to project unwanted changes like warming temperatures or rising seas and ways we might avoid them.
But a new report suggests that there's value in looking at not just how humans shape the climate, but how the climate shaped human development going back millions of years.
"How we get here is relevant to where we are going as a species," says the analysis released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences. Written at the behest of the National Science Foundation, it lays out a 10- to 20-year plan for research that would improve understanding of the ancient climate and how that influenced human evolution.
Rick Potts, a Smithsonian Institution paleoanthropologist who helped write the report, said thatuntil about 20 years ago, scientists had a simplistic view of how the environment shaped human history. They believed that a few major events, like the expansion of grasslands in Africa and later ice ages in Europe and Asia, signaled forks in the evolutionary path that led to Homo sapiens.
But with more data available now on ancient climate -- such as temperature records derived from sediment cores drilled from lake beds and ocean floors -- researchers now believe humans evolved amid "a great deal of instability and environmental fluctuation," said Potts, director of the Human Origins Program and curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History.
"The human species today is a survivor of lots of different environmental changes," he said. "The possible implication is that we have, built into us, a certain degree of adaptability or resilience."
But history also shows there are limits.
"Look back to the fossil known as 'Lucy' -- her species, Australopithecus afarensis, lived back beyond 3 million years ago," Potts said. "Her species had a certain resilience to environmental change, but her species is no longer around."
A more recent example is the Classic Mayan civilization in southern Mexico and Central America, the report notes. Over a 400-year span between 750 and 1150, the Mayan population dropped by 70 percent or more.
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15 Comments
Add CommentIf we generously consider ourselves the 'Industrial and Electronic Civilization' of the past maybe 150 years, I don't think we should be too quick to judge the 400 year Mayan civilization a failure. Lets see if we can make it another 50 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis isn't about human adaption to the changing environment, its your progressive liberal lying about facts and your inability to admit your massive mistakes reporting the news.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLess1leg:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...its your progressive liberal lying about facts and your inability to admit your massive mistakes reporting the news."
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Oooooh....which one of the FAUX NoNooz propagandists or conspiracy theorists gave you that piece of political rhetoric?
Sure doen't take you and your ilk very long, much like flies on dung, to post your kneejerk opinions on every article here at SciAm that deals with climate change.
Science is not politics! This is not a political rag, Less1leg, this is Scientific American, reporting on news of new research by highly reputable National Academy and Smithsonian scientists. Your post is irrational, unscientific, and completely political in nature. You appear to oppose science itself. Posts should relate specifically to the particular article they refer to. Your post isn't even relevant to the topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI sure there are those who will disagree,because it's just a theory.But the setting of fires as a method of hunting.by driving game into blind canyons,and or off of cliffs,although wasteful,it would have been a very effective way of bringing down all sorts of game.For days after, early man would have then, just had to walk from kill to kill.Then within a week or two there would be all sorts of tender green shoots to eat as well.The lighting of these fires depending on how many, may of had effects on the local climate,and if a hunter gather group traveled over a wide area who knows how large the effect might have of been?Plus carrying with or the making there of fire would have given the same groups protection from other predators,talk about an edge,and combine that with the parasites that the heat killed,and the tubers that could now be cooked,all Homo's that used fire had a tool no other animal could match.Plus bright green spots would also show otherwise unseen water sourses.It was a win,win,win,situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe study should really look at history since the start of primates, otherwise you're not looking far enough.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack.123 - I think I saw a TV program that attributed the deforestation of Australia by the early populations' use of that fire-hunting method. Another program indicated that early arrivals in America used a slightly more conservative approach, producing huge nets into which they drove all the small animals from the region. Seems kind of like hunting from the highway, but when you're hungry...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate to be so negative, but this couldn’t be anthropology’s strategy for cashing in on the global warming gold rush, could it? It sure looks like it, and smells like it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile this seems like a reasonable research plan, I have to question its usefulness:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf global warming is increasing at the rate projected, would any adaptations to the slow warming of the past be indicative of future requirements?
Will there be time for any adaptations?
The more recent changes of industrialization, population growth and electronics technology seem to have made the greatest changes in the demands placed on human beings. If you can, try to imagine the pace of life in the early 1800s compared to today.
If we are to survive, our adaptations to changing conditions may have to be manifested not as individual organisms but as a technological civilization.
The climate and environmental changes in the past were self contained to earth. The human dimension in the current climate changes I am afraid will not produce similar input/output analysis. However, it may be usefull to some extends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjtdwyer, what about adaptations we had in the past for climate change (and still carry inside us), that aren't necessarily useful at this point so we don't notice them, but that would suddenly be useful again would the climate situation repeat itself?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRecognizing what those adaptations might be could be helpful or otherwise instructive.
In the end though, I agree with you that we'll survive future climate change not as much from a physical adaptation standpoint, but from the use of our technology. I think our use of science has already far outstripped the benefits of incremental evolutionary change for our species survival.
On the other hand, I'm not sure about your positioning this as "cashing in on the global warming gold rush". It just seems like a "Fox News" style of spinning the situation with cute tag lines to totally misrepresent what is going on. The fact that climate change is so serious and has such broad implications of course means a lot of different fields will be quite interested in looking at it, and of course there is research money in that. It would be insane if their weren't. But to portray that as a "gold rush" and to imply that the value of the underlying science is trumped by these financial concerns seems very disingenuous.
Sure, researchers will pursue grant money, always have, always will. And sure, lots of research projects could be better thought out and lots are just plain silly... I mean we are dealing with humanity here. But overall the efforts are generally pointed in the direction of progress.
I would be more willing to mock individual research efforts for however silly they may be if it weren't in a climate where outliers are used to describe the whole field. Where one scientist's incorrect conclusions or bad motives/actions are used by people with shady political motivations to discredit all the others who are on the accurate path.
Global warming deniers do this constantly, they make sweeping statements and snide comments and use outliers in the field to justify ignoring the bulk of real science that weighs against what they want to believe. So comments like "global warming gold rush" can easily raise ire, because they play into that misleading agenda.
tharriss - Excellent responses! I had completely overlooked the currently unexpressed characteristics that may rather quickly be be employed to produce adaptations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm really wavering on my emotional response to seeing all the announcements of new research, products, soap operas, etc. addressing the hot new global warming ticket. If I were assigned the task of developing a business plan for a university, I'd certainly emphasize the hot button. However, I agree that earnest efforts to contribute solutions, or at least coping methods, would produce a similar result.
I realize that I used inflammatory language: I changed 'cash cow' to 'gold rush'. I'll try to tone it down further in the future, if it comes up.
Thanks
:-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate may have been chaotic for our beginning evolution to make us adaptable, but "The End of the Long Summer", by Dianne Dumanoski, says it was pretty smooth for about the last 14,000, giving us time to build, and collapse, civilizations. If you look for it, it shows up on temperature graphs. Perhaps it wasn't for our greater good, because now we're too used to the easy life. The book title means the end of pleasant weather, and it's well worth reading.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMan, Climate, Glaciation, Diet, Hunting, Tooth, Microwear, Buccal surfaces
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumans evolved in environmental fluctuations with a great degree of adaptability. To test the evidence that the precise behaviors within particular geographic region reflect responses to climate change, we have observed dental micro striae on the buccal surfaces of the cheek teeth of humans from Tautavel (France) when ice covered most of the North Sea basin, ca. 450.000 years ago, from l'Hortus (France) when Neanderthals existed in Europe as the only hominin species, and from Zafarraya site (Spain) occupied between 30-27,000 BP as a camp from which Neanderthals, joined in France by migrating modern Homo sapiens, would hunt mountain goats.
http://independent.academia.edu/pfpuech/Papers/151367/EARTH-S-CLIMATE-AND-HUMAN-LINEAGES-