Evaluating refugia in recent human evolution in Africa.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
; 377(1849): 20200485, 2022 04 25.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35249393
ABSTRACT
Homo sapiens have adapted to an incredible diversity of habitats around the globe. This capacity to adapt to different landscapes is clearly expressed within Africa, with Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens populations occupying savannahs, woodlands, coastlines and mountainous terrain. As the only area of the world where Homo sapiens have clearly persisted through multiple glacial-interglacial cycles, Africa is the only continent where classic refugia models can be formulated and tested to examine and describe changing patterns of past distributions and human phylogeographies. The potential role of refugia has frequently been acknowledged in the Late Pleistocene palaeoanthropological literature, yet explicit identification of potential refugia has been limited by the patchy nature of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological records, and the low temporal resolution of climate or ecological models. Here, we apply potential climatic thresholds on human habitation, rooted in ethnographic studies, in combination with high-resolution model datasets for precipitation and biome distributions to identify persistent refugia spanning the Late Pleistocene (130-10 ka). We present two alternate models suggesting that between 27% and 66% of Africa may have provided refugia to Late Pleistocene human populations, and examine variability in precipitation, biome and ecotone distributions within these refugial zones. This article is part of the theme issue 'Tropical forests in the deep human past'.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Bases de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Ecossistema
/
Refúgio de Vida Selvagem
Tipo de estudo:
Qualitative_research
Limite:
Humans
País/Região como assunto:
Africa
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Alemanha