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The genus Homo sapiens emerged as a result of rapid climate change, scientists claim
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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Some argue that climate change will wipe out humans as a species. And then we will be killed by what gave birth to us: the rapid fluctuations in global average temperatures 3–2 million years ago coincided with the golden age of human evolution.
Fossil evidence suggests that eight other hominins arose from a single species, Australopithecus africanus, which lived about 2.7 million years ago. The first members of our genus appeared some 2.5 to 2.4 million years ago, and Homo erectus, the first hominin to leave Africa, was born about 1.8 million years ago.
Matt Grove from the University of Liverpool in the UK wanted to find out what role climate might have played at this stage of evolution. He turned to a data set collected by Lauren Lisicki from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US. Ms Lisicki analysed the oxygen isotope content in the shells of fossilised foraminifera. During ice ages, they contain higher concentrations of the heavier isotope, while the lighter one accumulates in snow and ice rather than the ocean.
Mr Grove found that average temperatures have changed relatively suddenly three times over the past 5 million years. Each change was equivalent to the temperature difference between glacial and interglacial periods, but none of these episodes occurred during the hominin “golden age.” Instead, this era was marked by a wider range of temperatures, a time of rapid and short-lived climate change. The speed of change, he believes, may have forced early humans to develop the adaptability that defines our species.
The specialist reminds that the main features of Homo erectus that increased its chances of survival were teeth suitable for any type of diet and a large brain. Probably, all this formed in response to rapid climate change.