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'Velichko AA, 1999: Global dispersals of hominids - a feature of their coevolution with the environment. Anthropologie (Brno) 37, 1: 5-18'. |
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| Abstract | | This chapter argues that the dynamic interplay of environmental factors and natural and sexual selection shaped the entire course of hominid evolution - specifically, that environmental transformations served as filtering mechanisms which selected for the best pre-adapted hominid populations. It suggests that the colonization of new habitats was a seminal component of hominid evolution but that this process was not continuous either in time or in space. Until some 2 Mya hominids remained only in tropical habitats after which they began spreading into temperate Eurasia through Northeast Africa, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. During the subsequent long period of some 500,000 years hominids occupied protected piedmont habitats. By the late Lower Paleolithic hominids undertook occasional forays into open landscapes north of the mountains. These initial colonization attempts were not synchronous in the different parts of Eurasia. Western Europe saw the earliest and the most continuous colonization of its northern plains. The increase in the continentality of the climate as one moved from the west to the east caused both the temporal and the spatial delay in hominid colonization. The open landscapes of Eastern Europe and Siberia, prior to being successfully colonized in the Upper Paleolithic, saw repeated advances and retreats of hominid populations. | | | | Keywords | | Human evolution - Hominids - Climatic changes - Eurasia - Prehistoric migrations - Palaeoecology | | |
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