"The Indian and southeast Asian distributions clearly show that the descendants of these early coastal migrants are a minority today." Spencer Wells is able to trace the lineages of pretty much every human being on the planet just by finding the routes that people moved around the continents so many years ago. Because of him we can know where we originated from and what our ancesters did long before we existed.
William Calvin, a neurobiologist, has written on the effects of climate change on early human evolution. He says that the Sahara drew animals from other regions during wetter phases and expelling them when the weather turned drier. "During one of these outward-pumping phases a small group of hominids left Africa and entered the Middle East." According to Calvin the climate changes that humans have experienced throughout their time on this planet, have had a great impact on where humans relocated and settled.
Without these climate changes, where would we be today? With global warming happening today, how does it affect the human race for the future? I mean we have learned that not all climate change is good, but the human race seems to be partly a cause of that.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Deep Ancestry
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5 comments:
Shannon,
I found this post to be very interesting. Do you think climate is as significant as people see it as? From your post I observed that early humans adapted to surrounding environmental changes, do you think we have the capacity to do this again? With global warming and other changes on the horizon, do you think we can withstand another climatic shift?
It obviously must have been the word "Indian" that attracted my attention but either way it was interesting to learn that the person who knows where we originated from is named Spencer Wells. With the climate changes, it does make me wonder what would have happened if not many substantial changes took place. Would we still be aligned as one big "country" with less diversity in the human race? With the amount of global warming occurring as well it is scary to think how long we have left to survive it all.
Yeah I remember from the video that the guy traveled down to Tamil Nadu to find where tribes had traveled off to. I found this somewhat shocking because I always thought that Indian's first were established up near the Ganges River because that's where some of the oldest living structures are. And I totally agree with the global warming thing! There is rapid climate changes in certain regions so if it's hard for animals to adapt to these conditions, it's scary to see how humans will survive later on.
At first when I read this post I didn't really believe that climate would have much of an effect on our ancestry. Once I thought about it, it actually made sense and it also makes me wonder if the climate changes today could completely change our next generation or will there not even be much of a next generation because of global warming is increasing?
I wonder if the climate change is significant enough over time for the animals to have to adapt over time. But has record shows this is actually true. Adaptation takes place at all time because our world is constantly changing.
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