C08.09 Environment Evolution

Session: Human-Environment Interactions and Evolution in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene

Chair(s): Fahu Chen, Loukas Barton, Bernhard Weninger, Andrei Velichko

Abstract:
Environmental change has long been implicated as a prime mover in human biological and cultural evolution. However, the long-term effects of human-environment interactions are poorly understood. This session is designed to address this shortcoming by bringing together scholars of diverse backgrounds for an open discussion of the appropriate methods, scales, units, and data for evaluating the complex interactions and feedbacks between environmental change and human evolution. The context for this discussion is the late Pleistocene and early-middle Holocene, roughly 100,000 years marked both by extreme environmental variability and unprecedented change in human biogeography, demography, and social complexity. During this time Eurasia witnessed the influx of anatomically modern humans and the disappearance of archaic hominid forms; the Americas received hominids for the very first time; hunter-gatherers domesticated plants and animals and intensified their agricultural efforts in numerous independent locations around the world; and human society diversified, specialized, and stratified in novel ways and degrees. All of these developments took shape against a background of local and global variability in atmospheric composition and circulation, ecological succession, and biological evolution unfolding on a variety of different scales. The extents to which these changes are both cause and consequence of human activity are the primary subjects of this session, entitled “Human-Environment Interactions and Evolution in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.” The products of this discussion will be of interest to scientists and laymen alike.

Timeslots: 6