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Climate, Fire and Human Evolution

Climate, Fire and Human Evolution
Author: Andrew Y. Glikson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2015-11-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 331922512X

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The book outlines principal milestones in the evolution of the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere during the last 4 million years in relation with the evolution from primates to the genus Homo – which uniquely mastered the ignition and transfer of fire. The advent of land plants since about 420 million years ago ensued in flammable carbon-rich biosphere interfaced with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Born on a flammable Earth surface, under increasingly unstable climates descending from the warmer Pliocene into the deepest ice ages of the Pleistocene, human survival depended on both—biological adaptations and cultural evolution, mastering fire as a necessity. This allowed the genus to increase entropy in nature by orders of magnitude. Gathered around camp fires during long nights for hundreds of thousandth of years, captivated by the flickering life-like dance of the flames, humans developed imagination, insights, cravings, fears, premonitions of death and thereby aspiration for immortality, omniscience, omnipotence and the concept of god. Inherent in pantheism was the reverence of the Earth, its rocks and its living creatures, contrasted by the subsequent rise of monotheistic sky-god creeds which regard Earth as but a corridor to heaven. Once the climate stabilized in the early Holocene, since about ~7000 years-ago production of excess food by Neolithic civilization along the Great River Valleys has allowed human imagination and dreams to express themselves through the construction of monuments to immortality. Further to burning large part of the forests, the discovery of combustion and exhumation of carbon from the Earth’s hundreds of millions of years-old fossil biospheres set the stage for an anthropogenic oxidation event, affecting an abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system. The consequent ongoing extinction equals the past five great mass extinctions of species—constituting a geological event horizon in the history of planet Earth.


Primates and Human Ancestors

Primates and Human Ancestors
Author: Thom Holmes
Publisher: Chelsea House Pub
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2009
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780816059652

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Highlights fundamental principles of scientific inquiry and details the foundations of human evolution, while tracing the origins of primates and the earliest human ancestors.


The Last Lost World

The Last Lost World
Author: Lydia Pyne
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2012-06-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1101583681

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An enlightening investigation of the Pleistocene’s dual character as a geologic time—and as a cultural idea The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. It’s a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctions—of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least early species of Homo. It’s the world that created ours. But outside that environmental story there exists a parallel narrative that describes how our ideas about the Pleistocene have emerged. This story explains the place of the Pleistocene in shaping intellectual culture, and the role of a rapidly evolving culture in creating the idea of the Pleistocene and in establishing its dimensions. This second story addresses how the epoch, its Earth-shaping events, and its creatures, both those that survived and those that disappeared, helped kindle new sciences and a new origins story as the sciences split from the humanities as a way of looking at the past. Ultimately, it is the story of how the dominant creature to emerge from the frost-and-fire world of the Pleistocene came to understand its place in the scheme of things. A remarkable synthesis of science and history, The Last Lost World describes the world that made our modern one.


Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution

Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2010-03-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309152399

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The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution explores the opportunities of using scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped shape our species. Improved climate records for specific regions will be required before it is possible to evaluate how critical resources for hominins, especially water and vegetation, would have been distributed on the landscape during key intervals of hominin history. Existing records contain substantial temporal gaps. The book's initiatives are presented in two major research themes: first, determining the impacts of climate change and climate variability on human evolution and dispersal; and second, integrating climate modeling, environmental records, and biotic responses. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies that involve an exploration initiative to locate new fossil sites and to broaden the geographic and temporal sampling of the fossil and archeological record; a comprehensive and integrative scientific drilling program in lakes, lake bed outcrops, and ocean basins surrounding the regions where hominins evolved and a major investment in climate modeling experiments for key time intervals and regions that are critical to understanding human evolution.


A Brain for All Seasons

A Brain for All Seasons
Author: William H. Calvin
Publisher: William H. Calvin
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2010-08-02
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 098291671X

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Embracing the Anthropocene: Managing Human Impact

Embracing the Anthropocene: Managing Human Impact
Author: Howard Burton
Publisher: Open Agenda Publishing
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1771701331

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This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Mark Maslin, Professor of Geography at University College London. The conversation explores Prof. Maslin’s research on the Anthropocene which according to his definition began when human impacts on the planet irrevocably started to change the course of the Earth’s biological and geographical trajectory, leading to climate change, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and more. This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, On Being A Superpower, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Becoming A Geographer - A serendipitous journey II. The Anthropocene - Exploring three starting dates III. What We Know - Ice ages, snowballs and hockey sticks IV. Unchecked Opinion - Examining beliefs V. Planetary Perspectives - Which type of Anthropocene do we want? VI. Becoming Social - Investigating a watershed moment About Ideas Roadshow Conversations: This book is part of an expanding series of 100+ Ideas Roadshow conversations, each one presenting a wealth of candid insights from a leading expert through a focused yet informal setting to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks.


Human Evolution

Human Evolution
Author: Camilo J. Cela-Conde
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2007-09-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0198567804

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This book is intended as a comprehensive overview of hominid evolution, synthesising data and approaches from physical anthropology, genetics, archaeology, psychology and philosophy. Human evolution courses are now widespread and this book has the potential to satisfy the requirements of most, particularly at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. It is based on a translation, albeit with substantial modification, of a successful Spanish language book.