A study of terrestrial and marine climate proxies spanning the last 620,000 years in Africa's low latitudes--a timeframe and region important to the evolution of modern humans--finds that the key driver of moisture availability across Africa was likely warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean paced by changes in solar radiation; this climate process may have in turn governed the distribution of plant and animal species and created favorable conditions for resource-rich regions from which modern humans may have emerged, according to the authors.
Article #20-18277: "Paleo-ENSO influence on African environments and early modern humans," by Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr, University of Potsdam, GERMANY; tel: +49 176 62037291; email: kabothbahr@uni-potsdam.de
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences