How climate shaped human migration

The model suggests that our species evolved when H. heidelbergensis in southern Africa started losing liveable habitat during an unusually warm period. This population could have evolved into H. sapiens by adapting to the hotter, drier conditions.

But this finding is unlikely to end debate. “To make the case that a particular climate event led to a speciation event is really hard”, in part because of gaps in the fossil and genetic record, says Tyler Faith, a palaeobiologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

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