The next steps in human evolutionary palaeoecology

IF 1.5 4区 综合性期刊 Q2 MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES
C. Marean
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Abstract

and how did hominins position themselves relative to it? Modern human hunter–gatherers always place their campsites near water – it structures much of their movement. What animals were the primary predators of hominins and how did hominins avoid them? The theory of landscape of fear shows us how important this question is. Do the faunal data show us what edible plants were available, and how these changed over time? We have become very good at assigning fossils to taxonomic groups and dating them, but we have yet to really make headway into understanding what these past ecologies were like. Second, the book shows us that we have reached a glass ceiling with our current approach. Our current approach finds fossils, describes them, dates them, and then uses specific animals or groups to infer what the environment was around the site. If there is a sequence, then we might describe how that changes over time, juxtapose it against a long climate and environmental archive record, and look for correlations. We are still very much in an inductive phase of science, and most sciences eventually mature into more deductive forms where the data are used to test hypotheses. We now have the ability to begin to do this. Advances in our ability to create climate models, and environmental models from those, has exploded in the last 10 years and will become increasingly powerful. My recommendation, which we have argued for elsewhere 3 , is that we start to nudge ourselves in that direction. In such a procedure, we would create formal models of climate and environment across regions, and then use our fragmented sequences to test and refine those models, thus creating palaeoscape models. Within those palaeoscapes, we can use computer simulations such as agent-based modelling to experiment with interactions between fauna and their environment, which of course moves us truly in the direction of palaeoecology.
人类进化古生态学的下一个步骤
以及类人猿是如何确定自己与水的相对位置的?现代人类的狩猎采集者总是把营地设在水边--这决定了他们的大部分行动。什么动物是类人的主要天敌,类人又是如何避开它们的?恐惧景观理论告诉我们这个问题有多么重要。动物数据是否向我们展示了当时有哪些可食用的植物,以及这些植物随着时间的推移发生了怎样的变化?我们已经非常擅长将化石归入分类学组别并确定其年代,但我们还没有真正深入了解这些过去的生态环境是怎样的。其次,这本书告诉我们,我们目前的方法已经达到了玻璃天花板。我们目前的方法是发现化石、描述化石、确定化石的年代,然后利用特定的动物或动物群来推断遗址周围的环境。如果有一个序列,那么我们可以描述它是如何随着时间的推移而变化的,将其与长期的气候和环境档案记录并列,并寻找相关性。我们在很大程度上仍处于科学的归纳阶段,而大多数科学最终都会发展成更具演绎性的形式,用数据来检验假设。我们现在有能力开始这样做。在过去 10 年里,我们创建气候模型和环境模型的能力有了爆炸性的增长,并将变得越来越强大。我的建议是,我们开始朝着这个方向努力。在这一过程中,我们将建立跨区域气候和环境的正式模型,然后利用我们破碎的序列来测试和完善这些模型,从而建立古地貌模型。在这些古景观模型中,我们可以使用计算机模拟(如基于代理的建模)来试验动物与其环境之间的相互作用,这当然会让我们真正朝着古生态学的方向前进。
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来源期刊
South African Journal of Science
South African Journal of Science 综合性期刊-综合性期刊
CiteScore
3.20
自引率
4.20%
发文量
131
审稿时长
1 months
期刊介绍: The South African Journal of Science is a multidisciplinary journal published bimonthly by the Academy of Science of South Africa. Our mandate is to publish original research with an interdisciplinary or regional focus, which will interest readers from more than one discipline, and to provide a forum for discussion of news and developments in research and higher education. Authors are requested to write their papers and reports in a manner and style that is intelligible to specialists and non-specialists alike. Research contributions, which are peer reviewed, are of three kinds: Review Articles, Research Articles and Research Letters.
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