Homo erectus adapted to steppe-desert climate extremes one million years ago
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Akuku, Pamela
Boivin, Nicole
Camacho, Alfredo
Carter, Tristan
Clarke, Siobhán
Cueva Temprana, Arturo
Favreau, Julien
Galloway, Jennifer
Hernando, Raquel
Huang, Haiping
Hubbard, Stephen
Kaplan, Jed O
Larter, Steve
Magohe, Stephen
et al.
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Questions about when early members of the genus Homo adapted to extreme environments like deserts and rainforests have traditionally focused on Homo sapiens. Here, we present multidisciplinary evidence from Engaji Nanyori in Tanzania's Oldupai Gorge, revealing that Homo erectus thrived in hyperarid landscapes one million years ago. Using biogeochemical analyses, precise chronometric dating, palaeoclimate simulations, biome modeling, fire history reconstructions, palaeobotanical studies, faunal assemblages, and archeological evidence, we reconstruct an environment dominated by semidesert shrubland. Despite these challenges, Homo erectus repeatedly occupied fluvial landscapes, leveraging water sources and ecological focal points to mitigate risk. These findings suggest archaic humans possessed an ecological flexibility previously attributed only to later hominins. This adaptability likely facilitated the expansion of Homo erectus into the arid regions of Africa and Eurasia, redefining their role as ecological generalists thriving in some of the most challenging landscapes of the Middle Pleistocene.
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Communications Earth & Environment
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6
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© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
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Earth sciences
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Mercader, J; Akuku, P; Boivin, N; Camacho, A; Carter, T; Clarke, S; Cueva Temprana, A; Favreau, J; Galloway, J; Hernando, R; Huang, H; Hubbard, S; Kaplan, JO; Larter, S; Magohe, S; et al., Homo erectus adapted to steppe-desert climate extremes one million years ago, Communications Earth & Environment, 2025, 6 , pp. 1