News Anthropology

How environmental changes may have helped make ancient humans more adaptable

A sediment core traces 1 million years of ecological shifts in eastern Africa

workers standing at a drilling site in Kenya's Koora basin

Drilling by an African company in Kenya’s Koora basin produced a sediment core that records much of the last 1 million years of environmental events in that area, including some that may have changed human evolution.

Human Origins Program/Smithsonian

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

An unforgiving environmental twist deserves at least some credit for the behavioral flexibility that has characterized the human species since our African origins around 300,000 years ago, a new study suggests.