In trying to understand how rapid the climatic changes were for Homohabilis, how do scientists estimate the rates of change?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Human evolution is most likely to be strongly affected by the strong climate change of Pleistocene (when the climate becomes colder and drier). These changes undoubtedly caused strong new natural selection pressure. Many animals have been extinct by the advancing ice age. Mankind survives by becoming smarter and more adaptable. This allows us to develop new cultural technologies to cope with the cold environment and changing food sources, especially over the last 1/4 million years. One of the biggest problems in cold regions is the scarcity of plant food that humans can eat in the winter and in response to this, ancestors were more adept at hunting animals. During the ice age, species not extinct by the cold often evolved larger, larger bodies as a means of producing and storing more heat. This is especially true for mammals in the northern hemisphere.