Climate Changes and Agriculture

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Homo sapiens first appeared in Ethiopia 200,000

Climate changes and natural disasters influenced human migrations

Glaciation

- Riss Glaciation from 200,000 - 130,000

-N. Europe and America were covered in ice

- Africa and S. America go from forests to grasslands

-Lots of food for evolving

- Humans become terrestrial no longer arboreal

Terrestial- ground arboreal- trees

Grass wheat barley rye corn

seeds

Interglacial- Time period between the glaciers

130,000 - 100,000

Climate warmed

Middle East became a grassland

Humans migrate out of Africa and into the Middle East

Wurm Glacial Period - 100,000 ya

Planet cools again

North Africa becomes a very hot dry desert

Humans are pushed back into Africa

Humans move out quickly via the shore of the Indian Ocean

Make it into South China

Mt. Toba

Volcano in Sumatra

Super-eruption 73,000 ya How do we know?

772 - 1150 cubic miles of earth

Volcanic winter of between 6-10 yrs

Cover KC from between 2.4 - 3.6 miles of dirt

Volcanic winter of between 6 - 10 yrs.

Worldwide human pop. dropped between 3,000 - 10,000 people

After Mt. Toba

Still very cold in Europe and parts of Asia

Humans start to repopulate SE Asia and Africa

Europe

Byy 50,000 ya, brief warming period

Humans move back into the middle east and for the first time in Europe

Europe II

Humans move to modern day Spain along the Mediterranean coast

Come into contact w/ H. neanderthalensis for about 10,000 yrs

Europe III

Climate is warming

Humans move north and east throughout europe and asia into the grasslands and Altamira in Western Europe

Cave paintings in places like Chauvet, Lascaux and Altamira in Western Europe.

Last Glacial Maximum

Last major glacial period

26,000 - 19,000 ya

ice covers n. europe

humans are driven south into spain, italy, and the balkans

Younger Dryas

Short cool dry period about 13,000 – 11,500 yrs. ago.

Caused by the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in N. America

This stopped the N. Atlantic thermohaline circulation

Glaciers again in N. Europe and N. America

Grasslands in the Middle East

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