The Wandering Ape

Climate changes have been driving the evolution of the human genus since our ancestors first ventured to walk upright, through the emergence of our species, Homo sapiens , and the great migrations of Huns, Mongols, and Vikings that changed history. Climate is vitally linked to ecosystems, so any change forces living beings to adapt, move to a more favorable location, or become extinct. The human genus seems to have excelled at the first two options throughout its two million-year history. The ability of species to adapt to environmental transformations is known as natural selection, one of the main engines of evolution, first described in Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species in 1859. However, it wasn't until 1925 that Raymond Dart proposed that climate had been a significant driver in human evolution. This marked the beginning of the Savannah Hypothesis, which suggests that our ancestors took a different evolutionary path from other primates to adapt to life on the Af