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...

In the coming years, the planet could experience a catastrophic climate change, so abrupt that no adaptation would be possible. The rapid melting of the continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere is altering the system of ocean currents that regulate the global climate. This has already happened in the past, related to the disappearance of the Neanderthals about 40,000 years ago. Seen from space, Earth is nothing more than a pale blue dot, as described by the renowned scientist Carl Sagan. If we get closer, we see water everywhere. Blue and liquid in the oceans, white and solid in the polar ice caps, and white again in the vapor of the clouds. Seawater, which covers 75 percent of the planet's surface, appears placid. But up close, movement is evident, both the vapor of the atmosphere and the liquid of the oceans and continental ice sheets. It is a dance between the atmosphere and the oceans that circulates seawater around the globe, generating heat and nutrient circulation t...