Recent research suggests that Homo sapiens evolved throughout Africa, including West African rainforests, disproving the long-held belief that the species originated solely in East African savannas. This study highlights how early humans adapted to diverse environments, emphasizing ecological diversification as a core aspect of human evolution. Researchers argue that findings from East Africa may simply reflect conditions favoring fossil preservation, instead of indicating that our species primarily thrived in open grasslands before adapting to harsher habitats like tropical rainforests.
"What we're seeing is that, from a very early stage, ecological diversification is at the heart of our species," said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist.
"Only much later, the theory went, did our species become versatile enough to survive in tougher environments."
"The abundance of stone tools and fossils found there, they argued, might have meant simply that the region had the right conditions for preserving those traces of history."
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