The evolution of human niche size in East Asia across the Pleistocene

Humans can thrive in nearly all terrestrial environments, exhibiting exceptional ecological flexibility among primates. However, it remains unclear how and when this flexibility first emerged in the human lineage. In this talk, I present a study addressing this question in the East Asian context. We combine mammalian fossil-based paleoenvironmental proxies and climate model simulations with data on human occurrences in mainland China to analyze how the range of suitable environmental conditions for humans – i.e., the human niche size size – changed across the Pleistocene. In addition, we examine how the niche size of humans and another large ape living in the area, Gigantopithecus blacki, co-varied through time to assess the potential role of humans in the extinction of G. blacki. Our results show that the human niche remained relatively narrow during the Early Pleistocene and expanded only gradually during the early Middle Pleistocene. By the late Middle Pleistocene (c. 450–130 ka), however, we observe a substantial increase in niche breadth. Depending on how the rich late Middle Pleistocene human fossil record in China is interpreted, this expansion may reflect either niche partitioning among different human species or modern human-like adaptability within a single species. The temporal pattern of niche co-variation between humans and G. blacki strongly suggests that humans played a significant role in the extinction of Gigantopithecus in the late Middle Pleistocene, demonstrating that even pre-sapiens humans could exert a detrimental impact on other species.

About the Speaker

Miikka Tallavaara is an assistant professor of Hominin Environments and the leader of the Hominin Ecology research group at the University of Helsinki. He is interested in how biotic and abiotic factors have influenced human distributions, population dynamics and other key aspects of hominin ecology, and how humans, in turn, have impacted other species. He still retains also his early love of archaeological lithics and the way these small pieces of rock provide unique window to past human behaviour and adaptations.