Introduction
Reconstructing the lives of our closest fossil relatives is relevant to our understanding of the history of the human lineage, our biology, and our relationship with the environment. Further back in time, evidence of material culture dwindles until, at around 2.6 million years ago, there ceases to be any surviving record. Prior to this, researchers must work with the same record of fossils, sediments, and rocks as any paleontologist. For the period before 2.6 million years ago, an ecological perspective – as opposed to the archaeological one usually employed for Homo sapiens – is therefore necessary. But the value of the paleoecological approach is not limited to species which predate material culture. The insights to be gained from studies of trophic relationships, ecological structures, and hominin interactions with the physical environment ensure that this perspective remains important to the study of human evolution up to and including Homo sapiens.
Definition
Paleoecol...
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Further Reading
Gell-Mann, M. 1994. The Quark and the Jaguar: adventures in the simple and the complex. London: Little, Brown and Company.
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Winder, I.C., Heyerdahl-King, I.S., Winder, N.P. (2014). Hominin Paleoecology and Environmental Archaeology. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2126
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