Paleoclimatic and Paleoenvironmental Context of the Origins of Modern Humans in South Africa: Constructing a Detailed Record from 400,000 - 30,000 Years Ago

现代人类可能在30万到10万年前在非洲进化，当时世界气候变得更加严酷和多变。在欧亚大陆西部的这段时间里，有一个关于古气候和古环境的杰出记录，但对现代人类进化的当代非洲记录知之甚少。这个项目将启动非洲详细的古气候和古环境记录的发展，这是一个多学科和国际项目，研究人员之间紧密结合，以同样的问题为导向，集中在南非南部海岸，这是一个对我们理解现代人类起源至关重要的地区。这个项目的科学价值很高，因为它将提供关于我们起源的非常具体的科学问题的信息，并告诉我们全球气候变化与陆地植被系统之间的广泛关系。该项目将记录全球气候变化及其在南部非洲和南半球的区域表现之间的关系。这将通过加深我们对生态环境的了解，增强我们对现代人类起源的理解。这将是南半球为数不多的长期研究区域植物系统对冰和深海核所反映的全球气候变化的响应的项目之一，进一步加深我们对南半球如何应对潜在的长期气候变化的理解。一个新颖的方面将是大陆、海洋和大气记录与有限区域内的考古和地质记录的紧密结合。这类研究的典型模式在学科上更为孤立：沙丘、洞穴、考古贝类的同位素等研究都是单独进行的。然后，跨学科的比较和关联就会发生，如果有的话，也是偶然的。一个更强大的模型是将这些研究协同进行，以便实时进行比较和关联，从而实现更具协同作用的过程和整体结果，利用经验记录的自然跨学科性质。我们希望通过该项目为古人类、古气候和古环境综合研究提供一个新的模式。该项目将产生更广泛的重大影响。科学人员是一个由教师和学生组成的国际联盟，拥有任何单一机构都不具备的专业和实验室设施，加强了国内外机构之间的国际联系和合作。众多来自美国和其他国家的研究生和本科生将参与并接受该项目的培训。许多美国学生将前往南非获得实地和实验室经验，这也将扩大他们对南非的了解，南非是一个民族国家，可能是整个非洲大陆经济发展的关键。该项目的结果将通过人类起源研究所获奖的人类进化网站（BecomingHuman.com）向公众公布。该网站将会扩展，重点关注气候变化和人类进化，根据未来可能发生的气候变化，这告诉我们人类的未来，并向公众宣传跨学科研究的重要性，正如这个项目所展示的那样。

Modern humans likely evolved in Africa between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago, a time when world climates became harsher and more variable. There is an outstanding record for paleoclimates and paleoenvironments for this time slice in western Eurasia, but little is known for the contemporary African record where modern humans evolved. This project will jump-start the development in Africa of a detailed paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental record with a multidisciplinary and international project tightly integrated between researchers grounded by the same problem orientation focused on the south coast of South Africa, a region critical to our understanding of the origins of modern humans.The Scientific Merit of this project is high as it will provide information on both very specific scientific questions about our origins and inform us on broad relationships between global climate change and terrestrial vegetation systems. The project will document the relation between global climate change and its regional expression in southern Africa and the Southern Hemisphere. This will enhance our understanding of modern human origins by furthering our knowledge of the ecological context. It will be one of the few projects in the Southern Hemisphere to study over a long period of time the response of regional floral systems to global climate change as reflected in the ice and deep sea cores, furthering our understanding of how the Southern Hemisphere might respond to potential long term changes in climate. A novel aspect will be the tight integration of the continental, marine, and atmospheric records with the archaeological and geological record in a restricted region. The typical model for studies such as this is more disciplinarily isolated: studies of dunes, speleothems, isotopes on archaeological shellfish, etc., conducted separately. Cross-disciplinary comparisons and correlations then occur, if at all, by serendipity. A more powerful model is to conduct these studies in concert so that comparisons and correlations occur in real-time, allowing a more synergistic process and holistic result that exploits the natural trans-disciplinary nature of the empirical record. We hope to illuminate a new model of integrated paleoanthropological, paleoclimatic, and paleoenvironmental research with this project. The project will have significant Broader Impacts. The scientific personnel are an international consortium of faculty and students with a constellation of specialties and laboratory facilities not present at any single institution, enhancing international contacts and cooperation between foreign and domestic institutions. Numerous graduate and undergraduate students from the USA and other countries will participate and receive training in this project. Many of the US students will travel to South Africa to gain field and laboratory experience, and this will also broaden their understanding of South Africa, a nation state that is likely to be key to the economic develop of the entire African continent. Results of the project will be communicated to the general public through the Institute of Human Origins award-winning website on human evolution (BecomingHuman.com). The web site will be expanded with a focus on climate change and human evolution, what this tells us about humanity's future in light of potential future climate change, and communicate to the public the importance of interdisciplinary research as illustrated by this project.