Page 9 - Perspective Paper

Recent studies suggest that Homo sapiens have played a much more important role in facilitating the
termination of the last AHP than previously understood (Wright, 2017). Hominin migrations out of Africa
beginning around 2 million years ago have been hypothesised to be primarily climate-driven, occurring
mainly during warm and wet cycles (Tierney et al., 2017). However, humans have never been passive
environmental actors, and there is a growing and significant body of research indicating that the use of
technology, such as fire and advanced, cooperative hunting skills, significantly affected landscape
composition during the Pleistocene (Boivin et al., 2016; Hoag & Svenning, 2017).

The mastery of fire combined with the cognitive revolution led to greater landscape manipulation skills,
which, in turn, led to the formation of landscapes that were dependent on the presence of humans for their
functionality (Scott, 2017). By burning away forests for better hunting grounds, cutting down trees for fuel,
building temples and hunting down large animal populations.

Homo sapiens became a keystone species that greatly altered the
landscape wherever they roamed (Pinter et al., 2011). Later, the
development of pastoralism (which spread from the Fertile Crescent
southward after 11,000 BP) introduced a novel trophic feature that
is hypothesised to have accelerated orbitally induced de-vegetation
and is caused major regime shifts in sensitive ecosystems (Wright,
2017). The effects of animal trampling on ASALs accelerate surface
erosion, enhancing albedo (Zerboni and Nicoll, 2019) and recursive
effects of an altered ‘ecology of fear’ as humans protect livestock
from predation (Wright, 2017) are argued to have reverberated
across the already drying landscape of the Sahara after 8000 years
ago. Many archaeological examples indicate the altering effects
Homo sapiens had on the flora and fauna they came into contact

with, leading to extinction, mono-cultures and a subsequent
Figure 2.4. These prehistoric rock
weakening of local biomes (example of cave paintings shown in paintings were discovered in Manda
Figure 2.4) thereby making these biotopes more susceptible to Guéli Cave in the Ennedi Mountains,
climate change. Therefore, prior to the modern era and burning of Chad, Central Africa. Camels have been
painted over earlier images of cattle,
fossil fuels driving anthropogenic climate change, human-induced
perhaps reflecting climatic changes
land cover change was an entrenched feature of northern Africa’s (Simonis et al., 2017)
ecosystems. Humans have been drivers of landscape processes in
the region for many millennia. The impact of humans on the environment has, however, logically increased
tremendously from the start of the industrial revolution (Foley et al., 2013).

Recognizing the connections and reciprocity between regional and global scale processes is crucial both in
understanding historical climate shifts and managing those of the future (Foley et al., 2005). Taking on a new
perspective that, over the course of human history, our interactions with the direct environment have
contributed to shaping the global climate to what it is today, opens up opportunities to shape the global
climate of the future, but now with intention.

A strategic ‘living systems’ approach to climate stabilization 9/26