How have changes in the environment influenced the physical development of the human species.?

Question

How have changes in the environment influenced the physical development of the human species.?

Answer 1

The Ice age is the obvious answer. We were able to develop because our main predator was wiped out, therefore we were able to propegate our species and this widened the gene pool, creating diversity in our physical development.

Answer 2

Does it count if people MOVED into new environments, because then we have the evolution of white people, with loss of melanin, as a response to moving to places with little sunlight.

Answer 3

recently , we didn't evolve , we started changeing the environment

Answer 4

The word you are looking for is "environmental determinism" and there has been a bucket load of books written on this subject. Check out this wiki for a starting place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment...

But what it doesn't take into account is that peoples from similar environments do not always turn out the same. For example desert peoples in Egypt and central Australia, Scandinavians and Inuit or Mexico and Spain.

It doesn't take into account the fact that a lot of so called primitive societies actually manipulate their environment to benefit themselves. For example fire stick farming in Australia is a means of terraforming the environment as to attract certain game to hunt. Because of this long tradition certain species of animals and plants have evolved to include fire into their development cycle with certain trees like the bottlebrush requiring fire to germinate their seeds.