Above all, stone is often scarce in rainforests, so people who lived in these areas made their objects from other materials, such as bamboo, which the inhabitants of Tabun Cave also used a lot. In fact, Shaofleere’s research strengthens the bamboo hypothesis, according to which prehistoric people in Southeast Asia did not make complex stone tools because they could use bamboo.
However, in the last decade, some researchers began searching for sites adjacent to the rainforest and found signs of human habitation. One of the key areas is Panga or Sidi, a cave in Kenya. This cave contains evidence of humans living 78,000 years ago in a mixed area of ​​rainforests and grasslands. According to some indications, the inhabitants of this area made nets and other non-durable tools for hunting small animals.
Now consider species other than our own. Hobbits (Homo floresiensis) lived on Flores Island, a part of present-day Indonesia, for hundreds of thousands of years until about 50,000 BC. Flores was densely forested at that time, so it is obvious that these species have adapted to the environment.
Humans probably got their uprightness from living in forests
Also, the small Homo Luzonensis species from Luzon, Philippines (not far from Tabun Cave) lived in the dense forests of this area at least 134,000 years ago. Now let’s go back further and take a look at our earliest human ancestors.
Our closest living relatives spend a lot of time in and around trees. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans all evolved to live in the shade of trees, and their long arms and other abilities allow them to leap and hang from branches.
In contrast, humans and their closest extinct relatives such as Neanderthals are more adapted to walking upright on the ground. We can climb trees, but we’re not as good at it as chimpanzees, any more than we are at endurance running.
All the above comparisons have a simple meaning: during the evolution of humans, we adapted less to living in trees and more to walking upright on the ground. Also, our ancestor was an unknown anthropoid monkey that probably lived 7 million years ago, and this monkey is the common ancestor of us and current chimpanzees. Probably, this ancestral monkey had evolved by living in trees.
The question is when exactly and why man came out of the trees? A classic theory that gradually emerged in the 20th century is called the Savannah hypothesis. This hypothesis is quite simple. Some great apes left the forests and moved into the savannahs, where evolutionary pressure led to upright walking instead of the ape walking pattern.
Savannah hypothesis has been the target of many criticisms in the last few decades. In a 2015 journal study, Bridget Sonnett writes, the famous Savannah hypothesis is no longer acceptable. Sonnet’s discoverer was a 6-million-year-old human named Orrorin. It seemed that this species was bipedal despite living in a forest environment. More recent species such as Ardipithecus ramidus from 4.4 million years ago also walked upright while living among trees.
