www.fgks.org   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

Jump to Navigation

Acting like Neanderthals

Print this article   Email this article

The Neanderthals failed to adapt to climate change and may have died out in as little as a thousand years. Are we making the same mistakes, asks Mike Williams.

In modern times we know that the Earth is warming and most of us accept the blame lies squarely with ourselves. We release gasses from burning fossil fuels that slowly but surely build up in the atmosphere to trap more and more heat. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and already creatures are becoming extinct. Yet this is not the first time the Earth has faced such changes. In the past, climate change may have been entirely natural but the ramifications of a rapidly warming planet were much the same, including the extinction of species. Except that, long ago, among the species that disappeared were archaic humans – Neanderthals. Could the same ever happen to us?

 This article is available to History Today online subscribers only. If you are a subscriber, please log in.

Please choose one of these options to access this article:

Contact our Subscriptions department on +44 (0)20 3219 7813 for more information.

If you are logged in but still cannot access the article, please contact us

Historical dictionary: Paleolithic
 

About Us | Contact Us | Advertising | Subscriptions | Newsletter | RSS Feeds | eBooks | Podcast | Student Page
Copyright 2012 History Today Ltd. All rights reserved.