Coping with climate: the legacy of H. heidelbergensis

We've all seen, whether in books, museums or on television and other media, representations of our early human ancestors, typically naked or with only the most limited forms of animal skin 'clothing'. We've also all woken up on cold winters' mornings, and crawled back under the duvet (or spent ten minutes de-icing the car). These themes of behaviour, material culture and climate, and the connections between them, are central to the story of Europe's earliest humans, who date back at least one million years.

The proposed research network therefore aims to address two fundamental evolutionary questions: firstly, what were the 'globalising' adaptations of Homo heidelbergensis (a key early human species in Europe, which existed prior to the Neanderthals and our own species, Homo sapiens)? In practical terms such adaptations would be required for early humans to deal successfully with the varying day-to-day challenges brought on by the changing latitudes and longitudes encountered during dispersals through Eurasia: e.g. long winters, short days, and marked seasonality. These factors would have impacted significantly on issues as varied as food availability, climatic tolerances, human technological and social behaviours, inter-species interactions (as suggested by recent palaeogenetic studies), and even human morphology and speciation events (the evolution of new human species). Secondly, how have those 'globalising' adaptations contributed to the evolution of our own species' abilities to manage climatic and environmental challenges (both past and present)?

These questions are currently unanswered, despite the fact that during the last twenty years researchers have come to recognise that the emergence of our own species, H. sapiens, was a more gradual and complex process than the 'human revolution' perspectives of the late 1980s (that older viewpoint argued that there was a rapid and dramatic 'step-change' in human behaviour, which appeared with H. sapiens). However even the newer perspectives continue to ignore over 1 million years of human evolution: this is the period sandwiched between the first dispersals of older human species from Africa (occurring around 1.8 million years ago) and the first appearance of H. sapiens (around 200,000 years ago in Africa). Yet the intervening period is critical to our understanding of human behavioural evolution, because H. heidelbergensis (whose European fossils are mostly dated to between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago) is widely recognised as our last common ancestor (albeit one that we also shared with the Neanderthals), and was also the first human species to engage successfully and enduringly with the new climatic and environmental challenges faced during those initial dispersals from Africa. This species, and other early Europeans such as Homo antecessor, are thus an invaluable test case for developing our understanding of how early humans met the challenges of Eurasian environments, and the associated implications for evolutionary developments in hominin technology, social life, and cognition.

The overall goal of the network is therefore to engage academics (e.g. from archaeology, palaeoenvironmental studies, palaeoclimatology, palaeogenetics, and anthropology), stakeholder groups (bushcraft organisations, museums and teachers), and the general public with the dynamic realities of Pleistocene (Ice Age) life and behaviour: e.g. taking paleoclimatologists from the climate model to the realities of a cold winter morning, while taking archaeologists from the stone tool to the dynamics of animal migrations and plant food security. This will advance our knowledge and understanding across multiple research fields, an exercise which is the only means of coming to understand the complex dynamics and the realities of the great dispersals of our human past. The trans-disciplinary approach proposed by this network application is the first step in achieving this goal.

Who will benefit from this research?

The principal non-academic beneficiaries of the research will be:

- School teachers and pupils;
- Local, regional and national museum organisations;
- The general public (museum visitors).

The principal intended impacts on the above groups will emphasise:

- The day-to-day survival strategies of Britain's earliest ice age humans;
- The ice age lives which lie behind museums' stone tool collections;
- The importance of present-day, hunter-gatherer cultures in developing understanding of our European past.

The project will thus emphasise:

- A re-alignment in the presentation and dissemination of 'origins' archaeology, placing greater emphasis upon the (Palaeolithic) realities of living within (Pleistocene) worlds: helping visitors to see stone tools not as type x or y, but rather in the context of the risks (e.g. climate, predators, injury) of travelling a few kilometres from a 'safe' sleeping site to a source of stone for tool-making.

- Bushcraft organisations and experimental archaeological outreach demonstrators: developing the general public's perception of bushcraft skills and hunter-gatherer lifestyles, with reference to their varied roles in helping all of us to understand both our contemporary environments and our human pasts.

These impacts will be achieved through a variety of means, primarily:

- The "Day in the Ice Age" event (hosted at Reading Museum) which will demonstrate, and engage school groups and the general public with, the theme of practical Ice Age survival strategies (e.g. wild foods, pyrotechnology, shelters and clothing). Schools from Reading and Brighton and the surrounding regions will receive targeted invitations to the respective events. The events will also promote the project's resources (see below; to be circulated through the project's hub website).

- Teaching resources for schools. These resources will be explicitly targeted at Key Stage 2, and current needs for resources to support the teaching of prehistory in the curriculum. These needs have been established, and resource types identified, through discussions with Reading University's Institute of Education and teaching consultancies (Schools Prehistory). Resources will include: lesson plans; image banks (e.g. of artefacts; reconstructions of Ice Age environments, hominin habitats and behaviours); Palaeolithic (= Old Stone Age) Timeline; 'Fundamentals' Fact-Sheets (Palaeolithic chronology and behaviour, and Ice Age environments); video-clips & photographs (practical Ice Age survival techniques; e.g. tool-making; processing of animal skins; exploitation of wild plant foods); digital 3D PDF models of artefacts (for display) and files for 3D printer replication; practical exercises (e.g. 'human' timelines); and links to existing web-based resources (see the Pathways to Impact document for further details).

- Evaluation of the "Day in the Ice Age" event and the school resources (e.g. level of event participation and resource take-up, and evidence of modified practices [e.g. in teaching]), through pre- and post-event on-line surveys and interviews/discussions via Skype, email and in person.

- Evaluation of the "Day in the Ice Age" event and school resources will lead to a set of recommendations, to be shared with the British Museum and the Museums Association (http://www.museumsassociation.org/), for consideration as a model for the promotion of Palaeolithic archaeology to the general public.

- The integration of stakeholder groups (teachers, bushcraft organisations and local, regional and national museums) and academic participants throughout the project, ensuring that schools, museums and bushcraft groups are active participants in the creation of the research, rather than static (and perhaps unwilling) 'recipients' of the project's outcomes and/or 'visual illustrators' of hunter-gatherer behaviours (e.g. tool-making and animal skins preparation).