Hominisation und Umwelt im Pleistozän

Pleistocene is the period during which the hominization process dit not yet begin to influence the ecological conditions of man and his area. Therefore his rise to modern man was merely an adaptation to life conditions given in his habitation area. The most important ecological factors influencing adaptations in the hominization process are : geological structure of the area, topography of the region, climatic conditions, vegetational cover and animal biomass distribution. Except for the geological stucture of the substratum all are - at least in the earliest phases of the hominization process - common with the postulates of higher animal life : food, protection against enemies and climatic endowments. Geological conditions are primarily influencing the first and most definitive human activity, the artefact production and use.

The most important steps in ecological adaptation are in a very generalized form as follows : Equatorial forest regions (Central Africa, SE Asian islands) with very low rate of higher animal biomass (+- 200 kg/km²) and lack of lithic raw material provided the rise of a primitive, alithic gatherer-culture (surviving in these areas until present times). Subtropical lightforest savanna-semidesert belts made by a very high rate of biomass accumulation(10,000 - 30,000 kg/km²) a very broad gatherer-scavenger activity, with rich access to hard material produced by mechanical of the rocks reaching the surface (pebble cultures - naking artefacts, not weapons - of the Homo erectus groups). The broad limestone belt of the Alpidic system provided (complementing and replacing pebble material - of limited tool-making variability) broad possibilities of making tools and weapons by the humans occupying this Mediterranean-temperate karstic, decidous-forest belt of mountains (with a biomass production of 400 - 600 kg/km²) and of hunting-collecting habits under climatically deteriorating conditions of the southward periglacial zone in Europe. The same belt under lowered climatic conditions was occupied by the Homo sapiens wave - coming from South - inventing the arrow (the first machine) and as an artist of the admirable cave illustrations, discoverer ofthe script, i.e. the separating of thought from the oral transmittion. With the climatic and drastic faunal-floral changes in the Early Holocene a new southern population of Homo sapiens occupied the Mediterranean-temparate belt of Eurasia, introducing Neolithic culture making use of the sandstone raw material of his original living area in North Africa - Southwest Asia and starting with increasing transformation of his natural living area by agriculture and animal husbandry.