Understanding the origins of humanity has long been one of our foremost intellectual pursuits, and one that greatly interests the general public as evidenced by museum attendance and by numerous media productions and general interest publications. Progress toward an improved understanding of our heritage is a continuing challenge for the scientific community, requiring advances in a range of disciplines that include archaeology, anthropology, geology, biology, oceanography, and genetics, and particularly research advances in areas where two or more of these fields intersect. One of the key questions in this interdisciplinary quest is how the environment, and specifically climate, shaped the evolution of our species and that of our close.
