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Century-scale Holocene processes as a source of natural selection pressure in human evolution: Holocene climate and the Human Genome Project

Department of Geology, Kent State University, Kent OH 44242, USA, alisonjs{at}kent.edu

As a result of research arising from the Human Genome Project, discovery of extremely recent evolutionary changes in the human genome show that positive selection pressure has occurred during the Holocene. Statistically estimated ages and confidence intervals are available for a number of these Holocene-age changes to the human genome. When these genetic age estimates are compared with independent dates from palaeoenvironmental and archaeological records, certain periods stand out as significant times for rapid human evolution, in concert with shifts in climate and environment. These coincident changes suggest that century-scale processes, including abrupt climate change, are a source of natural selection pressure on the human genome. Holocene researchers are uniquely placed to identify and constrain palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental sources of natural selection pressure on the human genome during the past 10 000 years. The Holocene palaeoclimatic, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological records are of key importance in fine-tuning the geneticists' confidence intervals for the observed changes in the human genome because they provide dating methods quite independent of the methodologies used in genetics. This latest information from the Human Genome Project opens a new avenue in Holocene research that will require a more interactive approach to the problem of how humans and the environment impact each other.

Key Words: Abrupt climate change • century-scale processes • natural selection pressure • genomics • human evolution • Human Genome Project • Holocene.

The Holocene, Vol. 17, No. 5, 689-695 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0959683607079003


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