Photo by Jan Kopřiva

Our ancestors’ ability to recognize water sources was crucial to their survival. As a result, the attraction to lustrous materials is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and is evident among prehistoric artifacts, ancient civilizations, and modern consumer culture.

During the Pliocene Epoch, early hominins likely traveled between semi-permanent rain pools, restricting their movement to warmer and wetter regions. During the Late Pleistocene, humid forests declined and grassland-savanna habitats expanded.[1] Thus, the ability to detect water sources became extremely important. In the dry savanna conditions of East Africa, early humans relied on small lakes and rain pools to survive seasonal droughts, and many fossil hominid remains have been found near ancient lakeshores, supporting the idea that access to water played a key role in early human migration. The savanna hypothesis suggests that the expansion of African grasslands led directly to the divergence of hominins from apes and the emergence of the genus Homo.[2]

© CounterPunch