Transitions in human evolution and faunal changes during the Pleistocene in Latium.

The analysis of human evolution should not leave aside the evaluation of faunal and paleoenvironmental changes. As far as the evolution of the genus Homo is concerned, it seems at present that at least three major evolutionary transitions occurred in Europe during the time span between the late Early Pleistocene and Late Pleistocene. Looking at the Italian peninsula, Latium is a region of utmost interest to test hypotheses about these transitions. It includes in fact many bearing-hominid sites, from some among the earliest evidence of human settlements in Europe until the evolution of the Neandertals and the advent of early modern humans. Consolidate knowledge about the fossil evidence dealing with micro and macro vertebrates, bio-chronological mammal faunas sequences, and major faunal changes in Latium appears from the present analysis rather consistent with predictions about human evolution. Particularly, one of the most important faunal renewals took place in correspondence of the Early/Middle Pleistocene boundary, in the same time range when a transition from the human morph represented by the archaic cranium from Ceprano (ca. 800 ka) and Middle Pleistocene Europeans, presently referred to the species Homo heidelbergensis, is observed. By contrast, the transition in the Late Pleistocene between Neandertals and modern humans is not paralleled by any sharp faunal change. This occurrence supports scenarios where the emergence (in Africa) and subsequent world-wide diffusion of modern humans is seen as an exceptional event in the natural history of our species; it probably conditioned the faunal composition instead of being conditioned by large mammals paleobiogeographic trajectories