Despite more than half a century of hominin fossil discoveries in eastern Africa, the regional environmental context of hominin evolution and dispersal is not well established due to the lack of continuous palaeoenvironmental records from one of the proven habitats of early human populations, particularly for the Pleistocene epoch. Here we present a 620,000-year environmental record from Chew Bahir, southern Ethiopia, which is proximal to key fossil sites. Our record documents the potential influence of different episodes of climatic variability on hominin biological and cultural transformation. The appearance of high anatomical diversity in hominin groups coincides with long-lasting and relatively stable humid conditions from ~620,000 to 275,000 years bp (episodes 1–6), interrupted by several abrupt and extreme hydroclimate perturbations. A pattern of pronounced climatic cyclicity transformed habitats during episodes 7–9 (~275,000–60,000 years bp), a crucial phase encompassing the gradual transition from Acheulean to Middle Stone Age technologies, the emergence of Homo sapiens in eastern Africa and key human social and cultural innovations. Those accumulative innovations plus the alignment of humid pulses between northeastern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean during high-frequency climate oscillations of episodes 10–12 (~60,000–10,000 years bp) could have facilitated the global dispersal of H. sapiens.

尽管在非洲东部发现了半个多世纪的古人类化石，但由于缺乏来自已证实的早期人类栖息地之一的连续古环境记录，尤其是更新世的古人类栖息地，人类进化和扩散的区域环境背景还没有得到很好的确立时代。在这里，我们展示了来自埃塞俄比亚南部 Chew Bahir 的 620,000 年的环境记录，该记录靠近关键的化石遗址。我们的记录记录了不同气候变化事件对人类生物和文化转变的潜在影响。古人类群体中高度解剖学多样性的出现与约 620,000 至 275,000 年bp的持久且相对稳定的潮湿条件相吻合（第 1-6 集），被几次突然和极端的水文气候扰动打断。在第 7-9 集（约 275,000-60,000 年bp）期间，明显的气候循环模式改变了栖息地，这是一个关键阶段，包括从阿舍利时代到中石器时代技术的逐步过渡、东非智人的出现以及关键的人类社会和文化创新。在第 10-12 集（约 60,000-10,000 年bp ）的高频气候振荡期间，这些累积的创新加上非洲东北部和东地中海之间的潮湿脉冲对齐可能促进了智人的全球传播。