Todd wrote:

>>There is some description of steppe-tundra at one of the
>>references you supplied...
>>
>>This one:
>>
>>> explanation of the climate zones therein:
>>> http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/adams3.html
>>
>>Note the speculation that this was the climate of 30-40% of
>>Eurasia.

If that's the environment, what you were thinking about, I didn't find
steppe-thundra in africa in times of claciation and not in thermals.

I did find it in eurasia in times of glaciation, see
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/NEW_MAPS/eurasia1.gif

Such a spares environment provided sparse plant supply.

>>But why go at all?

Exploring seems to be a natural tendency in man.



On Thu, 10 Aug 2000 11:58:03 -0700, Mike MacLeod <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Mike,

is Duncan a relative of you? :-)

> A friend of mine was nearly
>expelled from high school for proposing that the world owed so much to
>northern Europeans because they evolved to fight off the Pleistocene
>megafauna rather than sitting around plucking mangoes off the trees.

That happened several times, that homo erectus and -neanderthalensis
and at last -sapiens invaded iced europe.
The two failed after several 100,000s years.
Our genus, the last wave, succeeded at last.
There are indications that later Europeans are not the original pleistocene
invaders, but a mixture with neolithic people arriving
from direction near east, greek, balkan, middle europe. At 4600bc.

>... If
>you go far enough north, there simply are no vegetables you can digest, so
>they would have to be motivated to make the trip.

The northern african ice-age scenery looks rather arid and deserted,
if you look at the maps or the environment of the Laetoli footprints.

>..Timothy Leary  ..       "The hell with this, I'm headed west."

 Grog to Lucy (in laetoli) "The hell with this, I'm headed north."

Well if it was too deserted...

cheers

Amadeus S.