rationale, perspectives, and basic findings concerning the earth system context of human evolution.

As a package, these recommendations reflect a fundamental commitment to outreach and education, working in partnership with educators and scientists nationwide and worldwide.

The strategic integration of focused high-resolution modeling with new marine, lake, and terrestrial climate records proposed here will represent the most concerted research effort thus far to assess the precise influence of environmental dynamics (resolved on decadal to orbital timescales) on evolutionary history for any organism or time period in Earth’s history. The research agenda described here—although presenting a bold vision that will require substantial resources to bring it to reality—offers an opportunity to make equally bold steps toward an understanding of the role played by past climates in the evolution of our ancestral lineage.