2023-08-10 20:00:03
The oldest known hominin remains in Europe come from the Iberian Peninsula and suggest that the first archaic humans arrived from southwest Asia 1.4 million years ago.
The climate at this time of the Early Pleistocene was characterized by pwarm and humid interglacial periods and mild glacial periodsso it has long been assumed that, once humans arrived, they were able to survive in southern Europe through multiple climate cycles and adapt to the increasingly cold conditions of the last 900,000 years.
However, a study carried out by an international team, led by researchers from University College London (UCL), the Institute for Environmental Diagnosis and Water Studies (IDAEA-CSIC) and the South Korean IBS Center for Climate Physics published in Magazine Science has discovered the occurrence of hitherto unknown extreme glacial conditions around 1.12 million years ago. “This challenges the idea of an early and permanent human occupation of Europe,” says the UCL professor Chronis Tzedakis.
A team of paleoclimatologists from UCL, the University of Cambridge and IDAEA-CSIC reconstructed the conditions of a marine sedimentary core sampled off the coast of Portugal, which has shown the presence of abrupt climate changes that culminated in extreme glacial cooling ago 1.12 million years.
To our surprise, we found that the cooling was comparable to the most extreme events of recent ice ages.
Joan Grimalt, CSIC researcher
“To our surprise, we found that the cooling was comparable to the most extreme events of the recent ice ages,” says Professor Joan Grimalt, CSIC researcher at IDAEA. This would have subjected the small bands of hunter-gatherers to considerable stress, “particularly as early humans may have lacked adaptations such as sufficient insulation from fat, as well as effective clothing, shelter, or knowledge of fire-making,” according to the researcher Vasiliki Margari.
Pink shading on the map highlights areas where early human species suffered a significant reduction in habitat suitability due to cooling, drying, and reduced food resources. / Axel Timmermann
An uninhabited Iberian peninsula
To assess the impact of climate on early human populations, researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics developed a model of habitat suitability linking climate data to fossil and archaeological evidence of human occupation in southwestern Eurasia compiled by researchers at the Natural History Museum in London and the British Museum.
“The results showed that the climate around the Mediterranean strayed far from the conditions preferred by early humans during the cold glacial maximum,” according to the IBS professor. Axel Timmerman.
Europe may have been recolonized around 900,000 years ago by hardier humans
Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London
Taken together, the data and model results suggest that the Iberian Peninsula, and southern Europe more generally, was depopulated at least once in the Early Pleistocene. The apparent absence of stone tools and human remains for the next 200,000 years raises the intriguing possibility of a long-term hiatus in European occupation.
“If this is true,” says co-author Professor Chris Stringerfrom the Natural History Museum, London, “Europe could have been recolonized about 900,000 years ago by more resilient humans, with evolutionary or behavioral changes that allowed survival in the increasing intensity of Middle Pleistocene glacial conditions.”
Reference:
Vasiliki Margari et al. “Extreme glacial implies discontinuity of early hominin occupation of Europe“. Science.
Fuente: SINC
Rights: Creative Commons.
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