Human responses to hydroclimate fluctuations over the last 200 kyr in Ethiopia

Domaine:

climate

Créateur:

FraVerAsfAnd

Éditeur:

Cop

Hôte:

Humans have been adapting to more demanding habitats in the course of their evolutionary history. Nevertheless, environmental changes coupled with overpopulation naturally limit competition for resources. In order to find such limits, reconstructions of climate and population changes are increasingly used for the continent of our origin, Africa. However, continuous and high-resolution records of climate-human interactions are still scarce. Using a 280 m sediment core from Chew Bahir*, a wide tectonic basin in southern Ethiopia, we reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions during the development of Homo sapiens. The complete multiproxy record of the composite core covers the last ~600 ka , allowing tests of hypotheses about the influence of climate change on human evolution and technological innovation from the Late Acheulean to the Middle/Late Stone Age, and on dispersal within and out of Africa. Here we present results from the uppermost 100 meters of the Chew Bahir core, spanning the last 200 kiloyears (ka). The record shows two modes of environmental change that are associated with two types of human mobility. The first mode is a long-term trend towards a more arid climate, overlain by precession-driven wet-dry alternation. Through comparison with the archaeological record, humid episodes appear to have led to the opening of ‘green’ networks between favourable habitats and thus to increased human mobility on a regional scale. The second mode of environmental change resembles millennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events, which seem to coincide with enhanced vertical mobility from the Ethiopian rift to the highlands, especially in the time frame between ~65–21 ka BP. The coincidence of climate change and human mobility patterns help to define the limiting conditions for early Homo sapiens in eastern Africa.___________________* cored in the context of HSPDP (Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project) and CRC (Collaborative Research Centre) 806 “Our way to Europe”

Hydroclimate variability was the main control on fire activity in northern Africa over the last 50,000 years: dataset

North Africa features some of the most frequently burnt biomes on Earth, including the semi-arid gra

Eastern South African hydroclimate over the past 270,000 years

Abstract Processes that control the hydrological balance in eastern South Africa on orbital to mill

Pollen-inferred precipitation time-series from equatorial mountains, Africa, the last 40 kyr BP

International audience

Asymmetric Labor Market Responses to External Demand Fluctuations: Evidence from Africa

This replication dataset accompanies the manuscript “Asymmetric Labor Market Responses to External D

ASRHR in Ethiopia: reviewing progress over the last 20 years and looking ahead to the next 10 years

Abstract Over the last two decades, improvements in Ethiopia’s socio-economic context, the prioriti

Hydroclimate Changes to Arid regions subjected to Impact of climate change, human activities, and Large-scale climate patterns Hydroclimate Changes to Arid regions

In recent years, many regions worldwide have suffered from natural hazards related to the impact of