Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe
Abstract
A causality between millennial-scale climate cycles and the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans in Europe has tentatively been suggested. However, that replacement was diachronous and occurred over several such cycles. A poorly constrained continental paleoclimate framework has hindered identification of any inherent causality. Speleothems from the Carpathians reveal that, between 44,000 and 40,000 years ago, a sequence of stadials with severely cold and arid conditions caused successive regional Neanderthal depopulation intervals across Europe and facilitated staggered repopulation by modern humans. Repetitive depopulation–repopulation cycles may have facilitated multiple genetic turnover in Europe between 44,000 and 34,000 years ago.
Bibliography
Staubwasser, M., Drăgușin, V., Onac, B., Assonov, S., Ersek, V., Hoffmann, D., Veres, D. (2018): Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe. – In: PNAS, Vol. 115(37), p: 9116-9121, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1808647115
| author | Staubwasser, Michael and Drăgușin, Virgil and Onac, Bogdan and Assonov, Sergey and Ersek, Vasile and Hoffmann, Dirk and Veres, Daniel |
|---|---|
| doi | 10.1073/pnas.1808647115 |
| journal | PNAS |
| key | MichaelStaubwasser2018 |
| number | 37 |
| pages | 9116-9121 |
| type | article |
| volume | 115 |
| year | 2018 |