4. Prehistoric Climate Change

The Second Abu Hureyra Period

- 11,300-7,000yBP Agriculture and Diet During Second Abu Hureyra Period - Inhabited by settlers who had cultivated a variety of domesticated seeds, such as oats, domesticated barley, chickpeas, emmer and lentils - These plants required preparation before they could be eaten, thus, needed much labour and time - The evidence of vigorous food preparation was found in studies of bone structure - Found saddle querns in the rooms of houses - Grain had to be produced every day because the seeds would not keep once de-husked

The Beginnings of Agriculture and the Herding of Animals

- 13,000 years ago, the fertile valley of the Euphrates River supported dense stands of wild cereal grasses and thick oak forests - Enormous gazelle herds migrated through the valley in spring and fall - Fish were common in the slow-running river - Hundreds of forager families lived on the edge of the valley, where food was so abundant that they could live in one spot for most of the year - One such settlement was Abu Hureyra

Mammoth Hunter Camp at Vyzovsk

- A big mammoth hunter camp at 65*N on the Pechora river in the northeast of European Russia - 98% of the bones are mammoth, located with the remains of a dwelling built from mammoth bones

Abu Hureyra

- A tiny group of circular houses dug partly into the ground - Stood close to the river floodplain and in close proximity to forests - People lived on hackberries, wild plums, nuts, and gazelle meat - The global warming that sustained this environment was interrupted by the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet

Cro-Magnon Clothing East of Moscow

- Almost certainly Homo sapien - Dates to 30,000 years ago - Indicates that people wore pullover shirts decorated with ivory beads - Also had round necks with a head covering and pants with boots - The first hoodie with bling?

Auroch

- An extinct wild ox of Europe - Probable descent of cattle - The last one died in Poland in 1627 - Depicted in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave 32,000-30,000BP (1950), found in 1994

Puskari People

- Are Homo sapiens - anatomically and intellectually the same as us - Ohalo

Historical Global Warming

- Began slowly and unevenly just after 20,000BCE - At 15,000BCE the ice sheets began to melt - By 12,000BCE climate begins to fluctuate between warmth and rain to cold and dry - Soon after 10,000BCE a big burst of global warmth started the Holocene and human history changed - By 5,000 BC, many people throughout the World lived by farming - This was not the first time that the planet had undergone warming - early humans also lived through equivalent periods of climate change

Woodlands in 11,500BCE

- Birch, poplar, and pine - Penetrated northern Germany, Britain, and southern Scandinavia - In some regions, this is identified with a second particularly warm period (the Allerod) - Pollen grains record at 1,300 year lapse to Arctic conditions marked by a renewed dominance of grasses, shrubs, and only the most resilient of trees - The northern landscapes had once again become an open tundra, with copses of birch and pine struggling against the cold - The grasslands were dotted with white flowers of mountain avens, known to botanists as Dryas octopetala - from which the name Younger Dryas is derived

The End of the Ice Age World

- Brought great changes in the landscape: - Melting of the ice and the gradual disappearance of lakes - Rise of sea level as the meltwater returned to the oceans - Beginning of the prolonged rebound of the areas that would have been weighed down by the ice - The land around the northernmost end of the Baltic is still rising about 1 meter per hundred years - The total rise of this part of Scandinavia since the ice disappeared is estimated to be 270 to 300m - Along with all this came the advance of the forest over large areas of tundra and grass

Population Response to Climate Change

- Climate brought drastic changes for living peoples/animals whose way of life was adjusted to the Ice Age world - Many populations lived near the sea - probably because of the opportunities for catching fish and evaporating seawater to get salt to preserve the food they caught - Likely that population centers of the Ice Age are in areas now submerged by the sea - The end of the Ice Age and the continued rise of sea level may have greatly reduced the total number of people - an event rare in history - and may have given rise to many of the legends of the great flood in ancient times

Abu Hureyra During the Younger Dryas

- Cold wind, reduced rainfall, and much-depleted nut harvests changed the settlement very quickly - 1000 years earlier, these people could have dispersed into smaller groups and relied on ties with kin to see them through the lean years - Now there were too many people for the dryer valley to support - Settlement rapidly evolved into a compact village of mudbrick houses, separated by narrow alleyways

Climate at 20,000BCE

- Cold, dry, and windy with frequent storms and a dust-laden atmosphere - Lower sea level joined some landmasses and created extensive coastal plains -Tasmania, Australia, and New Guinea are joined, Borneo, Java, and Thailand were also joined - mountain chains in the largest rainforest on earth - The Sahara, Gobi, and other sandy deserts are much larger - Britain was a peninsula of Europe, its north buried beneath ice and its south a polar desert - Much of North America is covered in ice

Abandoned Settlements During the Younger Dryas

- Creates 1,000 years of drought (10,800-9,300BCE) - At 10,800BCE, Hayonim and Abu Hureyra were abandoned

Akrotiri Aetokremnos

- Cyprus - Analysis of suid bones provides the earliest evidence for human occupation of the Mediterranean islands - Morphological analysis and radiocarbon dating of both degraded collagen and apatite of these bones reveal that small suids result from island isolation

Stone Age Campsites Under the Baltic

- Danish archaeologists have recovered entire campsites preserved under the rising waters of the Baltic - Complete with fish traps, canoes, and numerous perfectly preserved wood artifacts such as barbed spears

Klimonas

- Demonstrates that villagers were living on Cyprus between 11,100-10,600yBP - Villagers had stone artifacts and buildings (including an exceptional 10m diameter communal building) that were similar to those found on late PPNA sites on the mainland - Cereals were introduced from the Levant, and meat was obtained by hunting the only ungulate living on the island, a small indigenous Cypriot wild board - Cats and small domestic dogs were brought from the mainland - This colonization suggests well-developed maritime capabilites by the PPNA period - Migration from the mainland may have occurred shortly after the beginning of agriculture

Ohalo

- Dwelling of Puskari people - 20,000BCE on the shore of Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee) - Consisted of dwellings made of brushwood by people wearing garments of hide and plant fibers - Hunter-gatherers on the forest steppe, 20,000-12,300BCE - Burned to the ground either by accident or to eliminate fleas and lice - Within a few years, rising lake levels flooded the site, thus preserving it - The site remained hidden until 1989 when a 9-meter drop in lake level exposed the charcoal rings that were the brushwood dwellings - Remains of the earliest bedding ever discovered - a grass mat arranged around a hearth

Jean-Marie Cordy's Examination of Animal Bones

- Examined animal bones recovered during more than 100 years of excavations in the limestone region of the Meuse basin in Belgium (15ka to 9ka) - Found that before 14,500 the bones of reindeer and musk ox were common - animals of the tundra - From 14,500BCE onward they were joined by the remains of grassland and woodland species, such as horse, red deer, and wild boar - These come to dominate the bones from 12,500BCE, coinciding with the Bolling phase - Reindeer again become common, reflecting a drop in temperature and re-emergence of tundra

Mastodons

- Fed on spruce and fir trees that grew in post-Pleistocene forests - Changes in the climate may have contributed to the extinction of the mastodons - Hunting by Paleo-Indians may have also contributed to their extinction

Lake Agassiz

- Filled the depression left by the retreating ice cap after the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted - At first, the meltwater spilled into the Mississippi watershed and flowed into the Gulf of Mexico - 12,000 years ago, the shrinking of ice front opened up a new channel to the east - The lake dropped rapidly as the water shot across southern Canada into what is now the St. Lawrence valley - Perhaps in less than 10 years, the downwelling that carried salt into the deep ocean and its movement southward stopped altogether - The warm conveyor belt that had nourished global warming for 3000 years had abruptly shut down - Far below the surface of the Labrador Sea, salt ceased to flow away from the northern ocean - Global warming stopped perhaps within a few years - Glaciers advanced again, plugging the world into a millennium of arctic cold - Then suddenly, Atlantic downwelling and the conveyor belt switch on - 10,000 years of warmer conditions began and continue to this day

Homo ergaster

- First human-like species - Appeared soon after 2Ma - The first ancestor to spread from Africa - Makes it to Asia by 1.6Ma - By 20,000BC, all other human species had become extinct (except maybe the little people of SE Asia and the Denisovans) - Had at least two evolutionary descendants: erectus and heidelbergensis

Homo heidelbergensis

- Found in Africa - Later spreads to Europea and evolving into the Neanderthals by about 250,000BCE

Process of Using a Saddle Quern

- Found on the ground at AH - Grain was placed on quern and the cylindrical pestle (rubbing stone) was help with both hands - Kneeling with toes bent forward, stone was pushed toward the end of quern until the upper body was almost parallel to ground, the jerk back to starting position

Affect of Saddle Quern on Body

- Generally women - The movement that raises the arms as the grinder pushes forward employs the deltoid muscles of the shoulder - During this stroke, the arms also turn inward, a motion accomplished by the biceps muscles - It is precisely where the deltoid muscles attach to the humorous (the long bone of the upper arm) and the biceps to the radius (one of 2 forearm bones) that are markedly over-devloped in these individuals - The over-development of the muscles was symmetrical, affecting both arms equally - On the forearm of these individuals, the radial tuberosity, the bulged area of the radius where the biceps muscle attaches is particularly noticeable - The process of bending for many hours strains the toes and knees, grinding put additional pressure on the hips and, especially, the lower back - The characteristic injuries found on the last dorsal vertebra were disk damage and crushing - Such injuries could occur if the grinder overshot the far end of the saddle quern during the forward push or recoiled to the starting position too quickly or vigorously - During grinding, the body pivots alternately around the knee and hip joints - The movement subjects the femurs (thigh bones) to considerable bending stresses Thus, these bones develop a distinct buttress along the back to counteract the bending movements from the hip and knee as the weight of the body swings back and forth across the quern - The feet were also subjected to heavy pressure as one grinds grain on a quern - The toes were curled forward to provide leverage, which was supplied in large part by the big toes - In the remains from A.H. the first metatarsal joints of the toes are often enlarged and injured - There are also signs of cartilage damage: smooth, polished surfaces at the metatarsal joint indicate that bone had rubbed on bone - In some individuals, a gross osteoarthritis had developed - In one case, the right toe is more severely affected than the left

Climate at the Dawn of History/Early Civilization

- Glaciers shrank rapidly in 13,000BCE, releasing millions of tons of freshwater into the oceans - As the glaciers continued to recede, the climate gradually became warmer and drier and relatively cold, wet forests gave way to forests of broad-leafed trees like oak, chestnut, and hickory that were better suited to the warmer, drier conditions - Dozens of familiar Ice Age animals became extinct within a few millennia (such as woolly mammoth, mastodons, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths

The Laurentide Ice Sheet

- Had covered eastern North America for 100,000 years - Was now rapidly melting - Enormous volumes of fresh water flowed into the North Atlantic - Icebergs broke off from the eastern margins of the ice cap and deposited as much as ½ meter of small rocks (IRDs) from the Hudson Bay region onto the floor of the Labrador sea

Denisova Cave

- In the Altai Mountains of Siberia - Russia archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of Novosibirsk find a small bone fragment in 2008 - Small bone fragment from the fifth finger of a juvenile hominin, dubbed the Denisova hominin or "X woman" (referring to the maternal descent of mtDNA) - Germany sequenced mtDNA from the fragment - They also discovered artifacts (such as a bracelet) at the same level that was carbon-dated to around 40,000 BP (1950)

Beetles

- Largely stopped evolving more than a million years ago - Consequently, we can be confident that the species found in ancient deposits are the same as the modern - Because many species are very sensitive to air temperature and live in very specific climates, we can use them for paleoclimate - Boreaphilus henningianus Boreaphilus henningianus - Restricted to northern Norway and Finland as it requires extreme cold - Remains are found in Ice Age deposits throughout Britain - This indicates temperatures as cold as those of the Arctic today

Last Glacial Episode

- Lasted from about 118,000-15,000 years ago - Merely the most recent in a long series - It was during this prolonged cold period that Homo sapiens sapiens left tropical Africa and colonized Europe, Asia, and finally the Americas - For most of our time on Earth, modern humans have lived in far colder, and often drier, environments than today - Climate warming is nothing new for humans either - earliest humans experienced even greater warmings than that predicted for the 21st century, as the World cycled from cold to warm conditions - The difference is that the world's population during the last warm-up was in the tens of thousands rather than the billions - this will make social change very slow

Animal Bones

- Like beetles, can tell us a lot - Often found in cave deposits, like the hippo bones from Aetokremnos Cave, Cyprus - Some are from animals that lived and died in the caves include hyenas and bears - Others are the prey of carnivores - food taken to feed their young or to be eaten in safety - while the bones of many small mammals arrived via the pellets deposited by roosting owls - Once humans arrived, they used caves for shelter and discarded within them the bones of animals they killed or had scavenged from frozen carcasses - These animal bones tell us about the changing environments of Europe because different mammals favour different habitats - Ex: reindeer prefer cold tundra while red deer prefer temperate woodland - Because the records from individual caves don't last long, we have to piece lots of them together to reconstruct long records

Marcel Mauss

- Lived with Arctic hunter-gatherers at ~1900CE - He noticed that periodic gatherings were characterized by intense communal life that included feasts, religious ceremonies, intellectual discussion, and lots of sex - In comparison, the rest of the year, when people lived in small far-flung groups was rather dull - Climate at the end of the Ice Age continued to get warmer and wetter, yielding more and better food until the Younger Dryas

Humans Arrival During the Last Ice Age North America

- Living in the ice-free areas of Alaska, north of the ice sheets - Probably roamed across the dry plain which then linked Alaska to Siberia - This drink land existed because world sea level was about 100m lower than today - The genome of aboriginal Americans suggests that their ancestors came from Asia, most likely by walking over - The distribution of earliest dated archaeological traces of human occupation of the Americas suggests arrival during the Ice Age •- here is some probability of an ice-free corridor through Alberta, between the cordilleran ice sheet over the Rocky Mountains and the huge Laurentide ice sheet (centred where Hudson Bay is now) was used for the migration south - Genetics suggests that there were about 10,000 modern people on Earth at 130,000, and it is estimated that there were about 1 million people by 30,000 years ago - Wooden hut at Terra Amata - Acheulean Hut in Grotte du Lazaret

Farming and Historical Global Warming

- Many people farmed by 5,000BCE - New types of plants and animals appeared (domesticated) - Farmers inhabited permanent villages and towns - Supported craftsmen, priests, and chiefs

Sahelanthropos tchadensis

- Marks the beginning of the human fossil record at 7Ma - Discovered in Chad, in north-central Africa - One of the most important discoveries of all time - After 4.5Ma, several species of ape-like created that walked on two legs and used stone tools are known from the fossil record in Africa

Progression of Tell es-Sulton

- Mount was built up to 10m high and 250m long in 10,000 years - Within a couple hundred years, grew even larger - Biggest change was the construction of a large wall on the western side and a circular toward - Wall didn't seem to circle the town as there is no evidence on the east side

Moldova Hut

- Mousterian hut in Ukraine - Made of mammoth bones and mammoth hides - Mammoth jaws used at the base were interlocked - a clever technique found at most of the mammoth hunter sites - The mammoth hunting culture appears to have thrived for tens of thousands of years

Before the Last Ice Age

- Much of the world was still uninhabited - Human beings moved onto the central Russian plains less than 25,000 years ago - Moved to the Americas, at the earliest, about 20,000 years ago, probably later ... or earlier? - During the Ice Age, many lakes and inland seas in temperate and lower latitude were much more numerous and larger than today - They were there because of shifts of the main rainfall belts and the reduced evaporation resulting from lower temperatures than now and increased cloudiness - The Caspian sea was over 2x its current size - Lake Chad in the southern Sahara was as large as the present Caspian

Dead Ends in Human Evolution

- Neanderthals - Denisova hominins - Homo erectus - Lived through wild swings in climate and were very successful in their time

Wooden Hut at Terra Amata

- Near Nice in France - Evidence of a wooden hut dated to the Mindel Glaciation (between 450,000 and 380,000BCE) - Was made by bracing branches with a circle of large and small stones - Included a hearth/fireplace - Similar stone circles are found through the Paleolithic - The basic design of such habitations may have remained unchanged for a million years - These people (Neanderthals), were hunters - Site contains remains of the bones of a variety of animals, including elephant, (whooley) rhinoceros, red deer, ibex, and giant ox

Acheulean Hut in the Grotte du Lazaret

- Near Nice, France - Tent-like structure built inside the cave made of animal hides over a wooden framework with the hide held down by stones - Dates to about 500,000-400,000BCE - Interior measures 11m x 3.5m - Subdivided into 2 rooms, the larger of which had a fireplace - Animal furs, grasses, and seaweed were used as carpeting and bedding - Inhabitants, apparently Neanderthals, used pipe for heating in preference to more available types of wood

Menzin Hut

- Near Tchernogov - Circular base of mammoth bones that provided a supporting structure for a paleolithic hut of a typical mammoth hunting society - The tent was made of mammoth hides and was probably carpeted with mammoth hides, although fur hides from other local mammals (fox, wolf, and bearskins) were often used for bedding

Tower at Tell es-Sulton

- Now thought to be used to store grain Burials at Tell es-Sulton - Dead were buried below floors in household structures, in walls, and in the tower

Cyprus

Earliest evidence of using cereals and Neolithic villages dates to 10,400BP

North American Lakes During the Ice

- Numerous lakes west of the main watershed there were numerous lakes (biggest - inland sea, Lake Bonneville) - This spread out from the present Great Salt Lake of Utah to an area over 50,000 square kilometres (the size of the present Aral Sea) and had a depth of over 300m - Other lakes in the same general region included Lake Lahontan with an area of about 25,000 square kilometres in Nevada and in southeastern California Searles Lake and the Salton Lake - These lakes remained into post-glacial times, as long as the dwindling Laurentide Ice Sheet still covered much of Canada Homo sapiens - During a particularly hard period ~130,000BCE, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa - The earliest specimen found in Omo Kibish in Ethiopia - This new species behaved very differently, leaving a record of art ritual, and a new range in technology, reflecting a more creative mind - Homo sapiens ultimately displaced all other human species - By about ~30,000BCE Homo sapiens was the only human species left, found throughout Africa, Europe, and across much of Asia - They made it all the way to southernmost Australiasia that would ultimately become Tasmania - By then, however, the climate was heading toward the last glacial maximum: o Temperatures were falling, droughts persisted, glaciers, ice sheets, and deserts expanded, sea level was falling o People, plants and animals had to adapt or become extinct

Ohalo Diet

- Ohalo provides the largest discovery of botanical remains from the Paleolithic, giving researchers an unprecedented look at the diet of Stone Age people in the Near East - "Ohalo shows the plant-human relationship with amazing clarity. It's like we were able to open these people's cupboards" - Faunal remains indicate the Late Paleolithic people began hunting a much wider variety of animals than their ancestors - Cereal grains were found concentrated around a grinding stone - Besides wild grasses, the these people also gathered things like almonds, pistachios, olives, and figs - Grains put more strains on teeth - Sophisticated knowledge of the plant world, foreshadowing the development of agriculture in the same area thousands of years later - Harvested grain by beating the plants with sticks - Also ate gazelle, fallow deer, wild ass, wild goats, Aurochs (wild cattle), hartebeest, wild boar, as well as smaller mammals, birds and reptiles, - May have eaten fish, crabs seaweed, and shellfish, but this is speculation

Arctic Lemming

- One of the most useful small mammals - The peaks and troughs in abundance are as good as a temperature gauge - Before 13,000BCE almost all small mammal bones are lemming (denoting very arctic tundra) - These are replaced by the northern birch mouse, the bank vole, the common hamster (require much warmer/wetter conditions, usually in a woodland) - Their absemce marks the start of the Bolling - During the next 1,000 years, the lemmings and warm-loving mammals exchange places as most abundant reflecting the swings in climate prior to the YD crash when all woodland rodents disappear

Shifting Vegetation Zones and Faunas, the Ranges of Birds and Fish

- Open plains were gradually invaded in Europe, and then taken over, first by birch thickets, later by extensive birch and pine forests - then hazel, oak, ulmus, and lime with alder in the wetter areas - These woodland types were accompanied by the insect life and the birds and animals that thrive in each respective habitat - Gradually these species were extended their ranges - Species establishedtheir seasonal migration routes which must have different starting points and destinations compared to today - People and animals began to adapt to the changing world - There were many extinctions, some of which were related to climate change, and some of which were related to changes in people's behaviour

Stone Age People

- Opportunistic, accustomed to sudden climate change, and able to adapt to it in ways that became impossible when populations rose rapidly after the last ice age - Until about 11,000 years ago (when farming appeared) Earth's population had not yet reached a critical point that exceeded the natural carrying capacity of the land Ain Mellaha - 12,300BCE - A village of the Natufian culture - Consisted of 5-6 dwellings with low walls dug into the hillsides and covered with brushwood and hides - This is the first village and the point of no turning back from farming - The stone mortars that they used to grind acorns and almost into paste are boulder-sized in this new, much larger operation - Excavated in 1954, one dwelling is 9m across - It contained wicker baskets, wooden bowls, sickles, and mortars - After use these dwellings became graves for 10-12 individuals and sometimes dogs indicating that they had been domesticated by then

Mezhyrich Hut

- Paleolithic hut - Circular base of mammoth bones with some support bones still standing - Mammoth hunters often built entire huts out of mammoth bones and covered them with mammoth hides stitched together and anchored at the corners - They also made tools, art, and musical instruments from the tusks - Remains suggest that some of them ate nothing but mammoth meat

Pushkari Villiage

- Paleolithic huts in Ukraine - Lived in circles of dwellings on the tundra - Openings facing south away from the wind - Igloo-like - Built from mammoth bone and hide - Entrance is formed by 2 tusks in an arch and walls are made of alternating leg bones and jawbones - 250km from the ice sheet temperatures as low as -30*C - Meat was stored in a hole in the ground - One hut was divided in 3 sections and made of animal skins - The inside was excavated and the structure was built-up from mammoth bones - No other animal remains were found here, suggesting they were specialized mammoth hunters - Many bones here had evidence of red paint (ochre), which is common in Paleolithic sites

Paleolithic Diet

- People gathered grasses like wheat 23,000 years ago - Wild grasses (cereals like wheat and barley) were gathered at least 10,000 years earlier than previously known - Harvard archaeobotanist Ehud Weiss and his team excavated a collection of 90,000 plant remains from Ohalo II, a site on the banks of Israel's Sea of Galilee that dates to 23,000 years ago

Tell es-Sulton 9,500BCE

- Population of likely over 500 - Probably the first time in human history that a completely viable population was living at the same place and time

PPNA

- Pre-Pottery Neolithic A

Jericho

- Provides information on the Neolithic agriculture, burial, and technology of the Jordan Valley 9,500-8,500BCE - Known as PPNA - Houses with flat thatched roofs are surrounded by willows, poplars, and fig trees - There are marshes that reach to Lake Lissan (the Dead Sea) - Oldest known town in the world - Most excavated site in Israel after Jerusalem - Appears around the time of rapid sea level rise over the coastal plains - Couple with evident exploitation of the rich salt deposits of the inland Dead Sea, which was then drying up and falling away from its Ice Age high stand

Paleolithic Huts

- Pushkari, Ukraine - Menzin - Moldava, Ukraine - Mezhyrich

Plant Remains at 9,300BCE

- Quite suddenly tree pollen appears again - It soon becomes abundant as Northern Europe is clothed by thick woodland when dramatic global warming brings the ice age to an end - Global temperatures rose by 7*C in less than a decade (amazing change in climate) - Wild plant food and animals were again abundant, streams and rivers increased their flow, lakes expanded, and wild cereals benefited from increased PCO2 - The plant rearing tricks used during the YD were now yielding bumper crops and people quickly returned to village life - This time there was no turning back - This was the beginning of the Neolithic - the new stone age

Humans in Australia

- Radiocarbon dates indicate the arrival of the first humans in Australia during the Ice Age - Perhaps 40,000years ago when lowered sea levels created dry land that nearly link Australia to Asia - In some ways, cold climate made travel easier Cave Paintings During the Ice Age World - Earliest historical record of humans comes from sketches and paintings on the walls of caves in central France and northern Spain from 40-50,000 years ago - Paintings contain images of bison, wild cattle, mammoths, rhinoceros, horses and deer, that they hunted with arrows and spears - Similar cave paintings in red, found in the Kapovaia Cave in the southern Urals, showed seven mammoths and two rhinoceroses as well as a number of horses

Seasonality of Paleolithic Fisheries in Upper Egypt w/ Isotope Analysis of Otoliths Study

- Read powerpoint - Conclusions: o Isotopic sclerochronology on otoliths provides accurate reconstructions of fishery practices during Prehistorical times o At Madkhadma: seasonal exploitation of fish and occupation of the site is linked to the Nile floods o High resolution profiles reveal intra-annual variation in the hydrology of freshwater systems o More than one annual Nile flood during late Pleistocene in Upper Egypt?

Early Human Response to Climate Change

- Responded by expanding and contracting populations - Adapting to changed environments and adjusting the tools they made - Rather than creating history, they engaged in an endless round of adaptation - There are no good written records between 20,000-5,000 BCE to describe lives and events - Must rely on materials they left behind like stone tools, pottery, fireplaces, food debris, deserted dwellings, monuments, burials, and rock art - Record also comes from pollen grains, beetle wings, and isotope values of sediment and midden materials - 20,000-15,000 years ago, most Stone Age people lived in tiny family bands and occupied home territories extensive enough for them to be able to move around freely, even over large distanced, using highly flexible survival strategies - If a small African forging band experience two consecutive dry years, they simply moved into better watered areas or fell back on less desirable plant foods, perhaps species that required more energy to harvest

Agricultural Technology During 2nd Abu Hureyra Period

- Saddle querns were used to grind the grains on a long flat piece of stone where the grains were placed and then ground with the help of a cylindrical pestle - It was the grinding of grain for eating that was the most strenuous and labour-intensive activity at AH - The de-husking with mortar and pestle and the subsequent grinding in a saddle querns would have taken many hours - Querns were placed on the ground rather than mounted, meaning the individual using the quern would be kneeling

Evolution of Humans

- Sahelanthropos tchadensis - Homo ergaster - Homo erectus - Homo heidelbergensis - Homo neanderthalensis - Denisovans

Buildings in Jerico/Tell-es Sulton

- Several millenia of collapsed buildings and debris - Consisted of mud-walled rounded buildings - First buildings made with bricks made of clay and straw - ~5m across - More than 50 with some arranged around courtyards and 500 people - Within a couple hundred years, had 70 buildings and ~1,000+ people - Many original dwellings collapsed or had been knocked down so others could be built on top

Ice Cores During the Younger Dryas

- Show a decrease in CO2 that may have further stressed the grain (some say) - It may have been more important than ever to weed, transplant, and water plants, as well as maintain pest control - In Abu Hureyra just before the crash in that some rye grains show signs of domestication from 11,000-10,500BCE (the oldest in the world) - After people left the area, the rye returned to the wild variety - Large expanses of fertile soil became available as rivers and lakes shrunk in size during the YD - This would have been a good place for growing crops - It is possible that wheat barley, pulses, and flax were domesticated during the YD - A genetics study suggests that Karacadag in SE Turkey is the site of domestication (200km from Abu Hureyra)

Lake Core at Hula

- Shows that by 15,000BCE, there is a big increase in thick woodland with oak, pistachio, almost, and pear trees - This leads to a vast increase in the availability of plant food on the steppe - Also an increase in seasonality with cooler winters and warmer, dryer summers - Vast stands of wild wheat, barley, and rye appeared across the steppe mixed with trees - This suggests that there was a massive increase in wild plant food throughout the whole Fertile Crescent

Evidence of Physical Strain of Food Preparation During 2nd Abu Hureyra Period

- Signs of extra and excessive strain by carrying loads of grain and possibly building materials - Big toe of the right foot was bent upward - common in women - Bones show physical signs of long hours spent at labour

Hayonim Cave

- Similar to Ain Mellaha, 20km to SW - Sedentary hunter-gatherers - Seem to have traded with another village at Kebara, but not with Ain Mallaha because they show no genetic similarities - Based on growth banding of gazelle teeth, we know that people probably lived there year-round - Rat, mouse, and sparrow bones are common in the remains, suggesting that they had become domesticated by then - Wolves were probably attracted to the village because of the abundant mice and rats as well as the permanent supply of waste - Eventually, they became tame and as people controlled their breeding, developing the domesticated dog - Not true farmers, but probably maintained wild gardens, and some carved stone slabs may have been maps outlining the gardens

- Upper Paleolithic Hut from Dolni Vestonice, Czechoslovakia

- Structure was first dug out from a slope and the roof was supported with timber set into postholes - Dates to about 23,000BCE - Low walls were made of packed clay and stones - Evidence of clay firing at this site are the earliest ever found - The famous Venus figurine was found at this site

Climate After 9,500BCE

- Summer droughts ended - Rivers deposited fertile soil as they flooded each year

Salt at Jericho

- Taken from salt deposits of the nearby Dead Sea - Seems to have been used for tanning leather and preserving food

Evidence of Changing Diet During Younger Dryas

- Teeth from human skeletons show hypoplasia or fewer teeth at the time of death - The demise of the warm wet woodland and return to steppe climate occurred just when populations were highest Abandonment of Abu Hureyra - People moved into the sheltered lowland valleys in the Taurus and Zagros mountains - Found scattered lush valleys with oak, pistachio, and tamarisk trees as well as foraging game forced out of the now bitterly cold highlands - Elaborate architecture with hearths, wattle and daub walls, stone foundations, and grinding stones - Hunted wild goats, deer, and wild boar - Bowls were decorated with animals and had holes in the sides for hanging over a fire

Beetles and Temperatures in Britain

- The best studied in the world with more than 350 species used for temperature reconstruction - Beetle remains indicate that LGM winter temperatures in southern Britain routinely reached -16*C and rose to 10*C in the summer - During the warm phase of the Bolling at 12,500BCE, the beetles were the same as today indicating a substantial drop in temperatures during winter to -5*C at 12,800BCE and -17*C at 10,500BCE, the last fitting neatly with the period of the YD in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica

Changing Diet at Abu Hureyra During the Younger Dryas

- The nut-rich forests retreated almost 100km away from the village - The people came to rely on wild cereal grasses and drought-resistant clovers to supplement the reduced nut harvests - These people ultimately survived due to their botanical knowledge and food gathering technology - Local game populations crashed - Deliberately planted einkorn wheat to supplement dwindling wild stands and to increase food supplies - These and other supplements soon became staples - Within a few generations, the forgers became full-time farmers - At first only a few communities grew cereal crops and kept animals, but growing populations and unpredictable climatic shifts caused the new economies to spread rapidly - Within a few centuries, thousands of people from Turkey to the Jordan valley had adopted this new lifestyle with its higher food returns

Natufians

- Tried to kill only adult male gazelle as they were bigger and only a few males were needed to maintain the heard - This resulted in smaller males reproducing, decreasing the size of the animals in only 500 years - This results in less meat, forcing people into over-harvesting wild gardens to the point that they too collapsed

Hallan Cemi Tepesi

- Very likely occupied year-round - People were no longer routinely buried with goods, but rather 25% of the people were buried with lots of stuff suggesting that living in villages could generate wealth and power for some, whereas hunter-gatherers were all about equal

History of Abu Hureyra

- Was occupied in 2 separate periods that lasted 4,500 years - 12,300-10,800BCE - the people ate gazelle, wild pig, and wild ass, along with several kinds of grain - Dwellings are waist high and gradually filled completely with rubbish - Abandonded during Younger Dryas as severe drought was brought to the Euphrates valley

Wild Boars and Cyprus

- Were managed on the mainland before their introduction to Cyprus - Before the beginning of the Neolithic - Adds weight to theory that pig domestication involved a long period of wild boar managment that started around the Pleistocene/Holocene transition

Wild vs. Domesticated Grains

- Wild cereal grains were the most important plants growing within the forest-steppe - The biggest difference relates to the ears - Wild grains have prattle ears that spontaneously shatter when ripe, thereby releasing the grains to the ground - This is bad because you can't have a season to harvest - Different individuals within a strand of wild plants will germinate and ripen at slightly different times to ensure that some will mature and survive to the next year in unpredictable rainfall - Domesticated forms do not do this - their ears remain intact and grains need to be removed by threshing - The same can be said for other early domesticates like peas, lentils, bitter vetch, and chickpeas - Domesticates wait for the harvester as a result of a single mutation - The origin of agriculture is intimately tied to the emergence of these domesticated varieties of cereals and legumes as well as flax used to make the first linen - This can only happen with the intervention of humans into the life cycle of plants - People have therefore been genetically modifying plants for a long time Effects of Warmer Weather on Paleolithic People - Populations increased in the warmer, wetter times as nutrition allowed women to have more kids - These people spread through the woodlands and into the uplands to hunt where it had previously been too cold and dry - After 14,500BCE people from the Euphrates, Sinai, Mediterranean, and Saudi Arabic all adopt rectangular and trapeze-shaped microliths that were to be used for 2,000 years

Hunter-Gatherer Population in 13,000BCE

- World population approaching 8.5million - At this point, the world was essentially full, with few environment's capable of supporting more than one or two people per square km - People begin to crowd into small territories and permanent camps by rivers and lakes - Some of the densest populations flourished in food rich areas like the shores of the Baltic Sea and Egypt's Nile Valley, where inhabitants exploited fish, game, and plants from several environmental zones - The inhabitants could draw on so many food sources that they occupied the same locations for months on end - Sea levels rose rapidly, flooding continental shelves and coastal plains and dramatically changing the world's geography - The Americas separated from Asia by 11,000BCE and Britain became an island 5,000 years later - Rivers like the Mississippi and the Nile formed fertile floodplains as they filled up their deep valleys

Influence of the Climate on DNA preservation at Denisova Cave

Cold climate greatly increased the DNA's ability to survive for longer periods at the low average annual temperature of 0*C Analysis of Denisova hominin - Indicated that modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisova hominin last shared a common ancestor (a precursor of H. heidelbergensis?) ~0.5Ma - mtDNA analysis of the finger bone showed it to be genetically distinct from the mtDNAs of Neanderthals and modern humans - Study suggests that this group shares a common ancestor with the Neanderthals and that they ranged from Europe to Siberia to Southeast Asia - They lived among and interbred with the ancestors of some present-day modern humans - Distinct from Homo erectus - Indicates that the evolution of man during the Late Pleistocene is more complex than once thought

Irish Elk

Common in Western Europe and Western Russia

Allerod

Final peak of climate change before the Younger Dryas began 10,800BCE

Homo erectus

Found in eastern Asia

Middle Pleistocene (Acheulean) Clevers

Mostly in Africa, parts of Europe, parts of Asia Early Human Lifestyles - Little seems to have changed between until about 20,000BCE with people living as hunter-gatherers in small mobile communities - From 20,000-5,000BCE came the origin of farming, towns, and civilization - The peak of the last Ice Age came about 20,000BCE known as the Late Glacial Maximum - Most humans survive the hard conditions by retreating to refugia where firewood and food could be found

Early Neolithic Sedentary Villagers

Started cultivating wild cereals in the Near East by 11,500BP