Risky business: the impact of climate variability on human populations in Western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Summary

The extent to which climate change has affected the course of human evolution is an enduring question. The ability to maintain spatially extensive social networks and fluid social structure allow human foragers to “map onto” the landscape, mitigating the impact of resource fluctuation. Together, these adaptations confer resilience in the face of climate change – but what are the limits of this resilience and what is the role played by climate variability? We address this question by testing how climate conditions and climate variability, which we consider a proxy for environmental risk, affected the distribution of human populations living in Western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum. The mechanisms used by foragers to counter resource failure come at a cost and the ability to make accurate predictions about the availability of resources helps foragers avoid costly mistakes. Climate variability, therefore, is a potentially significant risk factor since it affects the distribution of plant and animal resources unpredictably. Here, we quantify the sensitivity of human systems to this potential risk factor at a variety of spatial and temporal scales.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Global Perspectives on the Impact of Drastic Environmental Changes in Hunter-Gatherer Technologies

Keywords

Spatial Coverage