The rise and fall of the Great Basin Pleistocene lakes and the possible influence on early Paleoindian inhabitants

Summary

Few topics have been more profound than the subject of climate change at the end of the Pleistocene and early Holocene in the Great Basin of North America and the influence that such change may have had on the earliest human inhabitants. Rapidly shifting climate is exemplified by the filling and waning of internally drained pluvial lake basins. Two very large lakes intermittently occupied a huge part of the northern Great Basin throughout the Pleistocene. Lake Lahontan and Lake Bonneville covered 79,000 km2 along with many smaller basins stretching from southeastern California to central Oregon and east to the Rockies. Archaeological evidence is suggesting an early Paleoindian entry into the Great Basin to take advantage of what may have been a paleoecological refugium for wildlife in a mild and moister climatic regime.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage