A Paleoclimate model of Neanderthal landscape-use during the last interglacial

Summary

Obstacles to our understanding of Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) land-use patterns during the Last Interglacial (130kya-116kya, Marine Isotope Stage 5e) include not only the scarcity of sites in Europe but also a lack of knowing what the landscape may have looked like during this time. This research explores the influence of climate and seasonal variability on Neanderthal land-use. Recently developed global climate models are capable of simulating past climate variables (e.g., precipitation and temperature), and geographic information system (GIS) tools can then be used to interpolate these data to model the niches of past organisms into paleoclimate zones. This study uses Maximum Likelihood Classification analysis in GIS to create a mosaic landscape of 22 paleoclimate zones to reconstruct what Europe may have looked like during the Last Interglacial Eemian. The modeled paleoclimate zones show there was a preference for site locations in Warm Temperate and Mesic climates. It also shows that Neanderthals selected sites near climate zone margins to exploit an array of food resources. The Warm Temperate and Mesic climate regime may have been preferred as a more climatically stable region, leading to fewer fluctuations in a seasonal subsistence base, resulting in less biological stress and improved fertility rates.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage