Quaternary Vegetation and Climate in the Lesser Caucasus, an Update

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The numerous archaeological discoveries in the Lesser Caucasus document the crucial role that this territory had for humans more than 2 Ma. In particular, the scientific debate has highlighted its strategic position for phases of migration “out of Africa,” and expansion to the Eurasian continent. The role of climate has also been discussed as a forcing factor of Pleistocene phasing (Leroy et al. 2011). Two and a half million years requires us to take into account all the forcing factors in contexts in which humans evolved. Thus, this includes large changes due to significant geodynamic activity and the terrestrial environments inherited from the Pliocene that have been modified by ever colder and longer climatic cycles. The diversity of ecosystems must be contextualized throughout the lens of tectonic uplift and the distribution of precipitation. While, our work does not cover the entire period, we highlight several sedimentary archives, placed end to end, as windows to this past through the pollen record.

Leroy, S.A.G., Arpe, K., Mikolajewicz, U., 2011. Vegetation context and climatic limits of the Early Pleistocene hominin dispersal in Europe. Quaternary Science Reviews, Early Human Evolution in the Western Palaearctic: Ecological Scenarios 30, 1448–1463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.01.017

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36493.0