Sarah Pederzani (La Laguna, Spain) ’How did Homo sapiens spread across Eurasia? New data on human climatic resilience at the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic’.


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How did Homo sapiens spread across Eurasia? New data on human climatic resilience at the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic
The spread of Homo sapiens into new habitats across Eurasia and the concurrent disappearance of Neanderthals from the archaeological record during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition represents a critical evolutionary turnover in our species’ history. This biological transformation occurred in the framework of the dramatic and rapid climatic oscillations of the Late Pleistocene. Those climatic shifts are thought to have had major impacts on hunter-gatherer groups navigating the changing environments of Eurasia. It has been proposed that the earliest forays of our species into Europe and Northern Asia primarily occurred during warm phases of the Last Glacial Period. However, such correlations have been difficult to demonstrate clearly, as such models currently predominantly rest on low-resolution correlations of the chronometric ages of archaeological finds with climatic data from spatially distant archives such as ice cores. 

In this presentation, I will give an overview of how stable isotope analyses of faunal remains found directly at archaeological sites of interest can yield climatic data that is more directly connected to the archaeological evidence of our species dispersal across Eurasia. I will illustrate this using examples from some of the earliest records of Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens in Europe - the Initial Upper Palaeolithic in Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, and the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician in Ranis, Germany, where stable isotope climatic data now connects early H. sapiens dispersal events with severe cold conditions, in opposition to earlier models. Finally, I will explore how this informs the climatic resilience of our species and the mechanisms that supported rapid dispersals across a variety of climate zones ~ 45,000 years ago. 

Seminaret finder sted i sal 334 på Institutionen och kan fölges på Zoom på link 
The seminar takes place in room 334 at the Institute, and can also be attended on Zoom.


Kerstin Lidén will host the seminar.