Hominin Response to Oscillations in Climate and Local Environments During the Mid-Pleistocene Climate Transition in Northern China

Zhou, Bin, Wang, Zhe, Xu, Xiangchun, Pang, Yang, Bird, Michael I., Wang, Bin, Meadows, Michael E., and Taylor, David (2023) Hominin Response to Oscillations in Climate and Local Environments During the Mid-Pleistocene Climate Transition in Northern China. Geophysical Research Letters, 50 (21). e2023GL104931.

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Abstract

Archeological evidence from loess sediments from Shangchen on the southeastern Chinese Loess Plateau indicates a suspension of hominin occupation around the time of the early mid-Pleistocene climate transition, prompting a re-assessment of climate-vegetation-hominin interactions. Loess deposits with in situ lithic records cover the period of hominin occupation and reveal four distinct climate-vegetation periods (2.1–1.8, 1.8–1.26, 1.26–0.9, and 0.9–0.6 Ma). Major oscillations in climate superimposed upon an aridification trend and an expansion of C4 herbaceous vegetation from about 1.26 Ma may have driven early humans to move to more hospitable locations in the region. Comparison with the record at Nihewan indicates that large-scale climate oscillations induced disparate hominin responses due to distinctive local environmental conditions.

Item ID: 81055
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1944-8007
Keywords: aridity, C4 taxa, climate variability, hominin adaptation, loess sequence, mid-Pleistocene transition
Copyright Information: © 2023. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made
Date Deposited: 05 Mar 2024 04:40
FoR Codes: 43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4301 Archaeology > 430101 Archaeological science @ 100%
SEO Codes: 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280113 Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology @ 100%
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