XVII World UISPP Congress 2014
Burgos, 1-7 September The first peopling of Europe
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multistage, ‘punctuated’ configuration, which suggests a succession of adaptively stable peopling phases al- ternating with renewed dispersals from these staging posts. These observations require addressing their re- ticulate and multivariate causal interrelationships: iden- tifying optimal colonization habitats; implications for colonization logistics of a single polymorphous early Homo species; the bearing of biocultural hominization antecedents on the model of ‘pioneering’ populations expansions; the behavioural ecological dynamics be- tween incoming hominids for habituation with unfa- miliar large Palaearctic mammalian prey species during the Epi-Villafranchian and Galerian Events; the respective roles of social canids analogs in prey species habituation, and of long-lived core aspects of hominid socio-spatial and ecological organization for interpreting this punctu- ated stasis/dispersals sequence.
POSTER
POSTER 10. MODELING HUMAN SETTLEMENT, FAUNA AND FLORA DYNAMICS IN EUROPE DURING THE MID- PLEISTOCENE REVOLUTION (1.2 TO 0.5 MA).
Rodríguez, Jesús (CENIEH) [email protected] Mateos, Ana (CENIEH) [email protected]
Palombo, María Rita (Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”)
Hertler, Christine (Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut) [email protected]
We introduce here a new international project support- ed by the INQUA Humans and Biosphere Commission (HaBComm) focused on the Mid-Pleistocene Revolution.
This project intends to be a “pilot project” intended to be developed into an International Focus Group in the 2015-2019 INQUA inter-congress period.
The so called Mid-Pleistocene Revolution (c. 1.2-0.5 Ma) was a major environmental crisis driven by changes in orbital forcing which increased the amplitude of climatic oscillations. Changes in climate drastically affected vege- tation in complex ways and led to a significant renewal of mammalian faunal paleo-communities. Human groups with Oldowan technology were present in southern Eu- rope shortly before the Jaramillo subchron and in Britain shortly after the Matuyama/Brunhes boundary. Howev- er, evidence of human presence during the 0.7-0.5 Ma period is remarkably scarce, leading some authors to
propose a depopulation of the continent in this period and a subsequent recolonization by other groups with a new material culture: the Acheulean.
The aim of this project is to bring together research- ers with experience in the study of the archaeological evidence on the colonization of Europe in the Early and Middle Pleistocene, specialists who may provide primary data on the potential constraints to human settlement (palaeoclimate, mammalian faunas, palaeoflora, palaeo- geography, quantitative palaeoecology, sedimentol- ogy and palaeosoils…) and specialists in mathematical modeling. The main goals of this project are as follows:
(i) archaeologists will develop hypotheses about the pat- terns of human occupation and cultural change in rela- tion to the main environmental constraints of this period and (ii) palaeontologists, palynologists, palaeoclimatolo- gists, geologists, and palaeogeographers will provide the primary data to test these constraints; (iii) these con- ceptual models will be turned into mathematical mod- els, and this will be made possible with the participation of mathematicians, biogeographers and engineers with experience in the modeling of complex systems using different methodological approaches (like stochastic, dif- ferential, or agent-based models). Members of the pro- ject are not expected to have previous skills on research fields other than their own. This initiative is intended as a forum where specialists may share their expertise and join efforts to build up new approaches to address the key question of understanding the way environmental change influenced the human occupation of Europe in the Early and Middle Pleistocene.