A speleothem-based reconstruction of the Late Quaternary climate-environmental-human nexus in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Abstract

During the late Quaternary, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (north-eastern part of ancient Mesopotamia) was the scenario of several fundamental cultural events including the dispersal of Homo to Eurasia, the origin of agriculture and adoption of domesticates, the beginning of urbanization, and the formation of the first state entities. The role played by climate and environmental changes on these cultural processes was highly debated, but local, continuous, and well-dated paleoclimatic records are still missing. In this contribution, we present the preliminary results of a palaeoclimatological and paleoenvironmental investigation in this area, which aims to reconstruct a detailed framework of the relationship between global climatic changes, regional environmental and hydrological responses, and human adaptation during the Late Quaternary, with a special look to the Holocene. Speleothems were collected along the eastern slopes of northern Zagros from the Hassārok Cave, near Shaqlawa township, in the northern Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Preliminary geochemical and geochronological results provide information on Holocene climatic variability in the region. Environmental and paleoclimatic data have been compared with archaeological information to infer and quantify the effects of climatic changes (if any) on human exploitation of natural resources, settlement dynamic and major shift in subsistence strategies and land use.