Abstract
During the Holocene, North American ice sheet collapse and rapid sea-level rise reconnected the Black Sea with the global ocean. Rapid meltwater releases into the North Atlantic and associated climate change arguably slowed the pace of Neolithisation across southeastern Europe, originally hypothesized as a catastrophic flooding that fueled culturally-widespread deluge myths. However, we currently lack an independent record linking the timing of meltwater events, sea-level rise and environmental change with the timing of Neolithisation in southeastern Europe. Here, we present a sea surface salinity record from the Northern Aegean Sea indicative of two meltwater events at ~8.4 and ~7.6 kiloyears that can be directly linked to rapid declines in the establishment of Neolithic sites in southeast Europe. The meltwater events point to an increased outflow of low salinity water from the Black Sea driven by rapid sea level rise >1.4 m following freshwater outbursts from Lake Agassiz and the final decay of the Laurentide ice sheet. Our results shed new light on the link between catastrophic sea-level rise and the Neolithisation of southeastern Europe, and present a historical example of how coastal populations could have been impacted by future rapid sea-level rise.
Highlights
The analysis of early Holocene episodes of rapid ice-sheet disintegration and meltwater release are highly relevant for our understanding of future sea-level change due to global warming and the associated societal effects on coastal populations[1,2,3]
Of the Levantine Basin surface water circulation around core LC21 during the Holocene[14,16], which would have dampened any signal of northern Aegean Sea salinity changes in the southern Aegean Sea
This Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) rebound corresponds to the regional expression of the cool and dry phase of the 8.2 kyrs cal BP event that was caused by a reduced thermohaline circulation well after the main Lake Agassiz’s freshwater outburst into the North Atlantic[7,9,10,14]
Summary
Of the Levantine Basin surface water circulation around core LC21 during the Holocene[14,16], which would have dampened any signal of northern Aegean Sea salinity changes in the southern Aegean Sea. The increased outflow of freshwater from the Black Sea interpreted from our new salinity record is interrupted from about 8.4 and 8.0 kyrs cal BP, as evidenced by an abrupt rebound of the SSS in our record (Fig. 2). We relate the stasis in summed probability of agriculture between 8.4 and 8.2 kyrs cal BP to the combined effects of rapid sea level rise and subsequent flooding following Lake Agassiz’s freshwater outburst and the cool and dry climatic conditions of the 8.2 kyrs cal BP event caused by a reduced North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.
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