Early Pleistocene Faunas of Eurasia and Hominin Dispersals

Abstract

During Neogene–Quaternary times, all the dispersals of African taxa into the European continent are related to important faunal turnovers in the Eurasian faunas. Only on rare occasions have a few taxa of Ethiopian origin penetrated into the Northern Continents and vice versa. The finding of African species in Eurasia and of Eurasian species in Africa, although rare, is always very significant and provides important climatic, ecologic and geographic information. The Levantine Corridor – situated in the eastern Mediterranean Basin – is accepted as the major route out of Africa into Eurasia and vice versa. The fact that the Levant is an extension of the East African Rift and forms an inter-continental bottleneck, and that the climatic and ecological conditions prevailing in East Africa extended north at the Plio-Pleistocene times, makes this region the most important key area for explaining these dispersal phenomena. Although a large number of African origin large mammals are recorded in the Levant, only a few of these species penetrated into the Eurasian middle latitudes during the Plio-Pleistocene transition and Early Pleistocene times; these taxa are Theropithecus oswaldi, Megantereon whitei, and Hippopotamus antiquus. The dispersal of this fauna is associated with the first colonization of the Northern Continent by the genus Homo, and it reveals a new paleoecological picture of this event. The development of the social behavior, as has been detected in Dmanisi (Georgia), together with systematic carnivorous behavior by hominins, was necessary for colonizing the middle latitudes of Eurasia and survival in seasonal climates with winters and summers, where vegetable resources were not available throughout the year. One million years later, during the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition, there was another dispersal of African taxa, associated with the arrival of the Acheulean culture into Europe and Asia.