Regional heterogeneity of environmental stressors for the Early, Middle and Late Palaeolithic European human populations related to the evolutionary lineage of Neanderthals

Abstract

Pleistocene climatic fluctuations could play an important role in the development of the human phylogenetic line of Neanderthals. The aim of this study was to model how the climate-based physiological, cognitive, and vector-borne disease risk stressors for humans could vary in Europe by area and time from the Lower Palaeolithic era to the extinction of Neanderthals. For this purpose, the climatic requirements of the ancient humans were reconstructed based on the Early, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic occurrences of humans in Europe and its wider geographical environment for 8 Palaeolithic times and further six health and cold adaptation-related factors were also modelled. The adaptation of European human populations to the cool and volatile Pleistocene climate of Europe could gradually happen. While the Middle Palaeolithic humans in Europe lived in areas with long and medium-long vegetation periods and low or middle January mortality risk, in the late Palaeolithic the Neanderthal populations may have settled in areas with short ones. In January, these northern regions in the Late Palaeolithic era could be characterized by relatively high mortality risk. While the ancient humans of the Middle Palaeolithic era lived in such regions where the length of the thermal comfort season could be relatively long, the late Pleistocene humans of Europe occupied such regions where the thermal comfort season could be very short, and these humans should cover a large part of their body surface. However, the model results suggest that both humans of the Middle and Late Palaeolithic era should wear clothes in the coldest period of the winter in Europe. The Upper Palaeolithic populations could be less affected by such tick-borne diseases as Lyme borreliosis than the Early or the Middle Palaeolithic populations.